6 - Exposition of German characteristics in history

Summary

In the last address we examined what the principal differences would be between a people that continued to develop in its original language and one that adopted a foreign language. We said on that occasion: as far as foreigners are concerned, we wished to leave it to each observer's judgement to decide whether those phenomena really occurred which, according to our assertions, were bound to occur; but as far as the Germans are concerned, we pledged to demonstrate that they really revealed themselves as, according to our assertions, the people with an original language was bound to reveal itself. Today we shall make good our promise and set forth the proof for our claims by examining, first of all, the last great and, in a certain sense, completed world deed [Welt-That] of the German people, the Reformation of the Church.

Christianity, which originated in Asia and by its corruption became more Asiatic than ever, preaching dumb submission and blind faith, was something strange and exotic even to the Romans. They never truly penetrated and appropriated it, and divided its essence into two incongruous halves; whereupon the attachment of the foreign part was accomplished with the aid of the melancholy superstition they had inherited from their ancestors. Among the immigrated Teutons this religion acquired adherents who had no prior intellectual training [Verstandesbildung] to hinder its acceptance, but also no hereditary superstition favourable to it.