 Schlegel’s decision to present his position in an epistolary form, mixing different styles of argumentation, is an almost necessary consequence of his approach to the debate: a lively debate, which he aimed to dissolve by reconciling both perspectives but without negating any of them. In a way, these letters are a clear example of the fusion between content and form. In fact, Schlegel actually modified his last Letter after having received a commentary, through a missive, from Friedrich Schiller (Behler 2002: 126). For Schlegel, the only plausible theory on the origin of language had to take into account both its irrational elements (i.e., the purely emotional, imaginative, sensual, and most radically communicative aspects of language) and its rational characteristic (i.e., a system of signs based on convention), while admitting that on the whole, the origin of language remains as secret and inexplicable as the origin of humanity itself (SW: VII, 111). In brief: for Schlegel, as for Novalis or Schleiermacher, language could not be reduced to a mere system of signs and any account of the origin of language had to be able to integrate the two apparently opposite aspects of it.