Mr. Max Muller takes the opposite view.  Man did not call lifeless things by names denoting sex because he regarded them as persons; he came to regard them as persons because he had already given them names connoting sex.  And why had he done that?  This is what Mr. Max Muller does not explain.  He says: 

‘In ancient languages every one of these words’ (sky, earth, sea, rain) ‘had necessarily’ (why 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.’ {0a}

It is curious that, in proof apparently of this, Mr. Max Muller cites a passage from the Printer’s Register, in which we read that to little children ’everything is alive. . . .  The same instinct that prompts the child to personify everything remains unchecked in the savage, and grows up with him to manhood.  Hence in all simple and early languages there are but two genders, masculine and feminine.’

The Printer’s Register states our theory in its own words.  First came the childlike and savage belief in universal personality.  Thence arose the genders, masculine and feminine, in early languages.  These ideas are the precise reverse of Mr. Max Muller’s ideas.  In his opinion, genders in language caused the belief in the universal personality even of inanimate things.  The Printer’s Register holds that the belief in universal personality, on the other hand, caused the genders.  Yet for thirty years, since 1868, Mr. Max Muller has been citing his direct adversary, in the Printer’s Register, as a supporter of his opinion!  We, then, hold that man thought all things animated, and expressed his belief in gender-terminations.  Mr. Max Muller holds that, because man used gender-terminations, therefore he thought all things animated, and so he became mythopoeic.  In the passage cited, Mr. Max Muller does not say why ’in ancient languages every one of these words had necessarily terminations expressive of gender.’  He merely quotes the hypothesis of the Printer’s Register.  If he accepts that hypothesis, it destroys his own theory—­that gender-terminations caused all things to be regarded as personal; for, ex hypothesi, it was just because they were regarded as personal that they received names with gender-terminations.  Somewhere—­I cannot find the reference—­Mr. Max Muller seems to admit that personalising thought caused gender-terminations, but these later ‘reacted’ on thought, an hypothesis which multiplies causes praeter necessitatem.

Here, then, at the very threshold of the science of mythology we find Mr. Max Muller at once maintaining that a feature of language, gender-terminations, caused the mythopoeic state of thought, and quoting with approval the statement that the mythopoeic state of thought caused gender-terminations.