34. The Beginning and the End of the Earth
GA 68b/1907-12-16/p025
·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.
We look back to a distant primeval time of the earth, when the earth was still much warmer, indeed, when it was still in a molten state. We then see how the earth gradually cooled, how the metals hardened, how the solid rock settled; we see how the first simple plants and animals emerged in a way that is unfathomable to science. We see the earth covered with simple plants and animals in the time called the Silurian and Devonian periods, where lower animals such as fish are present first, then amphibians and reptiles.
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