{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 21/l02/p020","lang":"en","edition":"MP1996","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":false,"text":"One has to ask oneself how the unbelievable can occur that Dessoir has me assert that old India is to be understood in a *symbolic* way. Out of the whole context of his presentation, I come to the following explanation. Dessoir has read something about the processes in our soul life that I call the path to spiritual vision, whose first level is Imaginative cognition. I describe there how the soul, through calm devotion to certain thoughts, evolves from its own depths the ability to form Imaginative pictures. I say that to this end the soul does best to dwell upon symbolic pictures. No one, through my description, should fall into the error of thinking that these symbolic pictures are anything other than a means of arriving at Imaginative cognition. Now, Dessoir believes that, because one arrives at Imaginative picturing by means of symbols, this picturing also consists only in symbolic pictures; indeed, he ascribes to me the view that someone who uses his spiritual organs does not look through the Imaginative pictures at realities, but only at symbols.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"II. Max Dessoir on Anthroposophy","date":null,"location":null,"word_count":179,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/21/l02/p020?edition=MP1996","alignment_confidence":"low","alignment_reason":"count_diverges","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":null,"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["MP1996","RSP1970"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/21/l02/p020"},{"lang":"en","edition":"MP1996","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":false,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/21/l02/p020?edition=MP1996"}],"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.04,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":11429,"original_word_count":11023,"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."}}