25. On the Nature of Plants and Man's Relationship to the Plant Kingdom
GA 246/1910-02-14/p013
·1910-02-14
·
English
MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
Record: listeners' notes. Written from listeners' notes, summaries, or memory rather than a shorthand transcript. The wording is the note-taker's as much as Steiner's: weigh a single striking phrase here far more cautiously than the same phrase in a stenographic volume, and do not rest an argument on one word. Evidence: «Nach zum Teil bruchstückhaften Mitschriften» (From transcripts that are in part fragmentary). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 246), which also speaks of "fragmentarischen Hörernotizen und Vortragszusammenfassungen". The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
The earth was a being that lived in deepest longing since the time when something had gone from it at the separation of the sun, which belonged to the earth and was related to it - and which is as dear to the earth as a mother is to her son. It had to leave the earth and develop on the sun for a while. But that belongs to the earth, and therefore nothing is so related to the Christ as the plant kingdom of the earth and that which lives in man as an etheric or plant principle. The return of the Christ in the etheric body must be understood by man on earth.
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