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After the mother tongue follows French, for it is the most widely spoken and indispensable language of Europe; according to our present-day standards… - Johann Gottfried Herder
" "After the mother tongue follows French, for it is the most widely spoken and indispensable language of Europe; according to our present-day standards it is the most cultivated; fine style and the expressions of taste have been for the most part formed in this language and translated from it into others; it is the simplest and most uniform of languages from which to obtain a foretaste of philosophical grammar; it is the most suitable for the purposes of narrative, logic and reasoning. It must therefore, by the standards of our modern world, follow immediately after the mother tongue and precede every other, even Latin. I would like even the scholar to know French better than Latin!
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About Johann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried Herder (or von Herder) (25 August 1744 – 18 December 1803) was a German poet, philosopher, literary critic and folksong collector. He is remembered as a theorist of the Sturm und Drang movement, and as a decisive influence on the young Goethe.
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Alternative Names:
Johann Gottfried von Herder
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Herder
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Johann Gottfried
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Additional quotes by Johann Gottfried Herder
Wie hinfällig alles Menschenwerk, ja wie drückend auch die beste Einrichtung in wenigen Geschlechtern werde. Die Pflanze blühet und blühet ab; eure Väter starben und verwesen: euer Tempel zerfällt: dein Orakelzelt, deine Gesetztafeln sind nicht mehr: das ewige Band der Menschen, die Sprache selbst veraltet; wie? und Eine Menschenverfassung, Eine politische oder Religionseinrichtung, die doch nur auf diese Stücke gebauet sein kann: sie sollte, sie wollte ewig dauern?
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Herder (1803) objected that "the pains that have been taken, to make of all the people of the earth, according to this genealogy, descendants of the Hebrew, and half-brothers of the Jews, are contrary not only to chronology and universal history but to the true point of view of the narrative itself." As far as he was concerned, "the central point of the largest quarter of the Globe, the primitive mountains of Asia, prepared the first abode of the human race" (517-18).
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