122 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, 
mentariness)—a relation of actee-to-action. That is, as the 
result of shifting in the mental point of view, the figurative 
acquisition-phrase, at first by no means passive, came to be 
as much a passive as the classic phrase of self-infliction, and 
by no means figurative. 
C—THE FIGURE OF QUALITY 
To illustrate, given “Henry broke the knife,” suppose again,, 
instead of thinking (as that sentence indicates) from Henry 
to the knife, I start my thinking with the knife, and end with 
Henry. I may reverse my thought as indicated by “The knife 
was fragmentary through the agency of Henry/’ figuratively 
exhibiting the knife and fragmentariness in the relation of an 
object to its quality. 
Strictly speaking it must be admitted that the mental picture 
thus expressed reflects a moment subsequent to that of break¬ 
ing, and exhibits not at all a breaking, but resultant brokenness. 
Each of these however implies the other. Indeed, it may per¬ 
haps be said that, heeding now the one and now the other, we 
no more forget their oneness, than the eye of one in motion over¬ 
looks the oneness of a changing scene perplexed by parallax. 
Accordingly it may be held that either picture adequately cor¬ 
responds to outer-world reality. 
In the exhibition of the second mental picturing let “broken” 
take the place of “fragmentary,” the resultant total being then 
“The knife was broken through the agency of Henry”—or “The 
knife was broken by Henry”—an expression which I do not 
yet intend as passivq. “Broken,” somewhat as before (See p. 
45) shall still be understood as “in a state of brokenness.” 
Let now the mental picture offered by “The knife was broken” 
be so blurred that detail is forgotten. Discontent is sure to 
follow. There is sure to be a striving for distinctness. “Brok¬ 
enness” with utmost ease suggests the far more vivid “breaking.” 
“(The knife) was broken” may be reinterpreted as the expres¬ 
sion now no longer of a status (of the knife) but rather of a 
prior, status-forming action. 
Reasoning analogous to that applied to figurative self-in- 
