 But there is yet another important facet in Humboldt’s account that is lacking in Saussure and that Humboldt already had referred to in thesis 5. There he had shown the act of language production, or Articulation to be at one and the same time the constitutive act for the consciousness of self of the speaking individual. Thus there arises in the act of speaking the distinction between subject and object as mutually constitutive correlatives of this act. Subsequently, in thesis 7 we learn that besides the linguistic and epistemological angle there is still an anthropological side to this process. For language begins simultaneously with “the first act of reflection”, Humboldt argues, and