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IV. BOECKH ON THE RELATION OF ENCYCLOPAEDIA TO METHODOLOGY

[For Boeckh, philology means the reconstruction of the past, the ye-experiencing what has been known and felt by the human spirit; and science means the whole field of human knowledge.]

It would be a great error to regard an Encyclopaedia [or circle of learning] as such as a Methodology [or form of procedure], too. Whereas the encyclopaedia has a purely theoretical, scientific aim, the methodology has another; namely, to indicate how one is to acquire the theory. The encyclopaedia furnishes the general structure of the science; it blocks out the whole with great lines and strokes. But the person who wishes to study a science cannot possibly advance straightway upon the whole. Nor can the encyclopaedia, as it were, supplant a methodology by permitting one to study the separate disciplines in the encyclopaedic order. And, were it possible, still it would not be to the purpose. The encyclopaedia starts out with the most general conceptions; the student cannot start out with these he must take the very opposite course. Whereas the encyclopaedia derives and explains the particular from the general, the student must first of all come to know the particular as the basis and substance of ideas, and from the particular alone can he ascend to the general, if he is really to build up the science within himself, and not merely to take it at second hand. This follows from the conception of philology; for in historical investigation the general is the final result; but the encyclopaedia assumes and presents this result.

A person who wished first to acquire a general survey of the science, that is, to acquire the encyclopaedia, and then gradually to descend to details, would never attain to sound and exact knowledge, but would endlessly disperse his activities, and, knowing many things, would yet know little. Schelling, in his Methodology of Academical Study, remarks with great justice that, in history, to start out with a universal survey of the past is in the highest degree useless and injurious, since it gives one nothing but compartments for knowledge, without anything to fill them. In history, his advice is, first to study one period in detail, and from this gradually to broaden out in all directions. For philology, which coincides with history in its most general sense, a similar procedure is, in the light of methodology, the only right one. Everything in science is related; although science itself is endless, yet the whole system is pervaded with sympathies and correspondences. Let the student place himself where he will, - so long as he selects something significant and worth while, and he will be compelled to broaden out from this point of departure in every direction in order to reach a complete understanding of his subject. From each and every detail one is driven to consider the whole; the only thing that matters is that one go to work in the right way, with strength, intelligence, and avidity. Let one choose several different points of departure, working through from each of them to the whole, and one will grasp the whole all the more surely, and comprehend the wealth of detail all the more fully. Accordingly, by sinking deep into the particular, one most easily avoids the danger of becoming narrow, for, in consequence of

the interrelation of disciplines, investigation in any particular field forces the student into many others. On the other hand, if one from the outset strives only for encyclopaedic many-sidedness, gathering what is most general in all departments, the habit is formed of rapidly passing from one thing to another, and learning nothing from the bottom up.

The great philologists of Holland prescribe a chronological study of all antiquity, in such fashion as to journey through it as if on a country road, making so many miles a daya fashion of traveling that is not very instructive. This linear procedure does not take one to the heart of things; and in point of fact the Dutch have been superficial in collecting their materials. The only correct method is the cyclic, where one refers everything back to a central point, and from this crosses in all directions to the periphery. In this way the faculty is developed of seizing whatever one does seize upon, with vigor and in earnest; the judgment is exercised to better advantage, because one pauses longer on the individual object; and more talent is developed than by that other, general study, through which, on the contrary, there are engendered the mere opinion of knowledge and a fatal facility.

But though encyclopaedia and methodology are absolutely distinct, it is nevertheless very desirable to unite them; for if we have praised the method of intensive study, it is by no means in the sense that one could merely choose the better alternative, and not concern oneself with the other. The result of that would indeed be a detestable one-sidedness, a quality which must be

driven out in the early stages; for the habit is too easily formed, and out of it comes a self-exaltation that leads every one to consider his own subject of the utmost importance, and everything else of no value. Accordingly, one must make use of the general survey derived from the encyclopaedia as a corrective for intense specialization, acquiring the broad outlook in connection with special study, and beside it. To this end the encyclopaedia must itself furnish a methodical procedure.1

V. METHODS AND AIMS IN THE STUDY OF
LITERATURE: OPINIONS FROM TWO POETS

In the study of literature, as in all other study, the fundamental processes are two- observation and comparison. The need of observation in the study of poetry may be inferred from the utterances of Wordsworth on his habit of production :

'I have at all times endeavored to look steadily at my subject; consequently, there is, I hope, in these poems little falsehood of description, and my ideas are expressed in language fitted to their respective importance. Something must have been gained by this practice, as it is friendly to one property of all good poetry, namely, good sense.' 2

Again, in censuring certain literature of an inferior sort, Wordsworth declares :

'The poetry of the period intervening between the publication of the Paradise Lost and the Seasons . .

1 Boeckh, Encyclopädie, pp. 46–48.

2 Nowell Smith, Wordsworth's Literary Criticism, p. 18.

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scarcely presents a familiar [image] from which it can be inferred that the eye of the poet had been steadily fixed upon his subject. . . . A blind man, in the habit of attending accurately to descriptions casually dropped from the lips of those around him, might easily depict these appearances with more truth.'

1

If the eye of the poet must be steadily fixed upon his subject, the eye of the student must be steadily fixed upon the form of the poem as a whole, then upon each detail of it, and again upon the synthesis of all the parts. His first duty is to see the details and the whole precisely as they are; in other words, his first duty is exact observation.

Next, he must compare:

'At school [Christ's Hospital],' says Coleridge, 'I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time a very severe, master [thè Reverend James Bowyer]. He early molded my taste to the preference of Demosthenes to Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil, and again of Virgil to Ovid. He habituated me to compare Lucretius, (in such extracts as I then read) Terence, and, above all, the chaster poems of Catullus, not only with the Roman poets of the so-called silver and brazen ages, but with even those of the Augustan era; and on grounds of plain sense and universal logic to see and assert the superiority of the former in the truth and nativeness both of their thoughts and diction. At the same time that we were studying the Greek Tragic Poets, he made us read Shakespeare and Milton as lessons; and they were the

1 Nowell Smith, Wordsworth's Literary Criticism, p. 185.

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