194 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



into the bird as a " chance," if he does not peradventure 

 regard it as predestined. To us, who trace the bird 

 backwards to its origin, it seems the result of mechanical 

 causes. 



Let us now recapitulate what we have gained by 

 the doctrine of Descent, based on the theory of selec- 

 tion ; it is the knowledge of the connection of organisms 

 as consanguineous beings. The greater the accordance 

 of internal and external characteristics, the closer is the 

 kinship. The further we trace the pedigree to its origin, 

 the fewer become the characters persisting to these 

 roots, the more do these characters reveal themselves as 

 acquisitions in the lapse of time. It is by eliminating 

 these acquisitions and restricting the inherited characters 

 more and more as we feel our way backward, that we 

 are enabled to reconstruct the pedigrees of the various 

 groups. 



We do the very thing which in linguistic inquiry is 

 deemed extremely natural and scientific. The ideas and 

 words common to the individuals of a linguistic family 

 are the inheritance from the intellectual and linguistic 

 property of the original people, from which the pedigree 

 of the family has ramified. This so-called " chance " pre- 

 vailed in the formation of the derived languages neither 

 more nor less than in the evolution of organisms from their 

 original forms. 



