34. The Beginning and the End of the Earth
GA 68b/1907-12-16/p027
·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.
Natural science can tell us all this, but it has nothing to say about the way in which life develops out of the inanimate. It says: Once life existed, the beings developed ever higher through a constant struggle, [for which they needed and developed organs, and in this way they rose up to become human beings]. This is the confession that is purely limited to sensual facts – an image that would have to present itself from the point of view of natural science, the one who could sit down a chair in space and watch the world come into being over millions of years.
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