the whole truth.  We must not exaggerate the physical importance of the Norman invasion nor underrate the significance of the fact that Germany’s central geographical position made it peculiarly sensitive to French influences all through the Middle Ages, to humanistic influences in the latter fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and again to the powerful French influences of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  It seems very probable that the psychological attitude of the borrowing language itself towards linguistic material has much to do with its receptivity to foreign words.  English has long been striving for the completely unified, unanalyzed word, regardless of whether it is monosyllabic or polysyllabic.  Such words as credible, certitude, intangible are entirely welcome in English because each represents a unitary, well-nuanced idea and because their formal analysis (cred-ible, cert-itude, in-tang-ible) is not a necessary act of the unconscious mind (cred-, cert-, and tang- have no real existence in English comparable to that of good- in goodness).  A word like intangible, once it is acclimated, is nearly as simple a psychological entity as any radical monosyllable (say vague, thin, grasp).  In German, however, polysyllabic words strive to analyze themselves into significant elements.  Hence vast numbers of French and Latin words, borrowed at the height of certain cultural influences, could not maintain themselves in the language.  Latin-German words like kredibel “credible” and French-German words like reussieren “to succeed” offered nothing that the unconscious mind could assimilate to its customary method of feeling and handling words.  It is as though this unconscious mind said:  “I am perfectly willing to accept kredibel if you will just tell me what you mean by kred-.”  Hence German has generally found it easier to create new words out of its own resources, as the necessity for them arose.

The psychological contrast between English and German as regards the treatment of foreign material is a contrast that may be studied in all parts of the world.  The Athabaskan languages of America are spoken by peoples that have had astonishingly varied cultural contacts, yet nowhere do we find that an Athabaskan dialect has borrowed at all freely[166] from a neighboring language.  These languages have always found it easier to create new words by compounding afresh elements ready to hand.  They have for this reason been highly resistant to receiving the linguistic impress of the external cultural experiences of their speakers.  Cambodgian and Tibetan offer a highly instructive contrast in their reaction to Sanskrit influence.  Both are analytic languages, each totally different from the highly-wrought, inflective language of India.  Cambodgian is isolating, but, unlike Chinese, it contains many polysyllabic words whose etymological analysis