# Grimm's correspondences and Chesterton's demand for a reason

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH04.P011](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH04.P011/#char=209,275): "But Grimm's Law is far less intellectual than Grimm's Fairy Tales."

The joke opposes two enterprises associated with the name Grimm. But the linguistic enterprise is more definite than guessing an extinct people's alphabet: Grimm compares corresponding consonants across languages. His tables align Greek, Gothic and Old High German; one example places Latin *tres*, Gothic *þreis* and Old High German *drî* together. Such patterned correspondences are the object of the ‘law.’ The inspected English translation follows *Deutsche Grammatik*, I, pp. 580–592, in an 1893 edition; the formulation appeared in the second edition of 1822. [Grimm's text](https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/books/reader/5-j-grimm); [period reference account](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_International_Encyclop%C3%A6dia/Grimm%27s_Law).

Grimm's tables do not demonstrate that the changes were logically necessary. That leaves Chesterton's central philosophical distinction intact, while limiting his dismissal of the research: identifying a systematic relation need not claim to explain its ultimate cause. His comparison changes the criterion of intellectual success, from a defensible historical generalisation to knowledge of why reality must possess that form. The example illustrates his resistance to the word ‘law,’ rather than exposing a contradiction in Grimm's consonant tables.

## Sources

- [Jacob Grimm, Germanic Grammar, translated extract in A Reader in Nineteenth Century Historical Indo-European Linguistics](https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/books/reader/5-j-grimm), Text from Deutsche Grammatik (Gütersloh, 1893), I, pp. 580–592; consonant tables and example group IV
- [The New International Encyclopædia, ‘Grimm's Law’](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_International_Encyclop%C3%A6dia/Grimm%27s_Law), Opening definition and publication chronology; Wikisource transcription

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