{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 61/1912-03-21/p003","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"In a brief outline of philosophical thought Lessing alluded once to the only doctrine he considered worthy of the human soul—the doctrine he then expounded, in a form suited to Western consciousness, in his masterly treatise, ‘The Education of the Human Race’. He speaks there of reincarnation, of the repeated earthly lives experienced by the human soul, and continues somewhat as follows. Why, he asks, should this doctrine, so obvious in primeval days to the soul of man and one of its earliest treasures, while the soul was still uncorrupted by all kinds of theorising—why should this doctrine be less true than many other doctrines which in the course of time have been accepted as the result of philosophical speculation? After plainly indicating how this theory of repeated earthly lives is the only reasonable one for the human soul, Lessing says we might well expect that any unprejudiced man, willing to let the true nature of the soul work upon him, would grow accustomed to the doctrine—were it not for two things. We are certainly eager to know what Lessing meant by these two things that hindered the human soul from accepting the doctrine of repeated earthly lives. Lessing, however, never finished his sentence, having presumably been disturbed. He breaks off with the words: ‘were it not for two things’, and a colon. Nowhere in his writings, moreover, do we find anything to tell us what he considered these two things to be, although all kinds of speculations have been advanced by scholars who have made a special study of his work.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"The Nature of Eternity","site_heading":null,"date":"1912-03-21","location":null,"word_count":262,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/61/1912-03-21/p003","alignment_confidence":"medium","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"eLib2016","book_title":"Human History in the Light of Spiritual Investigation","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA061/English/eLib2016/19120321p01.html","evidence":null,"reason":"no_translator_named","note":"Neither the lecture's own page nor rsarchive's lecture list names a translator for it. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"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/61/1912-03-21/p003"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/61/1912-03-21/p003","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":"1912-03-21","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 61/1912-03-21/p002","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/61/1912-03-21/p002"},{"locus":"GA 61/1912-03-21/p003","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/61/1912-03-21/p003"}],"bead_confidence":"medium","pairing_state":"verified","verified":true,"evidence":["length","reader"],"reader_german":["GA 61/1912-03-21/p003"],"length_check":{"de_words":297,"en_words":267,"ratio":0.9,"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 61/1912-03-21/p002","passage_number":2,"text":"### Das Wesen der Ewigkeit und die Natur der Menschenseele im Lichte der Geisteswissenschaft","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":14,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/61/1912-03-21/p002"},{"locus":"GA 61/1912-03-21/p003","passage_number":3,"text":"Als Lessing in einer Gedankenskizze jene Lehre andeutete, die ihm als die einzige der Menschenseele würdige erschien, die er dann in seiner Art deutlich für ein abendländisches Bewußtsein durchgeführt hat in seiner meisterhaften Abhandlung über die «Erziehung des Menschengeschlechtes», als er diese Lehre von der Wiederverkörperung der Menschenseele, von dem Durchleben wiederholter Erdenleben durch die menschliche Seele aussprach, da bemerkte er etwa das Folgende. Er sagte: Sollte denn diese Lehre, da sie in den urältesten Zeiten der Menschenseele einleuchtete, als diese noch nicht durch allerlei Gedankenspekulationen verdorben war, da sie also sozusagen zu den primitivsten Gütern der Menschenseele gehörte, deshalb weniger wahr sein als so manche andere Lehre, welche im Laufe der Zeit durch philosophische Spekulation oder dergleichen sich dieser Menschenseele ergeben hat?- Und nachdemLessing deutlich darauf hingewiesen hat, daß eben für die Seele diese Lehre von den wiederholten Erdenleben des Menschen die einzig sinnvolle sei, da meinte er, es wäre wohl die Aussicht vorhanden, daß diese Lehre sich bei allen denjenigen einleben könnte, die wirklich unbefangen das Wesen der Menschenseele auf sich wirken lassen, wenn nicht zwei Dinge wären. Nun ist man gewiß gespannt, was Lessing unter diesen zwei Dingen, die gegenüber der Lehre von den wiederholten Erdenleben hindernd für die Menschenseele eintreten sollen, gemeint habe. Aber siehe da, Lessing hat diesen Satz nicht voll ausgeschrieben, er ist durch irgend etwas gestört worden, so daß ihm der Satz mit den Worten abbricht: «... wenn nicht gleichsam zwei Dinge wären:» mit einem Doppelpunkt. Und wir finden dann nicht in seinen Schriften einen Ausspruch von ihm selbst, was er eigentlich als diese zwei Dinge angesehen hat. Die Lessing-Gelehrten haben allerlei Spekulationen darüber angestellt, was etwa Lessings Gedanke beim Hinschreiben dieses Satzes gewesen sein könnte.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":283,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/61/1912-03-21/p003"}],"english":["GA 61/1912-03-21/p002","GA 61/1912-03-21/p003"],"method":"length","confidence":"medium","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":297,"en_words":267,"ratio":0.9,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"verified","verified":true,"evidence":["length","reader"],"reader_german":["GA 61/1912-03-21/p003"]},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":0.9,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":8000,"original_word_count":8902,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"eLib2016","book_title":"Human History in the Light of Spiritual Investigation","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA061/English/eLib2016/19120321p01.html","evidence":null,"reason":"no_translator_named","note":"Neither the lecture's own page nor rsarchive's lecture list names a translator for it. No translator is established for this lecture: nothing at the level of the lecture names one. Do not attribute this English to a translator, and do not borrow a credit from another lecture of the volume. Cite the German for anything load-bearing.","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 61/1912-03-21/p002","GA 61/1912-03-21/p003"],"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."}}