Note 2 — Chapter I

It is perhaps desirable to explain from the first that by the words “difference of kind,” as used in the above paragraph and elsewhere throughout this treatise, I mean difference of origin. This is the only real distinction that can be drawn between the terms “difference of kind” and “difference of degree;” and I should scarcely have deemed it worth while to give the definition, had it not been for the confused manner in which the terms are used by some writers—e.g. Professor Sayce, who says, while speaking of the development of languages from a common source, “differences of degree become in time differences of kind” (Introduction to the Science of Language, ii. 309).