The reflective pronoun often becomes reciprocal. § 395. These statements are made for the sake of illustrating, not of exhausting, the subject. It follows, however, as an inference from them, that the classification of pronouns is complicated. Even if we knew the original power and derivation of every form of every pronoun in a language, it would be far from an easy matter to determine therefrom the paradigm that they should take in grammar. To place a word according to its power in a late stage of language might confuse the study of an early stage. To say that because a word was once in a given class, it should always be so, would be to deny that in the present English _they_, _these_, and _she_ are personal pronouns at all. The two tests, then, of the grammatical place of a pronoun, its _present power_ and its _original power_, are often conflicting. § 396. In the English language the point of most importance in this department of grammar is the place of forms like _mine_ and _thine_; in other words, of the forms in -n. Now, if we take up the common grammars of the English language _as it is_, we find, that, whilst _my_ and _thy_ are dealt with as genitive cases, _mine_ and _thine_ are considered adjectives. In the _Anglo-Saxon_ grammars, however, _min_ and _þin_, the older forms of _mine_ and _thine_, are treated as genitives or possessives. § 397. This gives us two views of the words _my_ and _thy_. a. They may be genitives or possessives, which were originally datives or accusatives; in which case they are deduced from the Anglo-Saxon _mec_ and _þec_. b. They may be the Anglo-Saxon _min_ and _þin_, _minus_ the final -n. Each of these views has respectable supporters. The former is decidedly preferred by the present writer. § 398. What, however, are _thine_ and _mine_? Are they adjectives like _meus_, _tuus_, and _suus_, or cases like _mei_, _tui_, _sui_, in Latin, and _hi-s_ in English? It is no answer to say that sometimes they are one and sometimes the other. They were not so originally. They did not begin with meaning two things at once; on the contrary, they were either possessive cases, of which the power became subsequently adjectival, or adjectives, of which the power became subsequently possessive. § 399. In Anglo-Saxon and in Old Saxon there is but one form to express the Latin _mei_ (or _tui_), on the one side, and _meus_, _mea_, _meum_ (or _tuus_, &c.), on the other. In several other Gothic tongues, however, there was the following difference of form: