{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 227/1923-08-22/p023","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"Here we come to a point where—if as present-day men we are investigating these things anew—we feel reverent wonder at the dreamlike imaginations of earlier humanity. As I have said during these days, if we look back to the imaginations experienced even in waking life by the souls of those early peoples, imaginations embodied in their myths, legends and sayings of the gods, which all passed before them in so hazy a way compared with our clear perception of nature—when we look back on all this with the help of what can now be discovered quite independently of those old dreamy imaginations, we are filled with veneration and wonder. And if in this sphere we search again for truth, it echoes down from ancient Greece in a word which shows that the Greeks still retained some knowledge of these things. They said to themselves: “Something underlies the shaping of the world, something out of which all definite forms arise, but it is accessible only when we leave behind the world of the senses while we are asleep and dreaming.” The Greeks called this something, “Chaos”. All speculation, all abstract inquiry into the nature of this chaos, has been fruitless, but men to-day come near to it when it plays into their dreams. Yet in mediaeval times there was still some knowledge of a super-sensible, scarcely material substance lying behind all material substance, for a so-called quintessence, a fifth mode of being, was spoken of together with the four elements: earth, water, air, fire—and quintessence.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"4. Dream Life","site_heading":null,"date":"1923-08-22","location":null,"word_count":254,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/227/1923-08-22/p023","alignment_confidence":"medium","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Violet E. Watkin and Charles Davy","identified_edition":"RSP1966","book_title":"The Evolution of Consciousness","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA227/English/RSP1966/19230822p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"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/227/1923-08-22/p023"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/227/1923-08-22/p023","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":"1923-08-22","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 227/1923-08-22/p029","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/227/1923-08-22/p029"}],"bead_confidence":"medium","pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"length_check":{"de_words":314,"en_words":254,"ratio":0.81,"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 227/1923-08-22/p029","passage_number":29,"text":"Und hier ist einer derjenigen Punkte, wo man, wenn man als gegenwärtiger Mensch diese Dinge wieder erforscht, in jenes ehrfurchtsvolle Staunen hineinkommt, das man empfinden kann gegenüber den traumhaften Imaginationen einer früheren Menschheit, von denen ich auch in diesen Tagen gesprochen habe. Ich sagte, wenn wir zurückgehen zu demjenigen, was eine frühere Menschheit auch im Wachleben in traumhaften Imaginationen in der Seele erlebt hat, was sie dann in Mythen und Legenden in die Göttersagen geformt hat, was so unbestimmt vertfließt gegenüber demjenigen, was wir heute in fester Naturanschauung erfassen, wenn man zu dem zurückgeht mit dem, was man heute wieder entdecken kann, ganz selbständig, unabhängig von diesen alten traumhaften Imaginationen, dann kommt man aber doch zu einem ehrfürchtigen Erstaunen, zu einer ehrfürchtigen Bewunderung desjenigen, was in den Seelen dieser Menschen älterer Zeitepochen gelebt hat. Und aus dem alten Griechenland tönt uns noch ein Wort herüber, welches uns Zeugnis ist, wenn wir auf diesem Gebiete neuerdings dasjenige wieder erforschen, was die Wahrheit ist; es tönt uns aus dem alten Griechenland herüber ein Wort, welches uns bezeugt, daß die Griechen noch etwas gewußt haben von diesen Dingen, daß die Griechen sich vorgestellt haben: Es gibt etwas, was aller Weltgestaltung zugrunde liegt, aus dem sich alle bestimmten Gestalten erheben, das man aber nur erreichen kann, wenn man aus der Sinnenwelt heraus in den Schlafzustand, in einen traumhaften Zustand kommt. Das haben die Griechen genannt das Chaos. Und es war alle Spekulation, alle begriffliche Untersuchung, was das Chaos ist, vergeblich; denn das Chaos ist etwas, woran der heutige Mensch nahe kommt, wenn er ins Träumen hineinkommt. Nur noch ins Mittelalter ragt hinein irgend etwas von einer Kenntnis dessen, was so als übersinnliche, kaum schon Materie zu nennende äußere Substanz allen äußeren Substanzen zugrunde liegt, indem im Mittelalter gesprochen wird von der sogenannten Quintessenz, der fünften Wesenheit, neben den vier anderen Elementen: Erde, Wasser, Luft, Feuer — der Quintessenz.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":314,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/227/1923-08-22/p029"}],"english":["GA 227/1923-08-22/p023"],"method":"length","confidence":"medium","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":314,"en_words":254,"ratio":0.81,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":0.92,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":5015,"original_word_count":5460,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Violet E. Watkin and Charles Davy","identified_edition":"RSP1966","book_title":"The Evolution of Consciousness","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA227/English/RSP1966/19230822p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 227/1923-08-22/p029"],"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."}}