e vocal symbols for
ideas; ideas, however, are more or less definite mental symbols
for frequently returning and concurring sensations, for groups of
sensations. It is not sufficient to use the same words in order to
understand one another: we must also employ the same words for the same
kind of internal experiences, we must in the end have experiences IN
COMMON. On this account the people of one nation understand one another
better than those belonging to different nations, even when they use
the same language; or rather, when people have lived long together under
similar conditions (of climate, soil, danger, requirement, toil) there
ORIGINATES therefrom an entity that "understands itself"--namely, a
nation. In all souls a like number of frequently recurring experiences
have gained the upper hand over those occurring more rarely: about
these matters people understand one another rapidly and always more
rapidly--the history of language is the history of a process of
abbreviation; on the basis of this quick comprehension people always
unite closer and closer. The greater the danger, the greater is the
need of agreeing quickly and readily about what is necessary; not to
misunderstand one another in danger--that is what cannot at all be
dispensed with in intercourse. Also in all loves and friendships one has
the experience that nothing of the kind continues when the discovery
has been made that in using the same words, one of the two parties has
feelings, thoughts, intuitions, wishes, or fears different from those of
the other. (The fear of the "eternal misunderstanding": that is the good
genius which so often keeps persons of different sexes from too
hasty attachments, to which sense and heart prompt them--and NOT some
Schopenhauerian "genius of the species"!) Whichever groups of sensations
within a soul awaken most readily, begin to speak, and give the word of
command--these decide as to the general order of rank of its values, and
determine ultimately its list of desirable things. A man's estimates of
value betray something of the STRUCTURE of his soul, and wherein it
sees its conditions of life, its intrinsic needs. Supposing now that
necessity has from all time drawn together only such men as could
express similar requirements and similar experiences by similar symbols,
it results on the whole that the easy COMMUNICABILITY of need,
which implies ultimately the undergoing only of average and COMMON
experiences, must hav