VIII. Cosmology and Planets
GA 90a/1903-12-22/p009
·1903-12-22
·
English
HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: listeners' notes. Written from listeners' notes, summaries, or memory rather than a shorthand transcript. The wording is the note-taker's as much as Steiner's: weigh a single striking phrase here far more cautiously than the same phrase in a stenographic volume, and do not rest an argument on one word. Evidence: «Frühe Vortragsreihen und Einzelvorträge für Mitglieder in Berlin 1903–1904 nach ausführlichen und z.T. fragmentarischen Mitschriften.» (Early lecture series and single lectures for members in Berlin 1903-1904, from detailed and in part fragmentary listeners' transcripts.). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 90a); the description calls them "Hörermitschriften", and the served text carries the note-taker's gap marker "[Lücke in der Mitschrift]". The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
These beings were purely engaged in reproduction. Even before that, the earth was in a state in which it developed the physical, purely elementary principle. So at that time, before the Mars epoch had come, the earth, or rather the forerunner of the earth, was purely physical. At that time, the forerunner of man was also already present. But he was only changeable in the physical life. He was an automaton, an automatic human being. All spiritual life was above man. He himself was only an automaton. The world body that man inhabited at that time was so elementary that it had no cohesive force, so it shattered. And that formed the ring of planetoids: the many planets that circle the sun like a ring.
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