74. The Riddle of Death as a Riddle of Life

GA 246/1916-03-03/p055 ·1916-03-03 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
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.

There are certainly some people today who believe they are idealistic. They are not. Because they think in a very materialistic way, even though they want to be idealistic. So there is one of the most important - let's say - criminal anthropologists of our time (I've mentioned him before), Benedikt. Benedikt first studied the brains of criminals with great care on a broader scale. And there is always a peculiar aspect to criminal brains. These criminal brains have the characteristic that the occipital lobe does not properly cover the cerebellum, whereas in normally developed people the occipital lobe covers the cerebellum quite properly. So, isn't it true that through such an investigation - and it is true, it is quite correct - through such an investigation one comes to divide people into two classes: into those who have proper occipital lobes that cover the cerebellum and who do not commit crimes; and into those who have an occipital lobe that is too small, a stunted one that does not cover the cerebellum, and who become criminals. That is right; that is an absolutely correct observation. This smaller, this atrophied occipital lobe is also present in apes. So the criminal simply reverts to the nature of the ape, says the materialist. Well, that's how it is.

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Cite: GA 246/1916-03-03/p055 · edition English