32. The Origin of Man

GA 68b/1907-10-31/p017 ·1907-10-31 · English High

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 can now extend this concept to all living things. If we extend it in this way, we go back to the mammals that are closer to humans. Any simple theory of evolution would assume that the higher mammals were the ancestors of man. Today, this notion of man's very brutal descent from apes has been somewhat dropped, but the line of thought is still based on what appears to be different. If we imagine the relationship between humans and higher apes using this concept, we will say: Today's apes may descend from that original being that existed in the distant past and to which humans have evolved, but they have remained at [an older point of view], and therefore, in their present state, [in their present form] do not represent the ancestors of mankind, but the degenerate creation [that has wanted to hold on to an old form; that has corrupted itself]. Therefore, when today's man looks at this ape, he sees it with the mind, [then] it appears to him as a caricature of his own being, not at all as an ancestor, [and anyone with such feelings experiences it] as a kind of embarrassment... [illegible] when the original characteristics of man are corrupted.

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Cite: GA 68b/1907-10-31/p017 · edition English