THE SEXUALITY OF NATURE, AS EXHIBITED IN LANGUAGE. 447 prejudice in favour of its own views, and against those which are presented in opposition. But when a good mind, blessed with pure truth, has reason to confide in its intellectual powers of investigation and defence, its wholesome prejudice, although not discarded, is relaxed in the strictness of its office as the mind's door-keeper. It is inclined to parley with the assailants, because it is felt that the power within is fully equal to meet and overcome any hostile assault from without. As all human improvement is gradual, so the old prejudice of the "old man" gradually recedes, in proportion as the "new man" comes into power; and thus the regenerating mind becomes more and more teachable, more willing to hearken, yet with all due caution, in order to judge fairly; and thus also, it becomes more candid in its construction of the opinions and actions of others. [It is now thirty-three years since I wrote for the Repository a paper ON PREJUDICE, in which the subject is treated more generally and practically than in the present article, which is investigatory, more especially, of its origin. To such readers as happen to possess the numbers for 1819, I would beg to recommend a perusal of that paper, in which I perceive nothing to alter. It bears the signature of OBED.] W. M. THE SEXUALITY OF NATURE, AS EXHIBITED IN LANGUAGE. WHEN the soul plays itself forth into the material world, it is in Language; and this is either the language of actions, or the language conveyed by speech. All actions, and all utterances of the lips, originate accordingly, in that sublime spiritual pair, the Intellect and the Affections; coming, like every thing else, of a father and a mother; and as with the brothers and sisters of a family, in their distinguishing sexual inheritances, every action and every sentence bears a specific resemblance to one or the other parent. Some possess the stamp of the understanding; some the colouring of the affections. Male and female are no less plainly represented in them, than in the physical organizations of the objective world. The sexual character of actions needs little illustration. The masculine are such as take their rise in the understanding, and are performed through the assistance of the will-principle, as the cultivation of arts, sciences, literature, trade, commerce. The feminine are such as spring from the impulses of the affections, and are carried out under the guidance of the understanding, (which directs the method and proper season) comprising all deeds of kindness, charity and love, together with their opposites. The sexual character of words is one of the most beautiful and recondite subjects of philosophy. It is foretold even in their elements. The hard, sturdy consonants are masculine; the delicate, musical vowels, feminine. As man needs woman's aid to fulfil his noble nature, so does the consonant need the auxiliary vowel in order to be uttered; and as woman without man is destitute of her stay and strength, so is the unmarried vowel rarely more than a thoughtless interjection. How truly and beautifully is man, that is, homo, called a word of the Creator. Two sounds go to form each perfect articulation of the human voice; two natures to form every soul that is spoken into being by the Divine one. It is because vowels are feminine that into languages wherein they preponderate music flows most easily and sweetly. For music is vitally correspondent with the affections,—which, as we have seen, are essentially feminine, and whatever partakes of the feminine nature, is a home and vesture for music. Every one knows the receptivity of the Italian language in this respect. What the consonants and vowels are to each other, such are words to the tones in which they are uttered. The former are the masculine or intellectual portion of speech, the latter the feminine or emotional. It needs no argument to shew that tones are the natural and immutable expressions of the feelings of the heart, and that the significance of even the simplest words and phrases may be entirely changed by the tone in which they are spoken. Wherever we find the feminine principles of pure goodness and affection, or their symbols, as heretofore described, there also we find the essential spirit of music. Music, in a word, depicts to the ear all that is summed up in the goodness of God; as visible nature depicts to the eye all that is comprised in his wisdom. Neither, of course, to the exclusion of the other, but each in its preeminent degree. The sexuality of words lies, firstly, in their natural distinction into the two great classes of Noun-words and Verb-words. Popularly, the parts of speech' are distinguished into seven or eight, article, noun, pronoun, adjective, &c., and for practical purposes, such a subdivision is needful. But philosophically considered, all are resolvable into the two fundamental forms above-mentioned, as demonstrated three and twenty centuries ago by the illustrious sage of the Academia. (Sophist. Taylor, pp. 272-273.) Aristotle likewise alludes to it, both in the Rhetoric, (Book iii. chap. 2,) and in the Treatise Tepì épμnveías, (Book i. chap. 3.)† Priscian also, in his famous grammar, Lib. ii. sec. 34, de Oratione, (Ald. edit. p. 16.) Except by marrying a noun-word to a verb-word, it is impossible to construct a sentence that shall convey any definite statement. Put only one of each in contact, and there is a complete and intelligible meaning. Thus, 'fire warms,' 'birds warble,' 'trees wave.' Sometimes noun-words possess the masculine quality, and verb-words the feminine. This is because the objects and operations of nature which words denote, are, as we have seen, some of them correspondent with man, some with woman. In other terms, neither are things exclusively female, nor activities exclusively male. Water is masculine; the land, feminine: fertilization male; parturition female. In the latter fact we have, secondly, the key to the masculine and feminine genders of words denoting things in reality non-sexual, as met with, more or less, in nearly every language. Where English says it and its, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, &c., are prone to say he, she, his, hers, only a portion of their nouns being neuter; while in some languages, as the French and Italian, which in this respect probably resemble the primæval state of language, there are no neuters whatever. English on the other hand, it need scarcely be observed, rarely attributes the masculine or feminine gender (except in the personifications of poetry) to any objects except such as possess the veritable sexual organization, Ships, towns, countries, the sun and moon, are perhaps the only popular exceptions. Nothing in the philosophy of language has been so unjustly and slightingly treated as this matter of genders. 'The assignation of masculine and feminine genders to words,' it has been taught, was out of caprice rather than reason. It was not designed by the framers of language, but simply established by custom. The grammarians have only noted what usage had previously determined.'* In support of these dicta it is urged that there is frequently no coincidence between the grammatical gender and the natural quality of the object, and sometimes a wide disagreement; that on a comparison of languages, words denoting the same thing are often found of opposite genders; and further, that the gender even of the same word is often different in derived tongues from what it is in the parent one. That in Latin, for instance, dens is masculine, and arbor feminine; while in French, dent is feminine and arbre masculine. Undoubtedly, in language as it now exists, particularly in forms of language of comparatively modern construction, as the French, there * Encyclopædia Britannica; Blair's Lectures on the Belles Lettres, &c. N. S. No. 156.-VOL. XIII. 3 L is much that is heterodox and inconsistent. To a certain extent it is true likewise that the grammarians have only noted what usage had previously determined.' But whence arose that usage? And whence the rule to which the inconsistencies are the exceptions? Every falsehood, says Carlyle, that has ever established itself in the world, is 'the mistaken image of some great truth.' The phenomena of language have nothing about them indicating origin in mere fortuity or contrivance for expediency' sake. Nothing indeed is more striking to their investigator, nothing more admirable, than the law and method which everywhere prevail. A reason appears for everything. Vague and disjointed as the philosophy of language may seem when viewed from a distance, it is in fact the completest we enjoy. That masculine and feminine genders accordingly, as constituting one of the most remarkable of these phenomena, should have happened from mere accident or caprice, is a supposition no logic can allow. On the other hand there is no necessity to suppose that the assignation of genders was designed or premeditated. Nothing vital in language was ever designed. Language, as born of the intellectual powers of mankind in their communion with the external world, under the stimulus of a gradually enlarging intellectual necessity, grew and expanded like the employments of the mind itself; each particular circumstance naturally arising, like the leaves and branches of a tree, out of what had sprung already. As with the affixing of figurative meanings to the primary physical terms of language, which was the grandest phase of its development; so the primitive assignation of genders was doubtless in strictest deference to the symbolic qualities which were observed in the several objects and operations spoken of, and their natural harmony either with the male or female character and functions. That keen apprehension of the harmonies and symbolic language of nature, of which all the best part of spoken language is an outbirth;-which gives to Art its highest excellence; and to Poetry all its life and charm; -which is in a word, the most brilliant privilege of the soul;-gave on the one hand, spiritual or figurative significances to words; on the other, the attribute of gender. Though actually sexless and inanimate, the varied objects and activities of nature were in early times universally contemplated as either masculine or feminine, because the soul recognized in them emblems of its two-fold self, and of the dual presentation of its material duplicate, the body. At first, in all likelihood, a neuter was an anomaly and an absurdity. The ancient Grecian people proper,' observes Müller, scarcely knew a neuter gender.' The neuter would seem to have been a distinction of comparatively late origin, and one which came into use by very slow degrees. That origin would be partly in the decline of the old poetic habit which once loved to note the omnipresent picture of male and female, and in the succession of one preferring to dwell in frigid matter of fact;-partly in the cultivation of writing and grammar, which demand that words shall hold a fixed orthographic form, and be classified according to shape rather than spirit or significance. Under these two influences, it is easy to see how gender would come to be regulated by artificial considerations; the nature of the thing itself being forgotten in the spelling of the termination of its name; a circumstance having no necessary analogy with it, furnishing no trustworthy evidence, and exposed in fact, to a thousand vicissitudes till a matured literature shall agree which casualty shall become the rule. Herein is found, accordingly, the explanation of all the inconsistencies and incongruities which now deface the principle of word gender; those which pertain to modern languages being preeminently referable to the pens which first inscribed them on paper. Wherever quality or soul is forgotten, and mere external form is regarded in place of it, there is no end of error and corruption. The genders of words, viewed as to their true principle, are therefore no children of accident or whim, nor even of design or invention. They are beautiful and enduring vestiges of the fine primæval insights into the secrets of nature, of which mythology supplies another and so charming a memorial. There is a geology of the intellectual as of the material world. Each has its fossil flora and its fossil fauna, as well as its living ones. Mythology preserves the fern-leaves, bones, and shells; Language the foot-prints. That the genders of words originated as above described, in the sexuality of nature itself, was first suggested by Harris, in his celebrated work called Hermes, or a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar,' (1751.) After referring to those falsely-imposed genders which depend on the casual construction of the word itself, from having such a termination, or belonging to such a declension, he proceeds, "In others we may observe a more subtle kind of reasoning; a reasoning which discerns even in things without sex, a distant analogy to that great natural distinction which, according to Milton, 'animates the world.' Objects and qualities conspicuous for vigour, robustness, majesty, and causative power have their names, he remarks, in the masculine gender, and are personified as male; while such as are remarkable for delicacy, mildness, and productiveness, are feminine, and femininely treated. He exemplifies, by quotations from the poets, ancient and modern, the masculine character of the sun, the air, the ocean, time, death, and sleep; and the feminine character of the moon, the earth, ships, cities, countries, |