538 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



and the science of humanity. Through his writings 

 there rose two distinct views both fruitful for thought, 

 the philosophico-historical and the strictly scientific. His 

 immediate successors, or rather those who unconsciously 

 imbibed the spirit of his writings, took up the former 

 line. The great development of classical philology in 

 the school of Wolf, the discovery of Sanskrit and the 

 new field of oriental philology, for a time threw the 

 purely scientific aspect into the background. Yet at 

 the same time with Wilhelm von Humboldt and his 

 philosophical interests in comparative philology, we find 

 his brother Alexander giving a large share of his atten- 

 tion to the unknown languages of the New World, of 

 which he has been called " the scientific discoverer." 



But the real beginnings of an exact treatment of the 

 problem of speech were laid by one who did not come 

 under the conscious influence of Herder, though he came 

 under that of Goethe. By Johannes Miiller it was 

 carried further, and it was completed by some of his 

 most illustrious pupils and followers Bonders, Briicke, 

 Helmholtz, and Czermak of Vienna. Through the 

 anatomical and physiological labours of these and other 

 naturalists, joined to the physical analysis of musical 

 notes and sounds contained in the great work of 

 Helmholtz on Acoustics, aided by such instruments as 

 the laryngoscope or throat-mirror, and the wonderful 

 inventions of the phonograph and phonautograph, the 

 organ of speech is now known to be a complicated wind 

 instrument by which pure notes and an almost infinite 

 variety of nasal, labial, dental, palatal, guttural, and other 

 sounds can be produced which form the phonetic ele- 



