Johann Gottlieb Fichte

“ They get symbols which for them are neither immediately clear nor able to stimulate life, but which must seem to them entirely as arbitrary as the sensuous part of the language. For them this advent of history, and nothing but history, as expositor, makes the language dead and closed in respect of its whole sphere of imagery, and its continuous onward flow is broken off. ”

“ Within the range of German speech such a wrapping-up in incomprehensibility and darkness arises either from clumsiness or evil design; it is to be avoided, and the means always ready to hand is to translate into right and true German. But in the neo-Latin languages this incomprehensibility is of their very nature and origin, and there is no means of avoiding it, for they do not possess any living language by which they might examine the dead one; indeed, when one looks at the matter closely, they are entirely without a mother-tongue. ”

“ When these words are used in speaking to a German who has learnt no language but his own they are to him nothing but a meaningless noise, which has no relationship of sound to remind him of anything he knows already and so takes him completely out of his circle of observation and beyond any observation possible to him. ”

“ Hence the German, if only he makes use of all his advantages, can always be superior to the foreigner and understand him fully, even better than the foreigner understands himself, and can translate the foreigner to the fullest extent. On the other hand, the foreigner can never understand the true German without a thorough and extremely laborious study of the German language, and there is no doubt that he will leave what is genuinely German untranslated. ”

“ In the first place, the German is a branch of the Teutonic race. Of the latter it is sufficient to say here that its mission was to combine the social order established in ancient Europe with the true religion preserved in ancient Asia, and in this way to develop in and by itself a new and different age after the ancient world had perished. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the contrary there is, to begin with, a fundamental law, in accordance with which every idea becomes in the human organs of speech one particular sound and no other. Just as objects are represented in the sense-organs of an individual by a definite form, colour, etc., so they are represented in language, which is the organ of social man, by a definite sound. It is not really man that speaks, but human nature speaks in him and announces itself to others of his kind. ”

“ Moreover, since language is not an arbitrary means of communication, but breaks forth out of the life of understanding as an immediate force of nature, a language continuously developed according to this law has also the power of immediately affecting and stimulating life. ”

“ Idea or Vision, in its supersensuous meaning, would denote, first of all, in conformity with the sphere in which the word is to be valid, something that cannot be perceived by the body at all, but only by the mind; and then, something that cannot, as many other things can, be perceived by the dim feeling of the mind, but only by the eye of the mind, by clear perception. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From all this together it follows that in a nation of the former kind the mass of the people is capable of education, and the educators of such a nation test their discoveries on the people and wish to influence it; whereas in a nation of the latter kind the educated classes separate themselves from the people and regard it as nothing more than a blind instrument of their plans. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It does not matter if ever so many individuals of other race and other language are incorporated with the people speaking this language; provided the former are not permitted to bring the sphere of their observations up to the position from which the language is thereafter to develop, they remain dumb in the community and without influence on the language, until the time comes when they themselves have entered into the sphere of observation of the original people. ”

“ Although, beyond this sphere, they may again develop the language as a living language in their own way and so far as this is possible from such a starting-point, nevertheless that element remains a dividing wall at which, without exception, language in its original emergence from life as a force of nature and the actual language’s renewal of contact with life are broken. ”

“ We proceed to illustrate the foregoing by an example, remarking incidentally that such a language, at bottom dead and incomprehensible, very easily lends itself to perversion and to misuse in glossing over every kind of human corruption, and that this is not possible in a language which has never died. ”

“ The German never falls into this perversion, so long as it is put before him in his own language. But when Liberality is translated by saying that a man has not the soul of a slave, or, to give it a modern rendering, has not a lackey’s way of thinking, he once more replies that to say this also means very little. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The things in these languages which can only be learnt from the foreigner himself are mostly new fashions of speech due to boredom and caprice, and one is very modest when one consents to receive instruction of this kind. In most cases one would be able, instead, to show foreigners how they ought to speak according to the primitive language and its law of change, and that the new fashion is worthless and offends against ancient and traditional good usage. ”

“ To correct such ideas, and to refute all the objections to single points that might be raised by those who are not practised in taking a comprehensive view of a subject, would far exceed the limits of our time and our intention. ”

“ Although such a language may be stirred on the surface by the wind of life and thus present the appearance of having a life of its own, nevertheless it has a dead element deeper down, and by the entrance of the new circle of observation and the breach with the old one it is cut off from the living root. ”

“ 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 has ever entered that did not express an observation actually experienced by this people, and, moreover, an observation standing in a connection of wide-spread reciprocal influence with all the other observations of the same people. ”

“ All direct comparisons between German and neo-Latin languages are therefore null and void, and are obliged to discuss things which are not worth discussing. If the intrinsic value of the German language is to be discussed, at the very least a language of equal rank, a language equally primitive, as, for example, Greek, must enter the lists ”

“ But the exact opposite of all that has so far been said takes place when a people gives up its own language and adopts a foreign one which is already highly developed as regards the designation of supersensuous things. ”

“ Our ancestors had taken note of the separate human virtues and designated them symbolically in language perhaps long before it occurred to them to combine them in a single concept as contrasted with animal nature ”

“ Man easily makes himself at home under any sky, and the national characteristic, far from being much changed by the place of abode, dominates and changes the latter after its own pattern. Moreover, the variety of natural influences in the region inhabitated by the Teutons is not very great. Just as little importance should be attached to the fact that the Teutonic race has intermingled with the former inhabitants of the countries it conquered ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the first place, the German has a means of investigating his living language more thoroughly by comparing it with the closed Latin language, which differs very widely from his own in the development of verbal images ”

“ Nor is it a question of the previous ancestry of those who continue to speak an original language; on the contrary, the importance lies solely in the fact that this language continues to be spoken, for men are formed by language far more than language is formed by men. ”

“ Anything that arises, according to the conception of the fundamental impulse explained in the preceding address, directly in clear perception and not in the first place in dim feeling—anything of this kind, and it is always a supersensuous object, is denoted by a Greek word which is frequently used in the German language also ”