{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 68b/1909-02-13/p013","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"It is best to illustrate this with examples, some of which have already been mentioned here. Today, we want to bring one of these examples to mind in order to hold up our usual way of life to it. Who would not find it practical today that you don't have to go to the post office with every letter and that you don't have to open a huge book to look up how far away the place is to which the letter is addressed, and then determine, based on half-pennies, how much postage you have to pay? In the few cases where you still have to do that today, you can see how practical it is to have what is known as the penny postage stamp, the standard stamp, even for long distances. That was not the case eighty years ago. In the forties of the last century, you still had to go to the post office counter with a letter and it was very complicated. It was not a postal practitioner who invented this standard stamp, but an Englishman named Hill, who was not from the “practical” side of life. He was the first to say what advantages there would be if postage stamps were introduced. This is no myth. You can read it in the records of the English Parliament. The one who was the practitioner said: Oh, I don't believe what Hill has calculated; because such a device certainly cannot improve our traffic as he claims. And even if it were true, then one would have to be against it, because then one would have to make the post office building three times as large as it is. – That was the practical man, while the impractical man has just made this world-changing discovery of the penny postage stamp.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"49. The Practical Training of Thinking","site_heading":null,"date":"1909-02-13","location":null,"word_count":302,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/68b/1909-02-13/p013","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:identity","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Steiner Online Library","identified_edition":"SOL2024","book_title":"The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit","publisher":"Steiner Online Library","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA068b/English/SOL2024/19090213p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["English"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/68b/1909-02-13/p013"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/68b/1909-02-13/p013","paragraph_aligned":true}],"record":{"record_type":"listeners_notes","scope":"volume","note":"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.","evidence_translation":"Since no professional shorthand transcripts exist, these are often summaries or reports kept in the form of notes.","evidence_source":"The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 68b). The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one."},"paired_german":{"status":"paired","german":[{"locus":"GA 68b/1909-02-13/p013","passage_number":13,"text":"Am besten kann man sich das an Beispielen klarmachen, von denen manche schon hier erwähnt worden sind. Wir wollen uns heute vor die Seele rücken eines dieser Beispiele, um daran die gewöhnliche Lebenspraxis uns vorzuhalten. Wer wird es heute nicht praktisch finden, dass man nicht mit jedem Briefe zum Postschalter gehen muss und dass ein riesiges Buch aufgeschlagen werden muss, um da nachzuscehen, wie weit der Ort liegt, an den der Brief gerichtet ist, und dann danach bestimmt werden muss, bei halben Pfennigen, wie viel man als Porto zu entrichten hat? In den wenigen Fällen, wo man das heute tun muss, kann man schon lernen, wie praktisch es ist, dass man das hat, was man das sogenannte Pfennigporto nennt, die Einheitsmarke, selbst für weite Entfernungen. Das hat es noch nicht gegeben vor ungefähr achtzig Jahren. In den Vierzigerjahren des vorigen Jahrhunderts war es noch so, dass man mit einem Briefe zum Postschalter gehen musste und viele Umstände hatte. Kein Postpraktiker war es, der diese Einheitsmarke erfunden hat, sondern der Engländer Hill, der nicht vom «praktischen» Leben war. Er hat zuerst gesagt, welche Vorteile es haben würde, wenn man das Pfennigporto einführen würde. Das ist kein Märchen. Sie können es nachlesen in den Akten des englischen Parlaments. Derjenige, der der Praktiker war, der hat gesagt: Ach, was der Hill da ausrechnet, glaube ich ihm nicht; denn solch eine Einrichtung kann sicher unseren Verkehr nicht so heben, wie er angibt. Und selbst wenn es wahr wäre, dann müsste man dagegen sein, denn dann müsste man das Postgebäude dreimal so groß machen, als es ist. — Das war der Praktiker, während der Unpraktiker gerade diese weltumwälzende Entdeckung des Pfennigportos gemacht hat.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":278,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/68b/1909-02-13/p013"}],"english":["GA 68b/1909-02-13/p013"],"method":"identity","confidence":"high","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":278,"en_words":302,"ratio":1.09,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"verified","verified":true,"evidence":["length","meaning","anchors","audit"]},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.02,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":8301,"original_word_count":8161,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Steiner Online Library","identified_edition":"SOL2024","book_title":"The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit","publisher":"Steiner Online Library","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA068b/English/SOL2024/19090213p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 68b/1909-02-13/p013"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"high","note":"Every load-bearing name in the German counterpart appears in this English passage. That is a check on NAMES only: a translation can keep every name and still reverse who acts on whom, change a number, or soften a claim. Read the German for anything you intend to rest an argument on."},"note":"quote_safe certifies the bytes of this text. This block is about the translation as a WITNESS: who made it, and whether it carries the same names as the original. See witness_completeness for how much of the original this witness holds."}}