PROBLEMS IN COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY 55 



language" (p. vm of the preface to the Vergleichende Grammatik). 

 Schleicher, on the other hand, used the comparative method for an 

 entirely different ultimate end, namely, to reconstruct inferentially 

 a parent language upon the basis of a comparison of the really exist- 

 ing cognate languages, and in his Compendium "the attempt has 

 been made to place the inferred Indo-European parent language 

 alongside of its really existing descendants" (2d. ed., p. 8, note). 

 The contrast is clear. For Bopp the comparative method is largely 

 a means of bringing order and system into the grammars of the 

 individual historical languages. For Schleicher it is a key to open 

 a prehistoric period by recovering its lost language. Save only 

 where he proceeds to speculate upon the ultimate origin of inflection, 

 the former's face is turned toward the historical periods of a language, 

 the facts of which he interprets from his higher pinnacle; while the 

 latter uses the historical languages as a basis for his inferences, as 

 a spring-board, if one may use the figure, for a leap into the pre- 

 historic. 



Any one who has followed the trend of recent discussions cannot 

 have failed to see that there is at present a growing disinclination to 

 believe in the historical reality of reconstructed forms and meanings. 

 The more thoroughly we study the nature and mechanism of lin- 

 guistic development the clearer it must become that it can properly 

 be compared neither, in Schleicher's biological fashion, to the pro- 

 pagation of an animal, nor, as has been done more recently, to the 

 derivation of a number of manuscript copies from one archetype. The 

 processes of consolidation and disintegration to which dialects owe 

 their constantly changing being are so complicated and of so peculiar 

 a character that such comparisons can be made in the most general 

 and figurative way only, and they cannot justify the application of a 

 method designed for and capable of restoring a lost archetype to the 

 reconstruction of a language. The recent anthropological discussions 

 of Ratzel * make one point perfectly clear, namely, that for the 

 development of a secondary ethnic group with such definite and uni- 

 form characteristics as the fair, blond, tall, and long-headed Indo- 

 Europeans exhibit we are forced to assume a very large area; for 

 its dispersion over a wide area was its only protection against alien 

 influences and the guarantee of its survival. To think then of this 

 period as one " in which the individual members of the Indo-Euro- 

 pean family were still united by the consciousness of a common 

 tongue" seems to me to imply a complete reversal of all that we 

 know empirically of political and linguistic history, for in both the 

 course appears to be uniformly from multiplicity toward unity. As 

 all historical nations are the result of a consolidation of tribes, so all 

 historical languages are the result of a consolidation and unification 



1 Berichte d. sacks. Gesel. d. Wiss., 1898, p. 1, and 1900, p. 25. 



