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Excerpt from The Primitive Family in Its Origin and Development
The fitness of this method is explained by the special character of the subject. The sound-symbols which designate given objects were for the most part quite arbitrarily chosen, and it is therefore improbable that two distinct peoples should ever have chosen the same symbol for the same object. Whenever, therefore, we find such agreement, we may almost certainly infer, either that one people has borrowed the word from the other, or that both peoples are derived from one and the same primitive stock. A careful analysis will establish the store of words which were used by this primitive stock. By means of these words we learn what ideas were common to the race, or, in other words, what was their state of civilization.
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