34. The Beginning and the End of the Earth
GA 68b/1907-12-16/p019
·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.
Since Theosophy draws on completely different sources than the combining approach of our contemporaries [of building an event on solid facts], it may initially appear as if there is a bitter contradiction between what science is and what spiritual science has to say; but spiritual science does not deny anything that science says. But with a topic such as today's, where we combine the distant beginning of humanity and the goal of human development in the distant future, the contradiction between spiritual science and natural science will seemingly be there. In reality, spiritual science stands firmly on the ground of scientific facts. Let us first ask: What does science have to say about our topic, and by what means does it seek to recognize the gradual development of our earthly creatures?
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