ly inconvenient.
In many words it is impossible to detect the radical element. In
others, after the root is discovered, we find that it has not given
birth to any other derivatives which would throw their converging rays
of light on its radical meaning. In other cases, again, such seems to
have been the boldness of the original name-giver that we can hardly
enter into the idiosyncrasy which assigned such a name to such an
object.

This peculiarity of the Semitic and Aryan languages must have had the
greatest influence on the formation of their religious phraseology.
The Semitic man would call on God in adjectives only, or in words
which always conveyed a predicative meaning. Every one of his words
was more or less predicative, and he was therefore restricted in his
choice to such words as expressed some one or other of the abstract
qualities of the Deity. The Aryan man was less fettered in his choice.
Let us take an instance. Being startled by the sound of thunder, he
would at first express his impression by the single phrase, It
thunders,--[Greek: brouta]. Here the idea of God is understood rather
than expressed, very much in the same manner as the Semitic proper
names Zabd (present), Abd (servant), Aus (present), are habitually
used for Zabd-allah, Abd-allah, Aus-allah,--the servant of God, the
gift of God. It would be more in accordance with the feelings and
thoughts of those who first used these so-called impersonal verbs to
translate them by He thunders, He rains, He snows. Afterwards, instead
of the simple impersonal verb He thunders, another expression
naturally suggested itself. The thunder came from the sky, the sky was
frequently called Dyaus (the bright one), in Greek [Greek: Zeus]; and
though it was not the bright sky which thundered, but the dark, yet
Dyaus had already ceased to be an expressive predicate, it had become
a traditional name, and hence there was nothing to prevent an Aryan
man from saying Dyaus, or the sky thunders, in Greek [Greek: Zeus
brouta]. Let us here mark the almost irresistible influence of
language on the mind. The word Dyaus, which at first meant bright, had
lost its radical meaning, and now meant simply sky. It then entered
into a new stage. The idea which had first been expressed by the
pronoun or the termination of the third person, He thunders, was taken
up into the word Dyaus, or sky. He thunders, and Dyaus thunders,
became synonymous expressions, and by the mere habit of spee