254 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN, 



no proof that the agglutinative languages did not start from 

 an isolating type, and thereafter proceed on a different line 

 of development in accordance with their different "genius," 

 or method of growth. Naturalists entertain no doubt that 

 two different types of morphological structure, b and j3, are 

 both descended from a common parent form B, even though 

 b has "advanced" in one line of change and /3 in another, so 

 that both are now equally efficient from a morphological 

 point of view. Why, then, should a philologist dispute genetic 

 relationship in what appears to be a precisely analogous case, 

 on the sole ground that b is, to his thinking, no less psycho- 

 logically efficient a language than /3 ? 



Lastly, as I have before indicated, it appears to me 

 impossible to dispute that every agglutinative language, in 

 whatever measure it can be proved to be agglutinative, in 

 that measure is thereby proved to have been derived from a 

 language less agglutinative, and therefore more isolating. 

 And, similarly, in whatever measure an inflective language 

 can be proved to inflect its agglutinated words, in that 

 measure is it thereby proved to have been derived from a 

 language less inflective, or a language whose agglutinations 

 had not yet undergone so much of the inflective modification. 



On the other hand, as there is no necessary reason why an 

 isolating language should develop into an agglutinative, or an 

 agglutinative into an inflectional, it may very well be that the 

 higher evolution of isolating tongues has proceeded collaterally 

 with that of agglutinative, while the higher evolution of agglu- 

 tinative has proceeded collaterally with that of inflectional. 

 If this were so, both the schools of philology which we are 

 considering would be equally right, and equally wrong : each 

 would represent a different side of the same truth. 



Thus it appears to me that, so far as the purposes of the 

 present treatise are concerned, we may neglect the question 

 of phylogenesis as between these three orders of languages. 

 For, so long as it is on all hands agreed that the principles 

 of evolution are universally concerned in the genesis of every 

 language, it will make no difference to my future argument 



