26. The Secret of the Human Temperaments

GA 68d/1908-12-15/p029 ·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.

If the etheric body is not strongly influenced by either the physical body or the astral body and I, if the impulses of the family, the peculiarities of the race, are not strongly pronounced, if there is no strong effect on the etheric body from above and below, if it remains neutral, so to speak, then the phlegmatic temperament arises. The phlegm is the balanced part of the etheric body. In this case, neither the physical nor the astral body and the I have a particularly strong effect. In this case, the person has the balanced phlegm of the forces of his ether body surging through him. You can see this in the physical form of the body, which you can see projected outwards. You can see how, in the phlegmatic person, the etheric body receives no strong influences from above or below, and so what is surplus in life settles in the fat. You can see in every detail the consequences of what we must see in the spiritual; the physical is in every detail an expression of the spiritual. We can only understand the physical if we grasp the spiritual.

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Cite: GA 68d/1908-12-15/p029 · edition English