Thus it appears to me that, so far as the purposes of the present treatise are concerned, we may neglect the question of phylogenesis as between these three orders of languages. For, so long as it is on all hands agreed that the principles of evolution are universally concerned in the genesis of every language, it will make no difference to my future argument whether these principles have obtained in one or in more lines of development. There can be no reasonable doubt that in some greater or less degree the three orders are connected: in what precise degree this connection obtains is doubtless a question of high importance to the science of philology: it is of scarcely any importance to the problems which we shall presently have to consider. But the issue touching the relation between the polysynthetic and other types of language is of more importance for us, inasmuch as it involves the question whether or not we have here to do with the most primitive type of language. In the opinion of some philologists, “these polysynthetic languages are an interesting survival of the early condition of language everywhere, and are but a fresh proof that America is in truth ‘the new world:’ primitive forms of speech that have elsewhere perished long ago still survive there, like the armadillo, to bear record of a bygone past.”[156] On the other hand, it is with equal certainty affirmed that “polysynthesis is not a primitive feature, but an expansion, or, if you will, a second phase of agglutination.”[157] Of course in dealing with this issue I can only do so as an amateur, quite destitute of authority in matters pertaining to philology; but the points on which I am about to speak have reference to principles so general, that in trying them the lay mind may not be without its uses in the jury-box. Moreover, philologists themselves are at present so ill-informed touching the facts of polysynthetic language, that there is less presumption here than elsewhere in any outsider offering his opinion upon the matters in dispute.[158] It is however, undesirable to occupy space with any tedious rehearsal of the facts on which, after reading the more important literature of the subject, my judgment is based. For what it is worth, this judgment is as follows.