In his discussion of the semantics of historical time and the origins of historiography, Reinhart Koselleck notes the precedence of the optical (the primacy of eyewitness testimony to historical knowledge), and the importance of the metaphor of the mirror and of reflection. History as event and representation, the retrospective structuration of the past—the narrative of former presents that develops into a reflective re-presentation of the past that is acknowledged in its foreignness—is at the same time reflective knowledge of itself. Remarking that, until the eighteenth century, the contrast we take for granted between history and nature did not exist, Koselleck argues that the structure of temporal experience already provides the conceptual means of deducing progress, decadence, acceleration, or delay. What distinguishes historical epochs is how these modalities are deployed in writing, the currency they gain, the effects they unleash and which in turn reshape them. And so the historian, simultaneously subject and object, must reflect upon his own point of view, position, and standpoint. I have suggested that this demand is particularly acute when colonialism is taken into account. When the historicizing gaze turns to reflect on the origin of language there is clearly more at stake than language alone. Indeed, the origin of the historical sense itself, as reflection, takes center stage.