120 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
realized, it may be said that in the second place the evolution 
of the passive was arrested. 
Of linguistic thinking, what I must accordingly concede to 
be the accepted passive mode—which recognizes two relations 
(one between e. g. my apples and an eating; one between that 
eating and the boys)—at first may seem implausible, because it 
corresponds so inexactly with what I regard as the accepted 
active mode-—which recognizes one relation only (that e. g. 
between the boys and my apples). Yet the inexactness of this 
correspondence has its close analogies. The musician does not 
choose, for the descending minor scale, all notes he played in 
the ascending. How and then the Mississippi river cuts the 
neck of a far-sweeping bend. Two channels are accordingly 
available. Going down the stream you choose—or, rather, 
hardly can avoid—the shorter, swifter channel. But if you 
now reverse your course, it may be you will find that you can 
make no head against the stronger current of that channel * 
or your progress is so slow and painful that you wisely let 
yourself be swung into the other. So also even in the telling 
of your “passive” thought, perhaps you find “The longest way 
’round is the shortest way home.” 
B—THE FIGURE OF ACQUISITION 
As what I said of self-infliction in the main applies, with 
only obvious modification, to the now-considered figure, I can 
make the exposition of the latter very brief. 
To illustrate, given “Henry broke the knife,” suppose, in¬ 
stead of thinking (as that sentence indicates) from Henry to- 
the knife, I start my thinking with the knife and end with 
Henry. I may figuratively construct my thought as indicated 
by “The knife acquired fragmentariness through agency of 
Henry.” 
Expression of this type, on which I base my present title,, 
also may conveniently assume the form “The knife became 
fragmentary, etc.”, in which the words italicized may be en¬ 
dured as merely an ambitious substitute for the more popular 
“come broke.” 
