10. The Essence of the Human Being

GA 68d/1907-07-02/p033 ·1907-07-02 · English High

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.

But such a person also has the four limbs that I mentioned to you. How does the average European person differ from such a “savage”? He says to himself about some urges: you may follow them, but he forbids himself from following others. He has moral concepts that forbid him one thing and allow him another; he has purified and cleansed his urges and passions, and if he is a little higher, he has certain ideals that he strives for. How does he differ from the “savage”? He has worked on his astral body, the body that is the carrier of desires and passions. The savage has not yet done this; he has not yet put any work into it, he still lives in his urges and desires, and the part of his body, the ego, lives in him as it has been handed down to him by the gods. The higher a person is, the more this divine inheritance works in him and transforms the other bodies. The idealist has transformed even more in himself, he has brought even more under the rule of the ego; and the person who has his instincts and passions so well in hand that nothing happens that he does not recognize as right and good, who is never carried away by his instincts and desires, has completely purified and ennobled his astral body.

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Cite: GA 68d/1907-07-02/p033 · edition English