The elder brother of the explorer Alexander, Wilhelm von Humboldt was born in Potsdam and educated at Frankfurt and Göttingen. He combined the general scholarly interests of his time with a special concern for political philosophy. Until 1819 he was active in public service in Prussia. His collected works (seven volumes, 1841–52) cover a great variety of topics, but his principal philosophical importance lies in the role that he attributed to language, not as the mere external vehicle of thought, but as a repository of the spirit, and something whose ‘inner form’ itself dictates the kind of thought that can be available for comprehension. See also Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.