29. The Mystery of Human Temperaments

GA 68d/1909-01-19/p029 ·1909-01-19 · 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.

Thus, through the fourfold nature of human beings, we learn to understand precisely this mystery of the soul that is the temperaments. And truly, from a deep understanding of human nature, the knowledge of the four temperaments has been handed down to us from ancient times. When we understand human nature in this way and know that the external is only the expression of the spiritual, then we learn — apart from external appearances — to understand the human being in his or her context, to understand the human being in his or her entire becoming, and we learn to recognize what we must do for ourselves and for the child in relation to temperament. A truly lively understanding of the nature of temperaments is indispensable for both wisdom in life and pedagogy, and both would gain infinitely from it.

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Cite: GA 68d/1909-01-19/p029 · edition English