 Similarly, but on a larger scale, Humboldt thought the investigation of individual languages and their specific form and character should be guided by the linguist’s awareness of the prototypal element in them while his work should also contribute to our knowledge of the prototype. The task of the linguist was therefore “to study each language as a fragment of the universal language of the human species”, (“comme un fragment du langage général du genre humain”) (Essai sur les langues du Nouveau Continent in Stetter 2004: 238). Yet for Humboldt languages do not differ from each other as species (Gattungen) but as individuals; their character does not pertain to the species but to them as individuals as conditioned by and as a result of their own specific historical development (GS Vol 6: 150). The comparative study of the world’s languages, as Humboldt envisioned it, thus represented a constant challenge to the empirical linguist and to the philosopher; namely, to discover in the linguistic data that which relates to the prototypal in language and to increase our knowledge of the nature of language and the human language capacity. Furthermore, he saw the importance of linguistic studies (Sprachstudien) in the discovery of the part language plays in the formation and transmission of ideas (Vorstellungen) not just in “the metaphysical sense” as conditioning the creation of concepts, but also in the way in which an individual language imparts its formative imprint on these concepts (GS Vol 6: 147). 