102 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
and habitual writing is not yet in operation. In speech-devel¬ 
opment it is an a priori certainty that under such conditions 
verb and ever-present reflexive object coalesce, wear down and 
come to be regarded as a mere inflectional variant of the verb— 
that the like occur in other persons, numbers, modes and tenses 
—that a full reflexive system of inflections, a reflexive conju¬ 
gation, be established. 
Thus far I have merely been reciting the initial chapter in 
the history of the so-called “middle voice’ 7 —a species of reflex¬ 
ive conjugation which has often reached a strictly passive mean¬ 
ing. I find the major interest in the succeeding chapter. It 
opens with “themselves 77 —tjie once effective symbol of reflex¬ 
ive object or actee—so much impaired as to be quite unable 
longer to effect its (earlier) purpose. That is, although the 
specially inflected middle voice still indicates a reflex action, 
its distinguishing inflection does not symbolize with any cer¬ 
tainty the reflex object. 
As a rule, in such conditions, what no longer is expressed 
distinctly, is in time forgotten. In “The apples eat them¬ 
selves, 77 then, let “themselves, 77 surviving only in some frag¬ 
mentary form—in the present case for instance ^(emselves)— 
suggest no longer any element of thought; but let it be remem¬ 
bered still that any verb inflected with that form—say “eattfft/' 
analogous to “eduntur 77 with a middle meaning only—is used 
of only such activity as exercises its effect upon the subject— 
in the present case the apples. 
With the mental disappearance of “themselves, 77 the rela¬ 
tion—purely figurative—which at first was recognized between 
the apples and themselves, is also necessarily in time forgotten. 
That is, the apples and themselves are now no longer even figura¬ 
tively perceived in the eater-to-food relation. But the apples 
must be sensed in some relation; for otherwise they could not 
enter into any thought intended. Though sensed in detail, 
apples, boys and eating still are recognized as the constituents 
of a unit. It must assuredly be felt that all are in some way 
bound together by relation, though momentarily there be no 
clear conceiving what particular relation it may be. Indeed, 
