Owen—Relations Expressed by the Passive Voice. 137 
ing in their turn on these, I reach a single raining of the outer 
world—a raining which is sometimes real and sometimes unreal. 
In other words I think of the phenomenon of rain as sometimes 
busy and sometimes taking a holiday—sometimes active, some¬ 
times dormant. 
In either case, however, thus far I do hardly more than 
couple a phenomenon with what I rank as a temporary charac¬ 
teristic. My mode of thinking is analogous to that expressed 
by “Yonder cloud is yellow” or “in motion.” That is, I do 
not thus far pose the raining as the actor in an action, but as 
rather substance in relation with an attribute. Now sucii con¬ 
ceptions are not commonly reversed. For instance, “Yonder 
cloud is yellow” or “in motion” does not frequently appear as 
“Yellow(ness)” or “motion characterizes yonder cloud.” While 
then conceptions of this sort can be reversed, reversal is not 
probable enough to furnish plausible occasion for a passive voice. 
In particular, if the thought of raining is to achieve a passive 
evolution, we must start it in a better shape. 
Accordingly I further meddle with the outer world. If 
raining be, for instance, sometimes resting from its labors, and 
sometimes on the other hand exerting itself, it must occasionally 
pass from one phase to the other. What particularly interests 
me at the moment is that raining must, then, pass from unre¬ 
ality to reality. As this passing is a change in outer-world 
conditions, it requires the output of some energy. This energy, 
according to linguistic Physics, (see pp. 3, 9-10) may be ex¬ 
erted by the raining or some other agent—possibly unknown 
and possibly unthought of. In other words the raining may 
unaided pass from unreality to reality, or it may be-passed, by 
which expressions in italics I intend no difference in the pass¬ 
ing (see p. 2) but a difference in relations which shall hold be¬ 
tween the raining and the passing. 
In “Raining passes from unreality to reality,” “Raining,” 
figured as an entity, associates with passing in the actor-to-action 
relation. In “Raining is passed, etc.”, the relation of the same 
two terms is that of actee-to-action. The sentences presented in 
quotation marks indeed might be accepted as interpreting—the 
