ABSTRACT
The comparative method is simply the historical method applied to the past. It consists in extending the reasoning which holds good for historical periods to epochs for which documents are absent. The value of the comparative method is obvious, but so also are the faults inherent in it. It rests entirely upon linguistic principles, and can expect but little help from allied scientific systems. The comparative method, although it envisages the most distant past, in reality bears only upon later developments, for its effect is to throw light upon the details of languages which are attested by documentary data. Modern scholars have discovered that Greek and Latin are allied to other groups of languages, which, beginning with Sanskrit, are spread over a considerable part of the old world, from India to the western extremities of Europe. The name Indo-European has been given to these languages for want of a better term.
