III. Speech as a Formed Gesture

GA 282/1924-09-07/p010 ·1924-09-07 · English MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
Record: unknown. 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.

Man's head is round, at all events in its inherent tendency; and in its roundness it forms a picture of the universe, the universe, that is, as it presents itself to immediate observation in its material aspect. Thoughts that are spiritual can never originate in the head; they can only spring from the whole human being. And man as a whole is not round; for in man as a whole the roundness has been metamorphosed so that he has an altogether different form. The moment it is a question of leaving the purely material, as for example in the forming of speech, we have to look in the direction of that in man which is not round. We did this yesterday, when we gave our attention to gesture, which is something that least of all can be carried out by the head. For it is only a few people who can, for example, move their ears at will; and such gestures as these do not anyway come into consideration here. The head is indeed, and with good reason, gestureless; only in look and in play of countenance may it be said to have a last relic, an indication merely, of gesture.

Read this passage in another edition
DEoriginalENEnglish
Raw JSON: /v1/steiner/en/ga/282/1924-09-07/p010.json
Cite: GA 282/1924-09-07/p010 · edition English