55. The Mission of Devotion
GA 68b/1910-03-12/p043
·1910-03-12
·
English
MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
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.
It is understandable from the outset that all knowledge must be preceded by something like such a feeling. A person need only consider that, while man must understand everything through logic, that is, one must approach everything through logical thinking, that logic is what can prove everything in existence to us. But what does logic itself prove to us? If we are not to arrive at the self-contradiction that logic proves itself, then we must assume that there is something in the human soul other than mere logic, which in turn is proved by logic. Logic can only be proved by something that itself has nothing to do with logic. And that is in man that which can be called his original, healthy sense of truth. Thus, the logical ultimately leads us back to feeling. All understanding leads us back to feeling.
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