PEDIGREE OF VERTEBRATE ANIMALS. 249 



conjecture was tested. The further an inquirer has 

 carried his survey of the conditions of organization in 

 any of the larger groups, the less will he be able to 

 divest himself of the genealogical idea in his every act 

 and thought. 



All this is so self-evident, that one would scarcely sup- 

 pose that the use of this method could have been made 

 a subject of reproach to the doctrine of Descent. Never- 

 theless, it frequently occurs, and the champions of the 

 doctrine of Descent are blamed for often speaking of 

 mere probabilities, forgetting that even in cases in which 

 the probability ultimately proves false, the refuted hy- 

 pothesis has led to progress. Of this the science of 

 language has recently borne testimony. It is well known 

 that linguistic comparison within the family of Indo- 

 'Germanic tongues suggested the reconstruction of the 

 primitive language which formed their common basis. 

 Johannes Schmidt 74 now proves that the fundamental 

 forms disclosed may have originated at widely different 

 periods, and hence that the primitive language, regarded 

 as a whole, is a scientific fiction. Nevertheless, inquiry 

 was essentially facilitated by this fiction, and with it 

 was intimately connected the formation of a pedigree of 

 the Indo-Germanic linguistic family, as a hypothesis 

 supported by many indications. A bifurcation was 

 assumed into a South European language, with Greek, 

 Italian, and Celtic ramifications, and another language, 

 from a second division of which proceeded the funda- 

 mental language of North Europe and the Aryan fun- 

 damental language. Although Johannes Schmidt has 

 demonstrated that this pedigree is false, as the existence 

 of Slave - Lettish shows the impossibility of the first 



