Page:Nature and Origin of the Noun Genders of the Indo-European Languages.djvu/27

Rh (New High German die nacht) only as a goddess. Among the Hindoos agni, the 'Fire', only as a god, usas, the 'Dawn', only as a goddess. And so in other cases. But this sort of personification in no way substantiates the theory that the origin of grammatical gender is to be sought in the particularly active imagination of the primitive Indo-European people. Grimm's theory deceived our mythologists and led them to a mistaken view,—a view that meets us in several places in the otherwise instructive book of H. Usener on the "Götternamen." In all the cases that come into consideration here the grammatical gender of the word, so far as we can judge, is the earlier. The imagination used this gender and allowed itself to be led by it. The procedure is the same whether it is uncultivated primitive man creating a myth unconsciously, or the poet doing it with conscious effort. When either personified a lifeless concept into a living being, it was the grammatical form of the noun that, through the psychological impulse of analogy, an impulse that was very strong, and was, indeed, almost compulsory, decided the definite direction of the gender,—whether it should be masculine or feminine. Our thoughts and conceptions cling close to the language form. We