Between the two
epochs the Greek, Latin, Umbrian, and Keltic lauguages had
time to acquire distinct individualities. Far earlier,
therefore, than the Homeric "juventus mundi" was that "youth
of the world," in which the Aryan forefathers, knowing no
abstract terms, and possessing no philosophy but fetichism,
deliberately spoke of the Sun, and the Dawn, and the Clouds,
as persons or as animals. The Veda, though composed much later
than this,--perhaps as late as the Iliad,--nevertheless
preserves the record of the mental life of this period. The
Vedic poet is still dimly aware that Sarama is the fickle
twilight, and the Panis the night-demons who strive to coax
her from her allegiance to the day-god. He keeps the scene of
action in the sky. But the Homeric Greek had long since
forgotten that Helena and Paris were anything more than
semi-divine mortals, the daughter of Zeus and the son of the
Zeus-descended Priam. The Hindu understood that Dyaus ("the
bright one") meant the sky, and Sarama ("the creeping one")
the dawn, and spoke significantly when he called the latter
the daughter of the former. But the Greek could not know that
Zeus was derived from a root div, "to shine," or that Helena
belonged to a root sar, "to creep." Phonetic change thus
helped him to rise from fetichism to polytheism.
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