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J.G. Fichte
Addresses to the German Nation
Trans. By G.A. Kelly
NY: Harper Torchbooks, 1963.

But at the very outset the special observations which we are now on the
point of making must be prefaced by the following remark. As the cause of
the differentiation that has taken place in what was originally one stock I
shall cite an event which, considered merely as an event, lies clear and
incontestable before the eyes of all. I shall then adduce some
manifestations of the differentiation that has taken place; and these
manifestations, considered merely as events, could perhaps be made just as
clear and obvious. But with regard to the connection of the latter, as
consequences, with the former, as their cause, and with regard to the
deduction of the consequences from the cause, I cannot, speaking generally,
reckon upon being equally clear and convincing to everyone. It is true that
in this matter also I am no making entirely new statements which no one has
heard of before; on the contrary, there are among us many individuals who
are either well prepared for such a view of the matter, or perhaps already
familiar with it. Among the majority, however, there are in circulation
ideas about the subject of our discussion which differ greatly from our
own. To correct such ideas, and to refute all the objections to single
points that might be raised by those who are not practiced in taking a
comprehensive view of a subject, would far exceed the limits of our time
and our intention. I must content myself with placing before such people,
merely as a subject for their further consideration, what I have to say in
this connection, remarking that in my system of thought it does not stand
so separate and detached as it appears in this place, nor is it without a
foundation in the depths of knowledge. I could not omit it entirely, partly
on account of the thoroughness of treatment demanded by my whole subject,
and partly because of its important consequences, which will appear later
in the course of our addresses, and which are intimately connected with our
present design.
The first and immediately obvious difference between obvious difference
between
the fortunes of the Germans and the other branches which grew from the same
root of this: the former remained in the original dwelling places of the
ancestral stock; whereas the latter emigrated to other places; the former
retained and developed the original language of the ancestral stock,
whereas the latter adopted a foreign language and gradually reshaped it in
а way of their own. This earliest difference must be regarded as the
explanation of those which came later, e.g., that in the original
fatherland, in accordance with Teutonic primitive custom, there continued
to be a federation of states under a head with limited powers, whereas in
the foreign countries the form of government was brought more in accordance
with the existing Roman method, and monarchies were established, etc.2 2 An
interpretation popularized by Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws.
It is not these later differences that explain the one first mentioned.
Now, of the changes which have been indicated, the first, the change of
home, is "quite unimportant. 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 Teutonic race has intermingled with the former inhabitants
of the countries it conquered; for, after all, the victors and masters and
makers of the new people that arose from this intermingling were none but
Teutons. Moreover, in the mother-country there was an intermingling with
Slavs similar to that which took place abroad with Gauls, Cantabrians,
etc., and perhaps of no less extent; so that it would not be easy at the
present day for any one of the peoples descended from Teutons to
demonstrate a greater priority of descent than the others.
-^
More important, however, and in my opinion the cause of a complete contrast
between the Germans and the other peoples of Teutonic descent, is the
second change, the change of language. Here, as I wish to point out
distinctly at the very beginning, it is not a question of the special
quality of the language retained by the one branch or adopted by the other;
on the contrary, the importance lies solely in the fact that in the one
case something native is retained, while in the other case something
foreign is adopted. 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.
In order to make clear, so far as explanation is possible and necessary
here, the consequences of such a difference in the creation of peoples, and
to make clear the particular kind of contrast in national characteristics
that necessarily follows from this difference, I must invite you to a
consideration language in general.
Languages in general, and especially the designation of objects in language
by sounds from the organs of speech, is in no way dependent on arbitrary
decisions and agreements. 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, color,
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.3 Hence one
should say: There is and can be but one single language.
Now indeed, and this is the second point, language in this unity for man,
simply as man, may never and nowhere, have risen. Everywhere it may have
been further changed an formed by two groups of influences first those
exerted on the organs of speech by the locality and by more or less
frequent use, and, secondly, those exerted on the order
the designations by the order in which objects were observed and
designated. Nevertheless, in this also there
3 Fichte's general philological theory derives from Herder's essay on
language with some subsequent Romantic accretions; it is opposed especially
to the empiricist hypotheses of Condillac and the French school.


is no chance or arbitrariness, but strict law; and in an organ of speech
thus affected by the conditions mentioned there necessarily arises, not the
one pure human language, but a deviation therefrom, and, moreover, this
particular deviation and no other.
If we give the name of People to men whose organs of speech are influenced
by the same external conditions, who live together, and who develop their
language in continuous communication with each other, then we must say: The
language of this people is necessarily just what it is, and in reality this
people does not express its knowledge, but its knowledge expresses itself
out of the mouth of the people.
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.
After thousands of years, and after all the changes undergone in that time
by the external manifestation of the language of this people, it ever
remains nature's one, same, living power of speech, which in the beginning
necessarily arose in the way it did, which has flowed down through all
conditions without interruption, and in each necessarily
became what it id become, which in the end necessarily was what it now is,
and in time to come necessarily will be what it then will be. The pure
human language, in conjunction first with the speech organs 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. For that reason, too, the
language always remains 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.
There has never been a time when contemporaries ceased to understand each
other, for their eternal go-between and interpreter always was, and has
continued to be, the common power of nature speaking through them all. Such
is the condition of language, considered as the designation of objects
directly perceived by the senses; and in the beginning all human language
is this.
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 s 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 - to
contrast 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. As all the various objects of this supersensuous world
appear only in and exist for that supersensuous instrument, the only
possible way of designating them in language would be to say that their
special relation to their instrument is similar to the relation of such-and-
such particular sensuous objects to the sensuous instrument, and in this
relation to compare a particular supersensuous thing with a particular
sensuous one, using this comparison to indicate by language the place of
the supersensuous thing in the supersensuous instrument. In this sphere
language has no further power; it gives a sensuous image of the
supersensuous thing, merely with the remark that it is an image of that
kind; he who wishes to attain to the thing itself must set his own mental
instrument in motion according to the rule given him by the image. Speaking
generally, it is evident that this designation of the supersensuous by
means of sensuous images must in every case be conditioned by the stage of
development which the power of sensuous perception has reached in the
people under consideration. Hence, the origin and progress of this
designation by sensuous images will be very different in different
languages and will depend on the difference in the relation that has
existed and continues to exist between the sensuous and intellectual
development of the people speaking a language.
We shall next illustrate this observation, clear though it is in itself,
by an example. 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; it is called an Idea
[German, Idee]; and this word conveys exactly the same sensuous image as
the word Gesicht in German, which occurs in the following expressions in
Luther's translation of the Bible: Ye shall see [Gesichte], ye shall dream
dreams. Idea of Vision, in its sensuous meaning, would be something that
could be perceived only by the bodily eye and not by any other sense such
as taste, hearing, etc.; it would be such a thing as a rainbow, or the
forms which pass before us in dreams. 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. Further, even if one were
inclined to assume that for the Greeks the basis of this sensuous
designation was certainly the rainbow and similar phenomena, one would have
to admit that their sensuous perception had already advanced to the stage
of noticing this difference between things, viz., that some reveal
themselves to all or several senses and others to the eye alone, and that,
besides, if the developed conception had become clear to them, they would
have had to designate it not in this way but in some other. Also their
superior mental clearness would then be evident as compared, say, with that
of another people which was not able to indicate the difference between the
sensuous and the supersensuous by an image taken from the deliberate waking
state, but had gone to dreams to find an image for another world. It would
at the same time be plain that this difference was not based on the greater
or smaller strength of the sense for the supersensuous in the two peoples,
but solely on the difference between their sensuous clearness at the time
when they sought to designate supersensuous things.
Thus all designation of the supersensuous is conditioned by the extent and
clearness of sensuous perception in him who gives the designation. The
image is clear to him and expresses to him in an entirely comprehensible
way the relation of the thing conceived to the mental instrument, because
this relation is explained to him by another, direct, and living relation
to his sensuous instrument. The new designation which thus arises, together
with all the new clearness which sensuous perception itself acquires by
this extended use of the sign, is now deposited in the language; and the
supersensuous perception possible in the future is now designated in
accordance with its relation to the total supersensuous and sensuous
perception deposited in the whole language. So it goes on without
interruption, and so the immediate clearness and comprehensibility of the
images is never broken off, but remains a continuous stream.
Moreover, since language is not 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. 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.
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
widespread reciprocal influence with all the other observations of the same
people. 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
the sphere of observation of the original people. Hence they do not form
the language; it is the language which forms them.
'
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 which is already
highly developed as regards the designation of supersuous things. I do not
mean when it yields itself quite freely to the influence of this foreign
language and is quite content to remain without a language until it has
entered into the circle of observation of this foreign language, but when
it forces its own circle of observation on the adopted language, which,
when it develops from the position in which they found it, must
thenceforward proceed in this circle of observation. In respect of the
sensuous part of the language, such an event, indeed, is without
consequences. For among every реoplе the children must in any case learn
that part of the language just as if the signs were arbitrary, and thus
recapitulate in this matter the whole previous linguistic development the
nation. But in this sphere of the sense every sign can bе made quite clear
by directly looking at or touching the thing designated. At most, the
result of this would be that the first generation of a people which thus
changed its language would be compelled when adults to go back to the years
of childhood; with their descendants, however, and with subsequent
generations, everything would doubtless be in the old order again. On the
other hand, this change has consequences of the greatest importance in
respect of the supersensuous part of the language. For the first possessors
of the language this part was formed in the way already described; but for
those who acquire the language later, the verbal image contains a
comparison with an observation of the senses, which they have either passed
over long ago without the accompanying mental development, or else have not
yet had, and perhaps never can have. The most that they can do in such a
case is to let the verbal image and its mental significance explain each
other; in this way they receive the flat and dead history of a foreign
culture, but not in any way a culture of their own. 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. 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. 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. 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. I take as my example the three
notorious words, Humanity, Popularity, and Liberality. When these words are
used in speaking to a German who has learned 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. Now, if the unknown word nevertheless attracts his
attention by its foreign, distinguished, and euphonious tone, and if he
thinks that what sounds so lofty must also have some lofty meaning, he must
have this meaning explained to him from the very beginning and as something
entirely new to him, and he can only accept this explanation blindly. So he
becomes tacitly accustomed to acknowledge as really existing and valuable
something which he, if left to himself, would perhaps never have found
worth mentioning. Let no one believe that the case is much different with
the neo-Latin peoples, who utter those words as if they were words of their
mother tongue. Without a scholarly study of antiquity and of its у actual
language they understand the roots of those words just as little as the
German does. Now, if instead of the word Humanity [Humanitaet], we had said
to a German (the word Menschlichkeit, which is its literal translation, he
would have understood us without further historical explanation, but he
would have said: "Well, to be a man [Mensch] and not a wild beast is not
very much after all." Now it may be that no Roman would ever have said
that; but the German would say it, because in his language manhood
[Menschheit] has remained an ideal of the senses only and has never become
a symbol of a supersensuous idea as it did to Romans. 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; and that is no discredit
to our ancestors as compared with the Romans. Now anyone who, in spite of
this, wished to introduce that foreign and Roman symbol artificially and,
as it were, by a trick into the language of the Germans, would obviously be
lowering their ethical standard in passing on to them as distinguished and
commendable something which may perhaps be so in the foreign language, but
which the German, in accordance with the ineradicable nature of his
national power of imagination, only regards as something already known and
indispensable. A closer examination might enable us to demonstrate that
those Teutonic races which adopted the Latin language experienced, even in
the beginning, similar degradations of their former ethical standard
because of inappropriate foreign symbols; but on this circumstance we do
not now wish to lay too great a stress.
Further, if in speaking to the German, instead of the words Popularity
[Popularitaet] and Liberality [Liberalitaet], I should use the expression,
"striving for favor with the great mob," and "not having the mind of a
slave," which is how they must be literally translated, he would, to begin
with, not even obtain a clear and vivid sense image such as was certainly
obtained by a Roman of old. The latter saw every day with his own eyes the
flexible politeness of an ambitious candidate to all and sundry, and
outbursts of the slave mind too; and those words vividly re-presented these
things to him. Even from the Roman of a later period these sights were
removed by the change in the form of government and the introduction of
Christianity; and, besides, his own language was beginning to a great
extent to die away in his own mouth. This was more especially due to
Christianity, which was alien to him, and which he could neither ward off
nor thoroughly assimilate. How was it possible for this language, already
half dead in its own home, to be transmitted alive to a foreign people? How
could it now be transmitted to us Germans? Moreover, with regard to the
symbolic mental content of both those expressions, there is in the word
Popularity, even at the very beginning, something base, which was perverted
in their mouths and became a virtue, owing to the corruption of the nation
and of its constitution. 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.
Moreover, into these verbal images, which even in their pure form among the
Romans arose at a low stage of ethical culture or designated something
positively base, there were stealthily introduced during the development of
the neo-Latin languages the idea of lack of seriousness about social
relations, the idea of self-abandonment, and the idea of heartless laxity.
In order to bring these things into esteem among us, use was made of the
respect we have for antiquity and foreign countries to introduce the same
words into the German language. It was done so quietly that no one was
fully aware of what was actually intended. The purpose and the result of
all admixture has ever been this: first of all to remove the hearer from
the immediate comprehensibility and definiteness which are the inherent
qualities of every primitive language; then, when he has been prepared to
accept such words in blind faith, to supply him with the explanation that
he needs; and finally, in this explanation to mix vice and virtue together
in such a way that it is no easy matter to separate them again. Now, if the
true meaning of those three foreign words, provided they have a meaning,
had been expressed to the German in his own words and within his own circle
of verbal images, in this way: Menschenfreundlichkeit (friendliness to
man), Leutseligkeit (condescension or affability), and Edelmut
(noblemindedness), he would have understood us; but the base associations
we have mentioned could never have been slipped into those designations.
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 the 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.
This single example will serve to demonstrate what could with ease be
followed up throughout the whole range of the language and found present
everywhere. 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.
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. То 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 infinitely more value than the latter. 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 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 such a comparison is far beyond our present purpose.4
What an immeasurable influence on the whole human development of a people
the character of its language may have-its language, which accompanies the
individual into the most secret depths of his mind in thought and will and
either hinders him or gives him wings, which unites within its domain the
whole mass of men who speak it into one J single and common understanding,
which is the true point of meaning and mingling for the world of the senses
and the world of spirits, and fuses the ends of both in each other in such
a fashion that it is impossible to tell to which of the two it belongs
itself-how different the results of this influence may prove to be where
the relation is as life to death, all this in general is easily perceived.
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;
on the other hand, he has a means of understanding Latin more clearly in
the same way. This is not possible to a member of the neo-Latin
4 The comparison with the Greeks was, however, much in the German mind;
just as the Greeks were presumed the "mother race" of classical antiquity,
the Germans claimed this honor with regard to post-classical Europe.

peoples, who fundamentally remains a captive in the sphere of one and the
same language. Then the German, in learning the original Latin, at the same
time acquires to a certain extent the derived languages also; and if he
should learn the former more thoroughly than a foreigner does, which for
the reason given the German will very likely be able to do, he at the same
time learns to understand this foreigner's own language far more thoroughly
and to possess it far more intimately than does the foreigner himself who
speaks it. Hence the German, if only he makes use of all 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. 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.
In addition to the special consequence just mentioned, the whole wealth of
consequences we spoke of comes about of itself.
It is, however, our intention to treat these consequences as a whole,
fundamentally and comprehensively, from the point of view of the bond that
unites them, in order to give in this way a thorough description of the
German in contrast to the other Teutonic races. For the present I briefly
indicate these consequences thus:
(1) Where the people has a living language, mental culture influences life;
where the contrary is the case, mental culture and life go their way
independently of each other.
(2) For the same reason, a people of the former kind is really and truly
in earnest about all mental culture and wishes it to influence life;
whereas a people of the latter kind looks upon mental culture rather as an
ingenious game and has no wish to make it anything more.
(3) From No. 2 it follows that the former has honest diligence and
earnestness in all things, and takes pains; whereas the latter is easygoing
and guided by its happy nature.
(4) 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. The further discussion of the characteristics
indicated I reserve for the next address.