158 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
“I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious 
gains, 
Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower 
pains!” 
That the rule of accusative usage should thus be violated— 
that indeed it would have been much better always to use the 
nominative—appears to me essentially axiomatic, or at least 
demonstrable, as follows. Nominative inflection, which even 
in the case of an action has come to indicate the use of an idea 
as merely first term (and not at al’l the exerter of activity, 
e. g. with the passive voice) is quite as urgently demanded in 
the infinitive phrase, as it is in the sentence complete. If, 
in “George the dragon slew’ 7 I need to use in a highly inflected 
language (for that will be a language that pays little heed to 
the order of words) the nominative inflection of “George” as 
an indication that, in a thinking which includes the relation of 
slayer to victim (fixed by “slew,” which excludes the reverse 
relation of victim to slayer expressible by “was slain”) you 
must start your thinking with “George” and end with “dragon” 
(instead of starting with “dragon” and ending with “George”) 
in order to develop the particular thought intended, so also, in 
“Men declare George the dragon to have slain,” I need to give 
you a warning to begin subordinate thought with “George,” and 
not' with “dragon.” That is, in a well-inflected language, I 
should consistently put the subject of the infinitive in the nom¬ 
inative case. 
It must, however, be conceded, that in linguistic practice 
such consistency is not maintained. My illustrations of its 
maintenance are undoubtedly exceptions. The subject of the 
infinitive almost always takes the accusative form. But, remem¬ 
bering the greater desirability of the nominative, I cannot be¬ 
lieve that the subject is put in the accusative because it is the 
subject—but rather in spite of its being the subject. The 
cause of its accusative form I have accordingly yet to find. 
To illustrate what I believe this cause to be, let one Bobin- 
son’s employment of Italians appear as the object of a series of 
verbs which form a diminuendo in their ability to take a per- 
