32. The Origin of Man
GA 68b/1907-10-31/p011
·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.
So if we know that they [the two people standing opposite each other] are related, [if we] can determine that from something, can we then conclude that [the one who has the genius and who was hardworking and achieved something decent comes] from [the other who was lazy and careless and did not improve]? Anyone who reflects a little will be able to realize how unnatural such a conclusion would be, and how easily he could be set right in his thinking if it were shown to him that the one as well as the other person descended from the same parents, that the one has only developed upward to his industriousness, but the other has declined, has developed downward. It is extremely trivial, [what I see], and it could seem as if an admirable theory that prevails in the world today should be refuted [by an /illegible/ triviality].
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