{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 63/1914-01-15/p042","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"Philosophers and others may look away from such a human destiny: for our time however, such a human destiny is endlessly significant, because it shows us how the soul must live, which can really pierce down into its depths, to that which as longing can resurrect in our time—how the soul can live and confront the problem of wickedness and evil in the world, and have not any vision into the world where spiritual light spreads out and illuminates the sense of wickedness and of evil. It was necessary that the human soul should develop *the* materialistic capacities for a period. One can also position in a certain future of spiritual life, I would like to say, under a “psycho-biological viewpoint,” a point of view of the soul life, and make clear to oneself, that only when lifted up to the spiritual, does what appears in a physical image, for example in animal beings, become valid for human beings. Certain animals can go hungry for a long time and also are hungry for a long time. Tadpoles for example, can bring about their rapid transformation into frogs through long hunger. Similar behaviour is also shown in certain fishes with long hunger, because back-bone building processes come into play, that make it possible to perform what they have to perform; they are hungry because they hold back the forces, they otherwise take in through taking in nourishment, in order to force a way into another form. That is an image that is suitable for use for the human soul: through centuries it has lived through people constantly talking about the “boundaries of human knowledge”; and even many who believe that they think spiritually, are nonetheless entirely devoted to materialistic imaginations—which are willingly called monistic today because people are ashamed of them—, and even philosophers are devoted to the maxim: human knowledge can do no more than make a halt, when it stands before the greatest riddles. The capacities that led them to everything, had to be trained for a period: that is to say that humanity must undergo a period of spiritual starvation. This was the time of the arising of materialism. But the powers that were held back in souls through this, they will now lead human souls to seek for the way into the spirit world in accordance with a psycho- biological law. Certainly one will find that human pondering had to take the form that we meet up with in Mainländer, who could no longer find the spirit world in the physical world, because materialism had taken him. He was forced to remain before the physical world: there he only had the power to visualise errors, and not that which underlies our world, that indeed gives us the possibility in find something out in our souls, that refers to the future just as the outer world refers to the past. It cannot be denied, that in a certain sense Mainländer was correct: what our world sets out all around us, are the remains of original development. Even present-day geologists have to admit today, that we, in that we wander across the earth, are walking away a cadaver. But what Mainländer could not show, that is, that we, to the extent that we are walking over a dead body, at the same time are developing something in our inner being, which is precisely a seed for the future, as that which is all around us is a bequest from the past. And to the extent that we look into this, what spiritual science is for individual souls, it can resurrect in us, that which Mainländer was not yet able to see, and therefore was forced to doubt.","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":618,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/63/1914-01-15/p042","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/p042"},{"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/p042","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/p046","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/63/1914-01-15/p046"}],"bead_confidence":"medium","pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"length_check":{"de_words":558,"en_words":618,"ratio":1.11,"partial":false},"correspondence":"established","note":"English passage numbering is edition-relative, so the same number need not name the same paragraph in the German. 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Man wird in einer gewissen Zukunft das geistige Leben auch, ich möchte sagen, unter «psycho-biologische Gesichtspunkte» stellen, Gesichtspunkte des Seelenlebens, und sich klar werden, daß, nur ins Geistige heraufgehoben, für das Menschenwesen das gilt, was wie in einem physischen Abbilde unten, bei tierischen Wesen zum Beispiel, erscheint. Gewisse tierische Wesen können lange hungern und hungern auch lange.Kaulquappen zum Beispiel kann man durch längeres Hungern dazu bringen, daß sie schnell die Gestalt in Frösche umwandeln. Ähnliche Verhältnisse zeigen sich bei gewissen Fischen bei längerem Hungern, weil dann Rückbildungsprozesse eintreten, die sie fähig machen, das auszuführen, was sie auszuführen haben; sie hungern, weil sie die Kräfte, welche sie sonst in die Nahrungsaufnahme hineinnehmen, zurücknehmen, um eben andere Formen auszubilden. Das ist ein Bild, das sich auf die Menschenseele anwenden läßt: Durch Jahrhunderte hat sie eine Zeit durchlebt, wo man immer von den «Grenzen menschlicher Erkenntnis» gesprochen hat; und selbst viele, die heute glauben spirituell zu denken, sind noch ganz den materialistischen Vorstellungen hingegeben — die man nur, weil man sich ihrer schämt, heute gern monistisch nennt -, und selbst Philosophen sind hingegeben dem Grundsatz: Es kann die menschliche Erkenntnis nicht anders als Halt machen, wo sie gerade vor den größten Rätseln steht. Die Fähigkeiten, die zu dem allen führten, mußten eine Zeitlang ausgebildet werden; das heißt die Menschheit mußte eine Zeit geistiger Aushungerung durchmachen. Dies war die Zeit des Heraufkommens des Materialismus. Die Kräfte aber, die dadurch in den Seelen zurückgehalten wurden, sie werden nun nach einem psycho-biologischen Gesetz die Menschenseele dazu führen, den Weg in die geistigen Welten hinein zu suchen. Ja, finden wird man, daß das menschliche Grübeln die Form annehmen mußte, wie sie uns bei Mainländer entgegentritt, der nicht mehr die geistige Welt in der physischen Welt finden konnte, weil sie ihm der Materialismus genommen hatte, und der daher vor der physischen Welt stehen bleiben mußte, dabei nur den Fehler machte zu übersehen, daß das, was unserer Welt vorliegt, uns doch die Möglichkeit gibt, in unserer Seele etwas aufzufinden, was ebenso in die Zukunft verweist wie die äußere Welt in die Vergangenheit weist. Denn nicht zu leugnen ist es, daß Mainländer in einem gewissen Sinne recht hatte: daß das, was unsere Welt ringsherum darbietet, die Reste einer ursprünglichen Entwickelung sind. Selbst die gegenwärtigen Geologen müssen heute schon zugeben, daß wir, indem wir über die Erde wandeln, über einen Leichnam hinwegschreiten. Aber was Mainländer noch nicht zeigen konnte, das ist, daß wir, indem wir über einen Leichnam schreiten, zugleich in unserem Innern etwas entwickeln, was geradeso Keim ist für die Zukunft, wie das, was um uns herum ist, Hinterlassenschaft der Vergangenheit ist. Und indem wir auf das blicken, was die Geisteswissenschaft der einzelnen Seele ist, kann in uns wiederaufleben, worauf Mainländer noch nicht schauen konnte, und daher verzweifeln mußte.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":558,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/63/1914-01-15/p046"}],"english":["GA 63/1914-01-15/p042"],"method":"length","confidence":"medium","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":558,"en_words":618,"ratio":1.11,"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. 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