Owen— Relations Expressed by the Passive Voice. 113 
very different. The evolution of the passive mode of thinking 
was in the majority of minds diverted—personally I prefer 
to say perverted. 
Perversion of the passive evolution 
How this happened I can best appreciate by going back a 
little “for a running start,” observing first that what we rank 
as worth the effort of expression always may he sensed as multi¬ 
ple. One idea hardly stirs us to such effort. The mental pic¬ 
ture of the biggest fish I ever caught, I care but little to pro¬ 
duce before your mental eye, except conjointly with the mental 
picture of myself. Even two ideas are not a thought, but 
merely one idea and then again another idea, unless combined 
into a thought by a relation. To hang my portrait in your 
mental gallery beside the picture of the fish, is hardly worth 
the effort, if you do not further sense me in relation with the 
fish, as catcher to his “catch.” A trio of ideas, two* and what 
they have to do with each other—their relation—are the mini¬ 
mum of thought-communication.* 
Of relations doubtless some are easier to apprehend than 
others. To grasp the bulk-superiority of A to B requires surely 
less exertion than to sense the difference between “eventuality”' 
and “possibility.” Relations of the latter type—since they are 
later recognized, and far less frequently—are less familiar.. 
They are also much more difficult per se. In a given case- 
they have less chance of being apprehended. 
Applying now the recognition of this difference between re¬ 
lations, think a moment of, for instance, a collision—rather, 
say, an impact. However absolutely the occurrence be, to first 
perception of the mental eye, a blended whole, it plainly can¬ 
not be linguistically so exhibited; for almost always our vo¬ 
cabularies offer us at best a word for every constituting ele¬ 
ment of a particular occurrence—none for the occurrence as a 
whole. Of necessity we sense it, in linguistic thinking, in its 
details. I, for instance, sense the impact as an A, a striking, 
* That all the- members of a trio be expressed by words is plainly 
quite unnecessary, gesture or “the situation” often operating in the 
place of words. 
