All paradigmatic inflection requires unnecessary thought. In the clause if he was here, if fully expresses the subjunctive condition, and it is quite unnecessary to express it a second time by using another form of the verb to be. And so the people who are using the English language are deciding, for the subjunctive form is rapidly becoming obsolete with the long list of paradigmatic forms which have disappeared.
Every time the pronoun he, she, or it is used it is necessary to think of the sex of its antecedent, though in its use there is no reason why sex should be expressed, say, one time in ten thousand. If one pronoun non-expressive of gender were used instead of the three, with three gender adjectives, then in nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine cases the speaker would be relieved of the necessity of an unnecessary thought, and in the one case an adjective would fully express it. But when these inflections are greatly multiplied, as they are in the Indian languages, alike with the Greek and Latin, the speaker is compelled in the choice of a word to express his idea to think of a multiplicity of things which have no connection with that which he wishes to express.
A Ponka Indian, in saying that a man killed a rabbit, would have to say the man, he, one, animate, standing, in the nominative case, purposely killed, by shooting an arrow, the rabbit, he, the one, animate, sitting, in the objective case; for the form of a verb to kill would have to be selected, and the verb changes its form by inflection and incorporated particles to denote person, number, and gender as animate or inanimate, and gender as standing, sitting, or lying, and case; and the form of the verb would also express whether the killing was done accidentally or purposely, and whether it was by shooting or by some other process, and, if by shooting, whether by bow and arrow, or with a gun; and the form of the verb would in like manner have to express all of these things relating to the object; that is, the person, number, gender, and case of the object; and from the multiplicity of paradigmatic forms of the verb to kill this particular one would have to be selected. Perhaps one time in a million it would be the purpose to express all of these particulars, and in that case the Indian would have the whole expression in one compact word, but in the nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine cases all of these particulars would have to be thought of in the selection of the form of the verb, when no valuable purpose would be accomplished thereby.
In the development of the English, as well as the French and German, linguistic evolution has not been in vain.
Judged by these criteria, the English stands alone in the highest rank; but as a written language, in the way in which its alphabet is used, the English has but emerged from a barbaric condition.