10. The Essence of the Human Being

GA 68d/1907-07-02/p006 ·1907-07-02 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: mixed sources. This volume draws on more than one kind of record (transcripts, notes, documents). Check the volume's own front matter before weighing a single passage. Evidence: «Vorträge aus den Jahren 1905 bis 1909 in Form von ausführlichen Mitschriften, Zuhörernotizen und Zeitungsreferaten» (Lectures from the years 1905 to 1909 in the form of detailed transcripts, listeners' notes and newspaper reports). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 68d). The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

If you look at the physical body – it fades away in death, it shatters into a thousand and a thousand components, which you see disappearing in the cycle of matter. The question arises quite naturally: Does the disappearance of the human being exhaust everything that he means in the world? And when we look at our cultural life, when we see how man creates and works in the world, when we see how great masters of art, such as Michelangelo and Raphael, create their masterpieces, how they transform spiritual forces into the physical, corporeal, earthly and know that these works of great genius, which people enjoy and are uplifted by, will also one day fade away and be scattered, so that no human eye will see them again and no human soul will enjoy them, then this question arises anew before our soul.

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Cite: GA 68d/1907-07-02/p006 · edition English