later mythology, and has therefore been mistaken for the author of our male and female personations. What beside sexuality suggested the thought of the Chevalier Marini? "He introduces the god Pan, who boasts that the spots which are seen in the moon are impressions of the kisses he gave it." 120 That grammar is very much younger than sexual relations is proven by the curious fact mentioned by Max Müller that pater is not a masculine, nor mater a feminine. Gender, we must not forget, is from genus, a kind or class; and that the classification in various languages has been arranged on no fixed plan. We in our modern English, with much still to do, have improved in this respect, since, in Anglo-Saxon, wif = wife, was neuter, and wif-mann = woman, was masculine. In German still die frau, the woman, is feminine; but das weib, the wife, is neuter. 121 Dr. Farrar finds the root of gender in the imagination: which we admit if associated with sex. Otherwise, we cannot understand how an unfelt distinction of this sort could be mentally seen. But Dr. Farrar means more than imagination, for he says, "from this source is derived the whole system of genders for inanimate things, which was perhaps inevitable at that early childish stage of the human intelligence, when the actively working soul attributed to everything around it some portion of its own life. Hence, well-nigh everything is spoken of as masculine or feminine." 122 We are surprised that Dr. Farrar seems to think German an exception, in making a masculine noun of
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the moon. He has failed to apply to this point his usual learned and laborious investigation. 123
Diogenes Laertius describes the theology of the Jews as an offshoot from that of the Chaldees, and says that the former affirm of the latter "that they condemn images, and especially those persons who say that the gods are male and female." 124 Which condemnation implies the prevalence of this sexual distinction between their deities.
In concluding this chapter we think that it will be granted that gender in the personification of inanimate objects was the result of sex in the animate subject: that primitive men saw the moon as a most conspicuous object, whose spots at periods had the semblance of a man's face, whose waxing and waning increased their wonder: whose coming and going amid the still and solemn night added to the mystery: until from being viewed as a man, it was feared, especially when apparently angry in a mist or an eclipse, and so reverenced and worshipped as the heaven-man, the monthly god.
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