{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 56/1907-11-28/p023","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"The person who, within our German education and culture, has established such ideas free of sensuality for areas other than spatial structures in geometry is, once again, Goethe, and what Goethe has achieved with the type of plants, with the archetypal plant, and the type of animals, the archetypal animal, is a wonderful, tremendous achievement of the intellectual life of humanity. What are these ideas? Goethe himself seeks to clarify them in his own way. Many have written about them. But most of it is nonsense, because most people do not have the ability to understand how a spiritually constructed circle, whose laws we can understand, relates to the circle drawn on the blackboard, which is nothing more than a number of chalk particles. But this is how what Goethe calls the primordial plant relates to the plant that can be perceived externally and sensually. Outside are the various plants—so Goethe thought—one looks like this, the other like that. But within us lives an inner spiritual power through which we are able to find the concept of the primordial plant from our inner production. Botanists thought Goethe meant an imperfect plant. That's nonsense! He meant the spiritually perceived plant! That is what I have attempted to reconstruct in one of my books as this archetypal plant, just as one constructs the circle in the mind. Goethe's archetypal plant contains, if one is able to conjure up all its possibilities in the mind, all possible plants; his archetypal animal contains all possible animals. What Goethe created is a spiritual organic whole. It gives us the opportunity to create in the mind that which cannot appear to our senses. However, we are starting from a profound and significant spiritual fact. And Goethe proceeded from this fact, from which he was given what he found as the archetypal plant. For him, this was not a mere idea, but rather the creative force in all plants. For him, the archetypal animal was the creative force in every animal.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"Initiation or Consecration","site_heading":null,"date":"1907-11-28","location":null,"word_count":334,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/56/1907-11-28/p023","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:identity","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Steiner Online Library","identified_edition":"eLib2015","book_title":"Knowledge of Soul and Spirit","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA056/English/eLib2015/19071128p01.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/56/1907-11-28/p023"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/56/1907-11-28/p023","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},"paired_german":{"status":"paired","german":[{"locus":"GA 56/1907-11-28/p023","passage_number":23,"text":"Derjenige, der innerhalb unserer deutschen Bildung und Kultur für andere Gebiete als für Raumgebilde in der Geometrie solche sinnlichkeitsfreien Ideen aufgestellt hat, ist wiederum Goethe, und es ist eine wunderbare, eine gewaltige Errungenschaft des Geisteslebens der Menschheit, was Goethe geleistet hat mit dem Typus der Pflanzen, mit der Urpflanze, und dem Typus der Tiere, dem Urtier. Was sind das für Gedanken? Goethe selbst sucht sie in seiner Weise klarzumachen. Viele haben darüber geschrieben. Aber das meiste ist Unsinn, weil die meisten nicht die Möglichkeit haben, zu verstehen, wie sich ein geistig konstruierter Kreis, dessen Gesetze wir einsehen können, verhält zu dem auf der Tafel gezeichneten Kreis, der nichts ist als eine Anzahl Kreidepartikelchen. So aber verhält sich dasjenige, was Goethe die Urpflanze nennt, zu der äußerlich-sinnlich wahrnehmbaren Pflanze. Draußen sind die verschiedenen Pflanzen — so dachte Goethe -, die eine sieht so, die andere so aus. Aber in uns lebt eine innere geistige Kraft, durch die wir imstande sind, aus innerer Produktion heraus den Begriff der Urpflanze zu finden. Die Botaniker haben gedacht, Goethe habe eine unvollkommene Pflanze gemeint. Unsinn ist das! Er meinte die geistig geschaute Pflanze! Das ist es, was ich in einem meiner Bücher versucht habe nachzukonstruieren als diese Urpflanze, so wie man auch den Kreis im Geiste konstruiert. Goethes Urpflanze enthält, wenn man im Geiste in der Lage ist, alle Möglichkeiten aus ihr hervorzuzaubern, alle möglichen Pflanzen; sein Urtier enthält alle möglichen Tiere. Es ist eine geistige Organik, was Goethe da geschaffen hat. Sie gibt uns die Möglichkeit, das, was nicht unseren Sinnen erscheinen kann, im Geiste zu erschaffen. Da gehen wir allerdings von einer tiefen, bedeutsamen geistigen Tatsache aus. Und Goethe ging von dieser Tatsache aus, von welcher ihm das, was er als Urpflanze fand, zuteil wurde. Das war für ihn nicht eine bloße Idee, sondern es war das Schaffende in allen Pflanzen. Das Urtier war für ihn das Schöpferische in jedem Tier.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":318,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/56/1907-11-28/p023"}],"english":["GA 56/1907-11-28/p023"],"method":"identity","confidence":"high","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":318,"en_words":334,"ratio":1.05,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"verified","verified":true,"evidence":["length","reader"],"reader_german":["GA 56/1907-11-28/p023"]},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.03,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":8289,"original_word_count":8015,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Steiner Online Library","identified_edition":"eLib2015","book_title":"Knowledge of Soul and Spirit","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA056/English/eLib2015/19071128p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line"},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 56/1907-11-28/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."}}