But a single consideration sweeps away the entire argument as though it were a cobweb.

All the languages through which this verbal likeness runs are derived directly or indirectly from one common stock; and the common every-day words, "nine" and "new," have been transmitted from that primitive tongue into all these linguistic offspring with but little change.

Not only are the two words in question akin in each individual language, but _they are akin in all the languages_.

Hence all these resemblances reduce to a single resemblance, or perhaps identity, that between the Aryan words for "nine" and "new." This was probably an accidental resemblance, no more significant than any one of the scores of other similar cases occurring in every language.

If there were any further evidence of the former existence of an Aryan octonary scale, the coincidence would possess a certain degree of significance; but not a shred has ever been produced which is worthy of consideration.