{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 190/1919-03-28/p016","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"You see, such things are extraordinarily important and significant, for they give an intimation of the relation between the sense world and the world of the spirit. These things give a conception about this relation between the sensible and the supersensible much more than what it is today often so impressively given in abstract words. And as for the methods—my dear friends, just look through the literature of spiritual science which I have tried to put into writing, and test the method there—it is a test which apparently few have carried out; the method always is to explain one thing by another, so that the matters are mutually clarified. And a real understanding of the spirit can be arrived at in no other way than by one thing referring to another. Take for example the one word spirit! Anyone who wants to avoid the materialistic thinks that he must for ever be speaking of spirit, spirit, spirit. Take the word *Geist* in the German language. In Latin it has a still more concrete character: *Spiritus*, which is something which for most people does not clearly indicate what they understand by our word *geist*, and on further consideration it all becomes very abstract because you cannot conceive a *Spiritus*, can you? That is the fundamental concrete conception. But “Spirit Self” ( *Geistselbst*), “spirit” ( *Geist*), what is that? What is its actual concrete significance? Do not most people imagine the spirit—as I have often complained—as something materially very tenuous, absolutely thin, like a thin mist, and if they want to speak of spirit, they speak of vibrations. At theosophical gatherings, at least at their teas, I have so often heard people speak of “such good vibrations”! I do not know what they mean by these vibrations, in any case they were conjuring a very material process into the room. These worth *Geist*, *Gischt*, *Geischt*, *Geschti*, and so on, a sort of vapour issuing from some opening: this would be the concrete conception. In our time, however, the fifth post-Atlantean age of civilization, one cannot arrive in this way at a concrete idea of *Geist*, spirit: it is impossible. For you either remain in some shadowy abstraction that you connect with the word “spirit” ( *Geist*) or you are obliged to think of *Spiritus*, spirits of wine: in thinking of an inspired ( *begeistert*) man you then arrive at a very curious picture. Or else you are obliged to think of something welling up, spurting out of a crevice, a vent hole, and thus arrive at a concrete conception.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"I. Inner Experience of Language I","site_heading":null,"date":"1919-03-28","location":null,"word_count":427,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/190/1919-03-28/p016","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"LRZ1969","book_title":"The Social Question as a Problem of Soul Life","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA190/English/LRZ1969/19190328p01.html","evidence":null,"reason":"no_translator_named","note":"Neither the lecture's own page nor rsarchive's lecture list names a translator for it. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"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/190/1919-03-28/p016"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/190/1919-03-28/p016","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":"1919-03-28","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 190/1919-03-28/p015","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/190/1919-03-28/p015"}],"bead_confidence":"high","length_check":{"de_words":442,"en_words":427,"ratio":0.97,"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":0.99,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":5677,"original_word_count":5725,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"LRZ1969","book_title":"The Social Question as a Problem of Soul Life","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA190/English/LRZ1969/19190328p01.html","evidence":null,"reason":"no_translator_named","note":"Neither the lecture's own page nor rsarchive's lecture list names a translator for it. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing.","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":"ok","checked_against":["GA 190/1919-03-28/p015"],"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."}}