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What interests us most in this long extract is to find that among its different shades of meaning the word ‘heimlich’ exhibits one which is identical with its opposite, ‘unheimlich’. What is heimlich thus comes to be unheimlich. (Cf. the quotation from Gutzkow: ‘We call it "unheimlich"; you call it "heimlich".’) In general we are reminded that the word ‘heimlich’ is not unambiguous, but belongs to two sets of ideas, which, without being contradictory, are yet very different: on the one hand it means what is familiar and agreeable, and on the other, what is concealed and kept out of sight. ‘Unheimlich’ is customarily used, we are told, as the contrary only of the first signification of heimlich’, and not of the second. Sanders tells us nothing concerning a possible genetic connection between these two meanings of heimlich. On the other hand, we notice that Schelling says something which throws quite a new light on the concept of the Unheimlich, for which we were certainly not prepared. According to him, everything is unheimlich that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light.

Some of the doubts that have thus arisen are removed if we consult Grimm’s dictionary. (1877, 4, Part 2, 873 ff.)

We read:

Heimlich; adj. and adv. vernaculus, occultus; MHG. heimelîch, heimlîch.

(P. 874.) In a slightly different sense: ‘I feel heimlich, well, free from fear.’ . . .

(b) Heimlich is also used of a place free from ghostly influences . . . familiar, friendly, intimate.

(P. 875: â) Familiar, amicable, unreserved.

4. From the idea of ‘homelike’, ‘belonging to the house’, the further idea is developed of something withdrawn from the eyes of strangers, something concealed, secret; and this idea is expanded in many ways . . .

(P. 876.) ‘On the left bank of the lake there lies a meadow heimlich in the wood.’ (Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, I. 4.) . . . Poetic licence, rarely so used in modern speech . . . Heimlich is used in conjunction with a verb expressing the act of concealing: ‘In the secret of his tabernacle he shall hide me heimlich.’ (Ps. xxvii. 5.) . . . Heimlich parts of the human body, pudenda . . . ‘the men that died not were smitten on their heimlich parts.’ (1 Samuel v. 12.) . . .

(c) Officials who give important advice which has to be kept secret in matters of state are called heimlich councillors; the adjective, according to modern usage, has been replaced by geheim [secret] . . . ‘Pharaoh called Joseph’s name "him to whom secrets are revealed"‘ (heimlich councillor). (Gen. xli. 45.)

(P. 878.) 6. Heimlich, as used of knowledge - mystic, allegorical: a heimlich meaning, mysticus, divinus, occultus, figuratus.

(P. 878.) Heimlich in a different sense, as withdrawn from knowledge, unconscious . . . Heimlich also has the meaning of that which is obscure, inaccessible to knowledge . . . ‘Do you not see? They do not trust us; they fear the heimlich face of the Duke of Friedland.’ (Schiller, Wallensteins Lager, Scene 2.)

9. The notion of something hidden and dangerous, which is expressed in the last paragraph, is still further developed, so that ‘heimlich’ comes to have the meaning usually ascribed to ‘unheimlich’. Thus: ‘At times I feel like a man who walks in the night and believes in ghosts; every corner is heimlich and full of terrors for him’. (Klinger, Theater, 3. 298.)

Thus heimlich is a word the meaning of which develops in the direction of ambivalence, until it finally coincides with its opposite, unheimlich. Unheimlich is in some way or other a sub-species of heimlich. Let us bear this discovery in mind, though we cannot yet rightly understand it, alongside of Schelling’s definition of the Unheimlich. If we go on to examine individual instances of uncanniness, these hints will become intelligible to us.