the abstract nouns having been somehow
formed, and rightly formed, and used without personal meanings,
afterward became personalized--a process the reverse of that which
characterizes early linguistic progress.

No such contradictions occur if we interpret myths after the manner that
has been indicated. Nay, besides escaping contradictions, we meet with
unexpected solutions. The moment we try it, the key unlocks for us with
ease what seems a quite inexplicable fact, which the current hypothesis
takes as one of its postulates. Speaking of such words as sky and earth,
dew and rain, rivers and mountains, as well as of the abstract nouns
above named, Prof. Max Mueller says--"Now in ancient languages every one
of these words had necessarily a termination expressive of gender, and
this naturally produced in the mind the corresponding idea of sex, so
that these names received not only an individual, but a sexual
character. There was no substantive which was not either masculine or
feminine; neuters being of later growth, and distinguishable chiefly in
the nominative." (_Chips_, vol. ii., p. 55.) And this alleged necessity
for a masculine or feminine implication is assigned as a part of the
reason why these abstract nouns and collective nouns became
personalized. But should not a true theory of these first steps in the
evolution of thought and language show us how it happened that men
acquired the seemingly-strange habit of so framing their words for sky,
earth, dew, rain, etc., as to make them indicative of sex? Or, at any
rate, must it not be admitted that an interpretation which, instead of
assuming this habit to be "necessary," shows us how it results, thereby
acquires an additional claim to acceptance? The interpretation I have
indicated does this. If men and women are habitually nicknamed, and if
defects of language lead their descendants to regard themselves as
descendants of the things from which the names were taken, then
masculine or feminine genders will be ascribed to these things according
as the ancestors named after them were men or women. If a beautiful
maiden known metaphorically as "the Dawn," afterwards becomes the
mother of some distinguished chief called "the North Wind," it will
result that when, in course of time, the two have been mistaken for the
actual dawn and the actual north wind, these will, by implication, be
respectively considered as male and female.

Looking, now, at the ancient myths in gene