GREEK AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GREEKS 147 



einigen alten und neuen Sprachen," in his Sprachwissenschaftliche 

 Abhandlungen, p. 47.) 



Degrees of national social development are likewise indicated by 

 the contrast between "guest," ^os, and " hostis," in Old Latin 

 "stranger," in Classical Latin "foreigner." 



The shifting of signification within the limits of the same language 

 reflects many aspects of national life, and especially national morals; 

 as when foul thoughts are glossed by fair words and fair words lose 

 thereby their innocency. 



The unequaled resources at his command enabled the Greek at 

 will to employ synonyms at every hand; and this is nowhere more 

 noticeable than in the expressions for "good" and "bad." 



The astonishing wealth of synonyms in Homer, one of the most 

 remarkable phenomena in the history of any language, denotes the 

 concentration of the linguistic sense upon the things of prime interest 

 to the Homeric man. 1 With the destruction of national sentiment 

 synonyms are used without distinction, abstract and vague expres- 

 sions grow apace, the finer shading of thought is blurred in its out- 

 line through the adoption of general terms, or words properly ex- 

 pressive of delicate relations of ideas dissipate their vitality as they 

 enlarge the range of their signification, adjectives are "applied to 

 everything because they are applicable to nothing in particular" 

 (oXocrxe/oijs in Polybius); inanimate things and animate persons are 

 persecuted by the poets, who worry them with epithets. 



Greek semasiology has a twofold task : to set forth, on a psycho- 

 logical basis, the history of words according to their content, from 

 Homer to the end of Greek literature; to discover the processes of 

 thought by which words pass from one signification to another. 

 The determination of the etymology and the chronology is the duty 

 of the philologist; the determination of the laws that operate in the 

 movement of signification from age to age is the task of the empirical 

 psychologist. 



To illustrate the psychological and the chronological determin- 

 ation, I select a few examples, first of the development of words from 

 a primitive sensuous sphere to an intellectual or non-sensuous sphere, 

 and, secondly, of the transference of words from one kind of sensuous 

 meaning to another. Thus, -n-perrfiv, originally applied to the sense of 

 sight (though it is also used of smell and sound), passes through the 

 delimitation which restricts it to that which appeals favorably to 

 the sense of sight, and yields the common Attic meaning, irpan-eiv, 

 originally "to voyage through," "to pass over a space," acquires 

 the force of "complete" in Homer (who retains also the primitive 



1 For "battle" Homer has 6 words; for "helmet" 5: for "hunter" 4; for 

 " sea" 7;^ for " beggar" 7. He has seven words tp mark different kinds of herds- 

 men, besides four words of a general character. 



