32. The Origin of Man

GA 68b/1907-10-31/p005 ·1907-10-31 · 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.

And it must be realized that it is extremely difficult for those who have become accustomed to thinking in the direction that confronts them to bring the ideas they have once accepted into any kind of acceptable relationship with ideas of a different nature [that are put forward, for example, from the perspective of spiritual science]. Therefore, anyone who speaks about this question from the point of view of spiritual science today has no illusions about the fact that he could easily be understood by all those who have surrendered their habitual ways of thinking, by what is commonly accepted and seemingly based on the solid facts of science. That would certainly be an illusion. Nevertheless, from this spiritual-scientific point of view, what is to be said must be said, especially today, for little by little these ideas will find their way into the minds of all those who can free themselves from the [thought habits] just mentioned. This should be stated in advance so that it is not believed that the humanities scholar only indulges in such illusions, that he can conquer those who live in strict scientific ideas in flight, or that it cannot happen, [that one confronts such ideas], and say from their point of view, that what he has presented is pure nonsense, [pure folly]. As a rule, he is able to present the arguments put forward by the opponents of the former very easily himself. The deception then mostly lies with those who approach it from a spiritual scientific point of view and believe that its arguments could contain anything new for him.

Read this passage in another edition
DEoriginalENEnglish
Raw JSON: /v1/steiner/en/ga/68b/1907-10-31/p005.json
Cite: GA 68b/1907-10-31/p005 · edition English