THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 91 



The law is sometimes*'' stated thus : 



Such statements of the shiftings are easily remembered and 

 may be employed with advantage in elementary works to direct 

 attention to the regularity of the changes. But we must not con- 

 clude from these popular statements that the change is from the 

 Classical languages to the Low German, and from the Low German 

 to the High "German. High German is not derived from Low Ger- 

 man, nor does it spring from Sanskrit or Greek or Latin. The 

 change was rather from the "primitive" Indogermanic to the 

 " primitive " Germanic, and from it to High German ; the lan- 

 guages cited have a bearing upon the shiftings only in so far as 

 they indicate what we may assume to have been the nature of the 

 mutes in the respective " primitive " forms. Nor must we assume 

 that the symbols A, S, H denote precisely the same sounds in the 

 three columns and conclude that the movement is circular. That 

 was Professor Earle's view when he wrote in his " Philology of the 

 English Tongue" (pp. 6-7): — "A succession of small divergences, 

 which run upon stated lines of variation — lines having a determinate 

 relation to one another, and constituting an orbit in which the tran- 

 sitional movement revolves, — this is a phenomenon worthy of our 

 contemplation. It is the simplest example of a fact which in other 

 shapes will meet us again, namely, that the beauty of philology 

 springs out of that variety over unity which makes all nature 

 beautiful and all study of nature profoundly attractive." But the 

 discourse is based on the misunderstanding of the text. 



These considerations suggest another statement of the law. 

 The first shifting may be set down as follows : — In the Germanic 

 branch the primitive Indogermanic mutes underwent a general shifting ; 

 the aspirates tvere changed to medice, the medicE to temtes, whiie the 

 tenues beco^ne fricatives. To the examples given above the following 

 may be added in the other series.'^' 



(i) As in Morris' " Historical Outlines of English Accidence." 

 (2) For convenience, High German equivalents are given here. 



