[34] It is quite different with the Roman language. If you want to say something with great precision, then you use Latin, the language of that nation whose concern was the law, the law between man and man. The Roman language is characterized by the creation of the law in terms of preciseness of saying--in a way which cannot be surpassed, and never was reached, by any other language--the fundamental principles of human relations in terms of the law^a. The Romans considered their law as that which was guaranteed by their gods, as that for which they made their empire, as that to which they subjected all nations of the world. It is not so simple as the anti-imperialists say, as if the Romans wanted to conquer the whole world--such a thing never happens, even if the opposite group always calls it so, in propagandistic terms. But the reason is always something very similar to what happened in this country when, in the last half-century, it became an imperial power, not for the sake of conquering other nations, but driven by the belief in the right of the democratic^b idea. Without the sanctity of the law in the unconscious of the whole Roman nation, without the language^c in which this is expressed, no Roman empire would ever have been created. And it is important to know--we will come to it later--that the Christian Church took many elements of the Roman law into its own canon law. Or let me speak of the German language^d, which is my own. I didn't know much about it till I came to this country 22 years ago--I was already rather old--then noticed something about the German language, namely that it is based on the mysticism^e of the Middle Ages. This is empirically true, and is true in its very essence. The language of Meister Eckhart and of the great mystics of the Middle Ages was translated into German, and out of this the German philosophical and, partly, theological language was born and entered the general popular language of the Germans. And whenever you hear my lectures don’t forget that my encounter^f with reality is largely influenced by the German^g encounter with reality, which usually is called mystical. Now of course if I use the word "mystical" here, and very often later on, it is never used in the sense of "absurd," or "nonsense," as sometimes used today. It means what it says, in Greek, namely the presence of the mystery in the depth of reality, the mystery of our being, of our existence, and the EXPERIENCE of this mysterious depth of being.