LV. The Structure of Man I
GA 90a/1904-08-23/p009
·1904-08-23
·
English
MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
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.
But now it comes into contact with the spirit, which has created a physical tool for itself in the organ of thought, the brain. Thought serves it in the first instance; man reflects on his perceptions and passions. In order to satisfy these, he seeks opportunities, acts - through this the power of thought places the soul in a higher conformity to law, to which it does not belong as a mere sentient soul; it grows beyond what it is in the animal or in quite undeveloped man. It becomes the intellectual soul. The clairvoyant beholds this as a special entity within the soul body, as a second link. Through the intellectual soul the human being is led beyond his own life. He opens himself more and more to the spirit. To the extent that he opens himself to the knowledge of truth and goodness, he takes in the eternal within himself, that which exists in itself and does not depend on impressions. That which shines forth as the eternal in the soul may be called the 'conscious soul'. The body has a limiting effect on it, the spirit expands it.
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