Humboldt on Language Learning

I posted this on Facebook this summer while I was reading Noam Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (MIT, 1965). It's a strange, mystical quote with a lot of reassurance. It also humbly approximates the findings of psycholinguistics.

From page 51:

Applying this rationalist view to the special case of language learning, [Wilhelm von] Humboldt (1836) concludes that one cannot really teach language but can only present the conditions under which it will develop spontaneously in the mind in its own way.