On the Development of Philology

'Now that the defining of the philological activity has removed the one-sided ideas of it, the sole remaining task is to show how these ideas have arisen. They are easily accounted for through the division into separate elements of the definition just now established. Since the most usual vehicle of knowledge--rather, the pure reproduction of all knowledge--is speech, the first task of philology is to fathom the mystery of speech. The deepest and most illimitable human undertaking is the comprehension of speech in its freedom and necessity, and whoever has such knowledge has come to know all human knowledge.'

--August Boeckh, On Interpretation and Criticism, p. 10 (tr. John Paul Pritchard)

Discuss.