622 MEMOIR OF FLEISCHER. 



the French laugaage, wbicU he had mastered perfectly), and according 

 to this principle he consistently arranged his scientific career. In his 

 preface to the Golden Necldaces he says clearly and decidedly : " In Ara- 

 bic research neither good will, nor diligence, nor penetration of mind, 

 nor ingenuity, nor outside philological attainments, nor anything in the 

 world, can relieve one from the necessity of modestly, faithfully, and dili- 

 gently studying with the Arabic philologists, — and here in Europe, 

 above all with our master De Sacy; however, I do not mean to imply 

 that Ewald and his compeers will not in time succeed in summarizing the 

 superabundant material of Arabic philology in a more fitting and con- 

 venient form, as well as in explaining many facts in a more scientific 

 way." The justification for Ewald's philological methods does not es- 

 cape his notice, as Ewald in turn admits that the Arabian grammarians 

 are the promi condi totitis antiquitatis. But Fleischer avowedly limits 

 himself to the purely philological side of the task, for il nefautpas courir 

 deux lievres a lafois. Only once did he deviate from this rule, and then 

 it was done in order to venture upon a neighboring domain that could 

 not well be avoided, that of general Semitic etymology : He that wishes 

 to cast a stone at him on this account may do so after consulting St. John 

 viii, 7. To this wise self-restraint, among other things, he owes his pre- 

 eminence ui)on that field of philological research which was chosen by 

 him, or which (if you will) naturally fell to his share. At all events it is 

 hard to believe that any other field would have given the same scope to 

 his natural abilities. The undeviating conformity to law that character- 

 izes the structure of the Arabic language and its perspicuity naturally 

 appeal to him, as on the other hand its boundless wealth and apparent 

 complexity of linguistic phenomena offered welcome problems for his 

 ingenuity to solve. He was thus, by right of birth, the expounder of 

 the Arabic poets and writers, whose peculiarities are analogous to those 

 of their language. This partial affinity (for in other respects, he was a 

 true German with very un-Arabian feelings), together with his linguistic 

 attainments and large information, j^ermitted him to reach the incom- 

 parable skill and certainty in the criticism of Arabic texts which for 

 the time at least did more than anything else to shed luster upon his 

 name. Theoretically indeed there is no difference between the proper 

 philological treatment of a Greek or Latin and an Arabic or Persian 

 text. But many external circumstances connected with Mohammedan 

 literature, such as the relatively short period intervening between the 

 original writer and the manuscripts to be studied, the peculiarities of 

 Arabic characters, etc., cause less stress to be put in our specialty upon 

 the recensio, if I may be permitted to use technical terms. In some cases 

 the recensio is the most essential part of the work; in most however it 

 is very unimportant. With us it is the emendatio that taxes the critical 

 faculties to the utmost. Similarly, ours differs from classical philology, 

 inasmuch as conjectures with us are usually either entirely correct or 

 altogether incorrect Ta,rely—probabilis. Hence it may be said that, aside 



