THE ARGUMENTS FROM CLASSIFICATION. 445 



there are divergences of structure : there are some unlike- 

 nesses of idiom; some unlikenesses in the ways of modifying 

 the meanings of verbs; and considerable unlikenesses in the 

 uses of genders. But these unlikenesses are not sufficient 

 to hide a general community of organization. A greater con- 

 trast of structure exists between these modern languages of 

 Western Europe, and the classic languages. Differentiation 

 into abstract and concrete elements, which is shown by the 

 substitution of auxiliary words for inflections, has produced 

 a higher specialization, distinguishing these languages as a 

 group from the older languages. ^Nevertheless, both the 

 ancient and modern languages of Europe, together with some 

 Eastern languages derived from the same original, have, 

 under all their differences of organization, a fundamental like- 

 ness; since in all of them words are formed by such a coal- 

 escence and integration of roots as destroys the independent 

 meanings of the roots. These Aryan languages, and others 

 which have the amalgamate character, are united by it into a 

 class distinguished from the aptotic and agglutinate lan- 

 guages ; in which the roots are either not united at all, or so 

 incompletely united that one of them still retains its inde- 

 pendent meaning. And philologists find that these radical 

 traits which severally determine the grammatical forms, or 

 modes of combining ideas, characterize the primary divisions 

 among languages. 



So that among languages, where we know that evolution 

 has been going on, the greatest groups are marked off from 

 one another by the strongest structural contrasts ; and as the 

 like holds among groups of organisms, there results a further 

 reason for inferring that these have been evolved. 



§ 125. There is 3'et another parallelism of like meaning. 

 We saw (§ 101) that the successively-subordinate groups — 

 classes, orders, genera, and species — into which zoologists and 

 botanists segregate animals and plants, have not, in reality, 

 those definite values conventionally given to them. There 



