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PEKSONIFICATION. 881
come and go, and in his body he must bide, unless magic inter
vene ; hence he is [not] in the strictest sense a person, his veriest
self being emphasized in our older speech by the term lip (life),
body (Gramm. 4, 296). But language and an open brow distin
guish him from beasts, who have only voice and TrpoTo/jbrj, not a
real
irpocrwirov or countenance. Still less of personality have
plants, silent as theless both
they are, and rooted to the soil. Never
animals and plants have in common with man a
difference of sex and the power of propagation ;
to both of them
where that is non-
language assigns natural gender and, only
apparent, a purely grammatical. It goes yet further, and con
cedes it to lifeless tools and to things beyond the reach of sigtt
or sense.
Then poetry and fables set themselves to personify , i.e. to extend
personality, the prerogative of gods, spirits and men, to animals,
plants, things or states to which language has lent gender. All
these appear in ^Esop endowed with human speech, and acting
by the side of gods and men ; and this not only in the case of
trees and shrubs (like the bean or corn stalk in the fairy-tale),
but of utensils like pot and file (xyrprj, PLVTJ), of days and seasons
(eoprrj, vo-reprj, yjuptov, cap), even of mere emotions, as love,
shame (epw^, ala-^vvrj) . Our own simple-hearted eld loves to
emphasize this livingness by the formalities of address and rela
tionship : horse, ship and sword are gravely apostrophized by the
hero (Gramm. 3, 331. 434. 441) ; such entities receive the title of
herr or frau (3, 346) ; as animals are invested with gossip-
hood and brotherhood (Reinh. p. xxvii), the Edda makes air (the
awl) brother to knifr, Sn. 133. Under this head too I bring
father and l
mother with lifeless
the practice of coupling (
things (Gramm. 4, 723).
Things deeply intergrown with speech and story can at no
time have remained foreign to mythology, nay, they must have
sucked up peculiar nourishment from her soil, and that universal
life conceded in grammar and poetry may even have its source in
a mythical prosopopoeia. As all the individual gods and godlike
attributes really rest on the idea of an element, a luminary, a
phenomenon of nature, a force and virtue, an art and skill, a
blessing or calamity, which have obtained currency as objects of
worship ; so do notions related to these, though in themselves