Similarly, when we are told that “what we really mean when we say that one language is more advanced than another, is that it is better adapted to express thought,” we are again being shunted from the question. The question is whether one type of language-structure _develops_ into another: not whether, when developed, it is “_more advanced_” than another in the sense of being “better adapted to express thought.” This it may or may not be; but in either case the question of its efficiency as a language has no necessary connection with the question of its development as a language. For it may very well be that from the same origin two or more lines of development may occur in different directions. It is doubtless perfectly true, as Professor Sayce says, that modern Chinese is a higher product of evolution than ancient Chinese along the line of isolating condensation; but this is no proof that the agglutinative languages did not start from an isolating type, and thereafter proceed on a different line of development in accordance with their different “genius,” or method of growth. Naturalists entertain no doubt that two different types of morphological structure, _b_ and [Greek: b], are both descended from a common parent form B, even though _b_ has “advanced” in one line of change and [Greek: b] in another, so that both are now equally efficient from a morphological point of view. Why, then, should a philologist dispute genetic relationship in what appears to be a precisely analogous case, on the sole ground that _b_ is, to his thinking, no less psychologically efficient a language than [Greek: b]? Lastly, as I have before indicated, it appears to me impossible to dispute that every agglutinative language, in whatever measure it can be proved to be agglutinative, in that measure is thereby proved to have been derived from a language less agglutinative, and therefore more isolating. And, similarly, in whatever measure an inflective language can be proved to inflect its agglutinated words, in that measure is it thereby proved to have been derived from a language less inflective, or a language whose agglutinations had not yet undergone so much of the inflective modification. On the other hand, as there is no necessary reason why an isolating language should develop into an agglutinative, or an agglutinative into an inflectional, it may very well be that the higher evolution of isolating tongues has proceeded collaterally with that of agglutinative, while the higher evolution of agglutinative has proceeded collaterally with that of inflectional. If this were so, both the schools of philology which we are considering would be equally right, and equally wrong: each would represent a different side of the same truth.