[35] Now in this sense the German language^a was able to express, in ITS philosophy and poetry, THIS encounter^b with reality which is quite different from other languages, perhaps nearest to the Greek. And then the French language^c: without the French language, no Descartes and no modern philosophy. It is the clarity of the French language, its rationality, and the endeavor of the French mind to purify this language^d again and again intentionally, which has produced this miracle of the French language in its combination of beauty^e and rationality. This of course represents what France considers ITS ultimate concern, namely this kind of culture^f which combines beauty and clarity. And then the English language^g: one of the characteristics of it, in contrast for instance to the German, is the predominance of the verb. This predominance expresses again an ultimate concern, namely the English-American activism, the dynamic character of these nations, and of course most intensively, of America. The predominance of the noun, of the substantive, in German has something static, something fixed. When I spoke about the relation of the Second Person of the Trinity to the Holy Spirit, my German students usually didn’t ask, "Now what shell [sic.] we do about it? What is the practical consequence of this?", but they tried to find out whether this has sense or not in itself. Here immediately the question of the verb is asked, namely the question of the action. This again is a justified ultimate concern, and brought about so many consequences in the world-historical activities of these two nations. Enough examples. Others of you who know other languages may add to this consideration from their knowledge. In any case, in each of these languages an attitude of ultimate concern, in the encounter^h of this human group with reality, is manifest. I don't mind that someone comes and says, after this climatic and agricul- tural and economic and other conditions, "Who would doubt that everything that happens in the human mind has these conditions?" But that does not deny the reality of the meaning itself. No historical genesis can deny or even attack a meaning which is always valid in itself, and has to be criticized in itself, and not from the very tortuous way in which, out of the living matter on earth, such a thing as Shakespeare's drama finally develops.