"The third person plural, _etoient_, is a very curious word: it literally means _the great lives_--and there is for this a very wise reason. When this word first received this name, persons were not referred to, but the winds of heaven; and hence the propriety of the name _great lives_ or _great beings_; and also of making this name signify afterwards _persons_ or _beings gone_, since nothing can, to all appearance, be more gone than the winds that have passed by. When _oient_ means _the great lives_, it is to be thus analysed: _oi-iv-it_; or thus, _ii-iv-it_; or thus, _iv-iv-it_. But when considered as meaning but a single idea, it may be indifferently written _went_ or _ivent_. It is easy to perceive that _ivent_ is no other than _vent_, the French of wind, the _i_ having been dropped. Thus we discover the origin of the English word _went_: we see that it is the same as _vent_ or _wind_." "As the French word _souvent_ means, when analysed, _all the wind_ (_is-oii-vent_), it would appear that men in the beginning of time received also the idea of frequency from the winds. But in a country rarely visited by them, this idea must have been borrowed from some other natural object. Thus the Latin word for _often_ (_saeepe_) takes, when analysed, this form, _is-ae-ip-e_, which literally means, _is the bees_. Here the word _bees_ is represented by _ip-e_, of which the meaning is _bee_, _bee_; but to avoid the repetition of the second _bee_, a pronoun, that is _e_, and which means life or being, has been put in its place. When it is remarked that this pronoun might as well be _is_ or _es_ as what it is, it will be admitted that _saepe_ might as well be written _saepes_. I make this remark to show how slight the difference between _apes_, the Latin of _bees_ and _ape_ in _is-ape_, which means also the _bees_. Now the English word _often_ becomes, when analysed, _en-ov-it_, of which the literal meaning is _the sheep-sheep_; the pronoun _it_ serving here as in the last instance, and for the same reason, as a substitute for the second word _sheep_; but this _it_ might as well be _es_ or _is_. In Latin the word for _sheep_ is _ov is_, which must have first been _is ov_; that is, _the sheep_: but when the _is_ fell behind, it became _ovis_, and it has no other meaning than _the one life_ (_is-o-vie_). Thus we perceive that _the winds, bees_, and _sheep_, have, in three different countries, given birth to the same idea." Mr Kavanagh adds in a foot-note as to the word sheep--