39. The Origin of Evil

GA 68a/1908-02-20/p025 ·1908-02-20 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: unknown. 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.

That is possible only to love. Let us go back once more from the cosmos of love to the cosmos of wisdom. What was existing of man at the transition? That which I described as the four members of his being making man the crown of creation was not yet existing at the beginning of our earth evolution, only the beginnings of the physical, etheric and astral bodies. But just as a seed decays and yet rises again letting a plant arise, so man disappears at the transition from the cosmos of wisdom to the cosmos of love, to arise again on our present earth and gradually the ‘I’ develops. This I must be there as the counterpart to the force of love. Love has other conditions of existence than wisdom. Wisdom can run where all the single members are dependent on each other. Wisdom can rule where a being in love holds sway. But if love is to pass from one being to another that can only happen where it is a free gift which must be there as a Father force.

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Cite: GA 68a/1908-02-20/p025 · edition English