THE ACTIVE INFINITIVE. 
25 
object. This is a wide departure from classical usage, and indicates 
that the sense of the genitive character of the article tov before the 
Infinitive was partly lost in later Greek. . . . The origin of this use of the 
Infinitive with tov is (sic!) perhaps in such usages as appear in Luke 17:1; 
1 Cor. 16:4; and still more in such as that in Luke 4:10. In Luke 17:1 
the genitive is apparently suggested by the idea of hindering or avoiding in the 
adjective dveVSeKro v\ in 1 Cor. 16:4 it is the adjective d^tov which gives occa¬ 
sion to the genitive ; but in both cases the Infinitive seems to be logically the 
subject of the copulative verb, the adjective being the predicate. Whether 
this construction represents the thought in the mind of the writer, or whether 
the expression is rather to be regarded as an impersonal one, the Infinitive 
being dependent on the predicate adjective, cannot with confidence be de¬ 
cided. Such usages as Luke 4:10 and 5:7 doubtless owe their origin to the 
same mental process by which a clause introduced by Iva came to stand as 
the object of a verb of exhorting. Ps. Sol. 2:28 compared with Luke 12:45 
is also suggestive. It is doubtless the idea of hindering in that gives 
rise to the genitive in the former passage; in the latter the Infinitive is 
a direct object.” 
Again, this explanation of the Anglo-Saxon inflected infinitive as subject 
seems to me supported by the fact that, in the Slavic languages, after verbs 
and verbal phrases that govern a dative, we frequently have a dative-with- 
infinitive instead of an accusative-with-infinitive construction: see Chapter IX 
and section ix of Chapter XVI. 
The chief support of the theory, however, is to be found in the fact 
that, as we shall see in Chapter XVI, section i, the theory applies to the 
Germanic languages as a whole. 
The foregoing attempt at differentiating the two forms of the infinitive as 
subject is, I believe, almost entirely my own. Of the influence of attraction 
upon the infinitive in New Testament Greek and in the Slavic languages, I 
did not become aware until after I had worked out the theory above given as 
to the subjective infinitive in Anglo-Saxon, while I was hunting for confirma¬ 
tion of that theory in the kindred Indo-Germanic languages. Dr. Van Draat, 
in his “ The Infinitive with and without Preceding to,” says nothing of the Anglo- 
Saxon period. Dr. Kellner, in his “ Abwechselung und Tautologie,” gives several 
examples of the interchange of uninflected and inflected infinitive in Middle 
English, which he believes due to a more or less conscious striving after variety, 
but he says nothing of the interchange in Anglo-Saxon. Professor C. A. Smith, 
in his Studies in English Syntax, pp. 41-42, has an interesting note on the 
interchange of simple and prepositional infinitive after auxiliaries in Shakespeare, 
in which he discusses the influence upon the infinitive of proximity to the chief 
verb, but he says nothing of the infinitive in Anglo-Saxon or of the subjective 
infinitive in Shakespeare. Professor Einenkel, in his “ Der Infinitiv im Mittel- 
englischen,” p. 84, speaks of the confusion between a subjective infinitive and 
an infinitive dependent on an adjective in Middle English as follows: “ 1st das 
infinitivische subject eines adjectivs von einem objectsnomen begleitet, so tritt 
in den meisten fallen eine kreuzung ein mit dem unter dem infinitiv des zweckes 
verzeichneten belege: he is good to see (love etc.), das heisst, das objectsnomen 
wird zum subject gemacht, wahrend das friihere infinitivische subject eine func¬ 
tion erhalt, die einem gewohnlichen zwecksinfinitiv zum verwechseln ahnelt; ” 
