49. The Practical Training of Thinking

GA 68b/1909-02-13/p014 ·1909-02-13 · English High

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.

And I need only remind you of something that should be known here. When the first railroad was to be built, a medical council was asked whether, for hygienic reasons, railroads should be built. The document can be read, and the judgment was passed by the practitioners – it is not that many years ago – that railroads should not be built because, as the practitioners judged, people would destroy their nervous systems. But if you wanted to build railways anyway and people could be found to ride them, then you would have to build high board walls on both sides so that those who pass by the railroad would not get concussions. Another example of such a judgment based on practical experience is when the postmaster Nagler in Potsdam said: “I already send two stagecoaches out every day with no one sitting in them; how is anyone supposed to sit in the train if I send even more every day?”

Read this passage in another edition

DEoriginalENEnglish

Raw JSON: /v1/steiner/en/ga/68b/1909-02-13/p014.json
Cite: GA 68b/1909-02-13/p014 · edition English