LITERARY STUDIES IN NINETEENTH CENTURY 353 



phonology and history of language as they asserted themselves, 

 but also as of old with whatever concerns the literary side of language 

 as an expression of the national, or more broadly human spirit. 

 Since all study of origins and growth, whether of one phenomenon 

 or more than one, must be comparative if scientifically conducted, 

 it is not necessary to characterize the literary science, of which we 

 speak, by that particular adjective. More methods than the com- 

 parative enter into it, and it is more than a method; it is a theory 

 of relativity and of growth; and its material is vertically as well 

 as horizontally disposed. The literary study of to-day, based upon 

 the sciences of which I have spoken, and conducted in the scientific 

 method, is literary philology nothing more nor less : it stands over 

 against linguistic philology or glottology; and it deals genetically, 

 historically, and comparatively with literature as a solidarity and as 

 a product of the social individual, whether the point of view be 

 national or universal. The new discipline is already the property 

 and method of all scientific research in all literatures, ancient or 

 modern, not only in their common but in their individual relations to 

 the social spirit in which they live and move and have their being. 

 The more we develop this discipline, the more rapidly will each 

 literature in turn seek its explanation in literary philology; and of 

 such is the future of literary studies in the twentieth century. 



