ABSTRACT
The relation of language to nationhood became a subject of intense speculation for the whole spectrum of European intellectual enquiry during this period. It was seen to have crucial implications not only for historical, comparative studies of language and literature, but for religious history, for social and political criticism and theory, and for philosophy. Different philosophical traditions had, for example, developed contrasting theories of the origin of language. The empiricist school represented language as an evolutionary process which began with the sounds of nature, and came to complex fruition in the human animal through natural social processes. Rationalist theory, in contrast, emphasized the relation between the a priori nature of thought and the forms of language, whether these were God-given, or the result of human invention. Since the seventeenth century, the relation of language to thought, inspiration and revelation had become increasingly the subject of philosophical enquiry. It has been argued that, for both empiricists and rationalists, 'language was considered to have arisen after the emergence of society and Reason, so in their epistemological theories it played no important part, but was merely a means of transmitting knowledge that had already been acquired' (Brown, 1967, 87). This, however, is to ignore the importance which such thinkers gave to the correct and disciplined use of language in terms of the accurate communication of the processes and products of the mind.81 To the Romantics language was, in contrast, divine-human utterance, reflecting the creative genius of the human-spirit and its world-shaping powers. Their experience (Erlebnis) has been called Spracherlebnis, the commonality of the Romantic mind (Sinn) has been called Sprachsinn (Fiesel, 1927, 2). The most decisive factor which distinguishes this Sprachphilosophie is the idea of an inner language associated with a deep yearning for the rediscovery, the realization, of metaphysical language which breaks free from the constraints of concrete meaning (ibid., 3). Within Romantic thought and Idealist theory,
language both constitutes and is constituted by the dynamic relationship between act and idea, will and reason.
