32. The Origin of Man
GA 68b/1907-10-31/p026
·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.
It is the worst materialistic superstition, and basically very interesting, that even on scientific ground it has been pointed out [although he has made significant blunders] that the fact of consciousness of the simplest sensation can never be explained from the facts of the physical body. We can understand the sleeping person, but never the waking one. Why? When a person sleeps, all these facts seem to sink into an indeterminate abyss, and because that is missing, we can understand what remains. Du Bois-Reymond, who is himself a materialist, rightly found the fact of life inexplicable.
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