56 SYSTEMS OF CONSANGriNITY AXD AFFINITY 



families.' It Avill be sufficient to say that the descriptive system separates these 

 families and the Uralian from all the other families of mankind by a clearly defined 

 line ; and that it seems to point to a nearer connection among them than either 

 has with any other family of man. 



» " It is impossible to mistake a Semitic language, and what is more important, it is impossible to 

 imagine an Aryan language derived from a Semitic, or a Semitic from an Aryan language. The gram, 

 matical framework is totally distinct in these two families of speech. This does not preclude, however, 

 the possibility that both are divergent streams of the same source; and the comparisons that have beeo 

 instituted between the Semitic roots, reduced to their simplest form, and the roots of the Aryan lan- 

 guages, have made it more than probable that the material elements with which both started, were ori- 

 ginally the same." — Muller^s Science of Language, Lee. viii. p. 282. 



