53. The Human Character

GA 68b/1909-10-29/p005 ·1909-10-29 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
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.

In particular, we pointed out one of the qualities, anger, and showed how self-development lies in overcoming such an affect. Man's sense of truth [as educator of the mind or intellectual soul] was further found, and how then a special impulse for the development of the consciousness soul is what we described yesterday as devotion in the right sense of the word. As we were asking ourselves about that in the human inner being, which actually guides and leads the development, we came across that which we had to say could essentially reveal itself in two ways: We have come across the I that pulsates and interweaves through the whole soul. It is what works on the soul. It must reveal itself in two ways: on the one hand, strongly and powerfully and meaningfully, richer in thoughts, feelings and will impulses, which itself must expand more and more; in this way we have shown how selfhood grows more and more. Furthermore, that on the other hand this ego, by expressing selfhood in a special way, can degenerate into selfishness and egoism. ... Thus, in a certain respect, the ego became the center of the soul's life.

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Cite: GA 68b/1909-10-29/p005 · edition English