This proof, from the particular to the general,
does not follow that of traditional Logic. But with Lombroso, Buechner,
Nordau, and the like we have come to the boundary between specious and
vulgar error. They confuse scientific analysis with historical research.
Such inquiries may have value for history, but they have none for
Aesthetic. Thus, too, A. Lang maintains that the doctrine of the origin
of art as disinterested expression of the mimetic faculty is not
confirmed in what we know of primitive art, which is rather decorative
than expressive. But primitive art, which is a given fact to be
interpreted, cannot ever become its own criterion of interpretation.
The naturalistic misunderstanding has had a bad effect on linguistic
researches, which have not been carried out on the lofty plane to which
Humboldt and Steinthal had brought them.
Max Mueller is popular and exaggerated. He fails clearly to distinguish
thought from logical thought, although in one place he remarks that the
formation of names has a more intimate connexion with wit than with
judgment. He holds that the science of language is not historical, but
natural, because language is not the invention of man, altogether
ignoring the science of the spirit, philosophy, of which language is a
part. For Max Mueller, the natural sciences were the only sciences. The
consciousness of the science of the spirit becomes ever more obscured,
and we find the philologist W.
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