THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 65 



differ also fundamentally in their structure. One 

 great group, the isolative, developed a few monosyl- 

 labic words and then made its language by grouping 

 these words in an endless variety of relations. An- 

 other, the agglutinative, created its language by fus- 

 ing together into single words of great length several 

 shorter words, thus making a language rich in long 

 words. Another group developed its language by 

 adding to its primitive words certain prefixes and 

 endings which denoted relations, giving the inflec- 

 tional languages. Whether these types of language 

 ever really came from a common center, or whether 

 different groups of primitive men each independ- 

 ently created a language for itself, there is no good 

 evidence for deciding. If they ever were connected, 

 certainly all trace of any connection was lost long 

 ago. The differences between the structure of the 

 different languages and the absolute lack of anything 

 in common among them would seem to suggest that 

 they have been independently acquired. Such a con- 

 clusion is the most natural one possible. In the 

 study of organic evolution biologists have difficulty 

 in accounting for similar results appearing in uncon- 

 nected lines. It has always been a puzzle, for ex- 

 ample, why the vertebrate and the squid should de- 

 velop eyes with such a remarkable similarity, since it 

 is evident that heredity could not explain this like- 

 ness, the vertebrate and the squid not being in the 

 same line of inheritance. But that all races of man 

 should have developed a language offers no mystery 

 at all, since this has not been developed by the proc- 

 esses of organic inheritance, but developed by intel- 

 ligence and has been handed on by social inheritance. 

 Assuming that language has thus had its origin more 



