Page:Nature and Origin of the Noun Genders of the Indo-European Languages.djvu/28

do not control and lead language, but language rules and directs us. The Greek ὕπνος, for example, was from Indo-European time a simple appellative, just as the corresponding words in the other Indo-European languages, Latin somnus, Sanskrit svápnas, Lithuanian sãpnas, etc. Because ὕπνος had the same inflectional form as the numerous masculine nouns in -ος, like ἀδελφός, 'brother', θεός, 'god', and was, in consequence, most closely associated in the consciousness with these, the Greeks made Sleep a god and not a goddess. So far as the concept itself was concerned, there was nothing to prevent Sleep from being personified as a female. Ὑγίεια, 'Health', became a female deity, because the word in its inflectional form corresponded to the numerous words denoting females,—such as γραῖα, 'old woman', πότνια, 'mistress'. There is nothing in the nature of health that compelled it to be of either gender as opposed to the other. For this reason the separate Indo-European peoples have often assigned different genders to the same deities; the cause being that the appellative itself was of different genders in the different languages. To the Greeks and Romans ἔρως and amor was a boy or youth; for both these words were masculine when used as appellatives. To