90 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
THE RELATION WHICH THE PASSIVE VOICE EX¬ 
PRESSES 
Case (1) When Used With Both a Subject and aw 
“Agent” 
MEANS OF INDICATING THE DELATION 
As intimated on p. 13, for every variation in tlie action- 
personnel I look to find a corresponding variation in the recog¬ 
nized relation formed by action; and for each relational variety 
no doubt a special means of expression might have been adopted. 
But the particular action-personnel in actual practice will be 
found to insure in the active voice particular relation (in¬ 
suring it for instance, when the actor disappears, as that of 
action to actee) devolving on the passive voice the duty only 
of determining relation as reverse—e. g. relation not of action 
to actee,,but of actee to action. That is, the function of the- 
passive will be sensed as not the naming of particular reverse 
relation, but the naming of a what so ever-it-may-be reverse re¬ 
lation, the reverse of the relation indicated—or which might 
be indicated—by the corresponding active voice. Accordingly 
the symbolizing policy adopted when the passive is attended 
by actee and actor both-—or, say, by subject and by agent— 
is available still, though one or even both of them withdraw. 
Examination of this policy is not then special to Case (1), and 
might begin and end before examination of Case (1) and all 
the other cases, were it not that data necessary to the two ex¬ 
aminations interlock. Accordingly I somewhat dislocate the 
sequence of my reasonings, reviewing first the merely possible 
means of expressing a reverse relation, hoping this review may 
disembarrass me of preconceptions harmful to intelligent per¬ 
ception of the means in fact employed—passing next to in¬ 
fluences tending to evolve these actual means, and following 
their changes both in form and meaning—trusting better thus 
to understand their ultimately reached significance. 
