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Contributions Toward A History Of Arabico Gothic Culture
Contributions Toward A History Of Arabico Gothic Culture Author:Leo Wiener Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION My discovery of the late date of the Gothic Bible is fraught with important consequences, the whole bearing of which upon the civilization of the... more » Middle Ages I am as yet able to discuss only in detached investigations. I have no theory to offer or to defend,— I merely wish to ascertain the facts through the maze of falsehoods propagated by the mediaeval writers and their modern congeners, the comparative philologists.1 In time I shall write a chapter on the history of human follies, in which I shall pass in review the various fashions in philology from their inception to the creation of "stars" of diminutive magnitude with which to show up the cosmic darkness of the philologic brain. At present I am not concerned with philology, but with history. If I adduce etymologies, I do so as part of the documentary evidence and in support of facts ascertained independently of the philologic method. It would be presumption in me to assume that I have always struck the right solution. My task is accomplished if I compel the world of scholars to take into consideration the influence of Arabico- Gothic culture upon the history of Europe. i Naturally, there are among them also serious and sympathetic men, but their number is as yet very small. I wish to reccommend Sigmund Feist's Indogermamn und Germanen, Halle a S. 1914, to every young philologist who is not under the spell of the philological madness. In spite of the innumerable blunders contained in Feist's work, due to his inability to tear himself completely away from the Brugmann school, this book gives the sanest view on Indo-Europeanism and Proto-Germanism, two arbitrary divisions, which have created havoc with facts and truth. All honor to men like Feist who have the courage to dissent! The present book brings but ...« less