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Concerning the Unwritten History of the
Modern Language Association of America
THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS, DELIVERED ON
THE 30TH OF DECEMBER, 1902, AT THE TWEN-
TIETH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION,
HELD AT THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BY
JAMES WILSON BRIGHT

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Concerning the Unwritten History of the
Modern Language Association of America
THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS, DELIVERED ON
the 30th of December, 1902, AT THE TWEN-
TIETH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION,
HELD AT THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
BY
JAMES WILSON BRIGHT
[Reprinted from the Publications of the Modern Language Association
of America, Vol. XVIII, No. 4.]
BALTIMORE
THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
1903
ADDRESS.
6
This is the twentieth annual meeting of our Association,
and it has been thought of as a suitable event for marking off
a first period of our history. A score of years is a sufficiently
conventional unit of measure to assure the form and the
significance of a celebration of that character, and the nearness
to the hyphen of the centuries would also lend appropriateness
to our first comprehensive retrospection. But these thoughts
have not been 'submitted' regularly to the Association; they
have, on the contrary, not spread much beyond the few indi-
vidual minds of their spontaneous and coincident birth, and
therefore no authorized historic sketch has been prepared, no
tablet has been inscribed, no bronze is to be unveiled.
These special circumstances of this meeting, however, it
must be acknowledged, have been regarded as indications of a
subject suitable for the present address. At least the word
'history' in the title would thus be accounted for; and
whatever hope of protection may be fixed in the apologetic
concerning,' it is by an acquired instinct that we feel it to be
locum tenens in our professional literature, a titular lieutenant
that could not be spared lest our mental processes might
become dissociated for one fatal moment from the German
über. But it is especially necessary to issue a warning against
a possible misapprehension of history' as here qualified.
By unwritten history' shall be meant the direct and com-
plete contrast to mere history. This should be kept in mind.
It follows, therefore, that whereas history in the usual sense
(
6
3
4
MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION.
is an orderly composition, with complexity of details brought
under the law of unity of design, a trustworthy account of all
events in chronological sequence, interpreted by an impartial
judgment and by unbiassed feeling, 'unwritten history' is
acquitted of any adherence whatsoever to this canon of virtues.
For what is here meant an approximate definition would
be given in the Greek ȧvékdoтa, 'unpublished things'; but
somewhat more specifically the aim of reference is levelled at
such experiences as those which the historian often misunder-
stands or overlooks altogether.
But whose experiences? As there can be no common
experience which is not made up of individual experiences,
there will be no misunderstanding if it be replied, The experi-
ences of the Association. And as the following rambling
recital of some of these experiences proceeds, it is, consequently,
the privilege of each one enrolled on the list of members,—not
excluding any one whose name, in the wisdom of the treasurer
has, early or late, been cancelled from that list,-to make direct
appropriation of as many of the more congenial experiences
as he may feel constrained to assume, and to refer the more
grievous ones to the comprehensive and impersonal personality
of the Association. We shall thus be aided in flattering all
and in offending none.
There can be no arraignment of organization, cries the
public orator, and the people respond, Let there be organiza-
tion in politics, in finance, in industries, in trade, in science,
in education, in religion, in charity. The orator rejoins,
There are countless activities of mind and muscle, and all-
pervading feelings and impulses of the human heart, but
greater than these is organization. In the circumstances there
was nothing to do but to organize; and at the risk, therefore,
of incurring the charge of trespassing upon the privileges of
i
the normal historian, by beginning at the beginning, we
shall find in the conditions that led to the formation of
this Association concernments and by-concernments of our
'unwritten history.'
THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.
5
In retrospect it may now begin to excite surprise in some
minds to be told that certain conditions that might have been
conjectured as necessary incitements to our first corporate acts
were never experienced. All prophecy of our beginnings
would surely have contained a certain element of error, for
the veracious historian will have to record no Histoire de la
querelle des anciens et des modernes.
Two hundred years ago (1704), the master satirist of the
most satirical period of our literature published An Account
of a Battle between the Ancient and Modern Books in St. James's
Library. The misanthropic Dean was intensely convinced
of human folly and always wrote with a cynical determination
to bring about, as he expressed it, "the universal improve-
ment of mankind." This was his avowed purpose in taking
up that Gallic War which his great patron had transferred to
England.
That was a remarkable war. It originated in the purpose
of an encomium on the reign of the Grand Monarch; and the
panegyric genius of a Claudian might have convinced that
age of talent without genius, that age of practical education
without profound learning, that age of organization, that the
spontaneous play of the clear and bubbling Helicon and the
secret windings of the sweet waters of Arethusa were sur-
passed by the Grandes Eaux of the spigots and stop-cocks
of Versailles. That was a remarkable war in which, while
sharply defining party-names were borne by the opposing
forces, the Commander-in-chief of the ancients' fought and
won his battle in the ranks of the 'moderns.' That was a
remarkable war, that war 'about the higher summity of
Parnassus,' in which hot disputes over subordinate details
delayed the acknowledgment that upon the main question at
issue there could be no ground for differences or hostility of
belief.
The end achieved by the Battle of the Books was never
formally defined. We have grown wiser now and are always
ready with our philosophical mutterings. For the resolution.
of antagonism between Science and Religion, we recommend
6
MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION.
more science on the one side, and on the other more religion;
we urge upon Science to become more scientific, and upon
Religion to become more religious. If perchance the aim be
higher, we say, Let Science become fittingly religious, and let
Religion become honestly scientific, and there's the end of the
matter. And so we summarize with the 'ancients' and the
'moderns,' asking the ancients' to project themselves into
the modern world by the logic of inevitable sequence, and the
'moderns,' in reversed order, to be equally sound in historic
knowledge, and obedient to historic truth. The 'ancients,'
we demand, must be modernized into life, and the 'moderns'
must be seasoned and disciplined into the dignities of tradition.
6
But we must revert to that quarrel of the 'ancients' and
the 'moderns' to observe that it was remarkable above all
for its untimeliness. It was before its time; and when its time
had come, generations later, the solution of the problem was
effected by the noiseless and inevitable operation of the great
law of progress. When the quarrel was still premature, the
minds of men were fascinated by the paradox antiquitas
saeculi iuventus mundi, according to which, modern times, in
strictness of chronology, constitute antiquity, the 'moderns'
being the real 'ancients'; but when, in the fulness of time,
the great and beneficent law of the wider vision began to set
in, the paradox of the myopic partisan was gradually under-
stood to be the plainest statement of a profound truth.
Notions of the successions of times now took the place of
notions of the oppositions of times. The minds of men were
now fascinated by the observation of the continuity of history
and culture. Succession, transmission, growth, evolution,
these were the notions that set at naught the folly of that
untimely and forever unnecessary quarrel.
The initiative conditions of our organization were therefore
conditions not of warfare but of peace, of peace, however, as
strenuous as war itself,—but what device of expression has not
too often been pressed into the service of describing the last
quarter of the Nineteenth Century! Those were days not of
educational warfare, but rather of educational awakening and
THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.
7
questioning and experimentation, a time of facility in read-
justments, in changes of attitude, in revisions of creed. Nor
were these chiefly superficial disturbances of the social equa-
nimity; they were the manifestation of a fruition of the times.
There were indeed experiences akin to those of a thorough-
going reformation, but the main current of events moved on
peaceably, noiselessly, and irresistibly.
But there was some noise, it may be objected, and there
was strife to overcome stubborn resistance. At this point
where the historian might be misled, the truth of the 'un-
written history' must be asserted.
-
The Phi Beta Kappa orator at Harvard University who
had forgotten his Greek alphabet, and the President of Yale
University whose knowledge of his vernacular led him to
group Anglo-Saxon with Quaternions and to assign to both a
place in the hot-house of intellectual exotics, these and all
such antagonists were wholly unfitted to make an appeal in
behalf of the vital question at issue. Certain educational
ideas of greatest importance had indeed gained virility in the
saddle of the cavalry officer, and others had become freighted
with a commercial value that had accumulated in the office of
the Railway Commissioner, and these ideas in their strength
and value are still potent, though they have lost their revo-
lutionary demeanor. Other educational ideas of the greatest
importance had been kept alive in academic seclusion, and
these too have strength and value and will have to the end of
time. But let it be repeated that the purposes to be served
in the founding of this Association were not involved in an
assault upon the classical traditions of the college, in an in-
dictment of a fetish-worship of the Greek language; nor
were those purposes either helped or hindered by the com-
parative tests applied to the 'modernist '-education of the
Realschule and the classicist'-education of the Gymnasium.
G
To understand the purposes of this Association we must
dismiss from our minds all notions of a direct relationship
with that variety of controversy that has just now been
8
MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION.
recalled, though it must be perceived that there is here an
indirect relationship that may be easily misunderstood to be
direct. It may perhaps have been unwise even thus by elimi-
nation to bring suggestions of controversy within the range of
our present reflections upon the aims of this Association.
We are now in direct contact with our subject, for it is the
countless individual modes of apprehending and of misappre-
hending the aims of this Association that constitute that
'unwritten history' with which we have to do. But why
such diversity in interpretations and misinterpretations? The
reply is paradoxical, Because the subject is simple. It is char-
acteristic of educational principles to be simple, and it is
equally characteristic of the educational theorist to pervert the
effectively simple into aimless and unprofitable complexity.
The third section of the Constitution states the complete
purpose for which this Association was organized: "The
object of this Association shall be the advancement of the
study of the Modern Languages and Literatures." That is
brief and to the point, if you please; or, if you prefer, it is
comprehensive and points everywhere,-St. Augustine him-
self could not have wished it more capable of all possible
interpretations. A possible division emerges here between
the 'point' and the 'points,' and the constructionists might
accordingly be grouped, with some show of fitness, into the
point-party and the points-party, with a residuum left for the
pointless party.
A moment's reflection upon this constitution of less than
twenty words,-for the article cited is of course in essence the
entire constitution,-a moment's reflection, then, upon this
written constitution is sufficient to show that the Association
has been guided almost entirely by an unwritten constitution.
Our present subject would thus seem to require restatement
in ampler form; we seem to be committed to consider things
relating to the 'unwritten history' of an organization with an
unwritten constitution. This extension of our subject, as has
already been shown by an anticipatory inference, has more
THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.
9
than the mere appearance of homogeneity; for the facts of
'unwritten history,' in our special sense, must in many
instances be directly referred to conditions made possible by
the interpretations of an unwritten constitution.
Among the constructionists-rather the misconstructionists
-who saw possibilities of activity in the early conventions of
this Association were the foreign fencing-master and dancing-
master with the superadded 'arts' of the 'tongues,'-the
'tongues' as accomplishments to be classed with fencing and
dancing, the curling-tongs, as Sir Toby Belch would have
it, to 'mend,' to curl our locks which like those of Sir
Andrew Aguecheek, we were told, hung "like flax on a dis-
taff." It is gratifying to know that this Association did not
yield to the allurements of becoming a Gild of Barbers. It
seemed necessary, it was necessary, to assume an indifference
to the uses of the curling-tongs.
Other attendants of those early meetings when the Associa-
tion, now grown so large in all its dimensions, was then yet
like Falstaff in his early years "not an eagle's talon in the
waist," it "could have crept into any alderman's thumb-
ring,"-other participants in those early, tentative delibera-
tions were concerned in founding or in finding here a Teachers'
Agency. It was remembered, seemingly, that among the Bibles
of typographical rarity there was to be found the 'Place-Makers
Bible,' in which the beatitude of Matthew v, 9 reads, "Blessed
are the place-makers;" but notwithstanding this extraordi-
nary testimony and endorsement, the Association, we rejoice
to say, has not yet become a Teachers' Agency.
And there were present in those early days a known class
of advocates of methods of teachings.' Now there must be
methods for imparting knowledge; but these over-zealous
teachers seemed to expostulate thus, Notice the divisions of the
subject, method and knowledge; two things; both important;
but, if one can't have both, one should have at least method.
History and experience, they seemed to add, attest the value of
methods of teaching. Observe Seneca for example; does he
10
MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION.
not impose an inference? the philosopher of morals, was he
not the teacher of Nero? a teacher lacking in method? It
was however not believed to be the business of the Associa-
tion to give serious attention to this cause; on the contrary,
the temperament of these systematicians was felt to be essen-
tially incompatible with that of the scholar, and this convic-
tion, in view of the cherished purpose of the organization,
was happily sufficient to assure their gentle but unflinching
suppression.
A knowledge of the modern languages is a help in the
pursuit of the natural sciences. Not long ago there was
something novel and surprising in the sensation excited by
this statement, and it was natural that observers of a certain
temperament should see in this Association an adjunct to the
Scientific School, to the Polytechnic Institute. That was a
substantial gain. It was real progress to pass from the girls'
finishing school into the laboratories of the University; and
that was sound reasoning that made manifest such a require-
ment in the equipment of the student of nature for the widest
and best citizenship in the world of science. Indeed it must
be admitted that all departments of knowledge profited by
the idea of world-citizenship, which, in the mediating form
of a 'practical' measure, as presented by the science-party,
won so much of general approval as to make it available for
other applications. And the Association stood in need of
just this service when it was striving to make its own idea
prevail. If the man of science, whose work in the general
opinions and feelings is related to 'practical education,' if the
'practical man' could effect a persuasion that after all we
must trouble ourselves about foreign thought," for we can't
"invent the whole thing for ourselves as we go along," then
surely the way was in preparation for some acknowledgment
of the true basis of sound progress in knowledge and culture,
and for something of that "free play of the mind” on all
subjects in accordance with the nature of each subject, upon
which Matthew Arnold bases the structure of true criticism.
66
THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.
11
The times, therefore, abounded in helps and hindrances to
the achievement of the best. The air was charged with a
spirit of alertness; activity was stimulated, and there was
insistent looking to results. The lets and hindrances were also
principally such as are incident to overstimulation of activity,
and to close-ranging valuation of results; for the achieve-
ment of the best is usually involved in unostentatious growth,
and is, therefore, not "heedless of far gain" nor "greedy for
quick returns of profit." And it was for the achievement of
the best, let it be iterated, that the Association was striving
and has hitherto been striving.
It were easy to find concise and technically adequate expres-
sion for the description of this best; but these technicalities
are not easily resolved into terms that may be at once plain
and adequate. For the general comprehension, let us say for
the general reader, for example, it would be difficult to select
such a 'course of reading on the subject' (the phrase has a
familiar sound) as might suggest preparation of a paper for
a literary club, or an examination in a 'University by Cor-
respondence.' From those depressing annual lists of pub-
lications on education, from those books, journals, Records,
Reports, Proceedings, monographs, addresses, articles (re-
printed and misprinted), even the technical reader would be
puzzled to collect much that might be available in setting
forth in a clear manner the simple yet lofty purpose of this
Association.
That purpose was philological, and a concise and techni-
cally adequate modification of that third section of the Consti-
tution just cited would therefore be 'the advancement of the
philological study of modern life and culture,' or this,
'the advancement of philology in the departments of the
modern languages.' That word philological is, of course, at
the bottom of all the trouble. But this is not the time to
define philology; to do that one should be engaged in history
of the most comprehensive and philosophical character, be-
cause comprehensively and philosophically philology embraces
12
MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION.
history as a department of itself,—a relationship, it may be
observed in passing, which has unhappily not affected ex-
perience to such a degree as to preclude the advent of the
unphilological historian, with whom should be classed the
unhistorical student of language and literature, the unhistori-
cal philologian.
It has of course become necessary to divide the science of
philology into at least two large departments, philology and
history; and to comprehend the meaning and scope of philo-
logy under this division, has constituted the unrecorded
struggle of many a member of this Association. For is it so
very strange to be told that a scholar may not be alive to the
complete significance of the science to which he may be devot-
ing his life? He is truly a master that feels the deepest
import and measures the widest reaches of his science; and we
accordingly find the masters framing definitions in those out-
lines which their followers may endeavor to fill, each accord-
ing to the measure of his capabilities, with the content of
significant feeling and experience.
Although it would not be to our present purpose to turn
directly to the great definitions of philology, yet we may be
allowed to avail ourselves of analogy—that never-failing
expedient—and turn to masters of modern history for an
inferential characterization of modern philology, and possibly
for an indirect explanation of some of our less exultant experi-
ences in endeavoring to comprehend the character and range
of our science, 'to see it steadily and to see it whole.'
The Introductory Lectures on Modern History delivered
sixty years ago (1841-42) in the University of Oxford by
Dr. Thomas Arnold show clearly that modern history as
well as modern philology has stood in need of sound defini-
nition. And that the time for definitions does not rapidly
pass away, may be learned by comparing with the lectures of
Arnold those of Stubbs delivered on the same foundation in
the years 1867-1884. Both lecturers discuss the question,
What constitutes modern history? and thus furnish help for
THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.
13
the consideration of the parallel and closely related inquiry,
What constitutes modern philology?
The question in Dr. Arnold's words is "whether ancient
and modern history in the popular sense of the words differ
only in this, that one relates to events which took place before
a certain period, and the other to events which have happened
since that period; or whether there is a real distinction between
them, grounded upon an essential difference in their nature. If
they differ only chronologically, it is manifest that the line
which separates them is purely arbitrary: and we might
equally well fix the limit of ancient history at the fall of the
Babylonian monarchy and embrace the whole fortunes of
Greece and Rome within what we choose to call modern; or,
on the other hand, we might carry on ancient history to the
close of the fifteenth century, and place the beginning of
modern history at that memorable period which witnessed the
expulsion of the Moors from Spain, the discovery of America,
and, only a few years later, the Reformation."
"It seems, however, that there is a real difference between
ancient and modern history, which justifies the limit usually
assigned to them; the fall, namely, of the western empire;
that is to say, the fall of the western empire separates the
subsequent period from that which preceded it by a broader
line, so far as we are concerned, than can be found at any
other point either earlier or later. For the state of things
now in existence, dates its origin from the fall of the western
empire; so far we can trace up the fortunes of nations which
are still flourishing; history so far is the biography of the
living; beyond, it is the biography of the dead."
Dr. Arnold's meaning is plain. The modern nations as
such have their peculiar historical beginnings. There is a
unity in English history, whether it is held to begin with the
Angles and Saxons on the island (according to Dr. Arnold)
or on the continent (according to Professor Freeman). In
like manner an essential principle in historic doctrine is made.
manifest when Dr. Arnold says: "France and Frenchmen
14
MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION.
came into being when the Franks established themselves west
of the Rhine. Not that before that period the fathers of the
majority of the actual French people were living on the Elbe
or the Saal; for the Franks were numerically few, and
throughout the south of France the population is predomi-
nantly, and much more than predominantly, of Gallo-Roman
origin. But Clovis and his Germans struck root so deeply,
and their institutions wrought such changes, that the identity
of France cannot be carried back beyond their invasion: the
older elements no doubt have helped greatly to characterize
the existing nation; but they cannot be said by themselves
to be that nation."
Dr. Arnold supplies a formula for the distinction between
ancient and modern history. The history of a modern nation
begins when its principal national elements of race, language,
institutions, and religion first meet under conditions for organic
combination. Individually and in other combinations these
elements may have an antique history; but the new composi-
tion into which the old elements may enter marks the begin-
ning of a new history. The subject of modern history thus
becomes wide, and complex, and rich in content.
In Dr.
Arnold's words, "Modern history exhibits a fuller develop-
ment of the human race, a richer combination of its most
remarkable elements." We are not intent upon the enthusias-
tic comparatives here employed,—the grammarian is familiar
with a weakening effect of the comparative, but we are
intent upon the plain truth that dignifies modern history into
a profoundly great and worthy science.
The philologian has his corresponding formula for the dis-
tinction of the modern periods. Latin grammar and Romance-
grammar are separated not chronologically merely but signifi-
cantly by a difference which requires the hypothesis of a new
beginning. Primitive Germanic grammar must be theoreti-
cally reconstructed in accordance with Indo-European
linguistic antiquity on the one side, and on the other in
accordance with the new life of the historic Germanic tongues..
THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.
15
The galaxy of 'starred forms' shoots terror into the dismayed
breast of the incipient grammarian, but he that survives with
the spirit to conjecture, predict, and verify phenomena, to
photograph invisible clusters with motions in obedience to
Verner's Law, he has begun to apprehend the priesthood of
science.
In every department of literature the formula of modernity
mediates between the medieval and modern periods and that
of antiquity. Mere chronology fails as surely to carry us
from Vergil to Dante as it fails to carry us from Plutarch to
Montaigne, from Martial to Herrick, from Lucian to Landor,
or from Theocritus to Tennyson. The modern drama has its
formula of a distinctly new beginning, and a history that is
unrivalled in human interest. What is the formula of the
Völuspa, of the Muspilli, and of the Beowulf? The "Western
hypothesis" challenges the profoundest knowledge of classical
antiquity and the exercise of the scientific imagination in the
reconstruction of the processes by which cosmographical, my-
thological, and ethical elements may be transmitted and trans-
formed into new systems. What expression have we for the
relation between the Orient and the Occident in fable and story?
How do we pass from the Panchatantra to the Decameron?
from Esop, who has himself become a myth, to Marie de
France, who has almost become one? The formula of mod-
ernity must also comprise literary art, and the systems of
criticism; and it must be enlarged to include the systems of
philosophical thought. In its most comprehensive reaches
the formula of modernity for both history and philology
must represent the blending of the great systems of civiliza-
tion; the Germanic, the Slavonic, the Celtic, the Greek, the
Semitic, and the Latin, these systems in different combinations
constitute the fundamental elements of the great European
nationalities. From the point of view that might be gained
from the just consideration of the formula of modernity, is not
modern philology also a profoundly great and worthy science?
16
MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION.
:
6
،
Modern philology is therefore significantly marked off from
classical philology; each has its peculiar historic domain, and
each has its peculiar set of phenomena, in the manner, how-
ever, of departments of one comprehensive science. The
schoolmaster in the Heart of Midlothian would of course con-
temptuously refuse to coördinate in dignities the philology of
the learned languages' and that of the modern Babylonian
jargons; and some of his descendants have hardly been dis-
suaded from adherence to a theory of dimorphism in philo-
logy, according to which the 'classical' conditions of
crystallization produce diamonds, while the pressure and
temperature of the modern periods bring the same substance
merely to the state of coal or of graphite.
9
The 'coördination in dignities' of these departments of
philology,-does that phrase suggest chapter upon chapter of
our 'unwritten history?' Aubrey De Vere once described
the tories as persons who would "uninvent printing and un-
discover America." Have we had experiences, individually
and as a society, with academic toryism that would fain have
undiscovered Sanskrit, and uninvented the Indo-European
Parent Speech? The disappearance of that toryism-for it
has disappeared-marks a universal change in the academic
attitude of mind toward philology in all its departments.
The modern philologian has had a struggle, and he has won;
the classical philologian has also won, for the cause has been a
common cause,-an appeal to the disinterested valuation of
the study of life and culture. Philological Congresses now
celebrate an achievement which not long ago seemed far in
the future, the advent of an era of academic toleration in
matters philological. All departments of philology are now
viewed educationally and officially' through the same color-
less medium, and allowed to group themselves in accordance
with the law of their affinities. Nothing could be more satis-
factory; and in the circumstances we can have no bitter quar-
rel with the past. Some suggested recollections of experiences
6
1
THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.
17
may, however, help one to realize past problems, and reveal
principles for future guidance.
The science of Indo-European philology in establishing
the sisterhood of the languages and systems of culture estab-
lished at once both its inherent unity as a comprehensive
science and its inherent division into a sisterhood of philologies.
It was the birth of new sciences and the rebirth of old sciences,
and a discovery of their interrelations. The traditions of the
schools had accordingly to undergo readjustments and to admit
innovations.
The schools were affected, even the secondary schools, by
such readjustments. For example, the youth of the land was
allured by a revision of the Latin and Greek paradigms
'incorporating the latest results in Comparative Grammar
so far as they may be of use to the beginner,' so the declara-
tion ran, and so far as they may lead to more scientific
academic training.' These phrases were most in vogue before
America could be said to have contributed much to this
high-sounding Comparative Grammar. But a judicious
ostentation of scanty knowledge may at times be impressive
and even stimulating; and Englishmen and Americans cannot
be said to find the art of it especially hard to acquire.
،
And what was to be done for English? Here one could
not, so directly, at least, introduce the latest results of Com-
parative Grammar,' and yet complacency in the old manner
was not possible in that newly invigorated atmosphere. Let
us teach English as Greek and Latin are taught, imitating the
manner as closely as possible, was the conclusion of such as
resolve difficulties by cutting the knot. The study of English
must be made 'hard' and 'disciplinary' they declared.
And so it was made "hard" by the employment of the most
foolish methods that ever brought ridicule upon any study.
The wisest observers saw in such revisions and experiments
the natural consequences of conditions that were transitional.
Indeed' tentative' and 'transitional' became even generally
18
MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION.
familiar as passwords that stopped all further challenge, how-
ever vigilant and stern the sentinel. Or, to change the figure,
if it be allowed, a habitual frame of mind seemed to be
superinduced-like that of the medieval anchorite-by the
contemplation of the 'transitory state' and the vision of better
things to come. Better things were to come, and they have
The philologies we are having in mind particularly
have survived in the most admirable manner a period of
fundamental changes and of thoroughgoing tests.
come.
The written history of these sciences during the last three
or four decades will be 'full of interest,'-as the parlance of
the profession has it; but its most fascinating chapters will be
occupied not so much with the independent career of each as
with an interplay of influences between these philologies, an
interchange of favors, and a readjustment of the 'balance of
power' between them. The truest philological insight will
be required to compose those chapters that may adequately
make manifest what classical philology bequeathed to mod-
ern philology, and what modern philology gave in return.
There will be a record of inheriting from the classical side the
technicalities of systematization and the product of the wisdom
of generations in grammar, rhetoric, palæography, archæology,
the arts, and criticism. Modern philology will be rewarded
for verification of technicalities and traditions by observation
of vernacular phenomena. The science of phonetics and the
study of living dialects will be described as bringing sheaves
to the richly stored old garners. The hegemony of literary
centers rising and falling in the midst of dialectal rivalry will
be illustrated for Greek by modern European parallels; and
the modern literatures will be acknowledged to give addi-
tional breath to the view that perceives that the canon of lit-
erary art-forms is not closed, that it probably never can be
closed. But we shall not pursue further the list of necessary
chapter-heads in that history. When one is concerned with
'unwritten history' every temptation to become coherent must
be resisted.
THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.
19
But let us keep the note of rejoicing sounding upon our
ears. Better things have come to pass, and they have come
quickly. They have cost the price of founding new depart-
ments, and of reinvigorating old departments of ideal pursuits
in a practical world where "alle thinges obeyen to moneye;
but we may rejoice that there has been an abundant and a
willing expenditure of the required coinage of devotion of
heart and personal sacrifice.
""
This Association has had such a goodly share in the experi-
ences of founding new learning that it may be appropriate to
illustrate the point. A short passage from Bishop Stubbs's
"Inaugural Lecture" of that series already mentioned will
serve the purpose. Referring to the Oxford of "sixteen years
ago," he says:
“At that time the professorship of Church History had been
founded, and was filled by one [Robert Hussey] who was
undoubtedly the founder of the modern study of that subject
in Oxford. I mean the study of the history of the Church as
a whole, not from points of controversy to supply weapons for
the discomfiture of opposing theologians, but as the life of the
Christian Church itself.... But the theological exigencies of
the time had so far narrowed the field of inquiry that it was
practically restricted to the first three centuries, or at the out-
side to the period embraced under the topics of the general
councils." And here are some of the hindrances: "The
attempt which he made to extend the range by introducing
the study of the Venerable Bede as a text-book was, as you
are aware, foiled by the impossibility of getting together a
lecture on a matter that was neither connected with the con-
troversies of the day, nor required to be known by candidates
for holy orders."1
Parallels to this procedure could be pointed out in many
departments of philology. The fetters of traditions that may
¹ Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Medieval and Modern History and
Kindred Subjects. Oxford, 1886, p. 7 f.
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MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION.
bind a science hand and foot, and the outcry of utility and
'practical wisdom' against disinterested scholarship, experi-
ence has made these things altogether familiar. But let the
concrete example be kept in mind for a moment longer. The
difficulty was to establish the true study of the Christian
Church, the Christian Church itself and for its own sake, in
the place of the study of controversy for the sake of contro-
versy. And the practical objection was that one could not
require of the candidates for holy orders, and consequently of
the priests of the English Church, a knowledge of the 'Eccle-
siastical History of the English People.'
(
But better things have come to pass also in Oxford. The
Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature'
elicited a discussion that led to the acknowledgment of the
extensive and varied character of the principal departments
of English philology; in due time the Modern Language
Tripos was set up; and, curiously, to return to our illustra-
tion, Bede's 'Ecclesiastical History of the English People'
came to be studied in class "with a view to the Theological
Final School."
The better things in which we rejoice to-day have, naturally,
the marks of their time upon them. Professor Oertel states
an important fact in the following admirable fashion: "The
growth of a science is reflected in the chief tendencies of its
important investigations; and these variations will, on closer
inspection, never appear capricious. For, though it might
seem that sciences of all intellectual manifestations are freest
and most independent in their development, closer scrutiny
will reveal the law that the new ideas which advance and
transform them do not arise spontaneously or stand isolated;
on the contrary, they will be found closely correlated to the
general intellectual drift and philosophical attitude of a given
period of history."¹
We are permitted, it is even enjoined upon us, therefore, to
look as deeply as into the very depths of the principles by
1 ¹ Hanns Oertel, Lectures on the Study of Language, New York, 1901, p. 4.
THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.
21
which civilization progresses, for the true vision of the coming
of the junggrammatiker; and it would be folly, obviously, to
deny what has been accomplished in that campaign of phon-
etic law and analogy against anomaly. It also has belonged
strictly to the "scientific tendencies" of the time, to equip the
laboratories of science with the materials required for direct
observation and inductive study. It has been a time for the
founding of Text Societies and of departmental Journals; it
has been the most flourishing period of the scientific mono-
graph known to history. A period of such strong character-
istics will, of course, be followed by certain reactions; new
balances will be restored, and new exaggerations will swing
far away from the old extremes. But the transition from one
period to another is never abrupt. We are still somewhat
under the dominion of Paul and Braune's Beiträge, whatever
we may say; the volumes of the Romania will continue to
be numbered consecutively; and Anglia, Englische Studien
and the Archiv may continue even into a future when they
will be read, because of his interest in things "sacred to
philology," by the contributor to the Saturday Review.¹ Syn-
chronization and attunement, in the terms of wireless teleg-
raphy, will secure the silent communication of decade with
decade in the career of a vital science.
www
It has been a period of specialization in scholarship; there
will be more specialization, much more, in the future. Pro-
fessor Shaler 2 observes that organic life is possible at only
one-half of the temperatures due to the earth's climatal con-
ditions, and that the quantity of matter "at any one time in
the vitalized state" is proportionately "insignificant," for
"all the living forms of to-day," he says, "if brought down
upon the surface of the earth . would form "a mere film"
on the sphere" an infinitesimal part of that mass which
can never feel the vital impulse." The highest forms of
¹Cf. Saturday Review, 23 Nov. 1901, p. 653.
2 Nathaniel S. Shaler, The Individual: a Study of Life and Death. New
York, 1901, p. 101.
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MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION.
knowledge will, we know, never be fostered within the whole
domain of human interests; true specialization will probably
never represent more than a proportionately small part of the
entire educational activity of human society at any one time.
But the future of philology, just as the future of the highest
forms all other sciences and departments of learning, will be
in the hands of the specialist, who would not get much in-
spiration from President Hadley's decision that "the scientific
specialist, so long as he remains a specialist, is something less
than a whole man." 1
(6
The context, as would be conjectured, mitigates the abrupt-
ness of this decision. President Hadley warmly and elo-
quently enough extols the specialist's pursuit of truth for
its "own sake," and sees in this pursuit one of the noblest
purposes of the University; but he would have us remember
that we are first and last American citizens, and that, there-
fore, the most important thing is not specialization in knowl-
edge, not scientific devotion to the promotion of truth for its
own sake, not the inspired insistence on non-commercial
values," not the laying of the foundations of virtue in wisdom,
in the accumulated wisdom of mankind, "but," he says, "the
most profoundly important work which falls to the lot of the
American citizen is his work of guiding the destinies of the
country." Therefore, he adds, "important as it is to endow
the research of those who are serving the public in non-re-
munerative lines, we cannot regard the scientific specialist as
the consummate flower of American education." To this one
may reply confidently, that to exalt an ephebic dilution of
knowledges to the supreme position is not profound patriot-
ism, and it is not sound philosophy.
•
The dice of Deity are always loaded' (ἀεὶ γὰρ εὖ πίπτουσιν
oi Aiòs kúßoi) said the Greek, and he was right. No mere
chance determines the success of true science; it never throws
ambs-ace. Surely knowledge, and culture, and conduct will
¹ The Education of the American Citizen, New York, 1902, p. 167.
THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.
23
more and more be established, and more and more generally
acknowledged and felt to be established, upon the work of
the exact scholar, the specialist, who silences all narrow ques-
tioning by the wide-reaching paradox of the poet's query:
How fail
To find, or, better, lose your question, in this quick
Reply which nature yields, ample and catholic?
The scientific specialist will contribute for conduct a code of
honesty, modesty, caution, and tolerance; on the other hand,
the new manner will more and more require that the culture-
subjects be brought under the law of accuracy: literature,
æsthetics, the arts, criticism, and religion, will more and more
become scientific. And thereby the duties and the joys of
life will be made deeper and broader, and they will be filled
with truer significance; citizenship, too, will then be no less a
profound duty, and it will surely be a profounder joy.
In thus alluding in one way and another to experiences by
which we have been brought to our present state of scientific and
academic citizenship, our phrases have passed gradually from
the department of retrospection to that of prophecy. Much
has been accomplished in the brief history of this Association,
but that much is the merest symbol of what remains to be
done and surely will be done. At no time has the philological
future promised such rich rewards as it now holds in its gener-
ous hands. In modern philology the recent past has had its
enthusiasms, and many of the keen delights and prompt rewards
of pioneering; these experiences, not unaccompanied by hard-
ships and beset by hindrances, have necessarily preceded the
fuller life of more complete cultivation. We are upon the eve
of that fuller life. Ampler provision for the future of modern
philology could hardly have been made in so brief a period.
No more inviting conditions for the profound study of prob-
lems in the history of the human mind could easily be imagined
than those which are now provided and which unite and inter-
lock the different philologies.
24
MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION.
National progress, too, requires the profound study of these
problems; for the philological sanity and strength of a nation
is the measure of its intellectual and spiritual vitality. Here
is high service for state and nation. No statesmanship is
higher than that to which the philologist may attain. He leg-
islates for the activities and behavior of mind and spirit; he
must therefore share in the "work of guiding the destinies of
the country."
""
The "precipices" of philology "show untrodden green;
the heights will never be overpeopled. "The consummate
flower of American education" may not often be found in the
library of the philologian; but let President Hadley be called
to testify that the preeminent specialist in Sanskrit, the scien-
tific specialist in grammar, the great and gentle Whitney,
conferred a glory,-if not the glory of the "consummate
flower,"-upon the dignity and honor of American citizenship.
Finally, for your patience has been taxed too much,—let
this be made an occasion for the renewal of our faith. Alex-
ander J. Ellis¹ observed that the Welsh word for 'twenty,'
ugain, has been curiously Anglicized by the Yorkshire shep-
herd, who, in counting his sheep, score by score, guided by the
etymologizing instinct, has confused the foreign ugain with
his native again; and, to make it altogether intelligible, he
has prefixed gin, meaning 'begin,' and so for 'twenty' has
obtained the expression gin again (gin ugeeŭn; ghin a gaen).
His score thus ends, as he understands it, "with an injunction
to begin again." This Association in its counting has arrived
at just twenty. Surely it is willing to adopt the simple shep-
herd's score-name, gin again, in the sense of a solemn injunc-
tion laid upon it to enrich its second score wisely by the
profitable experiences of its first, and devoutly by a renewed
and an increasingly disinterested dedication of its work and
influence to the cause of truth.
1"The Anglo-Cymric Score." Transactions of the Philological Society
(London), 1877–8–9, p. 316 f.

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