{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 345/1923-07-13/p008","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"Now, when the starting point is feeling, it is good: in the true sense of the word language is so little understood, making the description which a person as a human-being applies to himself actually something whose understanding must first be wrestled with, whose understanding must first be arrived at. Feeling should actually always be a starting point so that when I believe I can describe myself in some or other words, even in my mother tongue, they designate an infinite pride in me. When we permeate ourselves with the feeling that we believe we can manage a language, even our mother tongue, so far removed from the spirit that we can legitimately name ourselves with the word “human-being,” if we consider this belief as terribly proud then we start to draw courage for the preparatory feeling towards a specific spiritual impulse such as I am indicating today. We should much more often be able to say: ‘I am placed on the earth as a human-being through some or other divine circumstances unknown to me and this leads me to call myself a “human-being,” but the basis for this description lies high above my horizon. It is the will of God who prevails here, who has lead me out of the unconscious deep substrate, to describe me as “human-being.” I have as a human-being, as this human individuality standing on earth, actually not the right to characterize myself.’ Then the next step must be to say to oneself: Before I can become capable at all of understanding the entire preliminary stages in existence which leads to me saying “I” to myself, I must undergo three developmental steps—right up to the judgement which I may express as the following: I have no right to call myself “human-being,” I need to first go through three steps of development, I must push through three tests. When I have passed these three tests to satisfy my own judgement, will I have earned the right to say to myself: ‘You are a human-being.’","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Lecture III","site_heading":"Reverence for Speech: The Three Steps to Becoming Human","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 Cite the unit by its title and locus, never by this heading, and do not quote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":"1923-07-13","location":null,"word_count":338,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/345/1923-07-13/p008","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Hanna Maltitz","identified_edition":"eLib2017","book_title":"The Essence of the Active Word","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA345/English/eLib2017/19230713p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line"},"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/345/1923-07-13/p008"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/345/1923-07-13/p008","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. 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},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1923-07-13","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 345/1923-07-13/p007","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/345/1923-07-13/p007"}],"bead_confidence":"high","pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"length_check":{"de_words":335,"en_words":338,"ratio":1.01,"partial":false},"correspondence":"established","note":"English passage numbering is edition-relative, so the same number need not name the same paragraph in the German. The German original passage(s) above are the edition-invariant anchor — fetch them (lang='de') to verify wording before quoting across editions."},"paired_german":{"status":"paired","german":[{"locus":"GA 345/1923-07-13/p007","passage_number":7,"text":"Nun ist es gut, wenn man von vornherein von der Empfindung ausgeht: Im wahren Sinne des Wortes versteht man die Sprache so wenig, daß eine solche Bezeichnung, die man als Mensch auf sich selbst anwendet, eigentlich etwas ist, zu dessen Verständnis man sich erst hinaufringen muß, zu dessen Verständnis man erst kommen muß. Man sollte eigentlich überall von der Empfindung ausgehen, daß, wenn ich glaube, mich mit irgendeinem Worte, auch der mir geläufigen Muttersprache zu bezeichnen, das ein unendlicher Hochmut von mir ist. Wenn wir uns mit dieser Empfindung durchdringen, daß wir den Glauben, wir könnten eine Sprache, sei es auch die Muttersprache, wirklich so weit aus dem Geiste heraus handhaben, daß wir uns mit Recht als Menschen und uns selbst mit dem Worte «Mensch» bezeichnen können, wenn wir diesen Glauben als einen furchtbaren Hochmut von uns ansehen, so haben wir die erste vorbereitende Empfindung, um einen gewissen spirituellen Impuls, wie ich ihn heute meine, in uns anzuregen. Man muß vielmehr sich sagen können: Ich bin als Mensch in die Erde hineingestellt durch irgendwelche mir unbekannte göttliche Zusammenhänge, und dies veranlaßt mich, mich als «Mensch» zu bezeichnen, aber die Gründe für dieses Bezeichnen liegen weit über meinem Horizont. Das ist Götterwille, der da waltet, der mich aus unbewußten tiefen Untergründen veranlaßt, mich als «Mensch» zu bezeichnen. Ich habe als Mensch, als diese auf der Erde stehende Menschenindividualität, ja überhaupt nicht das Recht, eine Bezeichnung auf mich selbst zu prägen. Dann muß der nächste Schritt der sein, daß man sich sagt: Bevor ich überhaupt fähig sein werde, den ganzen Vorgang zu verstehen, der da existiert, indem ich zu mir «Ich» sage, muß ich drei Entwickelungsstufen durchmachen. Bis zu dem Urteil, das ich so ausdrücken darf: Ich habe ein Recht, mich «Mensch» zu nennen -, werde ich also drei Entwickelungsstufen vorher durchmachen müssen, ich werde mich durchringen müssen durch drei Prüfungen. Wenn ich in für mich genügender Weiser diese drei Prüfungen bestanden habe, darf ich hoffen, zu mir mit Recht sagen zu dürfen: Du bist ein Mensch.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":335,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/345/1923-07-13/p007"}],"english":["GA 345/1923-07-13/p008"],"method":"length","confidence":"high","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":335,"en_words":338,"ratio":1.01,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.07,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":5176,"original_word_count":4830,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Hanna Maltitz","identified_edition":"eLib2017","book_title":"The Essence of the Active Word","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA345/English/eLib2017/19230713p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line"},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 345/1923-07-13/p007"],"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. See witness_completeness for how much of the original this witness holds."}}