The Genius of Languages
Each linguistic family has special features, just as each race has its own physiognomy; the distinctive feature of the Semitic languages is that the significative elements destined to form appellatives, when once incorporated as roots in the body of a word, suffered no modification, and the original meaning could never be ignored. Thus all Semitic names for the dawn, the sun, the vault of heaven, the rain, and other natural phenomena, preserving their appellative character, could not be used for any other object; thus they could never express an abstract idea, such as that of the Deity. The method followed with regard to the arrangement of words in the greater number of Semitic dictionaries, which are generally arranged according to their roots, attest the truth of this fact. When we wish to find the meaning of a word in Hebrew or Arabic, we first seek for its root, and then look in the dictionary for that root and its derivatives. In similar languages no ambiguity is possible; nothing lends itself to myths.
In the Aryan languages, on the contrary, such an arrangement would have been extremely inconvenient; here the roots were apt to become so completely absorbed by the derivative elements, whether prefixes or suffixes, that often substantives ceased almost immediately to be appellative, and were changed into mere names or proper names; this peculiarity of the language enabled the Hindoos to form such words as Dyaus, Aditi, Varuna, Indra, which at first designate various aspects of nature, and afterwards were applied to different aspects of divinities. The preceding pages have afforded us many examples, and I hope that the comparison I have drawn between the two representations of the same object will suffice to explain why it is that we possess a Grecian and Hindoo mythology, but that there was no Hebrew mythology.