Owen—Relations Expressed by the Passive Voice. 119 
voice of “eat” interpreted as naming the eater-to-food relation. 
But of such users I suppose there are at most but few. In the 
prevailing usage, then, it may be said—as I began to argue on 
p. 37—that evolution of the passive in the first place was di¬ 
verted or perverted. 
Arrest of passive evolution 
There still remained the possibility of fusing in the mean¬ 
ing of the passive verb the two relations whose expression was 
respectively effected by the passive and the preposition “by”-— 
the noun for the actee continuing to be inflected nominatively, 
because in “passive thinking” (ipso facto) the actee is the 
first term—the actor-naming noun however being put in the 
accusative without a preposition, since the actor in a passive 
thinking is the last term, destination, or arrival-point of mental 
transit. (Conf. “Romam ire”). But, until this possibility be 
the single short-cut and the two-fold roundabout relation be in mind 
together. In this diagram of three relations and three lines 
in which the words adjacent to the upper right-hand angle are sup¬ 
posed to name one person, I can see undoubtedly three lines at once; 
and doubtless I can also simultaneously sense the three relations. 
The required effort surely is no greater than the one demanded by 
“11:22 :: 13:26,” which calls on me to sense relation of equality be¬ 
tween two other relations (ratios)—an operation which I certainly 
cannot effect, with either of the three relations out of mind. I am 
not however to be understood as meaning that the short-cut and the 
roundabout are both expressed, or that each one is part of thought 
intended for expression . 
