{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 56/1907-12-12/p027","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"It is a lofty truth on the one hand and a shocking phrase on the other when human beings are told: You must sacrifice your personality. — I will use an example to illustrate how this can be something very lofty in one instance and something clichéd in another. Imagine you ask a person who has ten cents in their pocket to sacrifice those ten cents for some cause. They will make this sacrifice easily. On the other hand, if you ask someone who happens to have twenty thousand marks on them — perhaps their entire fortune — to sacrifice what they have, that is a completely different matter. Asking someone who has not yet worked on themselves, who has not yet elevated their personality, who cannot yet be called a personality, to renounce their personality is quite different from asking someone who has worked on it for a long time to make it as capable as possible. One sacrifices a genius at the altar of human development, the other a fool. It is not a matter of sacrificing, but of what one sacrifices. In order to be able to restrain a personality for the sake of humanity, one must first develop that personality. So sometimes it is just a phrase to speak of the sacrifice of personality, and sometimes it is a great and significant truth. Therefore, it is of no use if theosophical books call for the sacrifice of personality without at the same time demanding that personality be made as strong and comprehensive as possible.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"The So-Called Dangers of Initiation","site_heading":null,"date":"1907-12-12","location":null,"word_count":258,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/56/1907-12-12/p027","alignment_confidence":"medium","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/eLib2015/19071212p01.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/56/1907-12-12/p027"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/56/1907-12-12/p027","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":"1907-12-12","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 56/1907-12-12/p027","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/56/1907-12-12/p027"}],"bead_confidence":"medium","length_check":{"de_words":273,"en_words":258,"ratio":0.95,"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."},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.02,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":7538,"original_word_count":7419,"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/eLib2015/19071212p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line"},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 56/1907-12-12/p027"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"medium","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."}}