Schleicher was wrong in defining a language to be an organism in the sense in which a living being is an organism.
In this probably all recent philologists admit that Schleicher went too far.
Schleicher takes the same view in his masterly work, Die Deutsche Sprache.
The views of Schleicher were to some extent injurious to the proper methods of linguistic study.
I have been led to the wish by reading an article by your Professor Whitney versus Schleicher.
