Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/98

 It is intended to explain to you as clearly as is here possible what has so far been said. We are speaking of the supersensuous part of the language, and not immediately or directly of the sensuous part. This supersensuous part, in a language that has always remained alive, is expressed by symbols of sense, comprehending at every step in complete unity the sum total of the sensuous and mental life of the nation deposited in the language, for the purpose of designating an idea that likewise is not arbitrary, but necessarily proceeds from the whole previous life of the nation. From the idea and its designation a keen eye, looking back, could not fail to reconstruct the whole history of the nation’s culture. But in a dead language this supersensuous part, which, while the language was still alive, was what we have described, becomes with the death of the language a tattered collection of arbitrary and totally inexplicable symbols for ideas that are just as arbitrary; and with both idea and symbol there is nothing else to be done but just to learn them.

55. With this our immediate task is performed, which was to find the characteristic that differentiates the German from the other peoples of Teutonic descent. The difference arose at the moment of the separation of the common stock and consists in this, that the German speaks a language which has been alive ever since it first issued from the force of nature, whereas the other Teutonic races speak a language which has movement on the surface only but is dead at the root. To this circumstance alone, to life on the one hand and death on the other, we assign the difference; but we are not in any way taking up the further question of the intrinsic value of the German language. Between life and death there is no comparison; the former has