504 GERMANIC LITERATURE 



real basis of every profitable research. As a rule, there is also too 

 much investigated, and that too hastily, and there is too little 

 simply described; indeed, the ability to describe, the art of analysis, 

 is in a serious decline among the younger generation. Yet this gift 

 of artistic reproduction will always be counted among the indis- 

 pensable qualities of the literary historian. 



It is also useful simply to realize the limits that are set to the 

 principle of the division of labor in the history of literature. Certainly 

 the natural scientist does not need to repeat all the experiments and 

 calculations that have been made by his predecessors; not even the 

 historian is required to read over all the sources that his predecessors 

 have already exhausted. Still, no disciple of our science can be spared 

 the task of beginning his work with the reading of the chief works 

 of every period of literature, although these have already been read 

 and discussed by countless others. Hence a good part of our time and 

 energy will always be spent in the reading that we share in common 

 with others, and only a relatively smaller portion will be left to us 

 for what we claim as our special field of research. Moreover, we must 

 add to this the fact that even the results attained by others by no 

 means carry with them the same conclusive proof that they do, for 

 example, among natural scientists; for they calculate with uniform 

 weights and measures, which we unfortunately do not possess. For 

 instance, I cannot, for one, accept unreservedly another's inves- 

 tigations of the sources, as the physicist accepts the calculations of 

 another. Our conception and point of view of the subject are widely 

 different. 



The theory of our weights and measures should by rights be con- 

 tained in the study of style, meter, and poetry. But the active inquiry 

 that one would expect docs not exist with respect to these funda- 

 mental subjects. Our zealous special historical investigation of litera- 

 ture willingly relegates these matters to the more or less happy power 

 of observation, and puts the results, rather unsorted and unarranged, 

 upon the market. Particularly the theory of style lies almost entirely 

 fallow, and no one has undertaken for a long time to reduce the huge 

 collections of material that are scattered in critical, editions and 

 monographs to principles such as II. Paul succeeded in formulating 

 for grammatical material. "While the highly developed study of gram- 

 mar has long since been based upon the living language and the dia- 

 oiir iheory of style still depends upon book-language, although 

 )articularly in the individual use of the language that the aud- 

 aecent and melody, play the decisive role. Kven to this very 

 phrase like "das ist f/nt. das ist sclii'in," depending upon mere 



arallelism and gradation, is explained as an anaphora, although 



is not onlv unempha.sized. but often almost van- 



>site accentuation, "das ist gut, das ist schon." 



