OF ARTS AND SCIENCES : DECEMBER 6, 1864. 377 



and the Latin by si facit and si faciei (ov fecerit). The Commonwealth 

 of Massachusetts recently abolished the subjunctive as well as the fu- 

 ture indicative in protasis, as far as it could, by expunging both from its 

 statute-books, so that now our laws have, " Whoever steals," " If a clerk 

 embezzles" &c., instead of the time-honored forms, " Whoever shall 

 steal," " If a clerk shall embezzle " (or " If a clerk embezzle "). In the 

 riot act we find : " If any persons .... ore unlawfully, riotously, or 

 tumultuously assembled in any city or town," &c. In Athens at least 

 a law thus expressed would have been worthless against any rioters 

 who were not already assembled when the law was passed. Still there 

 is no doubt that this is the common English form, authorized by modern 

 usage ; although it is to be regretted that our language should lose its 

 power of expressing nice distinctions of thought, — a power which espe- 

 cially distinguishes the ancient languages, and the Greek pre-eminently, 

 from the modern. For example, the English sentence, he said that, if 

 they should pass this vote, the State would be safe, could be expressed in 

 Greek in twelve or more distinct forms, each depending on some deli- 

 cate shade of meaning which no modern language would attempt to ex- 

 press, the changes being confined to the last two verbs. It is one mark 

 of the degeneracy of the modern Greek that it has lost the ancient dis- 

 tinction between the subjunctive and the indicative ; ypacjid and ypti^??, 

 not being distinguished in pronunciation, have now lost their distinctive 

 force to the mass of the people. The scholars in Greece are doing 

 their best to revive this, as well as other distinctions of the ancient lan- 

 guage of their country, by observing the proper spelling in the written 

 language ; it would seem as if our tendency were rather to abolish 

 whatever distinction of the kind has been left to us, and to make our 

 present indicative do the work of both present and future. 



Still the English has a subjunctive, which is distinguished from the 

 indicative in most verbs only in the third person singular ; and it is still 

 in good use, although it is to be feared that the levelling power of cus- 

 tom will soon obliterate it entirely. But on what principle do modern 

 writers use the English subjunctive after if? I think that many writers 

 would admit that they use it without thinking of any special distinction 

 between if it be and if it is ; while others are influenced by the sup- 

 posed distinction between the corresponding classic forms, if it be being 

 used where doubt is to be expressed, if it is where the writer beUeves 

 his supposition is correct. How far such a distinction in English is now 

 authorized by usage I will not pretend to say ; it has been one of the 



