PROGRESS DURING LAST CENTURY 25 



section rather than morbid anatomy must supply the methods and 

 spirit of linguistic research. The germs of a new idea affecting the 

 conditions under which cognate languages may be supposed to have 

 differentiated out of a mother speech, and conceived in terms of 

 the observed relations of dialects to language, were infused by 

 Johannes Schmidt's Verwandtschafts-verhdltnisse der indogerman. 

 Sprachen (1872). The rigid formulas of Schleicher's Stammbaum 

 melted away before Schmidt's Wellentheorie and its line of successors 

 down to the destructive theories of Kretschmer's Einleitung in die 

 Geschichte der griech. Sprache (1896). Herein, as in many another 

 movement of the period, we trace the results of applying the lessons 

 of living languages to the understanding of the old. A remarkable 

 document thoroughly indicative of what was moving in the spirit of 

 the times was the Introduction to Osthoff and Brugmann's Morpho- 

 logische Untersuchungen, vol. i (1878). But the gospel of the period, 

 and its theology, for that matter, was most effectively set forth in 

 Hermann Paul's Principien der Sprachgeschichte (1st ed. 1880), a 

 work that has had more influence upon the science than any since 

 Jakob Grimm's Deutsche Grammatik. Paul was the real successor of 

 Steinthal. He also represented the strictest sect of the positivists in 

 historical grammar. As a consequence of the union in Paul of the two 

 tendencies, his work acquires its high significance. He established the 

 reaction from Schleicher's treatment of language-science as a natural 

 science; he showed it to be beyond perad venture one of the social 

 sciences, and set forth the life conditions of language as a socio- 

 historical product. 



The work of the period dominated by Paul and the nee-gramma- 

 rians, as well as the theories of method proclaimed, shows, however, 

 that the two factors just referred to had not reached in the scientific 

 thought and practice of the day a perfect blending. A well-known 

 book of Osthoff 's bears the title Das physiologische und psychologische 

 Moment in der sprachlichen FormenbUdung (1879). The title is symp- 

 tomatic of the times. The physiological and the psychological were 

 treated as two rival interests vying for the control of language. What 

 did not conform to the phonetic laws, in case it were not a pheno- 

 menon of mixture, was to be explained if possible as due to analogy. 

 This dualism could be expected to be but a temporary device, like 

 the setting up of Satan over against God, in order to account for the 

 existence of sin. A temporary device it has proved itself to be. The 

 close of the first century bf the modern science of language is tending 

 toward a unitary conception of the various forms of historical change 

 in language. The process by which the language of the individual 

 adjusts itself to the community speech differs in kind no whit from 

 that by which dialect yields to the standard language of the larger 

 community. The process by which the products of form-association 



