84 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
THE PASSIVE VOICE. 
By this I mean a system of verbal forms which express re¬ 
lation the reverse of that which is expressed—or might be— 
by the active voice. I concede the passive rank to the homely 
phrase “is being loved” as cordially as to the elegant “amatur;” 
bnt I exclude the. forms which are not recognized by general 
consent as constituting with the active forms one larger verbal 
system. To illustrate, in the sentence “June precedes July” 
the verb expresses a relation which, neglecting figurative values, 
may be known as that of earlier-to-later. If now I wish to 
substitute the passive form of thinking for the active, the re¬ 
quired reverse relation of later-to-earlier may be expressed by 
“follows,” as in “July follows June.” But I do not plan to 
aggravate existing difficulties by attempting to establish “fol¬ 
low” as a passive of “precede.” 
Its Uxxecessamkess 
By this I mean that passive verb-forms are by no means 
indispensable, although I recognize their great convenience. 
In the first place I suppose that it is never absolutely neces¬ 
sary to adopt the passive form of thinking. Reviving my ini¬ 
tial illustration, given a cannibal and a missionary, which¬ 
ever eats the other, I can always think of that one first, and 
always sense relation of the two accordingly as that of eater-to- 
food. My mental operations do not seem to seriously suffer, 
even if the relation of food-to-eater never dawns upon my con¬ 
sciousness. 
In the second place, although I be distinctly thinking in the 
passive form, as intimated under the preceding title I do not 
seem to absolutely need an actual passive voice for its expres¬ 
sion. In further illustration, given what is indicated by 
“The box overlies the book,” the positional relation of the 
mentioned objects plainly is that of overlier-to-overlain, or up- 
