GREEK AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GREEKS 139 



Hellenic qualities remain essentially unimpaired even in later periods 

 of Greek life, when Hellenism, in its excessive individualism, dis- 

 played an increasing detachment between the mass and the few who 

 still preserved the old ideals. 



But the lineaments of a national type, be they never so well defined, 

 must of necessity lose the precision of their outlines when the 

 phenomena of language are to serve as the material of illustration. 

 The minuter differentiae of racial psychology resist transference to 

 vocabulary, syntax, and style. It is only the larger lines of Greek 

 speech that mark the general psychological qualities of the Greeks. 

 Like the people that used it, the language is characterized by elegance 

 and delicacy. It is marked by an indescribable air of distinction; 

 by facility of resource and suppleness; by transparency and lucidity 

 of structure; by a reconciliation of intellectual vigor and emotion. 

 Inexhaustible in its native power, it reproduces Greek naturalness, 

 vividness, mobility of temperament, plasticity of mind. Its exuber- 

 ance is tempered by continence; form and matter are welded to 

 harmony by a sense of proportion. The genius of logic is native 

 to it; as the mirror of the reflective processes of the mind it is both 

 subtle and precise; as an artistic product it combines freedom 

 with strength and grace. Direct and concrete, it lends itself to the 

 happy inventions of fancy and follows the shifting mood with dra- 

 matic liveliness. Like the national hero, it is marked by TroiKiAia. 

 It wears the folds of a royal mantle (as Lamartine said of another 

 language) ; and with all it's alterations it retained a certain youthful 

 vigor and creative energy; it did not become senile by crystallizing 

 into rigidity. The language of Homer remained a national possession 

 to the last. 



An analysis of the distinctive qualities of the language in relation 

 to the national psychology demands a detailed study of phonetics, 

 word-form, vocabulary, word-meaning, syntax, and the general as- 

 pects of style. Such a study can at best only note the preponderance 

 of this or that psychological factor, and in the survey of the few 

 points that I can attempt here it is impossible to disengage the 

 operation of the intellectual from the emotional faculties: thought 

 and feeling are closely woven in forming the web of the inner life of 

 language. 



Sounds 



The study of sounds as an index of the difference between Greek 

 and other peoples is a province of investigation much neglected, not 

 merely by reason of the elusiveness in the doctrine of phonetic 

 symbolism as first enunciated by Humboldt, but also because of 

 absolute and inevitable gaps in our knowledge; furthermore research 



