Nevertheless, with all the linguistic learning which they undoubtedly possess, neither Humboldt nor the other members of his distinguished school fall properly within the scope of this Memoir. With all of them, even those who were themselves accomplished linguists, the knowledge of languages, (and especially of their vocabularies), is a subordinate object. They have never proposed the study to themselves, for its own sake, but only as an instrument of philosophical inquiry. It might almost be said, indeed, that by the reaction which this school has created against the old system of etymological, and in favour of the structural, comparison of languages, a positive discouragement has been given to the exact or extensive study of their vocabularies. Philologers, as a class, have a decided disposition to look down upon, and even to depreciate, the pursuit of linguists. With the former, the knowledge of the words of a language is a very minor consideration in comparison with its inflexions, and still more its laws of transposition (Lautverschiebung); Professor Schott of Berlin plainly avows that “a limited knowledge of languages is sufficient for settling the general questions as to their common origin;”[160] and beyond a catalogue of a certain number of words for the purpose of a comparative vocabulary, there is a manifest tendency on the part of many, to regard all further concern about the words of a language as old-fashioned and puerile. It it some consolation to the admirers of the old school to know, that, from time to time, learned philologers have been roughly taken to task for the presumption with which they have theorized about languages of whose vocabulary they are ignorant; and it is difficult not to regard the unsparing and often very amusing exposures of Professor Schott’s blunders which occur in the long controversy that he has had with Boehtlingk, Mr. Caldwell’s recent strictures[161] upon the Indian learning of Professor Max Müller, or Stanislaus Julien’s still fiercer onslaught on M. Panthier, in the _Journal Asiatique_,[162] as a sort of retributive offering to the offended Genius of neglected Etymology. * * * * * I shall not delay upon the Biblical linguists of Germany as Hug, Jahn, Schott, Windischmann, Vullers, &c., among Catholics, or the rival schools of Rosenmüller, Tholuck, Ewald, Gesenius, Fürst, Beer, De Lagarde, &c. Extensive[163] as is the range of the attainments of these distinguished men in the languages of the Bible, and their literature, this accomplishment has now become so universal among German Biblical scholars, that it has almost ceased to be regarded as a title to distinction. Its very masters are lost in the crowd of eminent men who have grown up on all sides around him. * * * * *