I. The Transforming of Instinctive into Conscious Impulses

GA 186/1918-12-13/p008 ·1918-12-13 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: unknown. 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.

Now when you turn your attention to such a phenomenon as this, you must remember the following important fact: So long as a thing works instinctively, it works with a certain sureness. Call it what you will, the Divine Order or the order of Nature, instincts are a force that works through all the evolution of mankind with a certain sureness, unshaken by thought. Uncertainty only begins from the moment when the things of life, in whose sphere the certainty of instincts was working hitherto, begin to be penetrated by human thought and reflection, human intellect. And only gradually, having gone through many and varied errors, does man regain in a conscious way that sureness and inner certainty which, under different conditions, he had in former times by instinct.

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Cite: GA 186/1918-12-13/p008 · edition English