Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 5.djvu/27

Rh Woods"), and other works, had immediately placed himself by the side of the most eminent men who had for a long time drawn toward them the eyes of their country. What an agitation there must have been in such a mind, what a fermentation there must have been in such a nature, can neither be conceived nor described. But great was certainly the concealed effort, as will be easily admitted when one reflects for how many years afterward, and how much, he has done and produced.

We had not lived together long in this manner when he confided to me that he meant to be a competitor for the prize which was offered at Berlin for the best treatise on the origin of language. His work was already nearly completed; and, as he wrote a very neat hand, he could soon communicate to me, in part, a legible manuscript. I had never reflected on such subjects, for I was yet too deeply involved in the midst of things to have thought about their beginning and end. The question, too, seemed to me idle in some measure; for, if God had created man as man, language was just as innate in him as walking erect: he must have just as well perceived that he could sing with his throat, and modify the tones in various ways with tongue, palate, and lips, as he must have remarked that he could walk, and take hold of things. If man was of divine origin, so was also language; and if man, considered in the circle of nature, was a natural being, language was likewise natural. These two things, like soul and body, I could never separate. Süssmilch, with a realism crude, yet somewhat fantastically devised, had declared himself for the divine origin; that is, that God had played the schoolmaster to the first men. Herder's treatise went to show that man as man could and must have attained to language by his own powers. I read the treatise with much pleasure, and it was of special aid in strengthening my mind; but I