X 



PASSAGES FOR COMPARISON WITH 

 THE METHOD OF AGASSIZ 



BOECKH ON THE STUDY OF HlSTORY AND 



LITERATURE 1 



THE person who first seeks to acquire a 

 general survey of a science, and then 

 gradually to descend to details, will 

 never attain to sound and exact knowledge, 

 but will for ever dissipate his energies, and, 

 knowing many things, will yet know nothing. 

 In his lectures on the Method of Academical 

 Study, Schelling remarks with great justice 

 that, in history, to begin with a survey of the 

 entire past is in the highest degree useless and 

 injurious, since it gives one mere compartments 

 for knowledge, without anything to fill them. 

 In history, his advice is, first study one period 

 in detail, and from this broaden out in all 



1 August Boeckh, Encyclopddie und Methodologie der 

 Philologischen Wissenschaften, pp. 46-47. 



[69] 



