Page:Nature and Origin of the Noun Genders of the Indo-European Languages.djvu/24

14 in their manner and means of expressing gender distinctions.

In the third place, Grimm's theory is in itself psychologically improbable. It presupposes that noun concepts were always (1) individualized and thought of as a separate object, (2) conceived of as a living being, and (3) sexualized as male or female. Now, for primitive man the external world was mostly matter, material, just as it is for us to-day, but to him even more so perhaps than to us. Material and general concepts, such as gold, mud, water, fog, flesh, grain, were certainly not as a rule conceived of and named in the pro-ethnic period as individuals; yet they show in large part, since primitive times, either masculine or feminine gender. How is it that such substantive concepts came to be conceived of as male or female, if they were not even considered as an individual? Further than this, that which is individualized is not necessarily thought of as animated and personal. Even if we imagine to ourselves the fancy of the Indo-European as lively and active, creating for itself many mythical images, yet however active it may have been, it could have drawn only a small circle of objects into its scope. It is certainly true that our primitive ancestors thought more