124 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
accordingly as only a de facto whole—the fragment quickly takes 
the rank of a de jure whole and readily is sensed in detail as 
an action, an actee, and their reciprocal belonging; or—to think 
of rather one of them alone in its belonging with the other, 
or its “having to do with 7 ’ that other—we may pose them, in 
the “active” form of thinking, as the action, the actee, and 
that relation of the action to its own actee, so dimly recognized 
by Grammar’s dictum that, in any phrase or sentence represent¬ 
ing such a thought, the noun is the object of the verb. 
In illustration of the now-considered case I offer the ex¬ 
pressions “II fit hdtir une maison” “Fecit aedificare domum ” 
of which the words italicized express an action (named by 
“batir”, “aedificare”), the relation of the action to its own 
actee—specifically that of building to what is built, incorporated 
in the meaning of “batir,” “aedificare”—and an actee (“mai¬ 
son,” “domum”).* That is, their meaning may be rendered 
by “He caused (never mind whom) to build a house 
The gratuitous imagining of an indefinite actor (e. g. “some¬ 
one,” as the object direct or indirect of “caused,” or subject 
of “to build”), the violent conception of “batir” as passive 
(“maison”being held to be its subject),and the French grammar¬ 
ian’s ingenious, though delirious, interpretation of “fit batir” 
as a causative verbal unit,t are so foreign to my own pro- 
* The words “II fit” and “Fecit” are irrelevant to the case in hand, 
and are admitted only because I do not think of any satisfactory case 
in which the now-considered type of thought obtains expression, save 
the clause employed as a substantive. 
f Lest I seem unfair, I note that building is a mere variety of mak¬ 
ing or creating—that is, causing to exist. This causing to exist in¬ 
deed I readily make over into an investing with existence, blend this 
total into a single act, and pose it as affecting what I choose. Indeed 
I can do more, accomplishing with no great effort the linguistic feat 
of blending “cause to be more beautiful (than it had been before),” 
expressing all of this by “beautify.” But if I be commanded to effect 
a blending of “to cause to make”—that is, “to cause to cause to ex¬ 
ist”—I must admit that I’m in danger of a serious blunder. 
“Any man can lead a horse to water; but the king himself can’t 
make him drink.” And I—while I can blend in thought the total 
“cause a horse to (drink water, i. e.) cause water to enter his 
stomach”—I cannot blend the causing of the drinking, while conceiv¬ 
ing in their individuality the horse and water. “To cause to drink,” 
for momentary purposes, may adequately be expressed by “drench;” 
but “drench the horse the water” is too much for any syntax in my 
