{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 316/1924-01-03/p007","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"What does the ego organization do with the physical body? It destroys the body all the time. It does the same as death, only the process is continually balanced out by the physical body being able to take external substances as food. Ego organization and the process of nourishment, therefore, are polar opposites. The ego organization betokens for man exactly the same—but in a process of continuous activity—as death betokens, but, in death, the process is concentrated, it happens all at once. Through your ego organization you are dying all the time, that is to say, you are destroying your physical body inwardly, whereas when you die, external nature destroys your physical body outwardly. The physical body is capable of destruction in two different directions and the ego organization is simply the sum total of the destructive forces working inwards. It really seems, at first, as if the ego organization had no other task than to bring about continual death in the human being—a process that is only prevented because there is fresh reinforcement, so that this activity only begins to bring about death. In the qualitative sense, therefore, ego organization is identifiable with death, and the physical organism is identifiable with the process of nourishment. We will speak in greater detail later on.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Christmas Course II","site_heading":"The Four Members of Man: Death, Disease, Health, and Nourishment","site_heading_note":"A heading the site wrote for this unit from a summary of it; not in the edition, and not the words of Rudolf Steiner or of the translator. Cite the unit by its title and locus, never by this heading, and do not quote it.","date":"1924-01-03","location":null,"word_count":214,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/316/1924-01-03/p007","alignment_confidence":"low","alignment_reason":"count_diverges","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Gerald F. Karnow","identified_edition":null,"book_title":"Course for Young Doctors","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/YoungDoctors/19240103p01.html","evidence":"lecture_list_row"},"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/316/1924-01-03/p007"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/316/1924-01-03/p007"}],"record":{"record_type":"unknown","scope":"volume","note":"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.","evidence":null,"evidence_translation":null,"evidence_source":null},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.03,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":4840,"original_word_count":4721,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Gerald F. Karnow","identified_edition":null,"book_title":"Course for Young Doctors","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/YoungDoctors/19240103p01.html","evidence":"lecture_list_row"},"entity_parity":{"status":"not_checkable","note":"No verified paragraph alignment covers this passage, so its names cannot be compared with the German."},"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. See witness_completeness for how much of the original this witness holds."}}