While WILHELM VON

exactly the opposite of HUMBOLDT'S. HUMBOLDT is never weary of expounding generalities, and exerts himself at every turn to subordinate details to ideas, BOPP occupies himself chiefly with individual points in language, and very seldom intersperses general observations, such as could be termed "philosophical". It is as impossible to obtain a theory and systematic method for linguistic science from BOPP's Comparative Grammar, as it would be to extract grammatical paradigms from HUMBOLDT's "Introduction to the Kawi Language". Under these circumstances we must investigate with caution BOPP's theoretical views in regard to the forces at work in language, that is, we must be careful, where he uses certain terms with an easy carelessness, not to examine their significance and breadth of application as inexorably as if we were setting up a system of terminology. I feel, therefore, as if the fairest way of proceeding were to frame our question thus: what are the general views constituting the standpoint from which BOPP was accustomed to judge the processes of language?—and to answer the question as follows his general views had a coloring of natural science, beneath which, however, the old philological background had not yet vanished. His fondness for the terminology of natural science is at once apparent when he attempts to describe his method of treating language in contrast to that of former scholars. He aims at a comparative "dissection" [Zergliederung] of language; systematic comparison of languages is a "language-anatomy"; we have to deal with an "anatomical dissection" or "chemical decomposition" of the body of language, or, to use another figure, with the "physics" or "physiology" of language. This coloring is very prominent in the first sentence of the preface to the Vergleichende Grammatik :

"In this book my aim is a comparative, comprehensive description of the organism of the languages mentioned in the title, an investigation of their physical and mechanical laws, and the origin of the forms characterizing grammatical relations."

What is meant by "physical and mechanical laws” in this sentence, the author has himself explained in reply to inquiry, as BRÉAL informs us in the French translation of BOPP's ComDELBRÜCK, Introduction to the Study of Language.

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parative Grammar. By "physical laws" is meant what we now call "phonetic laws": by "mechanical laws" the rules which BOPP believed he had established concerning the relative weight of vowels and syllables, of which we shall speak later. The meaning of "organism" and "organic" is shown by one or two passages in the Vergleichende Grammatik. In the preface to Heft 2, 1st edition, page VII, we read: "The inflections make up the true organism of a language”; and on the other hand he speaks of "languages with monosyllabic roots, without the capacity of composition, and hence without organism, without grammar." (§ 108.) "Organism" of a language is accordingly nothing but the grammatical "arrangement" [Einrichtung], which is founded on agglutination (preface to the first volume of the Vgl. Gr., page IV); "organic" is everything which is in accordance with this arrangement, and "inorganic" what is at variance with it. We can therefore say original" instead of "organic", and "not original" instead of "inorganic". So, for example, the v of the ending uy is said to be "organic, i. e. not a later, meaningless addition, but intentionally employed, and inherited from the primitive period of our branch of language"; 'on the contrary, the με of Túto is considered "inorganic", because the optative, in all languages where it exists as a separate form, has the short endings, even in the first person, with the single exception of Greek. Everything is "inorganic" which cannot, according to the view of the grammarian in question, be derived from the original structure of the Indo-European.

We see that the terms "mechanical", "physical", "organic" are not used strictly in the sense they possess in natural science, yet we can conclude from their application that Bopp's conception of language was of a kind of organic body. He uses this very word in the Vocalismus, page 1:

"Languages must be regarded as organic bodies [organische Naturkörper], formed in accordance with definite laws ; having a life-giving principle within, they develop and then gradually die out, after losing consciousness of their true nature, and throwing aside, or mutilating, or misusing (i. e. applying to uses to which they were not primarily adapted) their

members or forms, which were originally significant, but have gradually become a more external mass.

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This sentence introduces us to two new trains of thought. In the first place, I would call the attention of the reader to the remark that language in the course of time loses consciousness of its own nature. Here a mental activity is ascribed to language; it is referred to as if it were a thinking being. Nor is this an isolated instance. In other passages BOPP speaks of the spirit or genius of language, and recognizes in its procedure certain tendencies and aims. Sometimes, instead of language as a whole, an individual form is regarded as a thinking being. So for example in the Vgl. Gr., 1st edition, page 516, the Slavonic stem sjo is said to be "no longer conscious of its composition, which was handed down from the primitive period of the language." These expressions are metaphors,

very natural ones, too, and probably, if any one had called his attention to the point, BOPP would have acknowledged that in reality these psychical activities take place, not in language, but in speaking individuals; yet it is important to call attention here to the first beginnings of a mode of view which with SCHLEICHER rose to a conscious hypostasizing of the notion "language".

In the next place, in the sentence above quoted the expression "die out" is noteworthy. According to Bopp, all external changes which we observe in the Indo-European languages betoken not development, but disease, mutilation and decline. We become acquainted with languages, not in their ascending development, but after they have passed the goal set for them. That is, we find them in a state "where they might still perfect themselves syntactically, but where, grammatically considered, they have lost more or less of what belonged to that perfect arrangement, in virtue of which the separate members were in accurate proportion to each other, and all derivative formations were still connected, by a visible and unimpaired bond, with that from which they originated." (Vocalismus, page 2.) As long as the meaning of the composition continues to be felt in a grammatical form, it offers opposition to any change. But the farther languages are separated from their source, the more love of euphony gains

in influence. (Abh. der Berl. Akad., 1824, page 119.) This view has also been extended and systematized by SCHLEICHER.

Having thus briefly characterized BOPP's fundamental views, I will now give a more detailed account of his ideas concerning changes in language, and will classify them in accordance with the categories introduced by Bopp himself: mechanical and physical laws.

The effect of BOPP's so-called "mechanical laws" is especially visible in the changes which the weight of the personal endings produces in the stem. A light ending follows a heavy form of the stem, e. g. émi "I go", from i "go"; but before a heavy ending a light stem-form alone is permitted, e. g. imás "we go". The same law accounts for the German Ablaut, which is preserved to the present day in weiss and wissen. These facts, which were first formulated by Bopp, we now explain in a different manner, by ascribing the weakening of certain syllables no longer to a law of relative weight, but to the power exercised by the accent of the following syllable.

Beside the influence of the weight of the personal endings, Bopp recognizes another action of this law of gravity, which will be apparent from the following examples. It is the task of the stem-syllables to carry the formative syllables, and it sometimes happens that a stem-syllable is not strong enough for this purpose. We have such an instance in the Sanskrit imperative cinú "gather", from ci; BOPP here remarks that the sign nu is only able to carry the ending hi when the u is supported by two preceding consonants, as for example in apnuhi. "But where the u is only preceded by a single consonant, it has become incapable of carrying the ending hi, hence cinú gather', from ci." (§ 451.) In a similar manner BOPP explains the circumstance that the perfect endings appear greatly mutilated in comparison with those of the present. Since in the perfect the root has also the reduplication-syllable to carry, it is, so to speak, claimed by both sides at once, and is therefore no longer in a condition to lift a heavy ending. It is clear that this second law of gravity, whose action Bopp discovers in several other instances, is in direct contradiction to the first, and it

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is now universally acknowledged that the idea expressed in this law suffers from a metaphorical obscurity.

I have intimated above that the mechanical laws can no longer be understood and accepted by us in the same manner as by Bopp, and will pass to the "physical laws", which we are now accustomed to call. "phonetic laws". In order to appreciate Bopp's stand-point in this connection, it is important to come to a clear understanding of the possible method of establishing phonetic laws. Whoever compared Sanskrit with another Indo-European tongue, the Greek, for instance, was of necessity impressed with the fact that there exist in both languages words and formations which completely coïncide. No one could avoid noticing, for example, that the Skr. mātár and Gr. μýtyp, Skr. dáma and Gr. dóuos, Skr. pitár and Gr. лаτρ were the same words, and that the inflectional endings of the verb agree in the main in the two languages. The recognition of this agreement rested upon immediate evidence, and could not be further demonstrated. From comparison it was possible to deduce the rule that certain sounds of the Greek corresponded to certain sounds of the Sanskrit, m to μ, t to, etc. Yet after collecting a very few words, it immediately became plain that the same sound of the Sanskrit was not always represented by the same sound of the Greek. So for example in dama δόμος, dadami δίδωμι, the Greek & corresponded to the Sanskrit d; but in the pair duhitár dvɣátyp, which no one wished to separate, the Sanskrit d was represented by a Greek 9. As a result of such observations, it was necessary to adopt the conclusion that these rules admit of exceptions, and to say accordingly: "Usually Sanskrit d corresponds to a Greek 8, but often also to a Greek 9." Now two positions are conceivable in relation to such a rule. We can either start with the theoretical conviction that laws admit of no exceptions, and feel ourselves bound to investigate the causes which produce the so-called "exceptions"; or we can content ourselves in the wording of our rules with the expressions "usually" and "often”. And this latter is on the whole BOPP'S stand-point. "We must expect to find no laws in language”, he remarks, "which offer more resistance than the shores of rivers and seas". (Vocalismus, page 15.) In other passages he