In the Dutch, Danish, and Swedish, the true reflectives, both personal and possessive, occur; so that the modern Frisian and English stand alone in respect to the entire absence of them.--Deutsche Grammatik, iv. 321-348. The statement concerning the absence of the true reflective in English, although negative, has an important philological bearing on more points than one. 1. It renders the use of the word _self_ much more necessary than it would be otherwise. 2. It renders us unable to draw a distinction between the meanings of the Latin words _suus_ and _ejus_. 3. It precludes the possibility of the evolution of a middle voice like that of the Old Norse, where _kalla-sc_=_kalla-sik_. * * * * * {249} CHAPTER VII. THE DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS, &c. s. 300. The demonstrative pronouns are, 1. _He_, _it_. 2. _She_. 3. _This_, _that_. 4. _The_. _He_, _she_, and _it_, generally looked on as personal, are here treated as demonstrative pronouns, for the following reasons. 1. The personal pronouns form an extremely natural class, if the pronouns of the two first persons (and _se_ when found in the language) be taken by themselves. This is not the case if they be taken along with _he_, _it_, and _she_. The absence of gender, the peculiarity in their declension, and their defectiveness are marked characters wherein they agree with each other, but not with any other words. 2. The idea expressed by _he_, _it_, and _she_ is naturally that of demonstrativeness. In the Latin language _is_, _ea_, _id_; _ille_, _illa_, _illud_; _hic_, _haec_, _hoc_, are demonstrative pronouns in sense, as well as in declension. 3. The plural forms _they_, _them_, in the present English, are the plural forms of the root of _that_, a true demonstrative pronoun; so that even if _he_, _she_, and _it_ could be treated as personal pronouns, it could only be in their so-called singular number. 4. The word _she_ has grown out of the Anglo-Saxon _se['o]_. Now _se['o]_ was in Anglo-Saxon the feminine form of the definite article; the definite article being a demonstrative pronoun. Compared with the Anglo-Saxon the present English stands as follows:-- _She._--The Anglo-Saxon form _he['o]_, being lost to the language, is replaced by the feminine article _se['o]_. _Her._--This is a case, not of the present _she_, but of the Anglo-Saxon _he['o]_: so that _she_ may be said to be defective in {250} the oblique cases and _her_ to be defective in the nominative. _Him._--A true dative form, which has replaced the Anglo-Saxon _hine_. When used as a dative, it was neuter as well as masculine.