§ 363. Nouns are declined, verbs are both declined and conjugated.

§ 364. The declension of verbs is a fact which should never be overlooked; otherwise we run the risk of drawing a broader line between them and the noun than the structure of language warrants. Without doubt the difference is both important and striking, and, without doubt, the two classes are natural. This, however, is wholly insufficient to put them in anything like contrast to one another. Though the noun has no moods and tenses, it cannot be said that the verb has no cases. More than this. If, on the strength of its decided verbal character, we connect the participle with the verb (and in some sense most grammarians do so connect it) the inflection of the verb gives us not only cases, but numbers and genders as well; for, although, in the present stage of our language, the participles are uninflected, in AngloSaxon their inflection was full, as it was in the Greek and Latin, and as it is in many modern languages. But without having recourse to the participle, which is generally, though not consistently, treated as a separate part of speech, the infinitive mood, along with the gerunds and supines, where they exist, is, for most purposes, a substantive. In Old High-German we have blasennes=flandi and others. We may call this a Gerund if we choose. We may also, if we choose, call to blassenne a Supine; nevertheless, the result is a Noun in a Case. This is because the name of an action is an Abstract Substantive. When we connect with the idea of time an agent we get something concrete. But this gives us Persons and Tenses. A horse may run, or a man. horse may run to-day, the man may have run yesterday; but if I wish to have the notion of the act of running, I must separate, or draw it off, from both the horses.and the men who perform it. In both these cases the result

The

is something which I can imagine, but which I cannot perceive through any of my senses. I can see a man in a state of happiness, and I can see a horse in the act of running. Happiness, however, without some happy object, or the act of running, without some object that runs, I cannot perceive; though I can imagine it. Both, however, are Substantives; one being the name of a quality, the other that of an action.

§ 365. In English we have such lines as

To err is human, to forgive divine

To be or not to be, that is the question

in which a substantive in the nominative case is represented by a verb with a preposition before it. To err means error, and to forgive means forgiveness.

In Greek we find

This is because the name of any action may be used without any mention of the agent. Thus, we may speak of the simple fact of walking or moving, independently of any specification of the walker or mover. When actions

are spoken of thus indefinitely, the idea of either person or number has no place in the conception; from which it follows that the so-called infinitive mood must be at once impersonal, and without the distinction of singular, dual, and plural. Nevertheless, the ideas of time and relation in space have place in the conception. We can think of a person being in the act of striking a blow, of his having been in the act of striking a blow, or of his being ́about to be in the act of striking a blow. We can also think of a person being in the act of doing a good action, or of his being from the act of doing a good action.

CHAPTER XIX.

ON GENDER.

§ 366. How far have we Genders in English? This depends on our definitions.

The distinction of sex by wholly different words, such as boy and girl; father and mother; horse and mare, &c., is not gender. Neither are words like man-servant, he-goat, &c., contrasted with maid-servant, she-goat, &c.

§ 367. In the Latin words genitrix = a mother, and genitor = a father, the difference of sex is expressed by a difference of termination: the words being either derived from each other, or from some common source. This, however, in strict grammatical language, is an approach to gender rather than to gender itself. Let the words be declined ::

The syllables in italics are the signs of the cases and numbers. Now these signs are the same in each word, the difference of sex not affecting them. Contrast, however, with the words genitor and genitrix the words domina a mistress, and dominus a master.

Here the letters in italics, or the signs of the cases and numbers, are different. Now it is very evident that, if genitrix be a specimen of gender, domina is something

more.

§ 368. As terms, to be useful, must be limited, it may be laid down, as a sort of definition, that there is no gender where there is no affection of the declension.

§ 369. Another element in the notion of gender, although I will not venture to call it an essential one, is the following:-In the words domina and dominus, mistress and master, there is a natural distinction of sex; the one being masculine, or male, the other feminine, or female. In the words sword and lance there is no natural distinction of sex. Notwithstanding this, the word hasta, in Latin, is as much a feminine gender as domina, whilst gladius a sword, is, like dominus, a masculine noun. From this we see that, in languages wherein there are true genders, a fictitious or conventional sex is attributed even. to inanimate objects; so that sex is a natural distinction, gender a grammatical one. Now, in English, we sometimes attribute sex to objects naturally destitute of it. The sun in his glory, the moon in her wane, are examples of this. A sailor calls his ship she. A husbandman, according to Mr. Cobbett, does the same with his plough and working implements :—

"In speaking of a ship we say she and her. And you know that our country-folk in Hampshire call almost everything he or she. It is curious to observe that country labourers give the feminine appellation to those things only which are more closely identified with themselves, and by the qualities or conditions of which their own efforts, and their character as workmen, are affected. The mower calls his sc, the a she, the ploughman

calls his plough a she: but a prong, or a shovel, or a harrow, which passes promiscuously from hand to hand, and which is appropriated to no particular labourer, is called a he."-English Grammar, Letter V.

§ 370. Although this may account for a sailor calling his ship she, it will not account for the custom of giving to the sun a masculine, and to the moon a feminine, pronoun; still less will it account for the circumstance of the Germans reversing the gender, and making the sun feminine, and the moon masculine. The explanation here is different. Let there be a period in the history of a nation wherein the sun and moon are dealt with, not as inanimate masses of matter, but as animated divinities. Let there, in other words, be a period in the history of a nation wherein dead things are personified, and wherein there is a mythology. Let an object like the sun be deemed a male, and an object like the moon a female, deity, and we, easily, account for the Germans saying the sun in her glory; the moon in his wane. "Mundilfori had two children; a son, Máni (Moon), and a daughter, Sol (Sun)."—Such is an extract taken out of an Icelandic mythological work, viz. the prose Edda. In the classical languages, however, Phoebus and Sol are masculine, and Luna and Diana feminine. Hence it is, that although, in Anglo-Saxon and Old Saxon, the sun is feminine, it is, in English, masculine.

§ 371. Philosophy, charity, &c., or the names of abstract qualities personified, take a conventional sex, and are feminine from their being feminine in Latin. In these, words, there is no change of form, so that the consideration of them is a point of rhetoric, rather than of etymology.

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