43. Blood is a Very Special Fluid
GA 68b/1907-01-11/p024
·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.
We speak of consanguinity. The name is not quite right. The recently told story of Anzengruber and Rosegger illustrates what underlies it. Anzengruber had farmers for ancestors, which is why he can describe them. As figurative as this may seem, it is still the actual truth. Blood itself is not inherited; it is always newly formed. Blood and all its organs are the last to form in the animal and human germ. What is inherited is what lies behind the blood, the shape and structure of, for example, the nose, the brain and so on. We connect what we have inherited with our innermost selves by letting it affect our blood; in this way it becomes our property. Thus the blood pulses through entire generations, although it is always new blood.
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