Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/115

 in the world without a primitive impulse in man which, as something supersensuous, is rightly called Genius, to give it the foreign name. But this impulse in itself only stimulates the power of imagination, and brings forth in it figures that hover above the ground but are never completely defined. To bring these down completed to the ground of actual life and to fix them firmly therein, this requires thought, diligent, deliberate, and in accordance with a definite principle. Genius delivers to diligence the stuff to be worked upon, and the latter without the former would have to work upon either what had been worked upon already or else upon nothing at all. But diligence brings this stuff, which without it would remain an empty game, into life; and so it is only when united that the two can achieve anything; divided they can do nothing. Moreover, in a people with a dead language no truly creative genius can express itself, because they lack the primitive power of designation; they can only develop what has already been begun and convey it into the whole existing and completed system of designation.

67. When we consider the question of taking greater pains, it is natural that this can be done by the people with the living language. A living language can stand on a higher level of culture in comparison with another, but it can never in itself attain that perfection of development which a dead language quite easily attains. In the latter the connotation of words is fixed, and the possibilities of suitable combinations will also gradually become exhausted. Hence, he who wishes to speak this language must speak it just as it is; but, after he has once learnt to do this, the language speaks itself in his mouth and thinks and imagines for him. But in a living language, if only life in it is really lived, the words and their meanings increase and change continually, and for that