20 



INTRODUCTION. 



The light 

 which Ety- 

 mology 

 throws on 

 history of 

 Thought, 



88. 



and on the 

 migration 

 of ideas. 



fused in the course of our century, and so far as the greater 

 volume of ideas is concerned, we can speak now of Euro- 

 pean thought, when at one time we should have had to 

 distinguish between French, German, and English thought. 

 Eeserving, therefore, in the meantime the task of investi- 

 gating what still, within the bounds of this larger inter- 

 national life, remains peculiar to the thought of each 

 nation, it is the great body of common European thought 

 with which I propose at first to deal. How has it grown to 

 be what it is now, what special contributions have the 

 several nations made to the general stock, what is at pre- 

 sent our inventory of it, how has it been changed in 

 course of the century ? But how, it may be asked, are we 

 to take stock ? how is this inventory to be drawn up ? 

 There is indeed one very obvious method which presents 

 itself, though it is not the one which I propose to use 

 exclusively, or even largely. And yet it seems to me well 

 worthy of special attention. 



Already I have remarked how the changes of thought 

 are deposited in the altered language and style of the 

 age. A closer study of the changes which, in the course of 

 this century, have taken place in the vocabularies as well 

 as in the styles of the three principal European languages, 

 would no doubt reveal to a great extent when and how 

 new ideas have presented themselves, how they have be- 

 come fixed and defined in special words or terms. It 

 would allow us to trace to a very large extent not only 

 the growth of the general stock of European thought, but 

 also the migration of single ideas from one nation to an- 

 other. And, lastly, it would exhibit to a great extent in 

 what peculiar phrases, in what secluded corners, the indi- 



