ENGLISH LITERATURE AND OTHER SCIENCES 409 



Indians. The comparison is suggestive. Sociology, ethnology, 

 Monboddo complains that only three "barbarous" languages were 

 in his time accessible, and now anthropology, take the field. The 

 last named, one may say, was founded by Voltaire, Turgot, and their 

 followers, as well as the history of civilization so called; these 

 sciences, meanwhile, were made popular by Rousseau, 1 precisely as 

 it was left to Herder to popularize the sociological study of literature. 

 From Herder to Taine is simply a progress of the alliance. 



The great century of the sciences had hardly begun, however, 

 when a reaction set in, feeble at first, but gathering strength in certain 

 critical and philological quarters. A. W. Schlegel called the student of 

 literature back to his own ground, insisting salutary work! 

 on a critical knowledge of the subject, on profound philological 

 studies. Historical and comparative to a brilliant degree, Schlegel 

 nevertheless distinctly opposes the spirit of sociological combinations 

 and generalizations then invading literature. He refuses to lose the 

 author in his environment. Lachmann performed a somewhat 

 similar service in philology pure and simple; and the often admirable 

 work of Miillenhoff shows not only a praiseworthy concentration on 

 the literary problem itself, but a superfluously contemptuous atti- 

 tude toward the aids that were offered by actual ethnological and 

 sociological studies. The democratic movement came into disfavor 

 everywhere. Cosquin ridiculed the autonomy of the popular talc 

 and turned it over to the tender mercies of imitation imitation on 

 a new and literal scale unknown before. Taine's own masterpiece 

 was hardly published before a goodly number of critics and scholars 

 were at work to throw down the main prop of his literary method, the 

 doctrine of the milieu; while all the old watchwords of the sociological 

 school came more or less into discredit. "Laws" and "forces" are 

 phrases that are as plainly obsolescent in some quarters as " provi- 

 dence " is obsolete. A very healthy reaction, to which all praise is due. 

 was meanwhile putting the real facts and the unquestionable problems 

 of literature into the foreground of investigation, and sending theories 

 of origin to the rear. The great doctrine of environment, the great 

 problem of evolution, are not exactly put away forever, but they are 

 certainly postponed to a more convenient season, or else relegated 

 to books 2 that make no pretense to exact literary research; while-, 

 for this research itself, the theory which now holds the field is that 

 convenient formula already named, the formula of invention and 

 imitation. Students of English literature consult Taine nowadays. 

 not because his theory is right, but because of his genius and grasp 



1 A remarkable passage in Rousseau, Sur I'Originc, etc., ed. 1793, i, ">S, ff.. sug- 

 gests that two men, one rich and one wise, should circumnavigate the globe simply 

 in order to study the human race. 



2 Posnctt and Letourneau, for example, are both scholars who really bclo-iLi 

 to another department of investigation. 



