134 GREEK LANGUAGE 



Hellenic element with another stock yielded, as so often in the case 

 of the union of alien races, the peculiar quality of genius that gives 

 the Hellenes their separateness; yet after all comes the inevitable 

 admission that the processes of nature which create diversity among 

 nations, as among children of the same parents, defy all ultimate 

 analysis. Certainly all theories of the comparative aesthetics of the 

 structure of language fail to penetrate into the secrets of national 

 ability. Whatever the embryonic mind of the Greeks was, their 

 physical environment merely modified it or gave it opportunity to 

 express itself in different terms. The Greeks brought with them 

 from their inland home no memories of the sea; * nor did they inherit 

 from their Aryan progenitors names for the marine divinities; it 

 was their contact with the ^Egean that made them a seafaring folk, 

 as it was their inherent qualities as a people that made Poseidon the 

 god of the "on-swelling" waters and populated the deep with the 

 creations of their poetic fancy. We cannot penetrate beyond this 

 fact: that it was the unique prerogative of the Greeks that their 

 language possessed in its earliest known stages the power of ex- 

 pressing delicate relations of thought and feeling; while from the 

 dawn of Hellenic history the sovereignty of their greatest poet was 

 imposed on intellect and heart alike. 



It is in form rather than in content that the individuality of the 

 Greek mind is expressed most inwardly. The religion, the customs 

 of the Greeks mark rather the expression of individuality as regards 

 content : their language sets forth not merely the content of thought ; 

 it sets forth the form, the movement of thought; it best voices the 

 Hellenic conception of the world. But it is not merely that the 

 Hellenic language expresses the mode of Hellenic thought : the lan- 

 guage reacts on the mode of thought. "Human reason," as Eduard 

 Meyer says, "grows with and in language." From the first day 

 that Greek speech consciously obeyed the will of the Greeks, it 

 continually adjusted itself to the enrichment of their mind; until 

 reflection, reacting on thought and aiming to idealize feeling, created 

 the language of the subtlest dramatic poetry and of philosophy. 



Assuming by a broad generalization a division among different 

 peoples on the lines of a predominance of the intellect or of the 

 emotions, the Romans are a people whose language in its literary 

 and "popular" expression is marked by the intellectual quality. 

 In most uncivilized peoples feeling predominates, as is apparent in 

 part from their abundant use of simile and metaphor. Among all 

 languages that unite the qualities of intellect and emotion, Greek 

 stands supreme. 



Will, too, enters into the question as an element of language. 

 Though the part it plays in the structure of national character is 



1 Pictet thought the Indo-European peoples were familiar with the Caspian. 



