{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 70b/1916-02-21/p134","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"One would not want to do the English an injustice either. But when one hears how one of the leading contemporary English politicians lets it be known to the Germans across the Channel that “might before right” applies to them, and that this would be a German principle – then one must emphasize: The principle of “might before right” as a truly justified one can be found in the works of the English writer Thomas Hobbes, where it is first mentioned. The phrase “might before right” is a specifically English product, and all law is rooted in might. And so one could find many things; one would not want to do wrong, as I said, but I must say the sentence: All these nations, they need something to numb themselves about what they are actually doing in world history, to numb what they are doing, they need something like a fog that shrouds the truth. England needs a new lie – that can be said, without becoming in any way unobjective, from the facts themselves. And Italy? Yes, before the war a not insignificant Italian politician – for there were minds that were not so naive that they would have believed before the war that Italy would ever stand up for the Central European powers, and so I was not particularly struck by this – when a not insignificant Italian politician told me: We need a war in Italy, because our people have become impotent and lazy and careless; only war can reinvigorate them. So we need the war, a new sensation, a new passion, a tremor in the soul of the people, that is why Europe is worried.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"11. The Forgotten Pursuit of Spiritual Science Within the Development of German Thought","site_heading":null,"date":"1916-02-21","location":null,"word_count":279,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/70b/1916-02-21/p134","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Steiner Online Library","identified_edition":"SOL2024","book_title":"Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul","publisher":"Steiner Online Library","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA070b/English/SOL2024/19160221p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["English"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/70b/1916-02-21/p134"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/70b/1916-02-21/p134","paragraph_aligned":true}],"record":{"record_type":"unknown","scope":"volume","note":"How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.","evidence":null,"evidence_translation":null,"evidence_source":null},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1916-02-21","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 70b/1916-02-21/p135","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/70b/1916-02-21/p135"}],"bead_confidence":"high","pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"length_check":{"de_words":277,"en_words":279,"ratio":1.01,"partial":false},"correspondence":"established","note":"English passage numbering is edition-relative, so the same number need not name the same paragraph in the German. The German original passage(s) above are the edition-invariant anchor — fetch them (lang='de') to verify wording before quoting across editions."},"paired_german":{"status":"paired","german":[{"locus":"GA 70b/1916-02-21/p135","passage_number":135,"text":"Der Engländer, man möchte den Engländern wirklich auch nicht unrecht tun. Aber wenn man so hört, wie einer der tonangebenden gegenwärtigen englischen Politiker zu den Deutschen es hinübertönen lässt, herüber über den Kanal, dass bei ihnen «Macht vor Recht» gehe, und dass das ein deutscher Grundsatz wäre - dann muss man denn doch betonen: Der Grundsatz «Macht geht vor Recht» als ein wirklich berechtigter findet [sich] bei dem englischen Schriftsteller Thomas Hobbes, [dort] wird das zuerst angeführt. Es ist ein spezifisch englisches Produkt, der Satz «Macht geht vor Recht», und alles Recht wurzelt in der Macht. Und so könnte man viele Sachen finden; man möchte, wie gesagt, nicht unrecht tun, aber ich muss den Satz aussprechen: All diese Völker, sie brauchen etwas, um sich selber zu betäuben darüber, was sie eigentlich vor der Weltgeschichte tun, um das zu betäuben, wie sie handeln, sie brauchen etwas wie einen Nebel, der sich darüber hüllt über die Wahrheit. England braucht eine neue Lüge — das kann, ohne irgendwie unsachlich zu werden, aus den Tatsachen selber heraus gesagt werden. Und Italien? Ja, ein nicht unbedeutender Politiker Italiens hat mich vor dem Kriege - denn es gab Gemüter, die nicht so naiv waren, dass sie vor dem Krieg geglaubt hätten, dass sich Italien jemals für die mitteleuropäischen Mächte einsetzen werde, und so fiel es mir nicht besonders auf -, als ein nicht unbedeutender italienischer Politiker mir sagte: Wir müssen in Italien einen Krieg haben, denn unser Volk ist impotent und faul und lässig geworden; da kann höchstens wiederum Kraft hineinkommen, wenn es Krieg führen kann. Wir brauchen den Krieg also eine neue Sensation, ein neues Leidenschaftserzittern der Volksseele, daher wird Europa beunruhigt.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":277,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/70b/1916-02-21/p135"}],"english":["GA 70b/1916-02-21/p134"],"method":"length","confidence":"high","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":277,"en_words":279,"ratio":1.01,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.05,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":13967,"original_word_count":13293,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Steiner Online Library","identified_edition":"SOL2024","book_title":"Ways to a Knowledge of the Eternal Forces of the Human Soul","publisher":"Steiner Online Library","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA070b/English/SOL2024/19160221p01.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 70b/1916-02-21/p135"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"high","note":"Every load-bearing name in the German counterpart appears in this English passage. That is a check on NAMES only: a translation can keep every name and still reverse who acts on whom, change a number, or soften a claim. Read the German for anything you intend to rest an argument on."},"note":"quote_safe certifies the bytes of this text. This block is about the translation as a WITNESS: who made it, and whether it carries the same names as the original. See witness_completeness for how much of the original this witness holds."}}