Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/88

 of language, considered as the designation of objects directly perceived by the senses; and in the beginning all human language is this. When the people raises itself from this stage of sensuous perception to a grasp of the supersensuous, then, if this supersensuous is to be repeated at will and kept from being confused with the sensuous by the first individual, and if it is to be communicated to others for their convenience and guidance, the only way at first to keep firm hold of it will be to designate a Self as the instrument of a supersensuous world and to distinguish it precisely from the same Self as the instrument of the sensuous world—to contrast a soul, a mind, etc., with a physical body. As all the various objects of this supersensuous world appear only in and exist for that supersensuous instrument, the only possible way of designating them in language would be to say that their special relation to their instrument is similar to the relation of such-and-such particular sensuous objects to the sensuous instrument, and in this relation to compare a particular supersensuous thing with a particular sensuous one, using this comparison to indicate by language the place of the supersensuous thing in the supersensuous instrument. In this sphere language has no further power; it gives a sensuous image of the supersensuous thing, merely with the remark that it is an image of that kind; he who wishes to attain to the thing itself must set his own mental instrument in motion according to the rule given him by the image. Speaking generally, it is evident that this designation of the supersensuous by means of sensuous images must in every case be conditioned by the stage of development which the power of sensuous perception has reached in the people under consideration. Hence, the origin and progress of this designation by sensuous images will be very