26. The Secret of the Human Temperaments

GA 68d/1908-12-15/p026 ·1908-12-15 · 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.

We have seen that the temperaments have their particular expression in the etheric body. Through this balance, which takes place between what is imprinted in the etheric body from above when a person descends and what comes into the etheric body from below in the form of certain qualities, the temperament arises. If, in a particular incarnation, a person has a physical body that makes a stronger impression on the etheric body than the astral body and the ego, then what is called the melancholic temperament develops in that person. Due to the nature of the descending astral body, because it does not, so to speak, fully master the laws of the physical body, this physical body, with all its heaviness, has an effect on the ether body, and this is how the melancholic temperament arises. In particular, in the case of a person, it must be that part of the physical body that is the physical instrument of thought, of the spiritual life in general, which, in the case of the melancholic temperament, has a retroactive effect on the etheric body, on the person's entire life circumstances. Therefore, the person who, through his astral body and ego, cannot, so to speak, master the physical brain, that which is otherwise the physical instrument for thoughts, will be under the control of his thoughts. The physical body forces the etheric body to do this, so that the person is not master of his thoughts, but is ruled by them.

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Cite: GA 68d/1908-12-15/p026 · edition English