{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 188/1919-01-03/p006","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"At the outset of our considerations today, I will take an example that may be said to have come my way by chance; if the word is not misunderstood, and there is no need for any misunderstanding. It is an article which, it is true, is out of date today since it was written when the so-called war was still in full swing. Thus the article is not up to date. Also it is not exactly impressive in other ways, for most of the things discussed are treated very one-sidedly. But it comes from a man—and this can be seen from the whole character and way of writing—who is giving his most earnest thought to what should now happen, and what the world has to expect from the events. This article gives a picture of the gradual trend of behaviour on the part of the western powers, the central powers, the eastern powers, during the catastrophe of these last years. Although in a one-sided way, it shows the great dangers from this catastrophe threatening both present and future. The writer has a certain world-outlook. He considers the world not only from the point of view of land frontiers; the world from the point of view of frontiers is also discussed among men today, and if they can satisfy themselves that some particular thing does not happen within their own territory, they make their mind easy. The author of this article has a wider outlook than that of the village pump, he grasps something of world perspective. And in the summing up of his ideas we come to a very remarkable passage. He says; “A fearful destiny beckons to the white races which seems to me an absolute certainty unless a period of the supremacy of great wisdom succeeds that of passion and delusion. For some time we have actually been living in an age very similar to that of the migration of peoples. The tempo has been tremendously increased by the world war. What corresponds to the German races who invaded the civilised lands of olden times from outside, are the rapidly rising lower classes of the people who both in blood and cultural heritage are very different from those who previously held the power. This migration of peoples—it is better to refer to it thus than to call it a war—is good in so far as it necessitates a widening, a widening of the cultural basis and a raising of levels as a whole. But this would be very dangerous were it to come about too rapidly. And this danger will be increased the longer the world war lasts.”","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"I. The Difference Between Man and Animal","site_heading":null,"date":"1919-01-03","location":null,"word_count":440,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/188/1919-01-03/p006","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Violet E. Watkin","identified_edition":"UNK1960","book_title":"Goetheanism as an Impulse for Man's Transformation","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA188/English/UNK1960/19190103p01.html","evidence":"lecture_list_row"},"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/188/1919-01-03/p006"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/188/1919-01-03/p006","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},"paired_german":{"status":"paired","german":[{"locus":"GA 188/1919-01-03/p006","passage_number":6,"text":"Ich will bei der heutigen Betrachtung von einem Beispiel ausgehen, das mir, man kann sagen zufällig - wenn man das Wort nicht mißversteht, und wir brauchen es nicht mißzuverstehen - in die Hände gekommen ist; ein Aufsatz, der allerdings insofern heute veraltet ist, als er geschrieben wurde, während der sogenannte Krieg noch in vollem Gange war. Also der Aufsatz ist heute veraltet. Er ist auch sonst nicht gerade eindringlich, da er die meisten Dinge, die er bespricht, sehr einseitig behandelt. Allein er rührt doch her von einem Menschen das sieht man nach der ganzen Haltung, nach der ganzen Schreibweise -, der sich die ernstesten Gedanken darüber macht, was nun eigentlich geschehen soll, was die Welt von den Ereignissen zu erwarten hat. Er stellt dar, dieser Aufsatz, wie sich die Westmächte, die Mittelmächte, die Ostmächte allmählich verhalten haben innerhalb der Katastrophe der letzten Jahre. Er stellt die großen Gefahren, wenn auch einseitig, aber doch immerhin dar, die aus dieser Katastrophe heraus heute lauern und in die Zukunft hineinlauern werden. Der Verfasser hat einen gewissen Weltblick. Er betrachtet die Welt nicht nur vom Gesichtspunkt der Landesgrenzen; auch das soll ja unter den heutigen Menschen noch vorkommen, daß sie die Welt nur vom Gesichtspunkt ihrer Landesgrenzen betrachten, und wenn sie sich dann beruhigen können, daß innerhalb ihres Landes das oder jenes noch nicht stattfindet, dann sind sie unbesorgt. Der Verfasser dieses Aufsatzes sieht immerhin nicht nur den Umkreis des Kitchturmes, sondern er sieht doch etwas von der Weltperspektive. Und seine Gedanken zusammenfassend, kommt er zu einem sehr merkwürdigen Satze. Er sagt: «Daß ein furchtbares Schicksal der weißen Menschheit winkt; dies scheint mir unter allen Umständen gewiß, es sei denn, daß eine Periode supremer Weisheitsherrschaft sehr bald die der Leidenschaft und Wahnvorstellungen ablöst. Wir leben in der Tat seit lange schon in der Periode, die mit der Völkerwanderungszeit viel Ähnlichkeit hat. Das Tempo wird durch den Weltkrieg ungeheuer beschleunigt. Was den damals von außen in altes Kulturland einwandernden Germanenstämmen entspricht, sind die beträchtlichen, aufsteigenden unteren Volksschichten, die sowohl dem Blut wie dem Kulturerbe nach von den bisher herrschenden sehr verschieden sind. Daß diese Völkerwanderung» - es ist in der Tat viel besser, von einer Völkerwanderung als von einem Kriege zu sprechen - «überhaupt stattfindet, ist gut insofern, als sie Verbreitung bedingt, eine Verbreitung der Kulturbasis und eine Hebung vom Gesamtniveau. Sehr gefährlich aber ist es, wenn sie zu schnell verläuft. Und diese Gefahr wird vergrößert, je länger der Weltkrieg dauert.»","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":406,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/188/1919-01-03/p006"}],"english":["GA 188/1919-01-03/p006"],"method":"length","confidence":"high","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":406,"en_words":440,"ratio":1.08,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.05,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":8259,"original_word_count":7890,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Violet E. Watkin","identified_edition":"UNK1960","book_title":"Goetheanism as an Impulse for Man's Transformation","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA188/English/UNK1960/19190103p01.html","evidence":"lecture_list_row"},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 188/1919-01-03/p006"],"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."}}