_a._ The _numerals_ of the three great divisions are alike.
_b._ A large per-centage of the names of the commoner objects are alike.
_c._ The signs of _case_ in nouns, and of _person_ in verbs, are alike.
So wide has been the geographical extent of the populations speaking languages thus connected (languages which separated from the common mother-tongue subsequent to the evolution of both the cases of nouns and the persons of verbs), that the literary language of India belongs to the class in question. Hence, when this fact became known, and when India passed for the _eastern_ and Germany for the _western_ extremity of the great area of this great tongue, the term _Indo-Germanic_ became current.
But its currency was of no long duration. Dr. Prichard showed that the Keltic tongues had Indo-Germanic numerals, a certain per-centage of Indo-Germanic names for the commoner objects, and Indo-Germanic personal terminations of verbs. Since then, the Keltic has been considered as a fixed language, with a definite place in the classification of the philologist; and the term _Indo-European_[26], expressive of the class to which, along with the Sarmatian, the Gothic, and the Classical tongues of Greece and Italy, it belongs, has superseded the original compound _Indo-Germanic_.
We now know what is meant by _Indo-European_; a term of, at least, equal generality with the term _Turanian_.
_a._ In _physical conformation_ the Indo-Europeans are a branch of the higher division so improperly and inconveniently called _Caucasian_.
_b._ In _language_ they are the highest group hitherto recognized, a group subordinate to none other.
And we have also improved our measure of the isolation of the--
III. _Basques._--Anatomically these are _Caucasian_ so-called. Philologically, they are the only members of the group to which they belong, and that group is the highest recognized. They are like a species in natural history, which is the only one of its genus, the genus being the only one of its order, and the order being so indeterminate as to have no higher class to which it is subordinate.
IV. _The Albanians_ are in the same predicament.
This is the state of classification which pre-eminently inspires us with the ambition of making higher groups; higher groups in _philology_, since in _anatomy_ we have them ready-made--_i. e._ expressed by the terms Mongolian and Caucasian. The school which has made the most notable efforts in this way is the Scandinavian. In England it is, perhaps, better appreciated than in Germany, and in Germany better than in France.