Owen—Relations Expressed by the Passive Voice. 143 
of the order followed in the former disconcerts me. I may fail 
to note the great relation-change which change in order of the 
terms revealed in “Jones was killed by Brown.” Blind to any 
difference in Brown’s and Jones’ respective implications in the 
act of killing, sure that Brown and Jones are each unchanged, 
hut well aware that very different happenings are intended by 
the two expressions, I perhaps imagine that—I know not, care 
not, how—the killing was in one case (independently of its 
participants) unlike the killing in the other. Indeed, perhaps 
I go so far as to conceive these different killings as the one the 
other’s opposite. 
I do not intend to risk my peace of mind—perhaps my san¬ 
ity—in any effort to establish with precision what I mean, or 
ought to mean, by “opposite.” Enough that what it roughly 
indicates appears to be what is conceived by those who think of 
“being-killed” as different from “killing”—i. e. that “being- 
killed” must be about as far as possible from “killing”—“be¬ 
ing-done” from “doing.” 
If, being cross-examined, I attempt to justify myself in my 
supposed imagining, I must imagine somewhat more distinctly. 
First then I dismiss such natural opposites to “kill”—or, say, 
deprive of life—as “not to kill,” “to endow with life” and “to 
restore to life”; for these don’t seem to help me very much. 
Indeed about the best that I can do is to suppose that while in 
“Brown killed Jones” the action, or in other words the out-put 
energy, was exercised in one direction—say from left to right, 
in “Brown was killed by Jones” it was put out in the opposite 
direction—say from right to left. I nominate then killings 
of two sorts, the one done forward and the other backward— 
say a prorso-active and a retro-active. Indeed, I half suspect 
these terms express with some precision the imaginary differ¬ 
ence between a “doing” and a “being-done.” 
For this or any other difference the universe affords, I think, 
no precedent. To illustrate, take for an example action of the 
simplest order, motion rectilinear and horizontal, of a uniform 
velocity—beginning, say, with motion northward. 
