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.