{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p037-p039","extent":"range","passage_number":37,"through":39,"paragraph_count":3,"first_locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p037","last_locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p039","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"title":"Lecture XI","date":"1924-03-22","location":null,"alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"George Adams. Revised by M. Cotterell, C. Davy and D.S. Osmond","identified_edition":"RSP1972","book_title":"Karmic Relationships I","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA235/English/RSP1972/19240322p01.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"]},"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},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.02,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":5641,"original_word_count":5536,"may_be_abridged":false},"site_heading":"Destiny's Signatures: Preparing Karmic Investigation","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 Cite the unit by its title and locus, never by this heading, and do not quote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.","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/235/1924-03-22/p037-p039","json_url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/235/1924-03-22/p037-p039.json","lecture_url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/235/1924-03-22#p037","word_count":586,"quote_safe":true,"passages":[{"passage_number":37,"locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p037","text":"At the close of his life Lessing wrote the remarkable essay, *The Education of the Human Race*, at the end of which, quite isolated, as it were, the idea of repeated earth-lives appears. The book shows how mankind goes through one epoch of development after another, and how the Gods gave into man's hand as a first primer, so to speak, the Old Testament, and then as a second primer the New Testament, and how in the future a third book will come for the further education of the human race. And then all at once the essay is brought to a close with a brief presentation of the idea that man lives through repeated earth-lives. And there Lessing says, again in a way that is absolutely in accord with his character (I am not quoting the actual words, but this is the gist of it): Ought the idea of repeated earth-lives to seem so absurd, considering that it was present in very early times, when men had not yet been spoilt by school learning? The essay then ends with a genuine panegyric on repeated earth-lives, finishing with these beautiful words: “Is not all Eternity mine?”","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":196,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/235/1924-03-22/p037","german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1924-03-22","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p041","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/235/1924-03-22/p041"},{"locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p042","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/235/1924-03-22/p042"}],"bead_confidence":"high","length_check":{"de_words":199,"en_words":196,"ratio":0.98,"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_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"George Adams. Revised by M. Cotterell, C. Davy and D.S. Osmond","identified_edition":"RSP1972","book_title":"Karmic Relationships I","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA235/English/RSP1972/19240322p01.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 235/1924-03-22/p041","GA 235/1924-03-22/p042"],"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."}},{"passage_number":38,"locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p038","text":"One used to meet continually—perhaps it would still be so if one mixed more with people—one used to meet men who valued Lessing highly, but who turned away, so to speak, when they came to *The Education of the Human Race*. Really it is hard to understand the state of mind of such men. They set the highest estimation on a man of genius, and then reject what he gives to mankind in his most mature age. They say: he has grown old, he is senile, we can no longer follow him. That is all very well; one can reject anything by that method! The fact is, no one has any right to recognise Lessing and not to recognise that this work was conceived by him in the full maturity of his powers. When a man like Lessing utters a profound aphorism such as this on repeated earth-lives, there is, properly speaking, no possibility of ignoring it.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":157,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/235/1924-03-22/p038","german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1924-03-22","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p043","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/235/1924-03-22/p043"},{"locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p044","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/235/1924-03-22/p044"}],"bead_confidence":"high","length_check":{"de_words":145,"en_words":157,"ratio":1.08,"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_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"George Adams. Revised by M. Cotterell, C. Davy and D.S. Osmond","identified_edition":"RSP1972","book_title":"Karmic Relationships I","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA235/English/RSP1972/19240322p01.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 235/1924-03-22/p043","GA 235/1924-03-22/p044"],"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."}},{"passage_number":39,"locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p039","text":"You will readily see that the personality of Lessing is interesting in the highest degree from a karmic point of view, in relation to his own passage through different earth-lives. In the second half of the 18th century the idea of repeated earth-lives was by no means a commonly accepted one. It comes forth in Lessing like a flash of lightning, like a flash of genius. We cannot account for its appearance; it cannot possibly be due to Lessing's education or to any other influence in this particular life. We are compelled to ask how it may be with the previous life of a man in whom at a certain age the idea of repeated earth-lives suddenly emerges—an idea that is foreign to the civilisation of his own day—emerges, too, in such a way that the man himself points to the fact that the idea was once present in very early times. The truth is that he is really bringing forward *inner grounds* for the idea, grounds of *feeling* that carry with them an indication of his own earth-life in the distant past. Needless to say, in his ordinary surface-consciousness he has no notion of such connections. The things we do not know are, however, none the less true. If those things alone were true that many men know, then the world would be poor indeed in events and poor indeed in beings.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":233,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/235/1924-03-22/p039","german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1924-03-22","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p045","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/235/1924-03-22/p045"}],"bead_confidence":"high","length_check":{"de_words":235,"en_words":233,"ratio":0.99,"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_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"George Adams. Revised by M. Cotterell, C. Davy and D.S. Osmond","identified_edition":"RSP1972","book_title":"Karmic Relationships I","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA235/English/RSP1972/19240322p01.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 235/1924-03-22/p045"],"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."}}],"witnesses":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"first_passage":1,"last_passage":54,"passage_count":54,"word_count":5536},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"first_passage":1,"last_passage":49,"passage_count":49,"word_count":5641,"completeness":{"ratio":1.02,"band":"comparable","note":null}}],"aligned_witness":{"status":"aligned","lang":"de","edition":"original","confidence":"high","passages":[{"locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p041","passage_number":41,"text":"Dieser Lessing hat am Abschluß seines Lebens die merkwürdige Schrift «Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts» geschrieben, wo am Ende, man möchte sagen, wie ganz vereinsamt die Idee der wiederholten Erdenleben auftritt. Die Schrift handelt so über die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts, daß nacheinander die Menschheit Epochen der Entwickelung, der Zivilisationsentwickelung durchmacht: Wie die Götter dem Menschen das erste Elementarbuch, das Alte Testament, in die Hand geben, wie dann das zweite Elementarbuch, das Neue Testament, kommt, wiein der Zukunft ein drittes Buch kommen wird zur Erziehung des Menschengeschlechtes.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":85,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/235/1924-03-22/p041"},{"locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p042","passage_number":42,"text":"Dann aber klingt die Schrift aus in eine kurze Darstellung, daß der Mensch in wiederholten Erdenleben lebt. Und dann wiederum, in einer Weise, die ganz aus dem Charakter Lessings herauskommt, sagt er: Sollte diese Idee der wiederholten Erdenleben — er gebraucht diesen Ausdruck nicht, aber es ist das ja da- deshalb so absurd sein, weil sie in der ersten Zeit, als die Menschen noch nicht durch die Schulweisheit verdorben waren, bei den Menschen auftrat? — Es klingt dann die Schrift in einen wahren Panegyrikus auf die wiederholten Erdenleben aus und hat zuletzt die schönen Worte, hinweisend, wie der Mensch von Erdenleben zu Erdenleben geht, die dann ausklingen in: «Ist nicht die ganze Ewigkeit mein?»","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":114,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/235/1924-03-22/p042"},{"locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p043","passage_number":43,"text":"Man traf, vielleicht trifft man es auch heute noch, wenn man mit den Leuten zusammenlebt, immer wieder die Menschen, die eigentlich Lessing sehr schätzten, aber abrückten von der Schrift: «Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts.» Man kann eigentlich nicht verstehen, was solche Menschen für eine Seelenbeschaffenheit haben. Sie schätzen solch einen genialen Menschen aufs höchste, lehnen aber dasjenige ab, was er gerade in seinem reifsten Alter der Menschheit gibt. Er ist halt alt geworden, senil — so sagen sie —, da kann man nicht mehr mitgehen - so sagen sie. Ja, nicht wahr, auf diese Art läßt sich alles wegschaffen!","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":98,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/235/1924-03-22/p043"},{"locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p044","passage_number":44,"text":"Aber es hat eigentlich niemand ein Recht, Lessing anzuerkennen, der nicht diese Schrift, die von ihm als reifster Geist verfaßt worden ist, mit anerkennt. Und bei Lessing gibt es keine rechte Möglichkeit, wenn ein solch Lapidares hingestellt wird wie diese Idee der wiederholten Erdenleben, das nicht anzuerkennen.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":47,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/235/1924-03-22/p044"},{"locus":"GA 235/1924-03-22/p045","passage_number":45,"text":"Sie werden begreiflich finden, meine lieben Freunde, daß gerade diese Persönlichkeit mit Bezug auf Karma, mit Bezug auf ihren eigenen Durchgang durch die verschiedenen Erdenleben im höchsten Grade interessant ist. Denn etwa eine allgemein geltende Idee war in der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts die Idee der wiederholten Erdenleben nicht. Sie ist schon bei Lessing fast wie aus der Pistole herausgeschossen, wie eine aufblitzende, geniale Idee. Und man kann nicht sagen, daß es irgendwie gelingen könnte, sie durch Erziehung oder durch irgend etwas zu erklären, was Einfluß haben könnte auf dieses besondere Lessing-Leben und wiederum auf dieses Lessing-Leben im hohen Alter. Das legt einem schon die Aufgabe nahe, zu fragen: Wie mag es mit dem vorangegangenen Erdenleben bei einem Menschen sein, bei dem in einem bestimmten Alter die Idee der wiederholten Erdenleben, die sonst seiner ihn umgebenden Zivilisation fremd ist, plötzlich auftaucht, und zwar auftaucht so, daß der Mensch selber hinweist darauf, wie sie einmal in der Urzeit vorhanden war; also eigentlich innere Gefühlsgründe anführt, die mit dem Hinweis auf die eigenen Erdenleben bis weit zurück zusammenhängen, trotzdem Lessing in seinem gewöhnlichen Oberbewußtsein gewiß von solchen Zusammenhängen keine Ahnung hatte? Aber die Dinge, die man nicht weiß, sind ja deshalb doch da. Wenn nur diejenigen Dinge da wären, die manche Menschen wissen, dann wäre die Welt sehr arm an Ereignissen und an Wesenheiten. Das ist die zweite Frage, die uns beschäftigen soll in karmischer Beziehung.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":235,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/235/1924-03-22/p045"}],"beads":[{"from":[37],"to":[41,42],"confidence":"high"},{"from":[38],"to":[43,44],"confidence":"high"},{"from":[39],"to":[45],"confidence":"high"}],"note":"Paired by the paragraph aligner; each language numbers its own paragraphs. A bead at either end of the span can carry text beyond it (the `from` numbers show what each bead covers)."}}