32. The Origin of Man

GA 68b/1907-10-31/p025 ·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.

Now we can only understand the origin and descent of man if we consider the relationships between these elements of human beings in the present-day individual. We must distinguish between the two essentially different states in which we encounter man, waking and sleeping. These are two fundamentally different states. It was a remarkable fact when Du Bois-Reymond, [the naturalist], said [and it has already been pointed out in the first of these lectures] at the Leipzig Naturalists' Assembly: 'If one were to examine everything that goes on in the human physical body, all these [complicated movements and] processes, one could indeed investigate how hydrogen and oxygen and carbon and nitrogen [move in such a way, but one could examine all this], but one would never be able to explain the simplest fact of consciousness from these movements: “I feel red”, “I smell the scent of roses”. And likewise, even if someone were to see all the movements with the most wonderful instruments, he would only see movement, but not the soul processes, “I see red and feel the scent of roses”.

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Cite: GA 68b/1907-10-31/p025 · edition English