POWELL. ] THE VERB TO BE. 15 
the active voice throughout its entire conjugation, we discover that 
many of its forms are limited to special uses. 
Throughout the conjugation of the verb the auxiliaries are predicants, 
but these auxiliaries, to the extent that they are modified for mode, 
tense, number, and person, contain adverbial and connective elements. 
In like manner many of the lexical elements of the English language 
contain more than one part of speech: To ascend is to go up; to descend 
is to go down; and to depart is to go from. 
Thus it is seen that the English language is also synthetic in that its 
parts of speech are not completely differentiated. The English, then, 
differs in this respect from an Indian language only in degree. 
In most Indian tongues no pure predicant has been differentiated, 
but in some the verb to be, or predicant, has been slightly developed, 
chiefly to affirm existence in a place. 
It will thus be seen that by the criterion of organization Indian tongues 
are of very low grade. 
It need but to be affirmed that by the criterion of sematologic content 
Indian languages are of a very low grade. Therefore the frequently- 
expressed opinion that the languages of barbaric peoples have a more 
highly organized grammatic structure than the languages of civilized 
peoples has its complete refutation. 
It is worthy of remark that all paradigmatic inflection in a civilized 
tongue is a relic of its barbaric condition. When the parts of speech 
are fully differentiated and the process of placement fully specialized, 
so that the order of words in sentences has its full significance, no use- 
ful purpose is subserved by inflection. 
Economy in speech is the force by which its development has been 
accomplished, and it divides itself properly into economy of utterance 
and economy of thought. Economy of utterance has had to do with the 
phonic constitution of words; economy of thought has developed the 
sentence. 
All paradigmatic inflection requires unnecessary thought. In the 
clause if he was here, if fully expresses the subjunctive condition, and 
it is quite unnecessary to express it a second time by using another form 
of the verb to be. And so the people who are using the English lan- 
guage are deciding, for the subjunctive form is rapidly becoming obso- 
lete with the long list of paradigmatic forms which have disappeared. 
Every time the pronoun he, she, or it is used it is necessary to think 
of the sex of its antecedent, though in its use there is no reason why 
sex should be expressed, say, one time in ten thousand. If one pronoun 
non-expressive of gender were used instead of the three, with three 
gender adjectives, then in nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine 
cases the speaker would be relieved of the necessity of an unnecessary 
thought, and in the one case an adjective would fully express it. Butwhen 
these inflections are greatly multiplied, as they are in the Indian lan- 
guages, alike with the Greek and Latin, the speaker is compelled in the 
