In his autobiography,
The Course of My Life
(chapters
35 and
36),
Rudolf Steiner speaks as follows
concerning the character and records of lectures and addresses printed
originally for private circulation:
The contents of this printed matter were intended as
oral communications and not for print. . . .
They contain nothing that is not a pure expression
of anthroposophical knowledge in its progressive development and growth.
. . the reader may confidently take them as representing what
Anthroposophy has to tell. Therefore it was possible, and moreover
without misgivings. . . to depart from the accepted custom of
circulating these publications only among the membership. But it will
have to be remembered that faulty passages occur in the transcripts,
which I myself did not revise.
It is only reasonable to expect that anyone
professing to pass judgment on the contents of this privately printed
matter will be acquainted with the premises that were taken for granted
when the words were spoken. These premises include, at the very least, the
anthroposophical knowledge of Man and of the Cosmos in its spiritual
essence; also what may be called anthroposophical History,
told as an outcome of research into the spiritual world."
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