{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 63/1914-01-15/p019","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"Where does this come from? When we look closer to see where it comes from, we find in this the essential feature of all human evil, so to speak. In my last book “The Threshold of the Spiritual World” I tried to refer to precisely this essential feature of evil, as far as it proceeds outwards from mankind. The common essential feature of all evil is none other than selfishness.—If I wanted to prove this in detail, what I will now set out here, I should have to speak for several hours; but I will only set this out and each person may then follow up for themselves with the further run of thoughts that follow as a consequence. They will also be followed up on in the next lectures, where we shall speak of the “Moral Basis of Human Life.” Basically, all human evil comes forth from what we call selfishness. We shall go and follow through from the smallest details, which we regard as human slip-ups, to the strongest crimes, that are human imperfections and human evil, regardless of whether they are portrayed to us as apparently arising more from the soul or apparently more from the bodily: the common essential feature, that comes from selfishness is universally present. We find the true meaning of evil, when we think of it as bound up with human selfishness; and we find all striving outwards and over imperfections and evil, when we see this striving upwards in the struggle against what we call selfishness. A great deal of careful thinking has been done over some ethical principle or another, over some moral basis or another; but the deeper we plunge into ethical principles and moral foundations, precisely this shows us that selfishness is the common root of all human evil. And so we might say: the more a human being works him/herself free of evil here in the physical world, the more he/she overcomes selfishness.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"7. Evil in the Light of Spiritual Knowledge","site_heading":null,"date":"1914-01-15","location":null,"word_count":325,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/63/1914-01-15/p019","alignment_confidence":"medium","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"eLib2015","book_title":"Spiritual Science as a Life's Work","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA063/English/eLib2015/19140115p02.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/63/1914-01-15/p019"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/63/1914-01-15/p019","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":"1914-01-15","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 63/1914-01-15/p022","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/63/1914-01-15/p022"}],"bead_confidence":"medium","pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"length_check":{"de_words":285,"en_words":325,"ratio":1.14,"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 63/1914-01-15/p022","passage_number":22,"text":"Woher kommt das? Wenn man näher zusieht, woher dies kommt, so findet man dabei den Grundzug sozusagen alles menschlichen Bösen. In meiner letzten Schrift «Die Schwelle der geistigen Welt» versuchte ich gerade auf diesen Grundzug des Bösen hinzudeuten, insofern es aus dem Menschen hervorgeht. Der gemeinsame Grundzug alles Bösen ist doch nichts anderes als Egoismus. —- Wenn ich dieses im einzelnen nachweisen wollte, was ich jetzt ausführen will, so müßte ich allerdings viele Stunden sprechen; aber ich will es nur hinstellen, und jeder mag die angeschlagenen Gedankengänge selbst weiterverfolgen. Sie werden ja auch weiter verfolgt werden im nächsten Vortrage, wo über die «Sittliche Grundlage des Menschenlebens» gesprochen werden soll. Im Grunde genommen geht alles menschliche Böse aus dem hervor, was wir den Egoismus nennen. Wir mögen von den geringsten Kleinigkeiten, die wir als menschliche Versehen ansehen, bis zu den stärksten Verbrechen hin alles verfolgen, was menschliche Unvollkommenheiten und menschliches Böses sind, ob es sich uns darstellt scheinbar mehr von der Seele herkommend oder scheinbar mehr von der Leiblichkeit kommend, der gemeinsame Grundzug, von dem Egoismus herrührend, ist überall da. Wir finden die eigentliche Bedeutung des Bösen, wenn wir es verknüpft denken mit dem menschlichen Egoismus; und wir finden alles Hinausstreben über Unvollkommenheiten und Böses, wenn wir dieses Hinausstreben in der Bekämpfung dessen sehen, was wir den Egoismus nennen. Viel ist nachgedacht worden über diese oder jene ethischen Prinzipien, über diese oder jene Moralgrundlagen; gerade das zeigt sich aber, je tiefer man in ethische Prinzipien und in Moralgrundlagen untertaucht, daß der Egoismus die gemeinsame Grundlage alles menschlichen Bösen ist. Und so darf man sagen: der Mensch arbeitet sich aus dem Bösen hier in der physischen Welt um so mehr heraus, je mehr er den Egoismus überwindet.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":285,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/63/1914-01-15/p022"}],"english":["GA 63/1914-01-15/p019"],"method":"length","confidence":"medium","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":285,"en_words":325,"ratio":1.14,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.07,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":10981,"original_word_count":10241,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"not_established","translator":null,"identified_edition":"eLib2015","book_title":"Spiritual Science as a Life's Work","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA063/English/eLib2015/19140115p02.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 63/1914-01-15/p022"],"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. 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