Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/91

 continuously developed according to this law has also the power of immediately affecting and stimulating life. Just as things immediately present influence man, so must the words of such a language influence him who understands them; for they, too, are things, and not an arbitrary contrivance. Such is the case first in the sensuous world. Nor is it otherwise in the supersensuous; for, although in the latter the continuous process of observing nature is interrupted by free contemplation and reflection, and at this point God who is without image appears, yet designation by language at once inserts the Thing-without-image in the continuous connection of things which have an image. So, in this respect also, the continuous progress of language, which broke forth in the beginning as a force of nature, remains uninterrupted, and into the stream of designation no arbitrariness enters. For the same reason the supersensuous part of a language thus continuously developed cannot lose its power of stimulating life in him who but sets his mental instrument in motion. The words of such a language in all its parts are life and create life. Now if, in respect of the development of the language for what is supersensuous, we make the assumption that the people of this language have continued in unbroken communication, and that what one has thought and expressed has before long come to the knowledge of all, then what has previously been said in general is valid for all who speak this language. To all who will but think the image deposited in the language is clear; to all who really think it is alive and stimulates their life.

51. Such is the case, I say, with a language which, from the time the first sound broke forth among the same people, has developed continuously out of the actual common life of this people, and into which no element