{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 4/l01/p015","lang":"en","edition":"RSPC1949","edition_basis":"Steiner 1918 revised edition","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":false,"text":"What distinguishes man from all other organic beings is his rational thinking. Activity is common to him with other organisms. Nothing is gained by seeking analogies in the animal world to clear up the concept of freedom as applied to the actions of human beings. Modern science loves these analogies. When scientists have succeeded in finding among animals something similar to human behaviour, they believe they have touched on the most important question of the science of man. To what misunderstandings this view leads is seen, for example, in the book Die Illusion der Willensfreiheit, by P. Rée, 1885, where, on page 5, the following remark on freedom appears: “It is easy to explain why the movement of a stone seems to us necessary, while the volition of a donkey does not. The causes which set the stone in motion are external and visible, while the causes which determine the donkey's volition are internal and invisible. Between us and the place of their activity there is the skull cap of the ass ... The causal nexus is not visible and, therefore, thought to be non-existent. The volition, it is explained, is, indeed, the cause of the donkey's turning round, but is itself unconditioned; it is an absolute beginning.” Here again human actions in which there is a consciousness of the motives are simply ignored, for Rée declares, “that between us and the sphere of their activity there is the skull cap of the ass.” As these words show, it has not so much as dawned on Rée that there are actions, not indeed of the ass, but of human beings, in which the motive that has become conscious, lies between us and the action. Rée demonstrates his blindness once again, a few pages further on, when he says, “We do not perceive the causes by which our will is determined, hence we think it is not causally determined at all.”","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"I. Conscious Human Action","site_heading":null,"date":null,"location":null,"word_count":320,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/4/l01/p015?edition=RSPC1949","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":null,"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["AP1986","GPP1916","RSP1964","RSPC1949","RSPI1963"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":"Steiner 1918 revised edition","is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/4/l01/p015"},{"lang":"en","edition":"RSP1964","edition_basis":"Steiner 1918 revised edition","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/4/l01/p015"},{"lang":"en","edition":"AP1986","edition_basis":"Steiner 1918 revised edition","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":false,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/4/l01/p015?edition=AP1986","paragraph_aligned":true},{"lang":"en","edition":"GPP1916","edition_basis":"Steiner 1894 first edition","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":false,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/4/l01/p015?edition=GPP1916"},{"lang":"en","edition":"RSPC1949","edition_basis":"Steiner 1918 revised edition","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":false,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/4/l01/p015?edition=RSPC1949","paragraph_aligned":true},{"lang":"en","edition":"RSPI1963","edition_basis":"Steiner 1918 revised edition","is_original":false,"is_default_edition":false,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/4/l01/p015?edition=RSPI1963"}],"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.04,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":3138,"original_word_count":3011,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"status":"unknown","warning":"No translator is recorded for this edition. An unattributed translation cannot be weighed as a witness: you cannot tell which hand made the choices in it. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 4/l01/p015"],"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."}}