Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/87

 48. Despite all the changes brought about, as the language progresses, by the circumstances mentioned above, this conformity with law remains uninterrupted; and indeed, for all who remain in uninterrupted communication, and who all hear in due course whatever any individual for the first time expresses, there is one and the same conformity with law. After thousands of years, and after all the changes undergone in that time by the external manifestation of the language of this people, it ever remains nature’s one, same, living power of speech, which in the beginning necessarily arose in the way it did, which has flowed down through all conditions without interruption, and in each necessarily became what it did become, which in the end necessarily was what it now is, and in time to come necessarily will be what it then will be. The pure human language, in conjunction first with the speech-organ of the people when its first sound was uttered, and the product of these, in conjunction further with all the developments which this first sound in the given circumstances necessarily acquired—all this together gives as its final result the present language of the people. For that reason, too, the language always remains the same language. Even though, after some centuries have passed, the descendants do not understand the language of their ancestors, because for them the transitions have been lost, nevertheless there is from the beginning a continuous transition without a leap, a transition always imperceptible at the time, and only made perceptible when further transitions occur and the whole process appears as a leap forward. There has never been a time when contemporaries ceased to understand each other, for their eternal go-between and interpreter always was, and has continued to be, the common power of nature speaking through them all. Such is the