Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/271



last two lectures have given us a view of the Indo-European family of languages. We have glanced at the principal dialects, ancient and modern, of which it is composed, noticing their exceeding variety and the high antiquity of some among them—the unequalled sweep, of time and of historic development together, which they include and cover. The family has been shown to be of preëminent importance and interest to the linguistic student, because the peoples to whom it belongs have taken during the past two thousand years or more a leading or even the foremost part in the world's history, because it includes the noblest and most perfect instruments of human thought and expression, and because upon its study is mainly founded the present science of language. We examined, in a general way, the method pursued in its investigation—namely, a genetic analysis, effected chiefly by the aid of a widely extended comparison of the kindred forms of related dialects (whence the science gets its familiar name of "comparative philology")—and noted briefly some of the misapprehensions and misapplications to which this was liable. At present, before going on to survey the other great families