38. The Ideals of Humanity and the Ideals of the Initiates
GA 68b/1906-01-16/p011
·1906-01-16
·
English
HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: listeners' notes. Written from listeners' notes, summaries, or memory rather than a shorthand transcript. The wording is the note-taker's as much as Steiner's: weigh a single striking phrase here far more cautiously than the same phrase in a stenographic volume, and do not rest an argument on one word. Evidence: «Da keine professionellen Stenogramme vorliegen, handelt es sich oftmals um notizenhaft festgehaltene Zusammenfassungen oder Berichte.» (Since no professional shorthand transcripts exist, these are often summaries or reports kept in the form of notes.). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 68b). The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
Ideas continue to have an effect in life. This can be observed in Herder's “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind”, the most beautiful primer of theosophy, whose ideas Goethe, Schiller, Novalis and Schlegel absorbed. Of this work, Goethe could say: This is the most beautiful way in which ideas continue to have an effect in life, although one so easily forgets their origin. And with the great ideals of the spiritual leaders of humanity, forms are also formed. The geniuses of humanity transform human beings in their most everyday activities. To rise to the ideals, we must absorb the spiritual creation within us; we must revere that which rises above the everyday. It is indiscreet to see the everyday in the lives of great geniuses, instead of seeing that which rises above the everyday.
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