In order to fix our attention on this more profound aspect of our inner life, I shall take as an example one of those elements which are contained in the concept of nationality, Language. Language it must be remembered does not belong _per se_ to nationality; it belongs to it in virtue of an act by which a will, a personality, affirms itself with a determined content. We must now point out the abstract character of that concept by which language, which is a constituent element of our personality, is usually ascribed to what is merely particular in it. That language is a peculiar and constituent element of personality is quite obvious. Through language we speak not to others only, but to ourselves also. Speaking to ourselves means seeing within ourselves our own ideas, our soul, our very self in short,--it means self-consciousness, as the philosophers say, and therefore self-control, clear vision of our acts, knowledge of what stirs within us; it means, therefore, living not after the manner of dumb animals, but as rational beings, as men. Man cannot think, have consciousness of himself, reason, without first expressing all that to himself. Man has been defined as a rational animal; he may also be defined as the speaking animal. The remark is as old as Aristotle. Man, however, this animal endowed with the faculty of speaking, is not man in general who never was, but the real man, the historical man, actually existing. And he does not speak a general language, but a certain definite one. When I speak before a public, I can but use my language, the Italian language. And I exist, that is I affirm myself, I come into real being, by thinking in conformity with my real personality, in so far as I speak, and speak this language of mine. _My_ language, the _Italian_ language. Here lies the problem. Were I not to speak, or were I to speak otherwise than I know how, I would not be myself. This manner of expressing myself is then an intrinsic trait of my personality. But this speech which makes me what I am, and which therefore intimately belongs to me, could it possibly be mine, could I use it, mould it into my own life-substance, if, mine though it be, it were yet enclosed within me in the manner that every particle of my flesh is contained within my body, having nothing in common with any other part of matter co-existing in space? Could my language in short really be my language, if it belonged exclusively to me, to what I have called my particular or empirical personality?