{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 18/p02c03/p029","lang":"en","edition":"AP1973","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"The same mechanism that produces our sensations also produces our conception of matter. Matter, equally, is only a product of my organization, just as color and tone. Even when we speak of things in themselves, we must be clearly aware of the fact that we cannot go beyond our own realm. We are so organized that we cannot possibly go beyond ourselves. Even what lies beyond our realm can be represented to ourselves only through *our* conception. We become aware of a limit to our world. We argue that there must be something beyond the limit that causes sensations in us. But we can only go as far as to that limit, even the limit we set ourselves because we can go no further. “A fish can swim in water in the pond, not in the earth, but it can hit its head against the bottom and the walls.” In the same way we live within the realm of our conceptions and sensations, but not in the external things. We hit against a limit, however, where we cannot go any further, where we must say no more than that beyond this is the unknown. All conceptions we produce concerning this unknown are unjustified because we cannot do anything but relate the conceptions we have obtained within ourselves to the unknown. If we wanted to do this, we should be no wiser than a fish that would say, “Here I cannot go any further. Therefore, I want to go into some other kind of water in which I will try to swim in some other way.” But the fact is that the fish can swim only in water and nowhere else.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"III. The World as Illusion","site_heading":null,"date":null,"location":null,"word_count":280,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/18/p02c03/p029","alignment_confidence":"low","alignment_reason":"no_original_to_compare","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":null,"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["AP1973"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"en","edition":"AP1973","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/18/p02c03/p029"},{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"locus":"GA 18/l12/p029","anchor_mapped":true,"anchor_method":"part_chapter","anchor_confidence":"high","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/18/l12/p029"}],"witness_completeness":{"ratio":null,"band":"no_original","note":null,"word_count":14163,"original_word_count":null,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"status":"unknown","warning":"No translator is recorded for this edition. An unattributed translation cannot be weighed as a witness: you cannot tell which hand made the choices in it. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"entity_parity":{"status":"not_checkable","note":"No verified paragraph alignment covers this passage, so its names cannot be compared with the German."},"note":"quote_safe certifies the bytes of this text. This block is about the translation as a WITNESS: who made it, and whether it carries the same names as the original. See witness_completeness for how much of the original this witness holds."}}