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and even on the title-page of Glossarium Sanscritum a Franzisco Bopp. Classical scholars also looked askance at the growing interest in the changes of sounds, or, as it was then usual to say, of letters. But when they were apt here to quote the scriptural phrase about the letter that killeth, while the spirit giveth life, they overlooked the fact that Nature has rendered it impossible for anyone to penetrate to the mind of anyone else except through its outer manifestations, and that it is consequently impossible to get at the spirit of a language except through its sounds: phonology must therefore form the necessary basis and prerequisite of the scientific study of any group of languages. Still, it cannot be denied that sometimes comparative phonology was treated in such a mechanical way as partly to dehumanize the study of language.

      

      When we look back at this period in the history of linguistics, there are certain tendencies and characteristics that cannot fail to catch our attention. First we must mention the prominence given to Sanskrit, which was thought to be the unavoidable requirement of every comparative linguist. In explaining anything in any of the cognate languages the etymologist always turned first to Sanskrit words and Sanskrit forms. This standpoint is found even much later, for instance in Max Müller’s Inaugural Address (1868, Ch. 19): “Sanskrit certainly forms the only sound foundation of Comparative Philology, and it will always remain the only safe guide through all its intricacies. A comparative philologist without a knowledge of Sanskrit is like an astronomer without a knowledge of mathematics.” A linguist of a later generation may be excused for agreeing rather with Ellis, who says (Transact. Philol. Soc., 1873–4, 21): “Almost in our own days came the discovery of Sanskrit, and philology proper began—but, alas! at the wrong end. Now, here I run great danger of being misunderstood. Although for a scientific sifting of the nature of language I presume to think that beginning at Sanskrit was unfortunate, yet I freely admit that, had that language not been brought into Europe … our knowledge of language would have been in a poor condition indeed. … We are under the greatest obligations to those distinguished men who have undertaken to unravel its secrets and to show its connexion with the languages of Europe. Yet I must repeat that for the pure science of language, to begin with Sanskrit was as much beginning at the wrong end as it would have been to commence zoology with palæontology—the relations of life with the bones of the dead.”

      Next, Bopp and his nearest successors were chiefly occupied with finding likenesses between the languages treated and discovering things that united them. This was quite natural in the first stage of the new science, but sometimes led to one-sidedness, the characteristic individuality of each language being lost sight of, while forms from many countries and many times were mixed up in a hotch-potch. Rask, on account of his whole mental equipment, was less liable to this danger than most of his contemporaries; but Pott was evidently right when he warned his fellow-students that their comparative linguistics should be supplemented by separative linguistics (Zählmethode, 229), as it has been to a great extent in recent years.

      Still another feature of the linguistic science of those days is the almost exclusive occupation of the student with dead languages. It was quite natural that the earliest comparativists should first give their attention to the oldest stages of the languages compared, since these alone enabled them to prove the essential kinship between the different members of the great Aryan family. In Grimm’s grammar nearly all the space is taken up with Gothic, Old High German, Old Norse, etc., and comparatively little is said about recent developments of the same languages. In Bopp’s comparative grammar classical Greek and Latin are, of course, treated carefully, but Modern Greek and the Romanic languages are not mentioned (thus also in Schleicher’s Compendium and in Brugmann’s Grammar), such later developments being left to specialists who were more or less considered to be outside the sphere of Comparative Linguistics and even of the science of language in general, though it would have been a much more correct view to include them in both, and though much more could really be learnt of the life of language from these studies than from comparisons made in the spirit of Bopp.

      The earlier stages of different languages, which were compared by linguists, were, of course, accessible only through the medium of writing; we have seen that the early linguists spoke constantly of letters and not of sounds. But this vitiated their whole outlook on languages. These were scarcely ever studied at first-hand, and neither in Bopp nor in Grimm nor in Pott or Benfey do we find such first-hand observations of living spoken languages as play a great rôle in the writings of Rask and impart an atmosphere of soundness to his whole manner of looking at languages. If languages were called natural objects, they were not yet studied as such or by truly naturalistic methods.

      When living dialects were studied, the interest constantly centred round the archaic traits in them; every survival of an old form, every trace of old sounds that had been dropped in the standard speech, was greeted with enthusiasm, and the significance of these old characteristics greatly exaggerated, the general impression being that popular dialects were always much more conservative than the speech of educated people. It was reserved for a much later time to prove that this view is completely erroneous, and that popular dialects, in spite of many archaic details, are on the whole further developed than the various standard languages with their stronger tradition and literary reminiscences.

      III.—§ 2. K. M. Rapp.

      It was from this archæological point of view only that Grimm encouraged the study of dialects, but he expressly advised students not to carry the research too far in the direction of discriminating minutiæ of sounds, because these had little bearing on the history of language as he understood it. In this connexion we may mention an episode in the history of early linguistics that is symptomatic. K. M. Rapp brought out his Versuch einer Physiologie der Sprache nebst historischer Entwickelung der abendländischen Idiome nach physiologischen Grundsätzen in four volumes (1836, 1839, 1840, 1841). A physiological examination into the nature and classification of speech sounds was to serve only as the basis of the historical part, the grandiose plan of which was to find out how Greek, Latin and Gothic sounded, and then to pursue the destinies of these sound systems through the Middle Ages (Byzantine Greek, Old Provençal, Old French, Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Old High German) to the present time (Modern Greek, Italian, Spanish, etc., down to Low and High German, with different dialects). To carry out this plan Rapp was equipped with no small knowledge of the earlier stages of these languages and a not contemptible first-hand observation of living languages. He relates how from his childhood he had a “morbidly sharpened ear for all acoustic impressions”; he had early observed the difference between dialectal and educated speech and taken an interest in foreign languages, such as French, Italian and English. He visited Denmark, and there made the acquaintance of and became the pupil of Rask; he often speaks of him and his works in terms of the greatest admiration. After his return he took up the study of Jacob Grimm; but though he speaks always very warmly about the other parts of Grimm’s work, Grimm’s phonology disappointed him. “Grimm’s theory of letters I devoured with a ravenous appetite for all the new things I had to learn from it, but also with heartburning on account of the equally numerous things that warred against the whole of my previous research with regard to the nature of speech sounds; fascinated though I was by what I read, it thus made me incredibly miserable.” He set to his great task with enthusiasm, led by the conviction that “the historical material gives here only one side of the truth, and that the living language in all its branches that have never been committed to writing forms the other and equally important side which is still far from being satisfactorily investigated.” It is easy to understand that Rapp came into conflict with Grimm’s Buchstabenlehre, that had been based exclusively on written forms, and Rapp was not afraid of expressing his unorthodox views in what he himself terms “a violent and arrogating tone.” No wonder, therefore, that his book fell into disgrace with the leaders of linguistics in Germany, who noticed its errors and mistakes, which were indeed numerous and conspicuous, rather than the new and sane ideas it contained. Rapp’s work is extraordinarily little known; in Raumer’s Geschichte der germanischen Philologie and similar works it is not even mentioned, and when I disinterred it from undeserved oblivion in my Fonetik (1897, p. 35; cf. Die neueren Sprachen, vol. xiii, 1904) it was utterly unknown to the German phoneticians of my acquaintance. Yet not only are its phonetic observations[12] deserving of praise, but still more its whole plan, based as it is on a thorough comprehension

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