{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 251/1922-05-21/p033","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"Forty years ago, if you looked at a person in terms of how they used their intellect intellectually, the person who made the training of the intellect his profession was active in his intellectual training. The human being was there. There were really great minds there, minds that were active; in the schools, minds were there that one could rejoice at the activity of the intellect. Today it is not so, and people seem as if the mind had moved a little deeper, and as if they were producing the mind as a mechanism. One feels how people speak in intellectual terms, but as if the mind were not even involved. There are some very simple phrases that you come across. The further west you go, the worse it is, but it is already taking hold in Germany. If someone writes a sentence and doesn't put the predicate where it is supposed to be for whatever reason, it is stylistically incorrect; and if you go to France, everything is already stylistically incorrect because the language has already become stereotyped. In Germany, you can still turn your sentences around to get different possibilities of expression, but in France people are gradually getting out of the habit of doing that. In the East – Bolshevism wanted to get rid of it, but it will make itself felt again – there is still a certain flexibility in the language. But in general, this flexibility decreases with civilization. It is especially the case with younger people that they talk like mechanisms. They start – forty years ago it would have been interesting to pay attention to how they would continue to talk – but today we already know it, we are no longer interested; they talk like clockwork. There has been – we can see it today, but we want to close our eyes to it – a certain calcification of people, even literally, so that the intellect has indeed slipped down. But Ahriman takes him in. He cannot work through the nervous-sensory system as humans do, but he works through the elemental spirits. What the brains and etheric bodies are for us, the elemental spirits are for Ahriman; he waits until they place themselves at his disposal. But he has them as his brain and as his heart, which has become a leather bag. It is the case that the elemental spirits place themselves at the disposal of the Ahrimanic powers. That is one side of it.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"39. On the Character of the Present Day","site_heading":null,"date":"1922-05-21","location":null,"word_count":414,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/251/1922-05-21/p033","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:identity","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Steiner Online Library","identified_edition":"SOL2024","book_title":"The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922","publisher":"Steiner Online Library","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA251/English/SOL2024/19220521s01.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/251/1922-05-21/p033"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/251/1922-05-21/p033","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. 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Wording differs between translations, so a quotation found in one need not occur in the other."},"paired_german":{"status":"paired","german":[{"locus":"GA 251/1922-05-21/p033","passage_number":33,"text":"Wenn man noch vor vierzig Jahren den Menschen daraufhin angeschaut hat, wie er sich intellektuell mit seinem Verstande betätigt hat —der Mensch, der gerade die Ausbildung des Verstandes zu seinem Beruf machte -, so war da etwas Tätiges in seinem Verstandesausbilden. Der Mensch war dabei. Es waren wirklich große Geister da, die den Verstand betätigten; in den Schulen waren Geister da, dass man sich freuen konnte über die Verstandesregsamkeit. Heute ist es nicht so, und es kommen einem die Menschen vor, als wenn der Verstand ein Stück tiefer gerückt wäre, und als wenn sie den Verstand als Mechanismus hervorbrächten. Man fühlt, wie die Menschen reden in Verstandesformen, aber wie wenn der Verstand gar nicht mitarbeiten würde. Es sind schon ganz einfältige Redewendungen, denen man begegnet. Je weiter man nach Westen kommt, desto schlimmer ist es, aber in Deutschland nistet es sich auch heute schon ein. Wenn jemand einen Satz hinschreibt und das Prädikat nicht dort hinstellt, wo es aus irgendeinem Grunde sein soll, so ist das stillos; und wenn Sie nach Frankreich kommen, so ist dort schon alles stillos, weil da die Sprache schon stereotyp geworden ist. In Deutschland kann man wenigstens noch seine Sätze drehen, um so verschiedene Möglichkeiten des Ausdrucks zu bekommen, aber in Frankreich gewöhnen sich die Leute das allmählich ab. Im Osten — der Bolschewismus hat es wegbringen wollen, aber es wird sich schon wieder bemerkbar machen - ist noch eine gewisse Biegsamkeit in der Sprache vorhanden. Aber im Allgemeinen nimmt diese Biegsamkeit mit der Zivilisation ab. Es ist besonders bei jüngeren Leuten so, dass sie wie Mechanismen reden. Sie fangen an - vor vierzig Jahren wäre es einem interessant gewesen, darauf zu achten, wie sie weiterreden würden -, heute weiß man es schon, man ist gar nicht mehr daran interessiert; sie reden wie ein aufgezogenes Uhrwerk. Es ist - man kann das heute sehen, aber man will die Augen davor verschließen - eine gewisse Verkalkung der Menschen eingetreten, sogar buchstäblich, sodass der Intellekt eben durchaus heruntergerutscht ist. Da nimmt ihn aber Ahriman in Empfang. Er kann nicht, wie die Menschen, durch sein Nerven-Sinnes-System wirken, sondern er wirkt durch die Elementargeister. Was für uns die Gehirne und Ätherleiber sind, das sind für Ahriman die Elementargeister; er wartet, bis sie sich ihm zur Verfügung stellen. Aber er hat sie als sein Gehirn und als das zu einem ledernen Beutel gewordene Herz. Es ist so, dass sich die elementarischen Geister den ahrimanischen Mächten zur Verfügung stellen. Das ist die eine Seite.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":413,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/251/1922-05-21/p033"}],"english":["GA 251/1922-05-21/p033"],"method":"identity","confidence":"high","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":413,"en_words":414,"ratio":1.0,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"verified","verified":true,"evidence":["length","meaning","anchors","audit"]},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.03,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":8564,"original_word_count":8348,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Steiner Online Library","identified_edition":"SOL2024","book_title":"The History of the Anthroposophical Society 1913–1922","publisher":"Steiner Online Library","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA251/English/SOL2024/19220521s01.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 251/1922-05-21/p033"],"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. 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