Owen—Relations Expressed by the Passive Voice. 99 
tutored minds in which, linguistic genius is embarrassed very 
little by conventionality. The illustration presupposes that a 
snake has bitten Brown. I further stipulate that it was in 
the back. The illustration thus protected I exploit as follows: 
Desiring to tell you what has happened, I of course can re¬ 
alize my purpose by “A snake bit Brown, etc.” But I don’t 
want to begin with the snake. Brown interests me more—and 
first. He is the superior creature. He was the “under-dog.” 
He is a friend of mine. The snake I never even saw. I want 
to begin with Brown. 
Yielding to the force of habit—following the mental line of 
least resistance—since I thus begin with Brown, I also pose 
him as the actor (see p. 22). I picture him as a doer of the biting; 
and I like the picture. It poses Man as arbiter of his destiny—• 
no victim of a loathsome reptile. 
But the picture does not yet inform you that the biting any¬ 
wise affected Brown. I must extend the picture, even though 
absurdly. Accordingly “Brown bit himself.” 
This statement might be more precisely true to fact; bufc 
that is unimportant. So long as I successfully inform you 
that a given injury befell my friend, the question who or what 
inflicted it may rank with you as quite subordinate. For my¬ 
self, I like my way of putting matters very much; and, “sav¬ 
ing” thus “the face” of him who really was a victim, by this 
feigning that what happened to him he achieved himself—“on 
purpose”—I am hardly guilty of an innovation. For it is in 
speech a deferential habit—most inveterate:—to attribute to 
another an autonomy contrasting violently with my own sub¬ 
jection to my destiny—a habit still detectable in “I shall, thou 
wilt, he will”—that usual linguistic exaltation of the other, 
often indicated only by a converse self-abasement, direct in 
the Japanese self-designation as “your stupid younger brother,” 
indirect in the Chinese “that dirty woman, my wife.”* My 
deviation from the truth, in telling so far what has happened, 
is accordingly not only unimportant, but effectively supported 
by analogy. 
* These hearsay phrases, quite unverified, I offer for their illus¬ 
trative value only. 
