{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 222/1923-03-12/p039","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"Think back to the times of earlier medicine. Nobody who had anything to do with medicine in those days would have thought of investigating merely the external, abstract forces and substances of nature. Men worked in their laboratories—if their workshops can be called that—in such a way that the operations of the elemental forces were clearly revealed to them. Actually, men have always asked: How does a sulphur—or some other process combine with a different substance? What effect has this behind the actual sense-phenomenon? How are the elemental beings working here? Men made their experiments in order to learn, let us say, by paying attention to the transformation undergone by a substance when it combines with another, or when it arises out of another, how—especially in the change of colour revealed by a substance in the process of transition—beings of the elemental kingdom peep out into the world of the senses. Even *Paracelsus*, when he described sulphur, salt and mercury was not describing these ordinary physical substances, but what peeped out at him from the elemental kingdom when these substances were undergoing transformation. Hence you can never understand Paracelsus if you take his expressions in the sense in which they are used today in chemistry, because everywhere he really means what peeps out from the elemental world in the way described. Here, however, are the healing forces, the real healing forces. In what you see when you Look at the external appearance of any plant, let us say the meadow saffron, you do not see the healing forces that are its characteristic; if you want to perceive the healing forces of the meadow saffron you must watch it when it is fading, when it is undergoing its unique, bold changes of colour; then the elemental being is escaping and this brings about the changes of colour. You know the saying that when the devil makes off, he leaves a stink behind him—and as they escape the elemental beings assert their audacity by the colouring.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Lecture II","site_heading":"Spiritual Hierarchies and Human Evolution's Elemental Worlds","site_heading_note":"A heading the site wrote for this unit from a summary of it; not in the edition, and not the words of Rudolf Steiner or of the translator. Cite the unit by its title and locus, never by this heading, and do not quote it.","date":"1923-03-12","location":null,"word_count":334,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/222/1923-03-12/p039","alignment_confidence":"medium","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Dorothy S. Osmond and Johanna Collis","identified_edition":"SBC1972","book_title":"The Driving Force of Spiritual Powers in World History","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA222/English/SBC1972/19230312p01.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/222/1923-03-12/p039"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/222/1923-03-12/p039","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":"1923-03-12","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 222/1923-03-12/p042","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/222/1923-03-12/p042"}],"bead_confidence":"medium","pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"length_check":{"de_words":347,"en_words":334,"ratio":0.96,"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."},"paired_german":{"status":"paired","german":[{"locus":"GA 222/1923-03-12/p042","passage_number":42,"text":"Gehen Sie zurück in die Zeiten der älteren Medizin. Da hat kein Mensch daran gedacht, der mit Medizin etwas zu tun hatte, bloß die äußeren abstrakten Naturkräfte und Naturstoffe zu untersuchen. Da arbeiteten die Leute in ihrem Laboratorium — wenn man ihre Anstalten so nennen kann - so, daß ihnen aus den Vorgängen der Natur überall die Wirkungsweisen der elementarischen Kräfte entgegenleuchteten. Eigentlich haben ja die Menschen immer gefragt: Wie nimmt sich dasjenige, was irgend so ein Schwefel- oder anderer Prozeß ist mit einem andern Stoffe zusammen, wie nimmt sich das aus hinter der bloßen sinnlichen Erscheinung? Wie wirken da die Wesen der elementarischen Reiche drinnen? — Die Menschen machten ihre Experimente, um gewissermaßen bei so einer Verwandlung, welche ein Stoff durchmacht, indem er sich mit einem andern verbindet, oder indem er aus einem andern hervorkommt, zu erlauschen, wie da namentlich in dem Übergange, bei dem Farbenwechsel eines Stoffes, herauslugt aus dem elementarischen Reiche in die sinnliche Welt herein dasjenige, was Wesen. der elementarischen Reiche sind. Noch Paracelsus, wenn er Sulfur, Salz, Merkur beschrieben hat, hat nicht diese gewöhnlichen physischen Stoffe beschrieben, sondern das, was ihm, wenn diese Stoffe Verwandlungen durchmachten, aus dem elementarischen Reiche herauslugte. Man kann daher nirgends den Paracelsus verstehen, wenn man seine Ausdrücke so nimmt, wie sie heute in der Chemie gebraucht werden, weil er überall eigentlich dasjenige meint, was eben in der geschilderten Weise da aus der elementarischen Welt herauslugt. Das aber sind auch die heilenden Kräfte. Es sind die wirklichen heilenden Kräfte. An dem, was Sie an irgendeiner Pflanze sehen, an dem, was Ihnen, sagen wir, die Herbstzeitlose äußerlich zeigt, sehen Sie nicht die charakteristischen heilenden Kräfte der Herbstzeitlose. Wenn Sie die charakteristischen heilenden Kräfte der Herbstzeitlose sehen wollen, da müssen Sie sich die Herbstzeitlose anschauen im Verblühen, wenn sie diese eigentümliche freche Farbenveränderung durchmacht. Da macht sich nämlich das elementarische Wesen davon und bewirkt die Farbenänderung durch einen ähnlichen Prozeß — nun, Sie wissen ja, wenn sich der Teufel davonmacht, läßt er einen Gestank hinter sich, und die elementarischen Wesen machen sich da durch ihre Frechheit in der Farbengebung geltend.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":347,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/222/1923-03-12/p042"}],"english":["GA 222/1923-03-12/p039"],"method":"length","confidence":"medium","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":347,"en_words":334,"ratio":0.96,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":0.99,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":6101,"original_word_count":6187,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Dorothy S. Osmond and Johanna Collis","identified_edition":"SBC1972","book_title":"The Driving Force of Spiritual Powers in World History","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA222/English/SBC1972/19230312p01.html","evidence":"lecture_list_row"},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 222/1923-03-12/p042"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"medium","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."}}