506 GERMANIC LITERATURE 



or anything essentially new coming to light. Surely all scientific study 

 of literature is in the last analysis based upon comparison, and it is 

 not the broader (here international) sphere of activity, but only the 

 unique method that can claim the name of a new science. Others 

 have desired to bring the history of literature into closer relations 

 with psychology than in their opinion the philologians did. Thus far. 

 however, it has not resulted in anything more than a very superficial 

 transference of what is well known to be a very heterogeneous 

 psychological terminology. A more successful attempt was made 

 here in America by our honored chairman in considering German 

 literature from a social-psychological aspect, and of showing the 

 change from subjective and individual to universal phenomena and 

 periods. The youngest, as yet hardly sufficiently investigated phase, 

 is the medical, more accurately stated, the neuro-pathological and 

 the psychiatrical treatment of the great literary figures, to which we 

 already owe, alas, the sick Goethe and the healthy Kleist. 



You see, we are not in need of means or ways, nor is there any 

 lack of work or workers. And we can make use of them! For a great , 

 broad field only little cultivated lies before us: the whole of the 

 nineteenth century! Our science, it seems to me, has too long re- 

 stricted itself to a comparatively narrow area, and time and again 

 treated the same periods and the same personalities. Even science 

 requires change of matter for its welfare. There is such a rich ma- 

 terial here at hand that the eager and talented workers which 

 America has of late years placed in the field are heartily welcome. 

 So let us offer our hands across the great ocean with the motto - 

 Viribus unitis! 



