132 GREEK LANGUAGE 



mind most readily, and perhaps first, gave expression to its individu- 

 ality. Though national differences are marked by language rather 

 than created by it, language more than any other expression of 

 national life displays the native endowments of a people and dis- 

 closes the innermost physiognomy of its nationality. 1 



It is to certain aspects of this general theme, the language of the 

 Greeks as the most complete expression of their national psychology, 

 that I especially invite your attention. An adequate treatment of 

 this theme carries with it an attempt to characterize the language 

 from certain psychological points of view and to discuss certain 

 qualities of national character. By singling out some departments of 

 the investigation of Greek that deserve ampler attention than they 

 receive at present, I shall endeavor to open up here and there certain 

 avenues of approach to that ideal which we all have in mind, 

 a history of the Greek tongue in its relations to the other factors of 

 Greek life. We have, indeed, many Greek grammars, but no history 

 of Greek speech as an index of Greek nationality. 



A thesis that has as its basis the determination of the national 

 mind of any people is of course open to the objection that the concep- 

 tion of national mind is elusive. Nor need one have any hesitation 

 in admitting that the science of national psychology, as set forth 

 by its adherents, is liable to error on every hand, and nowhere more 

 fatally than when it descends to arguments drawn from the rigid 

 insistence on the details of national character and soul. Terms 

 denoting the characteristics of nationality may be easily extended 

 in their application beyond their legitimate scope. Phenomena of 

 language may be interpreted in different ways. The necessities of 

 one language may be the luxuries of another; thus the relations 

 of time may be much more strictly expressed in one language than 

 in another, which is therefore not obscure in this regard; error is 

 possible in ascribing to one people a conservative character, to an- 

 other a progressive spirit, because of the retention or abandonment 

 of inherited sounds (as the vowels and especially the diphthongs, the 

 aspirates, the spirants, final consonants), cases (the locative, instru- 

 mental, ablative), or the tenses and moods (the aorist, the optative), 

 and in many other particulars, such as the dual number. Then there 

 is the danger of seeking to discover marks of capacity for emotion 

 or of individuality in the attribution of gender to senseless things. 

 But more than all, as the individual in his totality resists final 

 psychological analysis, so, a fortiori, the nation. Especially in the 

 case of ancient peoples we lack the means to arrive at even a partial 

 conception of the national soul; the total outcome of our investiga- 



1 F. A. Wolf maintained the unique hypothesis that Greek mirrored the life of the 

 nation without distortion because it was not till late that the language fell under 

 the control of the grammarians. 



