5& SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY 



families. 1 It will be sufficient to say that the descriptive system separates these 

 families and the Uralian from all the other families of mankind by a clearly defined 

 line ; and that it seems to point to a nearer connection among them than either 

 has with any other family of man. 



1 " It is impossible to mistake a Semitic language, and what is more important, it is impossible to 

 imagine an Aryan language derived from a Semitic, or a Semitic from an Aryan language. The gram- 

 matical framework is totally distinct in these two families of speech. This does not preclude, however, 

 the possibility that both are divergent streams of the same source; and the comparisons that have been 

 instituted between the Semitic roots, reduced to their simplest form, and the roots of the Aryan lan- 

 guages, have made it more than probable that the material elements with which both started, were ori- 

 ginally the same." Muller's Science of Language, Lee. viii. p. 282. 



