RELATIONS OF GERMAN LINGUISTICS 277 



actual science of grammar or linguistics, their attitude being influenced 

 partly by personal inclination and endowment and partly by the 

 strict discipline of Lachmann's school. 



The earliest attempt to establish an entente cordiale between the 

 fields of linguistics and philology dates from the end of the seventh 

 decade of the nineteenth century. On the literary side the movement 

 was introduced in Germany by Wilhelm Scherer in his History of 

 the German Language (Zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache 1868), 

 with its wealth of ideas and imagination. The book was hailed with 

 outspoken admiration by some, and met with determined opposition 

 by others. This latter attitude may be attributed in part to the fact 

 that in the field of comparative linguistics particularly under the 

 leadership of August Schleicher and Georg Curtius, who were joined 

 as far as methodology is concerned by William Dwight Whitney a 

 more sober mode of observation had begun to make itself felt, which 

 left less room for the kind of free speculation to which Scherer was so 

 partial. On the other hand, it was not without significance that 

 the interest in linguistic matters in general, which was spreading 

 rapidly at that time, had attracted a number of rising Germanic 

 scholars, especially at Leipzig, to the school of comparative linguistics, 

 scholars who had not yet fallen under the influence of Scherer's 

 book and his mode of thought, but who, like those of their contem- 

 poraries that devoted themselves more exclusively to linguistics, were 

 guided rather by the cool and clear precision of their teacher Curtius. 



Through the common labors of this Leipzig group of young 

 linguists and Germanic scholars, there arose during the seventies 

 the school of Young Grammarians (Junggrammatiker) , so-called from 

 a casual jest made by Zarncke. The most pronounced characteristic 

 of this school is the strong emphasis it lays upon methodology and 

 the doctrine of principles, thus furnishing a striking contrast to the 

 often desultory method adopted by Scherer. It is hardly fair to the 

 Young Grammarians to look upon their efforts, in the light of the 

 many heated controversies into which they were drawn, as being 

 expended mainly in outside disputes. The real characteristics of this 

 circle, on the contrary, must be sought in their attempts to free 

 themselves from a certain narrowness of doctrine represented in their 

 own teacher, Georg Curtius. It was this identical circumstance that 

 led finally to a scientific estrangement between Curtius and his pupils 

 an estrangement really no less remarkable than the contrast be- 

 tween the tendencies of the Young Grammarians and those of the 

 newly arising linguistic science, which were, almost simultaneously, 

 connected with Johannes Schmidt and August Fick. 



If from the generally accepted standpoint of to-day we look back 

 at the linguistic methods of research more or less universally current 

 in the sixties and early seventies, we must admit the existence of 



