A CENTURY OF METAPHYSICAL SYNTAX 193 



moods. Interest was revived when the Renaissance grammarians 

 took up the task. I hope some time to tell the story in detail. It is 

 an exceedingly interesting and instructive one; and it has not yet 

 been told in a way that seems to me wholly satisfactory, admirable 

 as is Golling's sketch in his recently published Introduction in vol. in 

 of the great German Historical Latin Grammar. 



We pass at once to the eighteenth century, and to the first in- 

 fluences of modern philosophy. Delbriick, in his Comparative Syn- 

 tax, has called attention to the influence of Wolff on certain parts 

 of grammar, but no one, so far as I know, has called attention 

 to what seems to be his influence on the doctrine of the moods. 

 Wolff finds three notions to be fundamental in his scheme of ontology, 

 namely those of Possibility, of Necessity, of Contingency. Here and 

 there in the eighteenth century one finds a grammatical treatment 

 corresponding to this. Thus in Meiner's Philosophische und Allge- 

 meine Sprachlehre, Leipzig, 1781, the Indicative is made to fill the 

 category of Necessity, the Subjunctive the two categories of Pos- 

 sibility and Contingency. A less thorough-going use of the same 

 scheme is to be found in Harris's Hermes, London, 1751. Harris 

 identifies the Potential Mood, the Subjoined Mood, and the Mood of 

 Contingency, and explains the Latin Subjunctive of Purpose on the 

 ground that an act purposed is in human life "always a contingent, 

 and may never, perhaps, happen, despite all our forethought." 



The philosophical system of Wolff was destined to be succeeded 

 by the system of Kant; and the system of Kant was destined to be 

 applied to the syntax of the verb. The fact that Kant influenced 

 mood-syntax has been pointed out frequently enough. But it has 

 been done by no one in detail except Koppin, in his two Beitrdge, 

 1877 and 1880; and Koppin seems to me not clearly to have un- 

 raveled the tangled threads, nor to have recognized sufficiently the 

 modifying influence of Matthia, Dissen, and Thiersch. Further, by 

 quoting Matthia in an edition published in 1825-27 instead of the 

 original edition of 1807 and 1808 (distinct books), and Thiersch in an 

 edition of 1824 instead of the original one of 1812, Koppin makes these 

 men to be followers, rather than shapers, of the opinion of others. 

 Again, no one has pointed out clearly the extraordinary manner in 

 which ideas laid down first for Greek were taken up for other lan- 

 guages of our family, or the extraordinary fact that under this or that 

 disguise they or their descendants rule the greater part of the gram- 

 matical world to-day. It is these things which I shall myself try to 

 do, in altogether too brief fashion, within the short time allowed me. 



In 1781, Kant published the Critique of Pure Reason, the first 

 working-out of his complete system. In this he places all judgments 

 under one or another of four categories: Quantity, Quality, Relation, 



1 I wish to thank Professor John Dewey for assistance in placing this influence. 



