112 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
tity of A and B, we do not put our B in the accusative.* Sud¬ 
denly—I’ve no suspicion why—we lose all thought of action. 
A no longer is conceived as “doing anything” to B. B no 
longer is conceived as suffering “a doing.” Since we then are 
quite unable to conceive accusative inflection as the sign that an 
idea is merely not the first term in our thinking but the last— 
since we think of such inflection only as the sign of “action-suf¬ 
fering”—we feel that, in the absence of that suffering, we must 
abandon that inflection. Why, of all the other several inflec¬ 
tions, one appeals to us and not another, it is hardly necessary 
to examine. Unluckily we violate the uniformity of nomina¬ 
tive function as the sign of first term, blundering into the adop¬ 
tion of the nominative case for B, the last term. 
Conservatism won the day. Entrenched in the inveterate 
'conception of accusative inflection as exclusively the sign of “ac¬ 
tion-suffering,” it held its own against the advance of those 
who doubtless strove for the conception of accusative inflection 
as the sign of a last term. Unsupported by sufficient knowl¬ 
edge of accusative history, I should hesitate to say that any 
“doubtless strove” for the latter conception, were it not that 
to this day it has its numerous and strenuous supporters; un¬ 
ceasingly the instinct of the laity protests against convention¬ 
ality, insisting on “It’s me” and other analogous expressions; 
and a writer, whose perceptions are superior to his reasonings, 
defends with much enthusiasm a poetic, resolute, defiant “I’ll 
he me.” 
Relations that were actually found 
For reasons which I later indicate the (natural) rational 
(advanced) conception of the passive meaning (pp. 31-32) was 
not generally reached. When the thought at first expressed by 
the reflexive sentence was reorganized, the new relation that 
should have been found, unfortunately was not found—not 
found, at least, by many. The relations actually found were 
* With this peculiar government by what is called the copula “to-be” 
rank also the exceptions offered by “to seem” (or “be apparently”) 
and other so-called “copulative verbs.” 
