Herbert Spencer

“ Objects, as the stars, may present themselves in small clusters, which are again more or less aggravated into clusters of clusters, in such manner that the individuals of each simple cluster are much closer together than are the simple clusters gathered into a compound cluster: in which case, the trait that unites groups of groups differs from the trait that unites groups, not in nature but only in amount. But this is not so either with the groups and sub-groups which we know have resulted from evolution, or with those which we here infer have resulted from evolution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The illustration furnished by languages will serve us once more. Some dialects of English are but little contrasted; others are strongly contrasted. The alliances of the several Scandinavian tongues with one another are different in degree. Dutch is much less distinct from German than Swedish is; while between Danish and Swedish there is so close a kinship that they might almost be regarded as widely-divergent dialects. Similarly on comparing the larger divisions, we see that the various languages of the Aryan stock have deviated from their original to very unlike distances. ”

“ In every case the endeavour to arrange the divergent products of evolution, is met by a difficulty like that which would meet the endeavour to classify the branches of a tree, into branches of the first, second, third, fourth, &c., orders—the difficulty, namely, that branches of intermediate degrees of composition exist. ”

“ And this wider divergence between the order of languages spoken in Northern Europe and the order of languages spoken in Southern Europe, answers to the longer time that has elapsed since their differentiation commenced. Further, these two orders of modern European languages, as well as Latin and Greek and certain extinct and spoken languages of the East, are shown to have traits in common which unite them into one great class known as Aryan languages; radically distinguished from the classes of languages spoken by the other main divisions of the human race. ”

“ If groups of organic forms have arisen by divergence and re-divergence; and if, while the groups have been developing from simple groups into compound groups, each group and sub-group has been giving origin to more complex forms of its own type ”

“ More decided approximations exist between the lower members of classes. In tracing down the Crustacea and the Arachnida from their more complex to their simpler forms, zoologists meet with difficulties: respecting some of these simpler forms, it becomes a question which class they belong to. ”