sexes share one
common name, and commonly, indeed, this answers quite well enough. In
those few instances where sex enters into the question in a manner not
to be ignored, particles denoting "male" or "female" are prefixed to the
general term. How comparatively rare is the need of such specification
can be seen from the way in which, with us, in many species, the name of
one sex alone does duty indifferently for both. That of the male is the
one usually selected, as in the case of the dog or horse. If, however,
it be the female with which man has most to do, she is allowed to bestow
her name upon her male partner. Examples of the latter description occur
in the use of "cows" for "cattle," and "hens" for "fowls." A Japanese
can say only "fowl," defined, if absolutely necessary, as "he-fowl" or
"she-fowl."

Now such a slighting of one of the most potent springs of human action,
sex, with all that the idea involves, is not due to a pronounced
misogynism on the part of these people, but to a much more effective
neglect, a great underlying impersonality. Indifference to woman is
but included in a much more general indifference to mankind. The fact
becomes all the more evident when we descend from sex to gender. That
Father Ocean does not, in their verbal imagery, embrace Mother Earth,
with that subtle suggestion of humanity which in Aryan speech the gender
of the nouns hints without expressing, is not due to any lack of poesy
in the Far Oriental speaker, but to the essential impersonality of
his mind, embodied now in the very character of the words he uses. A
Japanese noun is a crystallized concept, handed down unchanged from
the childhood of the Japanese race. So primitive a conception does it
represent that it is neither a total nor a partial symbol, but rather
the outcome of a first vague generality. The word "man," for instance,
means to them not one man, still less mankind, but that indefinite
idea which struggles for embodiment in the utterance of the infant. It
represents not a person, but a thing, a material fact quite innocent
of gender. This early state of semi-consciousness the Japanese never
outgrew. The world continued to present itself to their minds as a
collection of things. Nor did their subsequent Chinese education change
their view. Buddhism simply infused all things with the one universal
spirit.

As to inanimate objects, the idea of supposing sex where there is not
even life is altogether too fanciful