ABSTRACT
In the late eighteenth century, Johann Gottfried von Herder maintained that all peoples possessed a spirit of their own, a Volksgeist, manifest in their cultural achievements, languages and customs. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a contemporary, maintained that people have ‘natural borders’ which they will expand to fill, sharing a common identity with their territory. For Fichte, Germany, conscious of its superiority, was to become the leading nation, fulfilling the Destiny of the Universal Spirit. Such notions helped to shape rising nationalisms and later extrapolations of Darwinian ideas, emphasizing the importance of the nation over the individual.
