Note 2 — HOW ENGLISH DIFFERS FROM OTHER LANGUAGES.

For contrary to apparently reasonable assumption, the history of language shows that minute and highly wrought grammatical forms are the signs, or at least the accompaniments, not of advanced civilization and high culture, but of a rude and savage condition of society. The further we penetrate the obscure of antiquity, the more grammar we find. The oldest language known to us, the Sanskrit, is the most complex and elaborate in its grammar; the youngest, English, is, to all intents and purposes, grammarless; and Sanskrit grammar is at least four thousand years old. My readers will now see why it was that I said the minute forms and complicated grammatical relations of the Greek language are not the signs of a high development of language, but were relics of barbarism.—Richard Grant White.