.itself. For, just because that kind of thinking is life, it lis felt by its possessor with inward pleasure in its vitalizing, (transfiguring, and liberating power. But everyone to whose inmost being happiness has been revealed is bound to wish that everyone else may experience the same bliss; he is thus driven, and must work, to the end that the stream from 4which he has drawn his own well-being may spread itself over others too. It is different with him who has merely apprehended the possibility of second-hand thinking. Just as its substance yields him neither weal nor woe, but merely occupies his leisure agreeably and enter tainingly, so it is impossible for him to believe that it can bring weal or woe to anyone else. In the end it is to him a matter of indifference on what subject anyone exercises his ingenuity or with what he occupies his hours of leisure.
63. Of the means of introducing into the lives of all the thought that has begun in the life of the individual, the highest and best is £oe£ry; hence this is the second main branch of the spiritual culture of a people. The thinker designates his thought in language, and this, as we have said above, cannot be done except by images of sense and, moreover, by an act of creation extending beyond the previous range of sensuous imagery. In doing this the thinker is himself a poet; if he is not a poet, language will fail him when his first thought comes, and, when he attempts the second, thought itself will CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENCE 79 depart from him. An extension and amplification of the language's range of sensuous imagery having thus been begun by the thinker, to send it in flood through the whole field of sensuous images, so that every image may receive its appropriate share of the new spiritual ennoblement and so that the whole of life, down to its deepest depths of sense, may appear steeped in the new ray of light, may be well-pleasing, and may unwittingly give the illusion of ennobling itself — to do this is the work of true poetry. Only a living language can have such poetry, for only in such a language can the range of sensuous imagery be extended by creative thought, and only in it does what has already been created remain alive and open to the influence of kindred life. Such a language has within itself the power of infinite poetry, ever refreshing and renewing its youth, for every stirring of living thought in it opens up a new vein of poetic enthusiasm. To such a language, therefore, poetry is the highest and best means of flooding the life of all with the spiritual culture that has been attained. It is quite impossible for a dead language to have poetry in this higher sense, for none of the conditions necessary to poetry exist in it. Such a language can have, how ever, though only for a limited period, a substitute for poetry in the following way. The_qutpourings of the art of poetry in the original language will attract attention. The new people, indeed, cannot go on making poetry in the path that has been begun, for this is foreign to its life, but it can introduce its own life and its new circumstances into the sphere of sensuous imagery and poetry in which the preceding age expressed its own life; it can, for example, dress up its knights as heroes, and vice versa, and make the ancient gods exchange raiment with the new ones. It is precisely this placing 8o ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION of unfamiliar vesture upon the commonplace that gives it a charm akin to that produced by idealization, and the result will be quite pleasing figures. But the range of sensuous and poetical imagery in the original language on the one hand, and the new conditions of life on the other, are finite and limited quantities. At some point their mutual penetration is completed; and when that point is reached the people celebrates its golden age and the source of its poetry runs dry. Somewhere or other there must be a highest point in the adaptation of fixed words to fixed ideas, and of fixed imagery to fixed con ditions of life. When this point has been reached this people must do one of two things. It can either repeat its most successful masterpieces in a different form, so that they look as if they were something new, although they are in fact nothing but the old familiar things. Or else, if it is determined to achieve something entirely new, it can seek refuge in the unbecoming and the unseemly. In this case their poetic art will mix together the ugly and the beautiful and have recourse to carica ture and humour, while their prose will be compelled to confuse ideas and to jumble virtue and vice together.
This they must do if they seek new forms of expression.
64. When mental culture and life thus go their own separate ways in a nation, the natural consequence is that those classes who have no access to mental culture, and who do not even receive the results of it as they would in a living nation, are placed at a disadvantage as compared with the educated classes and are regarded, so to speak, as a different species of humanity, unequal to them in mental power from the beginning and by the mere fact of birth. Another consequence is that the educated classes have no truly loving sympathy with them and are not impelled to give them thorough aid, CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENCE 81 for they believe that their original inequality makes them quite incapable of being aided. It follows also that the educated classes are tempted rather to make use of them as they are and to let them be so used. Although even this consequence of the death of the language can be mitigated in the first years of the new nation by a humanitarian religion and by the lack of special skill among the higher classes, yet, as time goes on, this despising of the people will become more and more unconcealed and cruel. That is why the educated classes assume superiority and give themselves airs; and there is in addition a special reason closely connected with it which, as it has had a very extensive influence even on the Germans, must be mentioned here. It arises from the fact that in the beginning the Romans called themselves barbarians and their own language barbarous, as contrasted with the Greeks. In this they very ingenuously repeated what the Greeks had said about them. Afterwards the Romans handed on the description they had taken upon themselves, and found among the Teutons the same unquestioning simplicity as they themselves had shown towards the Greeks. The Teutons believed that the only possible way to get rid of barbarism was to become Romans. The immi grants to what was formerly Roman soil became as Roman as they possibly could. But in their imagination the term " barbarous " soon acquired the secondary meaning of " common, plebeian, and loutish," and in this way " Roman," on the contrary, became synonymous with " distinguished." This way of looking at it affected the Teutonic languages in general and in particular; in general, since, when measures were taken deliberately and consciously to mould the language, they were directed towards throwing out the Teutonic roots and forming 6 82 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION.
the words fromLatin roots, and thus creating the Romance language as the language of the court and of the educated classes. But the particular result is that, whenever two words have the same meaning, the one from a Teutonic root almost without exception denotes what is base and ignoble, and the one from the Latin root what is nobler and more distinguished.
65. This endemic disease of the whole Teutonic race, as it might be called, attacks the German in the mother- country too, if he is not armed against it by a high earnestness. Even in our ears it is easy for Latin to sound distinguished, even to our eyes Roman customs appear nobler and everything German on the contrary vulgar; and as we were not so fortunate as to acquire all this at first-hand, we take much pleasure in receiving it at second-hand through the medium of the neo-Latin nations.1 So long as we are German we appear to our- 1 [Fichte adds this note here: In our opinion the decision as to the greater or less euphony of a language should not be based upon the direct impression, which depends on so many matters of chance. Even a judg ment of this kind should be founded on definite principles. The merit of a language in this respect should undoubtedly be, first of all, that it exhausts and comprehensively presents the possibilities of the human organs of speech, and, secondly, that it combines the separate sounds in a natural and convenient unity. Hence it follows that nations who only half develop their organs of speech, and that in a one-sided fashion, who avoid certain soundsor combinations under the pretext of difficulty or cacophony, and who esteem euphonious only what they are accustomed to hear and can them selves pronounce — such nations have no say in an investigation of this kind.
This is not the place to deliver judgment according to those higher principles on the German language in this respect. Latin itself, the parent language, is pronounced by each neo-European nation in its own way, and it would not be easy to restore its true pronunciation. There remains, therefore, only this question, whether the German language when compared with neo-Latin languages sounds so bad, hard, and harsh as some are inclined to think.
Until this question is thoroughly decided, we may meanwhile at least explain how it happens that it does seem so to foreigners, and to Germans too, even when they are unprejudiced and free from preferences or hate.
CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENCE 83 selves men like any others; when half or more than half our vocabulary is non-German, and when we adopt conspicuous customs and wear conspicuous clothes which seem to come from foreign parts, then we fancy ourselves distinguished. But the summit of our triumph is reached when we are no longer taken for Germans, but actually for Spaniards or Englishmen, whichever of the two happens to be the more fashionable at the moment. We are right. Naturalness on the German side, arbitrariness and artificiality on the foreign side, are the fundamental differences. If we keep to the former we are just like all our fellow-Germans, who understand us and accept us as their equals; only when we seek refuge in the latter do we become incomprehensible to our fellows, who take us to be of a different nature. This unnatural- ness comes of itself into the life of foreign countries, because their life, deviated from nature originally...and \ in a matter _of__the_first importance. But we Germans ' must first seek it out and accustom ourselves to the belief that -something is beautiful, proper, and convenient, which does not naturally appear so to us. The main reason for all this in the case of the German is his belief in the greater distinction of romanized countries, together with his craving to be just as distinguished and arti ficially to create in Germany too that gulf between the A people as yet uncultivated, with a very lively power of imagination, and at the same time childlike in mind and free from national vanity (the Teutons seem to have had all these qualities) is attracted by what is far away, and likes to make remote countries and distant islands the habitation for the objects of its desires and the glories of which it dreams. Such a people develops a sense of romance (the word explains itself and no more suitable one could be invented). Sounds and tones from those regions touch this sense and awaken its whole world of wonders; hence they are pleasing.
This may be the reason why our countrymen who emigrated gave up their own language for a foreign one so easily, and also why we, their kindred so very far removed, find even now such wondrous pleasure in these tones.]
84 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION r upper classes and the people, which came about naturally / in foreign countries. I shall content myself with having indicated the main source of this love of foreign ways which is to be found among Germans; on another occa sion I shall show how widespread its effects have been, and how all the evils which have now brought us to ruin are of foreign origin. Of course it was only when united with German earnestness and influence on life that such evils were bound to bring destruction in their train.
66. In addition to these two manifestations resulting * from the fundamental difference — firstly, that mental / culture either does or does not influence life, and, secondly, that between the educated classes and the people a dividing wall either does or does not exist — I cited the following manifestation, that the people with a living language " will possess diligence and earnestness and take pains in all things, whereas the people with a dead language will rather look upon mental activity as an ingenious game, and will be easy-going and guided by its happy nature. This circumstance is a natural result of what has been said above. Among the people with a living language investigation proceeds from a vital need, which is thereby to be satisfied; hence, investigation receives all the com pelling impulses which life has in itself. But among the people with a dead language investigation seeks nothing more than to pass away the time in a manner that is pleasant and in keeping with the sense of the beautiful, and it has attained its object completely when it has done this. With foreigners the latter course is almost inevitable, but when a German boasts about his genius and his happy nature he displays a love of foreign ways which is unworthy of him and which, like every imitation of foreign ways, ' arise^-frsm_j:he craving- te-~ be- distinguished. It is true that nothing excellent will be produced in any nation CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENCE 85 in the world without a primitive impulse in man which, as something supersensuous, is rightly called Genius, to give it the foreign name. But this impulse in itself only stimulates the power of imagination, and brings forth in it figures that hover above the ground but are never completely defined. To bring these down completed to the ground of actual life and to fix them firmly thereinJ this requires thought, diligent, deliberate, and in accord-/ ance with a definite principle. Genius delivers tG diligence the stuff to be worked upon, and the latter with out the former would have to work upon either what had been worked upon already or else upon nothing at all. But diligence brings this stuff, which without it would remain an empty game, into life; and so it is only when united that the two can achieve anything; divided they can do nothing. Moreover, in a people with a dead language no truly creative genius can express itself, because they lack the primitive power of designation; they can only develop what has already been begun and convey it into the whole existing and completed system of designation.
67. When we consider the question of taking greater j pains, it is natural that this can be done by the people I with the living language. A living language can stand 1 on a higher level of culture in comparison with another, but it can never in itself attain that perfection of develop ment which a dead language quite easily attains. In the latter the connotation of words is fixed, and the possibilities of suitable combinations will also gradually become exhausted. Hence, he who wishes to speak this language must speak it just as it is; but, after he has once learnt to do this, the language speaks itself in his mouth and thinks and imagines for him. But in a living lan guage, if _only life in it is really liv-ed^. the words and their meanings increase and change continually, and for that 86 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION very reason new combinations become possible; and the language, which never is, but eternally is becoming, does not speak itself, but he wrio wisHes to Use IF must speak it himself in his own fashion and creatively for his own needs. The latter undoubtedly demands far more ^diligence and practice than the former. Similarly, the investigations of a people with a living language go down, as we have already said, to the root where ideas stream forth from spiritual nature itself; whereas the investiga tions of a people with a dead language only seek to pene trate a foreign idea and to make themselves comprehen sible. Hence, the investigations of the latter are in fact only historical and expository, but those of the former are truly philosophical. It is quite plain, too, that an investigation of the latter kind may be completed sooner and more easily than one of the former.
So we may say that genius in foreign lands will strew with flowers the well-trodden military roads of antiquity, and weave a becoming robe for that wisdom of life which it will easily take for philosophy. The German spirit, on the other hand, will open up new shafts and bring the light of day into their abysses, and hurl up rocky masses of thoughts, out of which ages to come will build their dwellings. The foreign genius will be a delightful sylph, which hovers in graceful flight above the flowers that have sprung of themselves from its soil, settles on them without causing them to bend, and drinks up their refreshing dew. Or we may call it a bee, which with busy art gathers the honey from the same flowers and deposits it with charming tidiness in cells of regular construction. B4^-4h£^Gerrnan spirit is an eagle, whose mighty body thrusts itself orT high anxTsoars on strong and well-practised wing into the empyrean, that it may rise nearer to the sun whereon it delights to gaze.
CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENCE 87 68. Now let us sum up in one main point of view all that has hitherto been said. In general, when we con sider the history of civilization in a race of men which is split up in history into an age of antiquity and a new world, we shall find on the whole that the function of these two main branches in the original development of this new world is as follows. That part of the vigorous nation which has gone abroad and adopted the language of antiquity thereby acquires a much closer relation ship to antiquity. At the beginning it will be far easier for this part of the nation to grasp the language of anti quity in its first and unchanged form, to penetrate the memorials of its culture, and to bring into them enough fresh life to enable them to be adapted to the new life that has arisen. In short, it is from them that the study of classical antiquity has taken its way over modern Europe. In its enthusiasm for the unsolved problems of antiquity it will continue to work at them, but, of course, only as one works at a problem that has been set, not by the needs of life, but by mere curiosity. It will take them lightly and not whole-heartedly, grasping them merely with the power of imagination, and solely in this medium giving them, as it were, an airy body. The very wealth of material bequeathed by antiquity, and the ease with which the work can be carried on in this fashion, will enable them to bring an abundance of such images into the field of vision of the modern world. Now, when these images of the ancient world in their new form reach that part of the original stock which, by its reten tion of the language, has remained in the stream of original culture, they will arouse the attention of the people and stimulate them to activity on their own part; though, perhaps, these images, if they had remained in the old form, would have passed before them unheeded and 88 ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION unperceived. But as soon as they have really grasped them and not, as it were, merely passed them on from hand to hand, they will grasp them as their nature impels them to do, not merely as knowledge of a foreign life, but as an element of their own life. So they will not only derive them from the life of the new world, but also bring them into it again, incarnating the hitherto merely airy figures in solid bodies that will endure in real life.
These figures, thus transformed in a way that would never have been possible to foreign countries, the latter now receive from them again. Through this channel alone is a development of the human race possible on the path of antiquity, a union of the two main portions, and a regular progress of human evolution. In this new order of things the mother-country will not actually invent anything; but, in the smallest as in the greatest matters, it will always have to acknowledge that it has been stimulated by some hint from abroad. The foreign countries themselves were in their turn stimulated by the ancients, but the mother-country will take earnestly, and bring into life, what other countries have only super ficially and hastily sketched out. As we have already said, this is not the place to illustrate this relationship by striking and far-reaching examples. This we reserve for our next address.
69. In this way both parts of the joint nation remained one, and only in this simultaneous separation and unity do they form a graft on the stem of the culture of antiquity, which otherwise would have been broken off by the new age, and so humanity would have begun again from the beginning. The two parts have these vocations laid upon them, different at the starting-point but coming together at the goal; each part must recognize its own CONSEQUENCES OF THE DIFFERENCE 89 vocation and that of the other, and in accordance there with each part must make use of the other. It is especi ally necessary for each part to consent to assist the other and to leave its characteristic quality untouched, if good progress is to be made in the general and complete culture of the whole. The recognition of this ought to come first from the mother-country, which has been endowed in the first place with the sense of profundity. But if ever foreign countries, in their blindness to this relation ship, should be so far carried away by what appears on the surface as to attempt to deprive their mother-country of its independence and so to destroy and absorb it, they would thereby, if their attempt succeeded, sever for themselves the last vein connecting them with nature and with life, and fall defenceless into spiritual death, which indeed, apart from this, has been revealing itself to be their true nature more and more clearly as time has gone on. Then the hitherto continuous stream of the development of our race would be in fact at an end; barbarism would be bound to begin again and to go on without hope of deliverance, until we were all living in caves again like wild beasts and, like them, devouring one another. That this is really so and must inevitably follow, only the German can see, of course, and only he shall see it. To the foreigner, who, since he knows no ; foreign culture, has unlimited scope to admire himself j in his own, it must and it may always appear preposterous blasphemy proceeding from ill-educated ignorance.
Non-German countries are the earth, from which fruitful vapours detach themselves and arise to the clouds, and by which even now the old gods condemned to Tartarus keep in touch with the sphere of life. Th<l mother-country is the eternal sky enveloping the earth] the sky in which the light vapours are condensed to clouds 9o ADDRESSES TO THE GERMAN NATION which, impregnated by the lightning flash of the Thunderer from the other world, descend in the form of fertilizing rain, uniting sky and earth and causing the gifts whose home is in the sky to germinate in the lap of earth. Do new Titans once more want to take heaven by storm? It will not be heaven for them, for they are earth-born, and the very sight and influence of heaven will be taken from them. Only their earth will remain to them, a cold, gloomy, and barren habitation. But, says a Roman poet, what could a Typhceus do, or the mighty Mimas, or Porphyrion with his threats, or Enceladus, the rash hurler of uprooted tree-trunks, if they flung themselves against the resounding shield of Pallas? It is this very shield that will undoubtedly cover us too, if we under stand how to betake ourselves to its protection.
SIXTH ADDRESS GERMAN CHARACTERISTICS AS EXHIBITED IN HISTORY