Dittenberger's research, as novel in Germany as Campbell's in Britain, provoked an immediate and sarcastic retort from A. Frederking in an article bearing the same title. In his view the stylistic method was a dangerous weapon requiring proper application, if it was to be of any service, and this was exactly what it had not received. It is by no means a foregone conclusion, he remarked, that an author's language has such a symmetrical development and is in every single work so perfectly in harmony with this development at its particular stage as Dittenberger was inclined to assume. It changes not only in accordance with the different period of the composition of individual works, but also within the same period according to the content and form of the work, the degree of logical and artistic perfection, and the character of the persons taking part in the dialogue, as well as for various other reasons which may conveniently be collected under the one name of ‘chance’.

This applies especially to particles, he said; if a particle is not used in some work, above all a small one, nothing at all can be deduced from its absence; nor can anything be gathered about the frequency of a particle in general from its more or less frequent occurrence in a single work; the opportunity for using it could be either entirely lacking or seldom offered. Frederking proceeded to illustrate his argument from some of the observations made by his predecessor.