parative Philology in general
that the ideas of Darwin have had most influence. Unfortunately, as
Jowett has said in the introduction to his translation of Plato's
"Republic", most men live in a corner. The specialisation of knowledge
has many advantages, but it has also disadvantages, none worse perhaps
than that it tends to narrow the specialist's horizon and to make it
more difficult for one worker to follow the advances that are being made
by workers in other departments. No longer is it possible as in earlier
days for an intellectual prophet to survey from a Pisgah height all the
Promised Land. And the case of linguistic research has been specially
hard. This study has, if the metaphor may be allowed, a very extended
frontier. On one side it touches the domain of literature, on other
sides it is conterminous with history, with ethnology and anthropology,
with physiology in so far as language is the production of the brain and
tissues of a living being, with physics in questions of pitch and stress
accent, with mental science in so far as the principles of similarity,
contrast, and contiguity affect the forms and the meanings of words
through association of ideas. The territory of linguistic study
is immense, and it has much to supply which might be useful to the
neighbours who border on that territory. But they have not regarded her
even with that interest which is called benevolent because it is not
actively maleficent. As Horne Tooke remarked a century ago, Locke had
found a whole philosophy in language. What have the philosophers done
for language since? The disciples of Kant and of Wilhelm von Humboldt
supplied her plentifully with the sour grapes of metaphysics; otherwise
her neighbours have left her severely alone save for an occasional
"Ausflug," on which it was clear they had sadly lost their bearings.
Some articles in Psychological Journals, Wundt's great work on
"Volkerpsychologie" (Erster Band: "Die Sprache", Leipzig, 1900. New
edition, 1904. This work has been fertile in producing both opponents
and supporters. Delbruck, "Grundfragen der Sprachforschung",
Strassburg, 1901, with a rejoinder by Wundt, "Sprachgeschichte" and
"Sprachpsychologie", Leipzig, 1901; L. Sutterlin, "Das Wesen der
Sprachgebilde", Heidelberg, 1902; von Rozwadowski, "Wortbildung
und Wortbedeutung", Heidelberg, 1904; O. Dittrich, "Grundzuge der
Sprachpsychologie", Halle, 1904, Ch. A. Sechehaye, "Programme et
methodes de la linguistique