classifiable under any of the present families; thus the decrease in the
total by reason of consolidation may be compensated by a corresponding
increase through discovery. It may even be possible that some of the
similarities used in combining languages into families may, on further
study, prove to be adventitious, and the number may be increased
thereby. To which side the numerical balance will fall remains for the
future to decide.

As stated above, all the families occupy the same basis of dissimilarity
from one another--i.e., none of them are related--and consequently no
two of them are either more or less alike than any other two, except
in so far as mere coincidences and borrowed material may be said to
constitute likeness and relationship. Coincidences in the nature of
superficial word resemblances are common in all languages of the world.
No matter how widely separated geographically two families of languages
may be, no matter how unlike their vocabularies, how distinct their
origin, some words may always be found which appear upon superficial
examination to indicate relationship. There is not a single Indian
linguistic family, for instance, which does not contain words similar
in sound, and more rarely similar in both sound and meaning, to words
in English, Chinese, Hebrew, and other languages. Not only do such
resemblances exist, but they have been discovered and pointed out, not
as mere adventitious similarities, but as proof of genetic relationship.
Borrowed linguistic material also appears in every family, tempting the
unwary investigator into making false analogies and drawing erroneous
conclusions. Neither coincidences nor borrowed material, however, can be
properly regarded as evidence of cognation.

While occupying the same plane of genetic dissimilarity, the families
are by no means alike as regards either the extent of territory