becoming inflexional. It is not always easy to say what the hindering causes have been in any individual case; but perhaps, if we look at the difference between the last two classes of language, we can get some idea of what they might be for the class of agglutinative languages as a whole. An inflexional language has quite lost the memory of the real meaning of its inflexions--or at least the real reason of them. We could give no reason why we should not use _bought_ in the place of _buy_, _art_ in the place of _am_, _whom_ in the place of _who_--no other reason save that we have always been taught to use the words in the position they take in our speech. But there was once a time when the changes only existed in the form of _additions_ having a distinct meaning. Even in agglutinative languages these additions have a distinct meaning _as_ additions, or, in other words, if we were using an agglutinative language we should be always able to distinguish the addition from the root, and so should understand the precise effect of the former in modifying the latter. To understand the use of words in an agglutinative language, therefore, a great deal less of tradition and memory would be required than are wanted to preserve an inflected language. This really is the same as saying that for the inflected language we must have a much more constant use; and this again implies a greater intellectual life, a closer bond of union among the people who speak it, than exists among those who speak agglutinative languages.