53. The Human Character
GA 68b/1909-10-29/p034
·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.
What we call time is incorporated into the human being's soul life. The I gradually develops out of the hidden germ, the peculiarities of the sentient soul and the mind soul, up into the consciousness soul. Thus, the child approaches us in a different way in terms of character than a young animal. From the earliest times, the latter practices the activities that are incumbent on it by virtue of its nature. In a sense, the human being enters the world without character. The individual forms, even those based on his nature, even what he acquires by being worked on by others, all that arises in later life, must be acquired over time.
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