43. Blood is a Very Special Fluid
GA 68b/1907-01-11/p022
·1907-01-11
·
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.
Now let us move on to the animal. It not only sets matter in motion, but is also able to reflect joy and suffering within itself. When a plant rolls up its leaves when touched, it is reacting to a stimulus, not sensing; it only becomes sentient when the external process is followed by an internal one. This requires a nervous system; this is provided by the astral body, so that when you have a human being in front of you, you can say: First of all, the human being has what only the physical part works on; these are the sense organs; they are lived through by the etheric body, but are not built by it. Its actual tool is growth, and so on. The astral body's tool is the nervous system, from the solar plexus to the finest nerves of the spine.
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