Owen—Relations Expressed hy the Passive Voice. 101 
It appears accordingly that an imaginary, figurative self- 
inflicted action may, in spite of all its clumsiness, be utilized 
successfully in so transposing thought- and sentence-order, that 
the object (or actee) is given what at first would seem to be 
exclusively the actor’s place, and vice versa. 
Probability that the actee and actor would be sensed in riew 
relations 
What has thus far been accomplished plainly is but the ini¬ 
tial step in the evolution of the passive voice. Further steps 
may be expected to establish members of the trio (actor, ac¬ 
tion and actee) in new relations different from those expressed 
by the active voice. In the search for these another illustra¬ 
tion will be more convenient—one in which relations will be 
understood more easily. Accordingly, “My apples eat them¬ 
selves by (the aid of) the boys.” 
This illustration seems to me, so far as it goes, identical 
in structure of both thought and sentence with my last, and 
also in its use of figurative self-infliction. That is, although in 
fact the boys eat the apples, I imagine the apples to “do” the 
eating “to themselves” with some assistance from the boys. 
That is again, the apples are conceived as in the eater-to-food 
relation—-a particular actor-to-actee relation—with themselves. 
How if that relation shall be superseded, in the first place 
it must be ignored. “It is well to be off with the old love 
before you are on with the new.” So long as mind is occupied 
by what the symbol > expresses, I see little room in mind for 
that which is expressed by <. Furthermore I see no proba¬ 
bility that a relation be ignored, so long as what expresses it is 
unimpaired. I look accordingly for some impairment of the 
expression “eat themselves.” 
By way of leading up to this, suppose my illustration to be 
typical—-that “eat themselves” is regularly used whenever we 
today would say “are eaten”-—that the case of “bit himself” 
is quite analogous—-that generally this reflexive usage holds the 
place that later will be yielded to a passive clearly recognized 
as such—-and that the change-resisting influence of printing 
