Page:Nature and Origin of the Noun Genders of the Indo-European Languages.djvu/18

8 to be susceptible, fertile, delicate, passive, attractive, became feminine. Jacob Grimm followed in this track in the third volume of his German Grammar. He treats the question of the origin of noun genders in the Indo-European languages at great length—some two hundred and fifty pages—and with all his incomparable skill and grace in presentation. He believes with Adelung that grammatical gender had its origin in the creative imagination of the primitive folk. He thinks that in that remote pro-ethnic period, at a time when imagination, not reason, was the predominant faculty, man individualized and personified every possible lifeless object of the external world, and assigned to it masculine or feminine traits. Just as Adelung, Grimm also believes that whatever gave the impression of the larger, stronger, more rough, more active, was looked upon as masculine; on the contrary, whatever was felt to be smaller, finer, more gentle, soft, tender, or still, was made feminine. He tries to prove this by many special cases, and investigates with poetic spirit the characteristics of natural objects. One says die hand, haec manus, ἡ χείρ, but der fuss, hīc pēs, ὁ πούς, because the hand is thought of as the smaller, daintier, the foot as larger and stronger. All