82 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
comparative calm of recollection, what I want to tell yon about 
is less the cow and her more or less imaginary doing, than the 
cook and what she underwent. 
i I am indeed aware that such a thinking backward—so to 
style it—may be caused by other influences: (1) putting the 
first term last, (2) putting the last term first, and (3) re¬ 
versal of relation, each requires the other two—that is, effects 
a thinking backward; and also each may have not only a posi¬ 
tive, but also a negative occasion. 
In other words, I might desire per se to use the reverse re¬ 
lation, or I might rather wish to avoid the proverse. I might 
wish to think last of the cow, or merely not to think of her 
first. I might dislike to think last of the cook, or I might 
positively wish to think of her first; and plainly any one of these 
likes or dislikes might induce the passive form of thinking 
indicated by “The cook has been scared by the cow.” But on 
the whole, for reasons given on pages 5 and 23 the motive for 
the passive form of thinking seems to me, as a rule at least, 
to be the wish to begin with what in the active form of think¬ 
ing is the final term. The very type of influence which pre¬ 
vents me from saying “A pin has been swallowed by the baby!” 
seems to me to lead me to say “The cook has been scared by 
the cow.” 
Its Frequency 
Thinking in the passive form is plainly not confined to 
action. To illustrate, in the sentences “Boses are red” I find 
no hint of action. Their redness, it is true, may be regarded 
as resulting from a former output energy which made them red; 
but the sentence seems to me (by means of “are”) directly to 
exhibit roses and what I express by “red” or “redness” in the 
merely existing relation of (thing or) substance-to- (its own) 
attribute or quality. FTow, just so far as I am sure of any¬ 
thing, I’m sure that, instead of thinking of the roses first and 
later of the redness, I can think, if so I choose, of redness 
first, and later of the roses; and that, in so doing, I no longer 
experience the mind-sensation which I called the thing-to-quality 
