34. The Beginning and the End of the Earth
GA 68b/1907-12-16/p007
·1907-12-16
·
English
MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
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.
But a distinction must be made between what human theory and hypothesis have built out of these facts like a confession; because, in addition to all other religious worldviews, in our time there is a kind of materialistic religion, or, since this is no longer a common word, , a kind of materialistic creed, which only wants to be in harmony and agreement with what the senses see, which only wants to accept what can be seen with the eyes, grasped with the hands, or similarly imagined as real sensual facts in the environment. This could bring Theosophy into conflict.
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