{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 55/1906-11-08_02/p022","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"To throw off old material and form new again—that is life. But life is not yet sensation, not yet consciousness. It is a childish kind of imagination that makes many scientists have such a false idea of sensation. To the plants to which we must ascribe life, they also attribute sensation. If one says that because many plants close their leaves and flowers on an external stimulation, as if they felt it, then one could also say that blue litmus paper, which goes red through outer stimulus, has sensation. We could also ascribe sensation to chemical substances because they react to certain influences. But that is not enough. To have sensation the stimulus must be reflected inwardly. Only then can we speak of the first element of consciousness, of sensation and feeling. And what is this first element of consciousness? When in further investigation of the world we raise ourselves to the next higher stage and try to comprehend the nature of consciousness, we shall not do so immediately, but shall nevertheless feel it dawn a little into the soul, just as we could explain a little the nature of life. Consciousness can arise only where there is life, can spring only from life. If life arises out of apparently lifeless matter, since the combination of the material is so complicated that it cannot preserve itself and must be seized upon by life in order to prevent continual decay, then consciousness appears to us within life as something higher. Whenever life is continually destroyed as life, where a being stands close to the threshold between life and death, where life threatens all the time to vanish again from the living substance, then consciousness arises. And as in the first place substance would have disintegrated if life did not permeate it, so now life seems to us to be dissipated if a new principle, consciousness, is not added to it. We can grasp consciousness only by saying: Just as life is there in order to renew certain processes, for lack of which matter would decay, so is consciousness there to renew again and again the life that would otherwise die.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"I. The Origin of Suffering","site_heading":null,"date":"1906-11-08","location":null,"word_count":359,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/55/1906-11-08_02/p022","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Mabel Cotterell and Violet E. Watkin","identified_edition":"SBC1980","book_title":"The Origin of Suffering the Origin of Evil Illness and Death","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA055/English/SBC1980/19061108p01.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/55/1906-11-08_02/p022"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/55/1906-11-08_02/p022","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},"other_renderings":{"loci":[{"locus":"GA 55/1906-11-08","ga":"55","lecture":"1906-11-08","kind":"renderings","relation":"another translation or transcription of the same lecture"}],"note":"The same lecture is also served at the loci listed, each with how it relates to this one. They are ONE witness, not independent attestations: quote the rendering you fetched, and do not cite another as corroborating it. Wording differs between translations, so a quotation found in one need not occur in the other."},"unit_kind":{"kind":"second_translation","base_unit":"GA 55/1906-11-08","note":"A second English translation of the same lecture as 1906-11-08. The German served under this id repeats the German of 1906-11-08: one German text, to be cited at 1906-11-08.","same_lecture_as":"GA 55/1906-11-08","german_repeats":"GA 55/1906-11-08"},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1906-11-08_02","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 55/1906-11-08_02/p023","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/55/1906-11-08_02/p023"}],"bead_confidence":"high","pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"length_check":{"de_words":365,"en_words":359,"ratio":0.98,"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 55/1906-11-08_02/p023","passage_number":23,"text":"Alte Materie absondern und neue wieder bilden, das ist Leben. Leben ist aber noch nicht Empfindung und noch nicht Bewußtsein. Es ist eine kindliche Vorstellungsart mancher Wissenschaftler, die sie den Begriff der Empfindung so wenig richtig fassen läßt, daß sie der Pflanze, der wir Leben zuschreiben müssen, auch Empfindung beimessen. Wenn man das sagt, weil manche Pflanzen Blätter und Blüten auf einen äußeren Reiz hin schließen, wie wenn sie diesen Reiz empfinden würden, so könnte man auch sagen, das blaue Lackmuspapier, das durch äußeren Reiz gerötet wird, habe Empfindung. Auch chemischen Substanzen könnten wir dann Empfindung zuschreiben, weil sie auf gewisse Einflüsse reagieren. Das genügt aber nicht. Soll Empfindung konstatiert werden, so muß sich der Reiz im Innern spiegeln. Erst dann können wir von dem ersten Element des Bewußtseins, von der Empfindung sprechen. Und was ist dieses erste Element des Bewußtseins? Wenn wir uns in der Welterforschung auf die nächsthöhere Stufe erheben und das Wesen des Bewußtseins zu erfassen suchen, so werden wir es zwar nicht gleich erkennen, aber es doch ein wenig in der Seele leuchten spüren, ebenso wie wir auch das Wesen des Lebens ein wenig erklären konnten. Wo Leben ist, kann allein Bewußtsein entstehen, nur aus dem Leben heraus kann Bewußtsein entspringen. Entspringt das Leben aus der scheinbar leblosen Materie, indem die Zusammensetzung der Materie so kompliziert wird, daß sie sich selbst nicht erhalten kann und vom Leben ergriffen werden muß, um ihren Zerfall fortwährend zu verhindern, so erscheint uns das Bewußtsein innerhalb des Lebens als etwas Höheres. Da, wo das Leben fortwährend als Leben vernichtet wird, wo fortwährend ein Wesen hart an der Grenze zwischen Leben und Tod steht, wo fortwährend das Leben wieder aus der lebendigen Substanz zu verschwinden droht, da entsteht das Bewußtsein. Und wie zuerst die Substanz zerfallen ist, wenn das Leben sie nicht bewohnte, so scheint uns jetzt das Leben zu zerfallen, wenn nicht als neues Prinzip das Bewußtsein hinzuträte. Das Bewußtsein kann nicht anders begriffen werden als indem wir sagen: so wie das Leben dazu da ist, gewisse Vorgänge zu erneuern, deren Fehlen den Zerfall der Materie herbeiführen würde, so ist das Bewußtsein dazu da, das Leben, das sich sonst auflösen würde, immer wieder zu erneuern.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":365,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/55/1906-11-08_02/p023"}],"english":["GA 55/1906-11-08_02/p022"],"method":"length","confidence":"high","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":365,"en_words":359,"ratio":0.98,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":0.98,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":6799,"original_word_count":6967,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Mabel Cotterell and Violet E. Watkin","identified_edition":"SBC1980","book_title":"The Origin of Suffering the Origin of Evil Illness and Death","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA055/English/SBC1980/19061108p01.html","evidence":"lecture_list_row"},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 55/1906-11-08_02/p023"],"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."}}