Lecture I
GA 90a/1904-10-10/p020
·1904-10-10
·
English
LowLow alignmentMost translators re-paragraphed Steiner substantially. The locus identifies the same chapter or section, but paragraph-N to paragraph-N mapping is loose. For exact-quotation precision, compare with the German.
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.
Memory developed for the first time in Atlantis. The Lemurian had no memory. In the first sub-race (Indian), man did indeed think, but his thinking was a kind of feeling, and what he thought comes to expression in the old Vedic civilisation. You read Vedic literature aright if, as you read, you get the impression that thought is basking in a wonder-world of feeling. In civilisations where memory comes more to the help of the thoughts, where outer customs then retain this memory-culture in the worship of ancient heroes, where the memory of a great inventor, or discoverer, or king is established as a principle of the moral life, where long lists of names and data are compiled; in these civilisations there arose the rudiments of the Calendar. Much was noted down in the early races by the ancient Indians and the Persian Magi. And from these memoranda arose the first beginnings of the Calendar.
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