53. The Human Character

GA 68b/1909-10-29/p047 ·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.

Suppose that what stirs particularly in the feeling soul and through which the I is stimulated by the feeling soul is particularly developed and expressed outwardly in the gesture: Man then reaches to his heart. Thus he rises up by his own body, by rising with his I and by playing in ever higher limbs. If the 'I' expresses itself in such a way that it only expresses the consciousness soul and is not touched by the other parts, only the consciousness soul, where thoughts and knowledge dominate, where human discernment is expressed – when a person reflects sharply on something and reflects in such a way that he wants to analyze something – then he puts his finger to his nose to, as it were, divide his face into two parts. What is worked in the consciousness soul is expressed. The character is reflected in the outward gesture by scratching behind the ear, or by grasping the head when something does not occur to one.

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Cite: GA 68b/1909-10-29/p047 · edition English