XXXVIII. The Transient and the Eternal
GA 90b/1906-01-10/p012
·1906-01-10
·
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 1905–1906 nach ausführlichen und z.T. fragmentarischen Mitschriften.» (Early lecture series and single lectures for members in Berlin 1905-1906, from detailed and in part fragmentary listeners' transcripts.). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 90b); 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.
And so we come to the second link of the human being; the whole body is a living thing, unlike the crystal. Such beings, from which a piece is taken and yet remains the same, are called “living beings”. We humans also have this life body, which holds the individual parts together; and we call this life body the ether body. For the theosophist, it is just as real as the physical body. And just as we have the physical body in common with all minerals, we have the etheric body in common with all plants. Man is a plant; he grows and reproduces, for these qualities are dependent on the etheric body.
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