 Already in June 1820 he was able to submit to the Berlin Academy a bold plan for the creation of the new discipline of comparative linguistics and to outline the philosophy and methodology on which it was to be built in a paper entitled: “On the Comparative Study of Language and its Relation to the Different Periods of Language Development” (“Ueber das vergleichende Sprachstudium in Beziehung auf die verschiedenen Epochen der Sprachentwicklung”, GS Vol 4: 1–34). In this compact yet highly complex presentation he offered a brief summary of his previous endeavors and proceeded to lay down the principles and the blueprint for a comprehensive research program that would guide his work during the following years but at the same time defined the tasks of a future linguistics. Humboldt viewed the function of language as not limited simply to representing or communicating existing ideas and concepts but as “formative organ of thought” (das bildende Organ des Gedankens, GS Vol 6: 152) and thus instrumental also in the production of new concepts that would not come into being without it. The differences between languages for him were not those of “sounds and signs” (Schällen und Zeichen) but ultimately of “differences of representing the world” (Verschiedenheit der Weltansichten), GS Vol 4: 27. Therefore it seemed obvious to Humboldt that a categorical separation between philosophy of language and empirical linguistics as it developed during the nineteenth century and still exists today, was unacceptable. For not only could there be no discipline of linguistics without a conceptual base and firm philosophical grasp of its many-faceted object of inquiry but, Humboldt maintained, empirical research into actual language use in different languages with quite diverging structures would provide the philosopher with concrete insights into the nature of human language that would otherwise not be attainable. One is reminded here of Kant’s dictum that “concepts without intuition” (Anschauung, i.e., empirical content) “are empty and that intuitions without concepts are blind.”