FORMS OF ADDRESS. 155 



gross incivility. But instead of saying, I am very sensible 

 of the service you have done me, they will say, The service 

 that the Lord or the Doctor has done for his meanest Ser 

 vant, or his Scholar, has greatly affected me.&quot; 



We come next to those perversions in the uses of pro 

 nouns which raise the superior and lower the inferior. 

 &quot; I and me are expressed by several terms in Siamese; 

 as (1) between a master and slave; (2) between a slave and 

 master; (3) between a commoner and a nobleman; (4) 

 between persons of equal rank; while there is, lastly, a 

 form of address which is only used by the priests.&quot; Still 

 more developed has this system been by the Japanese. 

 &quot; In Japan all classes have an I peculiar to themselves, 

 which no other class may use; and there is one exclusively 

 appropriated by the Mikado . . . and one confined to 

 women. . . . There are eight pronouns of the second per 

 son peculiar to servants, pupils, and children.&quot; Though 

 throughout the West, the distinctions established by abus 

 ing pronominal forms have been less elaborated, yet they 

 have been well marked. By Germans &quot; in old times . . . 

 all inferiors were spoken to in the third person singular, as 

 e er : &quot; that is, an oblique form by which the inferior was 

 referred to as though not present, served to disconnect him 

 from the speaker. And then, conversely, &quot; inferiors invari 

 ably use the third person plural in addressing their supe 

 riors: &quot; a mode which, while dignifying the superior by 

 pluralization, increases the distance of the inferior by its 

 relative indirectness; and a mode which, beginning as a 

 propitiation of those in power, has, like the rest, spread 

 till it has become a general propitiation. In our own 

 speech, lacking such misuse of pronouns as humiliates, 

 there exists only that substitution of the &quot; you &quot; for the 

 &quot; thou,&quot; which, once a complimentary exaltation, has now 

 by diffusion wholly lost its ceremonial meaning. That it 

 retained some ceremonial meaning at the time when the 

 Quakers persisted in using &quot; thou &quot; is clear; and that in 



