Owen—Relations Expressed by the Passive Voice. 123 
fliction might establish that, in thought intended by my illus¬ 
tration, the relation which at first obtained between the knife 
and brokenness—relation qualitative, static—was displaced by 
a dynamic action-caused relation of actee-to-action—of knife to- 
breaking (“being-broken”). That is, as the result of shifting 
in the mental point of view, a figurative phrase of quality, by 
no means passive, came to be an action-phrase as much a pas¬ 
sive 'as the classic phrase of self-infliction, and by no means 
figurative. 
While it is presumable that other lines (to me unknown) 
of passive evolution have been followed, both analogy and a 
priori indication lead me to expect of it in every case a figura¬ 
tive start and a peculiar, not to say a rambling course. 
Case II— When Used Without ah “Agent ” 
In the absence of the agent of the passive voice—in other- 
words, the actor of the active voice—the only elements im¬ 
mediately offered for construction of an action-thought appear 
at first to be the action and actee (or object of the active voice); 
and they are not enough. 
To illustrate, if I set before your mind together a baptizing 
and, say, monkeys, you presumably are far from satisfied. You 
want to know what the baptizing “has to do with” monkeys. 
Any inference to which you may be tempted you renounce, be¬ 
cause it is implausible. You are conscious that my thought, 
so far as you can duplicate it, needs another element, to be 
complete. You satisfy yourself that in the case before us, 
as in other cases, thought conceived in detail must consist at 
least of two terms and what one term has to do with the other— 
say, then, the relation which obtains between them. 
In the present case required relation seems to be evolved as 
follows. When the actor is eliminated, though without him 
the phenomenon in which he played his part must seem at 
first to mental habit but a fragment, still it soon is recognized 
that nothing will be added by the speaker to complete it. Tol¬ 
erated first as the merest all-there-is of thought-to-be-exhibited— 
