And that the same genitive forms are not used _throughout_ any language is no real objection to this theory. If we say _dictionis_, _lectionis_, but _musæ_, _rosæ_; if we say _Mannes_, _Hauses_, but _Blume_, _Rose_, the only reason of these varieties is that the languages from which these inflexions are derived possessed more than one word meaning ‘of,’ and that one of these words was attached to a certain series of nouns, another word to another series. This is the explanation which mere common sense would give of the origin of inflexions in language, and further research, had we time to examine the history of language more elaborately, would show that it was _fundamentally_ the right explanation. The only correction which we should have to make on this first and crude theory is explained a little further on. Thus we see in this third stage of language a process very closely analogous to the second. The second stage gave us the auxiliary words, which have decayed so to say, out of the class of significant words. The third stage gives us the auxiliary words joined on to the significant ones, and in their turn decaying to become mere inflexions. I have called this growth of inflexions the _third_ stage. It is the _third great_ stage in the formation of language, and is the only other stage distinguishable when we are examining what is called an inflected language. And all the languages the general reader is likely to know belong to this class. But when we turn to a wider study of the various tongues in use among mankind we find that this process of forming inflexions is a very slow one, that it, in its turn, has gone through many stages. And it is, in fact, the different stages through which a language has passed on its road to the formation of inflexions which settles the class in which it is to be placed among the various tongues spoken by mankind.