mental perspective which does not affect
the facts of history, biology, archaeology or language in the least. It
is only a question of which end of the telescope we look through.

[49-*] It is exceedingly interesting to trace the course of criticism
since the appearance of Wilhelm von Humboldt's great work, _Ueber die
Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die
geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts_ (Berlin, 1836). Dr.
Brinton gave it most unqualified approval; (see especially his monograph
read before the American Philosophical Society in 1885, and printed the
same year). Prof. H. Steinthal (_Grammatik, Logik und Psychologie_,
1855) calls the subject of "inner form" the most important one in
linguistic science, and von Humboldt's treatment of it his greatest
contribution to that science. And so on. But the work has nevertheless
received little attention from a large number of writers, most of them
declaring it "unclear." These two views, when one studies the various
writers, seem to follow closely upon the standpoints from which each
approaches the study. Those who study language (perhaps one should here
say, languages) as a phenomenon, a set of external forms, an act, a
thing done, get little use out of von Humboldt's work. Those who see it
as a human "activity," an energy, get much. This is quite apparent in
one of the clearest and ablest linguistic works which has recently
appeared, Dr. Adolf Noreen's _Vart Sprak_ (in 9 vols., still in course
of publication, Lund, 1903 and later), a work of far wider linguistic
value than appears from its title. Dr. Noreen, however, dismisses von
Humboldt's work, and the subject of "inner form," with a few pages, and
the results are apparent in several interesting points. In the first
place, in the course of an acute and critical analysis, wherein he shows
that the purpose of speech is not simply _expression_ of thoughts or
ideas, but the communication to some other person of the _knowledge_ of
the ideas so held by the speaker, he goes on to say: "the same knowledge
of A's wishes could be as well communicated by his saying 'I want you to
come' as by his saying just 'Come.'" This is quite true; but the
_energic_ effect is quite different. Language is the bridge from man to
man, and it is also a _creative activity_ of man. Of course Dr. Noreen,
in a later volume, where he most lucidly analyses the terms 'words,'
'forms,' and 'concepts,' etc. (_ord_,