ABSTRACT
86. (44) We have seen in the preceding investigations that the downhill theory does not hold good for languages in historic times; on the contrary, languages seem to be on the whole constantly progressive, not only with regard to the development of their vocabulary, where nobody ever denied it, but also in grammar, where philologists of the old school were able to see only decay and retrogression. And besides establishing this progressive tendency, we have also incidentally seen some at least of the often unexpected ways which lead languages to develop new grammatical forms and expressions. We are thus prepared to enter into a criticism of that theory concerning the prehistoric development of Arian speech which has met with greatest favour among philologists, and which has been expounded with greatest precision and consistency by Schleicher. The theory, as will be remembered, was this: an originally isolating language, consisting of formless roots, passed through an agglutinating stage, in which formal elements had been developed, although these and the roots were mutually independent, to the third and highest stage found in flexional languages, in which formal elements penetrated the roots and made inseparable unities with them.
