250 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN, 



cumbersome variety, as, for example, " House-I-it-built ; " 

 " They-have-them-their-books." 



Again, the Analytic order is merely a subdivision of the 

 inflectional, and represents a later stage of it. " One by one 

 the grammatical relations implied in an inflectional compound 

 are brought out into full relief, and provided with special 

 forms in which to be expressed." Thus, in English, for 

 example, inflections have largely given place to the use of 

 " auxiliary " words, whereby most of the advantages of refined 

 distinction are retained, while the machinery of expression is 

 considerably simplified. 



So that, on the whole, we may classify the Language- 

 kingdom thus : — 



Order I. Isolating. 



Order II. Agglutinative : (Sub-orders, Polysynthetic and 

 Incorporating). 



Order III. Inflectional : (Sub-order, Analytic). 



In the opinion of some philologists, however, the Polysyn- 

 thetic type deserves to be regarded, not as a sub-order of the 

 Agglutinative, but as itself independent of all the other three, 

 and therefore constituting a fourth order. Thus, on the one 

 hand, we have it said that polysynthetic languages must 

 " simply be placed last in the ascending order of the 

 agglutinating series ; " * while, on the other hand, it is said, 

 " the conception of the sentence that underlies the polysyn- 

 thetic dialects is the precise converse of that which underlies 

 the isolating or the agglutinative types ; the several ideas 

 into which the sentence may be analyzed, instead of being 

 made equal or independent, are combined, like a piece of 

 mosaic, into a single whole." t 



These two representative quotations may serve to show 

 how accentuated is the difference of teaching with regard to 

 this particular group of languages. As a mere matter of 

 classification, of course, the question would not be of any 

 importance for us ; but as the question of classification 



• Hovelacque, loc. cit,, p. 130. 

 t Sayce, Introduction^ dfc^ i. 1 26. 



