Man not only feels within himself a propensity, an irresistible impulse to think, to dream, to imagine, but also an irresistible propensity to speak, to express his thoughts and to communicate them. Divine is this propensity, divine is the power of language. The word is thought become image, revealed, manifested, brilliant, radiant, spreading immense clarity around it.

The word is the light of the world, leads to all truth, reveals all secrets, makes the invisible conceivable, brings the distant closer in time and space, sets limits to the infinite, makes the fleeting eternal. Men pass away, but the word remains; the word is life and truth; all power has been given to it. Through it, the blind see, the lame walk, the sick are healed, the dead are raised. It works miracles and the only miracles that make sense. The word is the Gospel, the Paraclete, the consoler of humanity. To convince yourself of its divine essence, imagine yourself alone and abandoned, but knowing language, and suppose that you are hearing the word of a man for the first time. Would not this word be for you like an angel sent from heaven? Would it not have for you the magnificence of the voice of God himself, the harmony of the most heavenly music? The word is not in reality poorer, emptier of soul than musical tone, although tone seems to say infinitely more. It is this appearance alone, this illusion that surrounds it, that makes it appear richer and deeper.

There is in the word a force that produces happiness, deliverance and reconciliation.

— Ludwig Feuerbach

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