Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/164

 is eternal. Such an order of things, however, is the special spiritual nature of human environment which, although indeed it is not to be comprehended in any conception, nevertheless truly exists, and from which he himself, with all his thoughts and deeds and with his belief in their eternity, has proceeded—the people, from which he is descended and among which he was educated and grew up to be what he now is. For, though it is true beyond dispute that his work, if he rightly claims it to be eternal, is in no wise the mere result of the spiritual law of nature of his nation or absolutely the same thing as this result, but on the contrary is something more than that and in so far streams forth directly from original and divine life; it is, nevertheless, equally true that this ‘something more,’ immediately on its first embodiment in a visible form, submitted itself to that special spiritual law of nature and found sensuous expression for itself only according to that law. So long as this people exists, every further revelation of the divine will appear and take shape in that people in accordance with the same natural law. But this law itself is further determined by the fact that this man existed and worked as he did, and his influence has become a permanent part of this law. Hence, everything that follows will be bound to submit itself to, and connect itself with, that law. So he is sure that the improvement achieved by him remains in his people so long as the people itself remains, and that it becomes a permanent determining factor in the evolution of his people.

114. This, then, is a people in the higher meaning of the word, when viewed from the standpoint of a spiritual world: the totality of men continuing to live in society with each other and continually creating themselves naturally and spiritually out of themselves, a totality that arises together out of the divine under a certain