PROBLEMS IN GERMANIC PHILOLOGY 287 



essential to regard every modern language as a product of historical 

 growth, or, in other words, of evolution; to investigate the relation 

 which exists between the "modern" shape of a language, and its 

 earlier stages, and to trace the connection, if it can be traced, bet ween 

 the development of the language (in its various stages) and the his- 

 tory of the people by whom the language is spoken. From Modern 

 German we have to turn to Middle High German and Old High 

 German and further to the Primitive Germanic and the Indo- 

 European period. We ask what changes the German language has 

 undergone from one epoch to another and try to explain the evolution 

 of the language in connection with the changes which have occurred 

 in the literary, social, and political life of the German people. 



Needless to say that from our standpoint the traditional distinction 

 between "modern" and "ancient" languages is of little consequence. 

 For languages like Middle High German, Old High German, Anglo- 

 Saxon, etc., are dead languages, just as much, or even more than 

 Latin and Greek. And yet the study of these languages cannot be 

 separated from that of Modern German, English, or Norse, any 

 more than it is possible to understand (scientifically) the modern 

 Romance languages without reference to Latin. Nor are we justified 

 in calling, for example, Latin as contrasted with German an " ancient " 

 language. German, if traced back to the Indo-European parent 

 speech and regarded as a language gradually transformed from what 

 it was at that early period, is scarcely less ancient than Latin. The 

 customary distinction between ancient and modern languages is 

 simply a remnant from the elementary stage of modern philology. 

 But I am spending perhaps too much time in trying to refute popular 

 misconceptions, which are not shared by representative scholars in 

 philology. Let us, therefore, take up some questions, which cannot 

 be said to lie so much in the beaten path as the preceding remarks. 



Historical grammar cannot expect to accomplish its task suffi- 

 ciently by paying attention to the earlier stages of the present lan- 

 guages, only so far as these stages have been handed down in literary 

 works. In the case, for example, of Modern German it is true that we 

 are able to trace its history back more than one thousand years by 

 the aid of Middle and Old High German. But we must not overlook 

 the fact that our records of Old and Middle High German are incom- 

 plete. Not all of the dialects existing at those periods are represented 

 in what remains of Old and Middle High German literature, and 

 it would be erroneous to believe that even in the most favorable 

 instances (say, for example, in the case of Otfried's language in Old 

 High German or that of the Swabian poets in Middle High German) 

 we possessed the vocabulary or the grammar of a single dialect 

 completely. Difficulties increase when we attempt to throw light on 

 the history of the German language in the period preceding the Old 



