5. Human Tasks in the Higher Worlds
GA 95/1906-08-26/p009
·1906-08-26
·
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: «Vierzehn Vorträge und zwei Fragenbeantwortungen (Hörernotizen)» (Fourteen lectures and two question-answerings (listeners' notes)). Rudolf Steiner Verlag Gesamtverzeichnis 2022, volume subtitle. The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
The countenance of the Earth with all its flora and fauna, is continually changing: how different, for instance, must things have been in northern Siberia when the mammoth, still to be found as though frozen alive in the ice-fields, lived there. How different things must have been here, when primeval forest still covered the ground, when wild animals of the torrid zone lived here and a tropical climate prevailed. Who is it that brings all this about? Who changes conditions on the Earth? How is it with the souls and spirits of animals, and with the souls of plants?
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