43. The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity III

GA 246/1911-06-07/p030 ·1911-06-07 · English High

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.

Occultism knows - today's materialistic science may deny this or come to it more or less in hypotheses, it makes no difference: There was in ancient times, namely in the Atlantean period, something like a kind of primordial human language, a kind of speaking which was similar over the whole earth, because “speaking” in those times came much more from the innermost part of the soul than speaking comes today. You can see this from the following. In the Atlantean times, people perceived all external impressions in such a way that the soul, when it wanted to express something external with a sound, was urged to make a consonant - that is, what stood there in space or in the soul was urged to be imitated consonantly. The blowing of the wind, the sound of the waves, being protected by a house was felt and imitated by consonants. And whatever one experienced inwardly in terms of pain or joy, or even what another being could feel, was imitated in the vowel. From this you can see that in ancient times the soul grew together with the external processes or entities in a speaking way.

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Cite: GA 246/1911-06-07/p030 · edition English