{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 186/1918-12-08/p041","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"Darwinism in its materialistic coloring has arisen from the British people. This is an entirely true principle—you can read this in my book, The Riddles of Philosophy. It is an entirely true principle that organic creatures have gradually evolved from the imperfect to the more perfect, even up to man. The perfect is derived from the imperfect. This principle is absolutely true if a person observes the physical world and in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold comes upon the powers of death and destruction. But we can express this also differently; in other words, we can say that the imperfect is derived from the perfect. Read the chapter dealing with Preuss in my book, *Riddles of Philosophy*. We can just as well prove that the perfect existed first and that the imperfect comes into existence through decadence. In other words, that man existed first and that the other kingdoms later descended from him through decadence. This is just as correct. The situation in which a thinking person finds himself the moment he must say one thing is true and the other also true—to recognize this situation in its whole fruitful character was really granted to the German peoples alone by reason of their folk character. This is not understood at all anywhere else in the world. It is not at all understood in the world that people can argue for a long time over this question, one maintaining that the perfect beings are derived from the imperfect, as Darwin does, and the other maintaining, as Schelling does, that the imperfect beings are derived from the perfect. Both are right, but from different points of view. If we look at the spiritual process, the imperfect is derived from the perfect; if we look at the physical, the perfect is derived from the imperfect.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"6. The Innate Capacities of the Nations of the World","site_heading":null,"date":"1918-12-08","location":null,"word_count":305,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/186/1918-12-08/p041","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Olin D. Wannamaker","identified_edition":"AP1941","book_title":"The Challenge of the Times","publisher":"Anthroposophic Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA186/English/AP1941/19181208p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["English"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/186/1918-12-08/p041"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/186/1918-12-08/p041","paragraph_aligned":true}],"record":{"record_type":"unknown","scope":"volume","note":"How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.","evidence":null,"evidence_translation":null,"evidence_source":null},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1918-12-08","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 186/1918-12-08/p035","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/186/1918-12-08/p035"}],"bead_confidence":"high","length_check":{"de_words":276,"en_words":305,"ratio":1.11,"partial":false},"correspondence":"established","note":"English passage numbering is edition-relative, so the same number need not name the same paragraph in the German. The German original passage(s) above are the edition-invariant anchor — fetch them (lang='de') to verify wording before quoting across editions."},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.08,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":9943,"original_word_count":9249,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Olin D. Wannamaker","identified_edition":"AP1941","book_title":"The Challenge of the Times","publisher":"Anthroposophic Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA186/English/AP1941/19181208p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 186/1918-12-08/p035"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"high","note":"Every load-bearing name in the German counterpart appears in this English passage. That is a check on NAMES only: a translation can keep every name and still reverse who acts on whom, change a number, or soften a claim. Read the German for anything you intend to rest an argument on."},"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."}}