Page:Nature and Origin of the Noun Genders of the Indo-European Languages.djvu/22

12 here to but one proof. Έπίκοινα (epicoena) is the term used by grammarians for those substantives which, although they denote animals, have for both physical genders only one language expression. The German says der hase, 'the hare', der adler, 'the eagle', and means by this both the male and female; again, die maus, 'the mouse ', die eule, 'the owl', for both the male and female. In like manner the Greeks said, for example, ὁ, 'the mouse' , but ἡ , 'the fox'. If there had been any feeling that the real physical sex was expressed by the gender assigned to the word by the language, they would have had to understand by der hase always the male hare only, and by die maus always the female mouse. Further, when one said der weibliche hase or die männliche maus, he would feel that this manner of expression contained a downright contradiction. But this is nowhere the case.

A second point which speaks against Grimm's hypothesis is the following. The Indo-Europeans, from the very fact of being a primitive people without culture, are asserted to have had this remarkable impulse to personify and sexualize. This tendency accordingly made them take a fanciful view of the whole universe and think