Herder also anticipated and influenced the Romantics in another important way. One of their most striking and distinctive positions was a certain valorization of literature and art over other areas of culture (such as science, religion, and morality). But Herder had already developed such a position before them. First, from an early period he argued that song was the origin of all language – and consequently also of all thought. Second, in works such as the Treatise on the Origin and especially