 Although he developed almost single-handedly against the tenets of his time and of most of the Nineteenth Century a structural approach for his investigation of dozens of mostly non-European languages, Humboldt did not consider the study of a language’s structure, its Bau, the ultimate end of linguistics. Because language in its fullest sense occurs only in the societal context in its acts of speech production and in what is being said through them, its true nature can only be intimated and perceived in living discourse (verbundener Rede) and should be studied equally in its lasting manifestations in the works of culture and of science, in literature, poetry, and philosophy.