24 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE 



of scholars who followed the leadership of Leskien and were known 

 under the title of the Leipziger Schule or the Junggrammatiker, and the 

 adherence to it in practice of many others who did not accept the 

 theory involved, a use which was undoubtedly greatly stimulated 

 by Verner's discovery (1875) that a great body of supposed excep- 

 tions to Grimm's law were in reality obedient to law gave to the 

 science in the two following decades not only an abundance of results, 

 but an objectivity of attitude and procedure and a firmness of struc- 

 ture that may fairly be said to represent the consummation of that 

 positivist tendency which we have sought to identify with the influ- 

 ence of Hindoo grammar. 



This movement, however, derived its impulse by no means exclu- 

 sively through Schleicher. A new stream had meanwhile blended its 

 waters with the current. The psychology of language as a study of 

 the relations of language to the speaking individual, that is, of the 

 conditions under which language is received, retained, and repro- 

 duced, and of the relations of the individual to his speech community, 

 had been brought into play preeminently through the labors of 

 Heymann Steinthal, 1 who though as a psychologist, a follower of 

 Herbart, must be felt to represent in general as a linguist the attitude 

 toward language-study first established by Wilhelm v. Humboldt. 

 William D. Whitney shows in his writings on general linguistics the 

 influence of Steinthal, as well as good schooling in the grammar of the 

 Hindoos and much good common sense. His lectures on Language 

 and the Study of Language (1867) and the Life and Growth of Lan- 

 guage (1875) helped chase many a goblin from the sky. Scherer's 

 Geschichte der deutschen Sprache (1868) combined, more than any book 

 of its day, the influences of new lines of endeavor, and especially gave 

 hearing to the new work in the psychology as well as the physiology 

 of speech. To this period (1865-80), under the influence of the com- 

 bination of the psychological with the physiological point of view, 

 belongs the establishment of scientific common sense in the treatment 

 of language. By virtue of this, as it were, binocular vision, language 

 was thrown up into relief, isolated, and objectivised as it had never 

 been before. Old half-mystical notions, such as the belief in a period 

 of upbuilding in language and a period of decay, all savoring of 

 Hegel, and the consequent fallacy that ancient languages display 

 a keener speech-consciousness than the modern, speedily faded away. 

 The centre of interest transferred itself from ancient and written 

 types of speech to the modern and living. Men came to see that vivi- 



1 H. Steinthal, Der Urprung der Sprache, im Zusammerihang mil den letzten 

 Fragen attes Wissens, 1851 ; Charakteristik der hauptsdchlichsten Typen des Sprach- 

 baues, 1860; Einleitung in die Psychologic und Sprachwissenschaft, 1881; Gesch. 

 der Sprachw. bei den Gfriechen und Romern, 1863; 1890-91. Also editor with 

 Lazarus of the Zeitschrift fur Volkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, from 

 1859. 



