Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/350

Word echoes. The and he. The boat, etc. etc. was originally he-boat, or his-boat. Long before the child or the savage could understand the general beingness of things (in other words, nouns) they could see them first only as the possessions of others. So, the, is really primitively he. This is true for other languages. In Spanish el is the and el means he. In French le is the and lui is him or to him, but it is also le as in Je le lui donné,—I gave it to him. This adds up to a little confirmatory proof of t as thingness. This and his for example. The th sound in English may involve the depersonalization of human being. Just as de as a prefix has connotations of death added to a word. Detail and tale. Detail and tail.