In exercising their powers and general spirit, they act as an entity according to Herder’s conception. He makes the group a single being, an individual. In Herder’s day when ideas of nationalism had no definite shape, this added sense of the meaning of nation meant clearly that he was a forerunner in the realm of philosophy, and gave to Herder’s conception of _Volk_, even in this commonly used sense, a unique place. Individuality, personality, distinguished nations just as these traits mark out human beings. Herder makes use of the term _Volk_ in a second sense. Here he means a group within a civilized nation which forms the mass below the aristocracy and the governing class. This use likewise is to be found in all languages of civilized peoples. But Herder is emphatic in noting that this group has not been affected by expurgating and eliminating influences to the fullest extent to which these have operated. It has therefore been more thoroughly the product of natural environment. In the proportion to which innate tendencies have not been checked and warped, individual traits have had free development. Therefore spontaneous personality characterizes this group to a higher degree than it does the more cultured. Here Herder makes prominent his philosophy that unhampered nature is the most potent force in the development of this spontaneous personality. In his collection of _Volkslieder_, Herder does not confine himself to those which are marked by primitivism, but includes also many selections of polished literary form. But these all submit to a classification which takes into account the true expression of universal and fundamental feelings common to all humanity. Here Herder’s mind is fixed on that power which the group has to express itself, to express that which is fundamental and therefore to show forth its personality. Ossian’s people and the Ancient Hebrews are products of an environment which is most effective in shaping Herder’s ideal _Volk_: namely, nature unaltered by the hand of man. As a result of such rough, crude surroundings, these peoples have developed into simple, harmonious beings, and possess all the elements which Herder considers essential in man’s nature. He finds they are natural because they are primitive, and they possess superior traits because they are natural. They have the power to give expression to their personality and have exercised this power in a marked way in their unique literatures. The individuality of each group is sharply defined in the songs of each. Now how does Herder arrive at the requirements to which he makes his _Volk_ conform? His philosophy as expressed in _Erkennen und Empfindung_ recognizes inborn forces in the individual which are potentialities differing in kind and degree of working power in each person. These varying potentialities he makes the constituencies of the senses which are accordingly different in scope and capacity in every human being.