Lectures on Language As Particularly Connected with English Grammar.

LECTURE XII.

ON VERBS.

=Mood=.--In­dica­tive.--Im­per­ative.--In­fini­tive.--For­mer dis­tinc­tions. --Sub­junc­tive mood.--=Time=.--Past.--Present.--Fu­ture.--The fu­ture ex­plained.--How formed.--Mr. Mur­ray's dis­tinc­tion of time.-- Im­per­fect.--Plu­per­fect.--Sec­ond fu­ture.--How many tens­es.-- =Aux­il­iary Verbs=.--Will.--Shall.--May.--Must.--Can.--Do.--Have.

We are now come to con­sid­er the dif­fer­ent re­la­tions of ac­tion in ref­er­ence to _man­ner_ and _time_. We shall en­deav­or to be as brief as pos­si­ble up­on this sub­ject, keep­ing in view mean­while that can­dor and per­spicu­ity which are in­dis­pens­able in all our at­tempts to ex­plain new views.

_Mood_ sig­ni­fies _man­ner_. Ap­plied to verbs it ex­plains _how_, in _what man­ner_, by what means, un­der what cir­cum­stances, ac­tions are per­formed.

There are _three_ moods, the _in­dica­tive_ or declar­ative, the _im­per­ative_ or com­mand­ing, and the _in­fini­tive_ or un­lim­it­ed.

The in­dica­tive mood de­clares an ac­tion to be _done_ or _do­ing_, _not done_, or _not do­ing_. It is al­ways in the past or present tense; as, David _killed_ Go­liath; schol­ars _learn_ knowl­edge; I _spoke not_ a word; they _sing not_.

The im­per­ative mood de­notes a com­mand giv­en from the first _per­son_ to the _sec­ond_, _to do_ or _not do_ an ac­tion. It ex­press­es the wish or de­sire of the first per­son to have a cer­tain ac­tion per­formed which de­pends on the agen­cy of the sec­ond. The com­mand is _present_, but the ac­tion sig­ni­fied by the word is _fu­ture_ to the giv­ing of the com­mand. The sec­ond per­son can­not com­ply with the will of the first till such will is made known; as, bring me a book; go to the door.

The _in­fini­tive_ mood has no di­rect per­son­al agent, but is pro­duced as a nec­es­sary con­se­quence, grow­ing out of a cer­tain con­di­tion of things. It is al­ways _fu­ture_ to such con­di­tion; that is, some pri­or ar­range­ment must be had be­fore such con­se­quences will fol­low. It is al­ways _fu­ture_; as, they are col­lect­ing a force _to be­siege_ the city. We study gram­mar _to ac­quire_ a knowl­edge of lan­guage. Win­dows are made _to ad­mit_ light. The act of be­sieg­ing the city de­pends on the pre­vi­ous cir­cum­stance, the col­lec­tion of a force _to do_ it. Were there no win­dows, the light would not be ad­mit­ted to the room.

These dis­tinc­tions in re­gard to ac­tion must be ob­vi­ous to ev­ery hear­er. You all are aware of the fact that ac­tion nec­es­sar­ily im­plies an ac­tor, as ev­ery ef­fect must have an ef­fi­cient cause; and such ac­tion clear­ly or dis­tinct­ly _in­di­cat­ed_, must have such an agent to pro­duce it. 2d. You are ac­quaint­ed with the fact that one per­son can ex­press his will to the sec­ond, di­rect­ing him to do or avoid some thing. 3d. From an es­tab­lished con­di­tion of things, it is easy to de­duce a con­se­quence which will fol­low, in the na­ture of things, as an un­avoid­able re­sult of such a com­bi­na­tion of pow­er, cause, and means.

With these prin­ci­ples you are all fa­mil­iar, whether you have stud­ied gram­mar or not. They are clear­ly marked, abun­dant­ly sim­ple, and must be ob­vi­ous to all. They form the on­ly nec­es­sary, be­cause the on­ly re­al, dis­tinc­tion, in the for­ma­tion and use of the verb to ex­press ac­tion. Any mi­nor dis­tinc­tions are on­ly cal­cu­lat­ed to per­plex and em­bar­rass the learn­er.

But some gram­mar­ians have passed these nat­ural bar­ri­ers, and built to them­selves schemes to ac­cord with their own vain fan­cies. The re­marks of Mr. Mur­ray up­on this point are very ap­pro­pos. He says:

"Some writ­ers have giv­en our moods a much greater ex­tent than we have as­signed to them. They as­sert that the en­glish lan­guage may be said, with­out any great im­pro­pri­ety, to have as many moods as it has aux­il­iary verbs; and they al­lege, in sup­port of their opin­ion, that the com­pound ex­pres­sion which they help to form, point out those var­ious dis­po­si­tions and ac­tions, which, in oth­er lan­guages, are ex­pressed by moods. This would be to mul­ti­ply the moods with­out ad­van­tage. It is, how­ev­er, cer­tain, that the con­ju­ga­tion or vari­ation of verbs, in the en­glish lan­guage, is ef­fect­ed, al­most en­tire­ly, by the means of aux­il­iaries. We must, there­fore, ac­com­mo­date our­selves to this cir­cum­stance; and do that by their as­sis­tance, which has been done in the learned lan­guages (a few in­stances to the con­trary ex­cept­ed) in an­oth­er man­ner, name­ly, by vary­ing the form of the verb it­self. At the same time, it is nec­es­sary to set prop­er bounds to this busi­ness, so as not to oc­ca­sion ob­scu­ri­ty and per­plex­ity, when we mean to be sim­ple and per­spic­uous. In­stead, there­fore, of mak­ing a sep­arate mood for ev­ery aux­il­iary verb, and in­tro­duc­ing moods _in­ter­rog­ative_, _op­ta­tive_, _promis­sive_, _hor­ta­tive_, _preca­tive_, &c., we have ex­hib­it­ed such on­ly as are ob­vi­ous­ly dis­tinct; and which, whilst they are cal­cu­lat­ed to un­fold and dis­play the sub­ject in­tel­li­gi­bly to the learn­er, seem to be suf­fi­cient, and not more than suf­fi­cient, to an­swer all the pur­pos­es for which moods were in­tro­duced.

“From gram­mar­ians who form their ideas, and make their de­ci­sions, re­spect­ing this part of en­glish gram­mar, on the prin­ci­ples and con­struc­tions of lan­guages which, in these points, do not suit the pe­cu­liar na­ture of our own, but dif­fer con­sid­er­ably from it, we may nat­ural­ly ex­pect gram­mat­ical schemes that are not very per­spic­uous nor per­fect­ly con­sis­tent, and which will tend more to per­plex than to in­form the learn­er.”

Had he fol­lowed this rule, he would have saved weeks and months to ev­ery stu­dent in gram­mar in the com­mu­ni­ty. But his re­marks were aimed at Mr. Har­ris, who was by far the most pop­ular writ­er on lan­guage in Eng­land at that time. He has adopt­ed the very rules of Mr. Mur­ray, and car­ried them out. By a care­ful ob­ser­vance of the dif­fer­ent forms and changes of the verb and its aux­il­iaries, he makes out quite ev­ident­ly to his own mind, _four­teen_ moods, which I for­bear to name.

Most gram­mar­ians con­tend for _five_ moods, two of which, the _po­ten­tial_ or pow­er­ful, and the _sub­junc­tive_, are pred­icat­ed on the same prin­ci­ples as Mr. Har­ris' op­ta­tive, in­ter­rog­ative, etc., which they con­demn. It is im­pos­si­ble to ex­plain the char­ac­ter of these moods so as to be un­der­stood. _If_, it is said, is the sign of the sub­junc­tive, and _may_ and _can_ of the po­ten­tial; and yet they are of­ten found to­geth­er; as, “I will go _if I can_.” No schol­ar can de­ter­mine in what mood to put this last verb. It of right be­longs to both the po­ten­tial and sub­junc­tive. _If_ I _may_ be al­lowed to speak my mind, I _should_ say that such dis­tinc­tions were false.

I will not go in­to an ex­po­sure of these use­less and false dis­tinc­tions, which are adopt­ed to help car­ry out er­ro­neous prin­ci­ples. The on­ly pre­tence for a sub­junc­tive mood is found­ed on the fact that _be_ and _were_ were for­mer­ly used in a char­ac­ter dif­fer­ent from what they are at present. _Be_ was used in the in­dica­tive mood, present tense, when doubt or sup­po­si­tion was im­plied; as, If I _be_ there; if they _be_ wise. _Be_ I a man, and _re­ceive_ such treat­ment? _Were_ was al­so used in­stead of _was_ in the past tense; as, “_Were_ I an Amer­ican I would fight for lib­er­ty. If I _were_ to ad­mit the fact.” In this char­ac­ter these words are rapid­ly be­com­ing ob­so­lete. We now say, “If I _am_ there; am I a man, and _re­ceive_ such abus­es? _was_ I an Amer­ican; if I was to ad­mit,” etc.

All the round about, per­plex­ing, and te­dious af­fair of con­ju­gat­ing verbs thro the dif­fer­ent modes and tens­es will ap­pear in its true char­ac­ter, when we come to give you a few brief ex­am­ples, ac­cord­ing to truth and plain sense. But be­fore do­ing that it will be nec­es­sary to make some re­marks on time.

_Tense_ means _time_. We dis­tin­guish time ac­cord­ing to cer­tain events which are gen­er­al­ly ob­served. In the use of the verb we ex­press ac­tion in ref­er­ence to pe­ri­ods of time when it is per­formed.

There are three tens­es, or di­vi­sions of time; _past_, _present_, and _fu­ture_.

_Past tense_ ap­plies to ac­tions which are ac­com­plished; as, I _wrote_ a book; he _re­cit­ed_ his les­son.

_Present tense_ de­notes ac­tions com­menced, but not fin­ished, and now in op­er­ation; as, he _reads_ his book; we _sit_ on our seats and _hear_ the lec­ture.

_Fu­ture tense_ refers to ac­tions, which are _to take_ place here­after; as, I am _to go_ from the In­sti­tute; we de­sire _to learn_ gram­mar cor­rect­ly.

Ev­ery body can mark three plain dis­tinc­tions of time, past, present, and fu­ture. With the past we have been ac­quaint­ed. It has ceased to be. Its works are end­ed. The present is a mere line--, noth­ing as it were--which is con­stant­ly pass­ing unchecked from the past to the fu­ture. It is a mere di­vi­sion of the past and fu­ture. The He­brew, which is strict­ly a philo­soph­ic lan­guage, ad­mits no present; on­ly a _past_ and _fu­ture_. We speak of the present as de­not­ing an ac­tion be­gun and not fin­ished. In the sum­mer, we say the trees grow, and bear fruit. But when the fruit is fall­en, and the leaves seared by the frost, we change the ex­pres­sion, and say, it _grew_ and _bore_ fruit.

Of the _fu­ture_ we can know noth­ing def­inite­ly. Heav­en has hung be­fore all hu­man eyes an im­pen­etra­ble veil which ob­scures all fu­ture events. No man with­out prophet­ic vi­sion be­stowed by Him who “sees the end from the be­gin­ning,” can know what is _to be_, and no ex­pres­sion can be made, no words em­ployed which will pos­itive­ly de­clare a fu­ture ac­tion. We may see a present con­di­tion of things, and from it ar­gue what is _to be_, or take place here­after; but all that knowl­edge is drawn from the past and de­duced from a re­view of the present re­la­tion and ten­den­cies of things.

I hold the pa­per near the fire and you say it _will_ burn, and you say tru­ly, for it has a _will_, or what is the same, an in­her­ent ten­den­cy _to burn_. It is made of com­bustible mat­ter, like pa­per which we have seen burn, and hence we ar­gue this has the same ten­den­cy to be con­sumed. But how does your mind ar­rive at that fact? If you had nev­er seen a sub­stance like it burn, why should you con­clude this _will_? Does the child know it _will_ burn? No; for it has not yet learned the qual­ity of the pa­per. It is not till the child has been burned that it dreads the fire. Sup­pose I take some as­bestus, of the kind called ami­anthus, which is a min­er­al, and is formed of slen­der flex­ible fi­bres like flax; and in east­ern coun­tries, es­pe­cial­ly in Savoy and Cor­si­ca, is man­ufac­tured in­to cloth, pa­per, and lamp wicks. It was used in mak­ing wind­ing sheets for the dead, in which the bod­ies were burned, and the ash­es, re­tained in the in­com­bustible sheet, were gath­ered in­to an urn, and revered as the manes of the dead. Sup­pose I take some of this in­com­bustible pa­per or cloth, and present to you. You say it _will_ burn. Why do you say thus? Be­cause you have seen oth­er ma­te­ri­als which ap­pear like this, con­sume to ash­es. Let us put it in­to the fire. It _will not_ burn. It has no _ten­den­cy_ to burn; no qual­ity which will con­sume. But this is a new idea to you and hence your mis­take. You did not know it _would_ burn, nor could you _in­di­cate_ such a fact. You on­ly told your opin­ion de­rived from the present ap­pear­ance of things, and hence you made an as­ser­tion in the _in­dica­tive_ mood, present tense, and added to it an _in­fini­tive_ mood, in or­der to de­duce the con­se­quence of this fu­ture ac­tion--it _wills_, or has a _ten­den­cy_ to burn. But you were mis­tak­en, be­cause ig­no­rant of the _na­ture_ of things. This ami­anthus looks like flax, and to a per­son un­ac­quaint­ed with it, ap­pears to be as tru­ly com­bustible; but the min­er­al­ogist, and all who know its prop­er­ties, know very well that it _will_ not--wills noth­ing, has no in­cli­na­tion, or ten­den­cy, to burn.

Take an­oth­er ex­am­ple. Here is a steel nee­dle. I hold it be­fore you. You say, “if I let go of it, it _will_ fall,” and you say cor­rect­ly, for it has such a ten­den­cy. But sup­pose a mag­net, as great as that which is said to have drawn the iron cof­fin of Mo­hammed to the roof of the tem­ple at Mec­ca, should be placed in the room above us. The nee­dle, in­stead of falling to the floor, would be drawn in the near­est di­rec­tion to that mag­net. The _will_ or _ten­den­cy_ of the nee­dle, as gen­er­al­ly un­der­stood, would be over­come, the nat­ural law of grav­ita­tion would lose its in­flu­ence, by the coun­ter­act­ing pow­er of the load­stone.

I say, “I will go home in an hour.” But does that ex­pres­sion _in­di­cate_ the act of _go­ing_? It is placed in the in­dica­tive mood in our gram­mars; and _go_ is the prin­ci­pal, and _will_ the aux­il­iary verb. May be I shall fall and die be­fore I reach my home. But the ex­pres­sion is cor­rect; _will_ is _present_, go _fu­ture_. I _will_, I now _re­solve_, am now in­clined _to go_ home.

You see the cor­rect­ness of our po­si­tion, that we can not pos­itive­ly as­sert a fu­ture ac­tive in the in­dica­tive mood. Try and form to your­selves a phrase by which it can be done. Should you suc­ceed, you would vi­olate a law of na­ture. You would pen­etrate the dark cur­tain of the fu­ture, and claim to your­self what you do not pos­sess, a pow­er to de­clare fu­ture ac­tions. Prophets, by the help of the Almighty, had this pow­er con­ferred up­on them. But in the rev­ela­tion of the sub­lime truths they were in­struct­ed to make known, they were com­pelled to adopt hu­man lan­guage, and make it agree with our man­ner of speech.

The on­ly method by which we ex­press a fu­ture event, is to make an as­ser­tion in the in­dica­tive mood, present tense, and to that ap­pend the nat­ural con­se­quence in the in­fini­tive or un­lim­it­ed; as, I _am to go_ to Boston. He is prepar­ing _to vis­it_ New-​York. The in­fini­tive mood is al­ways fu­ture to the cir­cum­stance on which it de­pends.

Mr. Mur­ray says, that “tense, be­ing the dis­tinc­tion of time, might seem to ad­mit of on­ly the present, past, and fu­ture; but to mark it more _ac­cu­rate­ly_, it is made to con­sist of six vari­ations, viz.: the present, im­per­fect, per­fect, plu­per­fect, first and sec­ond fu­ture tens­es.” This _more ac­cu­rate mark_, on­ly serves to ex­pose the au­thor's fol­ly, and dis­tract the learn­er's mind. Be­fore, all was plain. The past, present, and fu­ture are dis­tinct, nat­ural di­vi­sions, eas­ily un­der­stood by all. But what idea can a per­son form of an _im­per­fect_ tense in ac­tion. If there was ev­er such an ac­tion in the world, it was when _gram­mar­ians_ =made= their gram­mars, which is, if I mis­take not, ac­cord­ing to their own au­thor­ity, in the _im-​per­fect_ tense! I _wrote_ a let­ter. He _read_ his piece well. The schol­ar learn_ed_ and recit_ed_ his les­son _per­fect­ly_; and yet _learned_, tho made _per­fect_ by the qual­ifi­ca­tion of an _ad­verb_, is an _im­per­fect_ ac­tion!

But this ex­plains the whole mys­tery in the busi­ness of gram­mar. We can here dis­cov­er the cause of all the trou­bles and dif­fi­cul­ties we have en­coun­tered in the whole af­fair. When au­thors _made_ their books, they _did_ it _im­per­fect­ly_; when teach­ers _taught_ them, it was _im­per­fect­ly_; and when schol­ars _learned_ them, it was _im­per­fect­ly_!! So at last, we have found the ori­gin of this whole dif­fi­cul­ty, in the gram­mars them­selves; it was all im­per­fect­ly done.

But here, again, _mirabile dic­tu!_ won­der­ful to tell, we are pre­sent­ed with a _plu-​per­fect_ tense; that is,--_plus_ means _more_,--a _more_ than per­fect tense! What must that be? If a thing is per­fect, we can not eas­ily con­ceive any thing be­yond. That is a _ne plus ul­tra_ to all ad­vance­ment--there can be no more be­yond. If any change is in­tro­duced, it must be by falling from _per­fect_ back to _im­per­fect_.

I _have said_, “many of the dis­tinc­tions in the gram­mar books _have proved_ mis­chievous; that they are as false as frivolous;” and this is said _per­fect­ly_, in the per­fect tense. If I should say, “they _had been_ of some ben­efit,” that would be _more_ than _per­fect_--plu-​per­fect. But when I say, “they _ex­hib­it­ed_ great depth of re­search, and _con­veyed_ some light on the sub­ject of which they _treat­ed_,” it would all be _im_-per­fect.

Next, we are pre­sent­ed with a _sec­ond fu­ture_ tense, which at­tempts a di­vi­sion of time un­bound­ed and un­known. In the greek, they have what is called a “_paulo post fu­ture_,” which in plain en­glish, means a “_lit­tle af­ter the fu­ture_;” that is, I sup­pose, when fu­tu­ri­ty has come to an end, this tense will com­mence! At that time we may ex­pect to meet a “_praeter plus quam per­fec­tum_”--a more than per­fect tense! But till that pe­ri­od shall ar­rive, we see lit­tle need of mak­ing such false and un­philo­soph­ic dis­tinc­tions.

A teach­er once told me that he ex­plained the dis­tinc­tions of time to his schol­ars from the clock di­al which stood in the school room. Sup­pose _twelve_ o'clock rep­re­sents the _present_ tense; _nine_ would sig­ni­fy the _per­fect_; any thing be­tween nine and twelve would be _im­per­fect_; any thing be­yond, _plu­per­fect_. On the oth­er hand, any act, for­ward of twelve, would be _fu­ture_; and at _three_ the _sec­ond fu­ture_ would com­mence. I re­marked that I thought this a won­der­ful im­prove­ment, es­pe­cial­ly to those who were able to have clocks by which to teach gram­mar, but that I could not dis­cov­er why he did not have _three fu­ture_, as well as _three past_ tens­es. Why, he said, there were no such tens­es marked in the books, and hence there was no oc­ca­sion to ex­plain them. I asked him why he did not have a tense for ev­ery hour, and so he could dis­tin­guish with Mr. Web­ster, _twelve_ tens­es, with­out any trou­ble what­ev­er; and, by go­ing three times round the di­al, he could eas­ily prove the cor­rect­ness of Dr. Beat­tie's di­vi­sion; for he says, in his gram­mar, there are _thir­ty-​six_ tens­es, and thinks there can not be less with­out “in­tro­duc­ing con­fu­sion in the gram­mat­ical _art_.” But he thought such a course would serve rather to per­plex than en­light­en; and so thought I. But he was the teach­er of a pop­ular school in the city of ----, and had pub­lished a duodec­imo gram­mar of over 300 pages, en­ti­tled “Mur­ray's Gram­mar, _im­proved_, by ----.” I will not give his name; it would be li­bel­lous!

Mr. Mur­ray thinks be­cause cer­tain things which he as­serts, but does not prove, are found in greek and latin, “we may doubt­less ap­ply them to the en­glish verb; and ex­tend the prin­ci­ple _as far as con­ve­nience_, and the id­iom of our lan­guage re­quire.” He found it to his “con­ve­nience” to note _six_ prin­ci­pal, and as many _in­def­inite_ tens­es. Mr. Web­ster does the same. Dr. Beat­tie found it “con­ve­nient” to have _thir­ty-​six_. In the greek they have _nine_. Mr. Bauzee dis­tin­guish­es in the french _twen­ty_ tens­es; and the roy­al acade­my of Spain present a very learned and elab­orate trea­tise on _sev­en fu­ture tens­es_ in that lan­guage. The clock di­al of my friend would be found quite “_con­ve­nient_” in aid­ing the “con­ve­nience” of such dis­tinc­tions.

The fact is, there are on­ly three re­al di­vi­sions of time in any lan­guage, be­cause there are on­ly three in na­ture, and the ideas of all na­tions must agree in this re­spect. In fram­ing lan­guage it was found im­pos­si­ble to mark any oth­er dis­tinc­tions, with­out in­tro­duc­ing oth­er words than those which ex­press sim­ple ac­tion. These words be­came com­pound­ed in pro­cess of time, till they are now used as changes of the same verb. I would here en­ter in­to an ex­am­ina­tion of the for­ma­tion of the tens­es of greek, latin, french, span­ish, and ger­man verbs, did I con­ceive it nec­es­sary, and show you how, by com­pound­ing two words, they form the var­ious tens­es found in the gram­mars. But it will be more ed­ify­ing to you to con­fine my re­marks to our own lan­guage. Here it will be found im­pos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish more than three tens­es, or find the verb in any dif­fer­ent form, ex­cept by the aid of oth­er words, whol­ly for­eign from those that ex­press the ac­tion un­der con­sid­er­ation.

It is by the aid of aux­il­iary verbs that the per­fect, plu­per­fect, or fu­ture tens­es are formed. But when it is shown you that these are prin­ci­pal verbs, and like many oth­er words, are used be­fore the in­fini­tive mood with­out the word _to_ pre­fixed to them, you will per­ceive the con­sis­ten­cy of the plan we pro­pose. That such is the fact we have abun­dant ev­idence to show, and with your con­sent we will in­tro­duce it in this place. I re­peat, all the words long con­sid­ered aux­il­iaries, are _prin­ci­pal_ verbs, declar­ative of pos­itive ac­tion, and as such are in ex­ten­sive use in our lan­guage. We can hard­ly agree that the words _will_, _shall_, _may_, _must_, _can_, _could_, _would_, _should_, etc. have no mean­ing, as our gram­mars and dic­tio­nar­ies would teach us; for you may look in vain for a def­ini­tion of them, as prin­ci­pal verbs, with a few ex­cep­tions.

The rea­son these words are not found in the same re­la­tion to oth­er words, with a _to_ af­ter them, is be­cause they are so of­ten used that we are ac­cus­tomed to drop that word. The same may be said of all small words in fre­quent use; as, _bid_, _do_, _dare_, _feel_, _hear_, _have_, _let_, _make_, _see_, and some­times _needs_, _tell_, and a few oth­ers. Bid him go. I _dare say_ so. I _feel_ it _move_. We _hear_ him _sing_. _Let_ us _go_. _Make_ him _do_ it. He _must go_ thro Samaria. _Tell_ him _do_ it im­me­di­ate­ly.

It is a sin­gu­lar fact, but in keep­ing with neuter verb sys­tems, that all the _neuter_ verbs as well as the ac­tive, take these aux­il­iary or _help­ing_ verbs, which, ac­cord­ing to their show­ing _help them do noth­ing_--“ex­press nei­ther ac­tion or pas­sion.” A won­der­ful _help_ in­deed!

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=Will.= This verb sig­ni­fies to _wish_, to _re­solve_, to _ex­er­cise vo­li­tion_, in ref­er­ence to a cer­tain thing or ac­tion. “I will go.” I _now re­solve_ to per­form the act of go­ing. When ap­plied to inan­imate things in­ca­pable of vo­li­tion, it sig­ni­fies what is anal­ogous to it, _in­her­ent ten­den­cy_; as, pa­per _will_ burn; iron _will_ sink; wa­ter _will_ run. All these things have an in­her­ent or ac­tive ten­den­cy to change. Wa­ter is com­posed of minute par­ti­cles of a round form, piled to­geth­er. While on a lev­el they do not move; but let a de­scent be made, and these par­ti­cles, un­der the in­flu­ence of grav­ita­tion, _will_ change po­si­tion, and roll one over an­oth­er with a ra­pid­ity equalled to the con­di­tion in which they are placed. The same may be ob­served in a quan­ti­ty of shot opened at one side which _will_ run thro the aper­ture; but the par­ti­cles be­ing larg­er, they will not find a lev­el like wa­ter. Grain, sand, and any thing com­posed of small par­ti­cles, _will_ ex­hib­it the same ten­den­cy. Iron, lead, or any min­er­al, in a state of ig­neous so­lu­tion, _will_ run, has the same _in­cli­na­tion_ to run as wa­ter, or any oth­er liq­uid. In oil, tal­low, and lard, when ex­pand­ed by heat, the same ten­den­cy is ob­served; but severe­ly chilled with the cold, it con­geals, and _will_ not, has no such _ten­den­cy_, to run.

You have doubt­less ob­served a cask filled with wa­ter and near­ly tight, (if it is pos­si­ble, make it quite so,) and when an aper­ture is made in the side, it _will_ run but a tri­fle be­fore it will stop. Open a vent up­on the top of the cask and it _will_ run freely. This _will_ or ten­den­cy was coun­ter­act­ed by oth­er means which I will not stop here to ex­plain.

This is a most im­por­tant word in sci­ence, phys­ical and moral, and may be traced thro var­ious lan­guages where it ex­erts the same in­flu­ence in the ex­pres­sion of thought.

“To avoid mul­ti­ply­ing of words, I would crave leave here, un­der the word _ac­tion_, to com­pre­hend the _for­bear­ance_ too of any ac­tion pro­posed; _sit­ting still_, or _hold­ing one's peace_, when _walk­ing_ or _speak­ing_ are pro­posed, tho mere for­bear­ances, re­quir­ing as much the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the _will_, and be­ing as of­ten weighty in their con­se­quences as the _con­trary ac­tions_, may, on that con­sid­er­ation, well enough pass for ac­tions too. For he that shall turn his thoughts in­wards up­on what pass­es in his mind when he _wills_, shall see that the _will_ or pow­er of vo­li­tion is con­ver­sant about noth­ing.”--_Locke's Es­say_, b. II. c. 21. Sec. 30.

It is cor­rect­ly ap­plied by writ­ers to _mat­ter_ as well as mind, as may be seen by con­sult­ing their works.

“Mean­while as na­ture _wills_, night bids us rest.” _Mil­ton._

The _lupulis_, or com­mon hop, _feels_ for some el­evat­ed ob­ject which will as­sist it in its high as­pi­ra­tions, and _will_ climb it by wind­ing from left to right, and _will_ not be obliged to go in an op­po­site di­rec­tion; while the _phase­olus_, or kid­ney bean, takes the op­po­site di­rec­tion. Nei­ther _will_ be com­pelled to change its course. They _will_ have their own way, and grow as they please, or they _will_ die in the con­test for lib­er­ty.

Ar­senic has a _ten­den­cy_ in it­self, a la­tent pow­er, which on­ly re­quires an op­por­tu­ni­ty suit­ed to its ob­jects, when it _will act_ in the most ef­fi­ca­cious man­ner. It _will_ de­stroy the life of the Em­per­or, who has _vol­un­tar­ily_ slain his thou­sand and tens of thou­sands. This se­cret pow­er does not re­side in the flour of wheat, for that _will not_, has no ten­den­cy, to pro­duce such dis­as­trous con­se­quences.

This word is ap­plied in a sim­ilar man­ner to in­di­vid­uals and na­tions. The man _will_ fall, not of in­ten­tion, but of ac­ci­dent. He _will_ kill him­self. The man _will_ drown, and the boat _will_ swim. The wa­ter _will_ hold up the boat, but it _will_ al­low the man to sink. The Rus­sians _will_ con­quer the Turks. If con­quest de­pend­ed sole­ly on the _will_, the Turks would as soon con­quer as the Rus­sians. But I have not time to pur­sue this top­ic far­ther. You can fol­low out these hints at your leisure.

=Shall= sig­ni­fies to be _bound_, _ob­li­gat­ed_, or _re­quired_, from ex­ter­nal ne­ces­si­ty. Its et­ymol­ogy may be traced back thro var­ious lan­guages. It is de­rived di­rect from the sax­on _scae­lan_ or _scy­lan_, and is found as a prin­ci­pal verb in that lan­guage, as well as in ours. In the church homi­ly they say, “To Him alone we _schall us_ to de­vote our­selves;” we _bind_ or _ob­li­gate_ our­selves. Chaucer, an ear­ly en­glish po­et, says.

“The faith we _shall_ to God.”

Great dif­fi­cul­ty has been found in dis­tin­guish­ing be­tween _shall_ and _will_, and fre­quent es­says have been writ­ten, to give ar­bi­trary rules for their use. If the words were well un­der­stood, there could be no dif­fi­cul­ty in em­ploy­ing them cor­rect­ly. _Will_ sig­ni­fies _in­her­ent ten­den­cy_, _ap­ti­tude_, or _dis­po­si­tion_, and _vo­li­tion_ in be­ings ca­pa­ble of us­ing it. _Shall_ im­plies _ex­ter­nal ne­ces­si­ty_, or for­eign obli­ga­tion. The par­ent says, “You _will_ suf­fer mis­ery if you do evil,” for it is in ac­cor­dance with the na­ture of things for evil to pro­duce mis­ery. “You _shall_ re­gard my wish­es,” for you are un­der _obli­ga­tion_, from the re­la­tion in which you stand to me, to do so. Let these words be clear­ly ex­plained, and there will be no dif­fi­cul­ty in us­ing them cor­rect­ly.

=May=, past tense _might_. This verb ex­press­es _pow­er_, _strength_, or _abil­ity_ to per­form an ac­tion. It is a mis­take that it means per­mis­sion or lib­er­ty on­ly. It im­plies more than that, the del­ega­tion of a pow­er to per­form the con­tem­plat­ed ac­tion. Sup­pose the schol­ar should faint, would the teach­er say to him you _may_ go in­to the open air? He has no _pow­er_, _might_, or _strength_, com­mu­ni­cat­ed by such lib­er­ty, and must re­ceive the _might_ or strength of oth­ers to car­ry him out. But to the schol­ar in health he says you _may_ go out, there­by giv­ing to him a pow­er and lib­er­ty suf­fi­cient to per­form the ac­tion. This is done on the same prin­ci­ple that one man gives an­oth­er a “_pow­er_ of at­tor­ney” to trans­act his busi­ness; and that _pow­er_ con­sti­tutes his _lib­er­ty_ of ac­tion.

=Must= sig­ni­fies to be _con­fined_, _lim­it­ed_, _bound_, or _re­strained_. I _must_, or am bound, to obey; cer­tain obli­ga­tions re­quire me to obey. The ad­jec­tive of this word is in com­mon use. The air in the cask is _musty_. It has long been _bound_ or _con­fined_ there, and pre­vent­ed from par­tak­ing of the pu­ri­fy­ing qual­ities of the at­mo­sphere, and hence has be­come _musty_.

=Can.= This word is found as a prin­ci­pal verb and as a noun in our lan­guage, es­pe­cial­ly in the Scotch di­alect. “I _ken_ nae where he'd gone.” Be­yond the _ken_ of mor­tals. Far from all hu­man _ken_. It sig­ni­fies to _know_, to per­ceive, to un­der­stand. I knew not where he had gone. Be­yond the knowl­edge of mor­tals. Far from all hu­man reach. To _con_ or _cun_ is a dif­fer­ent spelling of the same word. _Cun­ning_ is that quick _per­cep­tion_ of things, which en­ables a per­son to use his knowl­edge adroit­ly. The child _can_ read; _knows_ how to read. It _can_ walk. Here it seems to im­ply _pow­er_; but pow­er, in this case, as in most oth­ers, is gained on­ly by knowl­edge, for =knowl­edge is pow­er=. Many chil­dren have strength suf­fi­cient to walk, long be­fore they do. The rea­son why they _can not_ walk, is, they do not _know how_; they have not learned to bal­ance them­selves in an erect po­si­tion, so as to move for­ward with­out falling.

A vast pro­por­tion of hu­man abil­ity is de­rived from knowl­edge. There is not a be­ing in cre­ation so en­tire­ly in­ca­pable of self-​sup­port, as the new-​born in­fant; and yet, by the help of knowl­edge, he be­comes the lord of this low­er world. Bona­parte was once as help­less as any oth­er child, and yet by dint of _can_, _ken_, _cun­ning_, or knowl­edge, he made all Eu­rope trem­ble. But his knowl­edge was lim­it­ed. He be­came blind to dan­ger, be­wil­dered by suc­cess, and he _could_ no longer fol­low the pru­dent course of wis­dom, but fell a sac­ri­fice to his own un­bri­dled am­bi­tion, and blind­ed fol­ly. An en­light­ened peo­ple _can_ gov­ern them­selves; but _pow­er_ of gov­ern­ment is gained by a knowl­edge of the prin­ci­ples of equal­ity, and mu­tu­al help and de­pen­den­cy; and when­ev­er the peo­ple be­come ig­no­rant of that fact, they _will_ fall, the de­grad­ed vic­tims of their own fol­ly, and the wily in­flu­ence of some more know­ing as­pi­rant for pow­er.

This is a most im­por­tant top­ic; but I dare not pur­sue it far­ther, lest I weary your pa­tience. A few ex­am­ples _must_ suf­fice.

“Ja­son, she cried, for aught I _see_ or _can_, This deed,” &c. _Chaucer._

A fa­mous man, Of ev­ery _witte_ some­what he _can_, _Out take_ that him lack­eth rule, His own es­tate to guide and rule. _Gow­er._

=Do= has been called a _help­ing_ verb; but it needs lit­tle ob­ser­va­tion to dis­cov­er that it is no more so than a hun­dred oth­er words. “_Do_ thy dili­gence to come be­fore win­ter.” “_Do_ the work of an evan­ge­list.”--_Paul to Tim­othy._ I _do_ all in my pow­er _to ex­pose_ the er­ror and wicked­ness of false teach­ing. _Do_ af­ford re­lief. _Do_ some­thing to af­ford re­lief.

=Have= has al­so been reck­oned as an aux­il­iary by the “help­ing verb gram­mars,” which has no oth­er du­ty to per­form than help con­ju­gate oth­er verbs thro some of their moods and tens­es. It is a word in very com­mon use, and of course must pos­sess a very im­por­tant char­ac­ter, which should be care­ful­ly ex­am­ined and dis­tinct­ly known by all who de­sire a knowl­edge of the con­struc­tion of our lan­guage.

The prin­ci­pal dif­fi­cul­ty in the ex­pla­na­tion of this word, is the pe­cu­liar mean­ing which some have at­tached to it. It has been de­fined to de­note _pos­ses­sion_ mere­ly. But when we say, a man _has_ much _prop­er­ty de­stroyed_ by fire, we do not mean that he _gains_ or _pos­sess­es_ much prop­er­ty by the fire; nor can we make _has_ aux­il­iary to _de­stroyed_, for in that case it would stand thus: a man _has de­stroyed_ much prop­er­ty by fire, which would be false, for the de­struc­tion was pro­duced by an in­cen­di­ary, or some oth­er means whol­ly un­known to him.

You at once per­ceive that _to pos­sess_ is not the on­ly mean­ing which at­tach­es to _have_. It as­sumes a more im­por­tant rank. It can be traced, with lit­tle change in form, back thro many gen­er­ations. It is the same word as _heave_, orig­inal­ly, and re­tains near­ly the same mean­ing. Sax­on _hab­ban_, Goth­ic _ha­ban_, Ger­man _haben_, Latin _habeo_, French _avoir_, are all the same word, var­ied in spelling more than in sound; for _b_ in many lan­guages is sound­ed very much like _v_, or _bv_. It may mean to _hold_, _pos­sess_, _re­tain_, _sway_, _con­trol_, _dis­pose of_, ei­ther as a di­rect or _rel­ative_ ac­tion; for a man sus­tains re­la­tions to his ac­tors, du­ties, fam­ily, friends, en­emies, and all the world, as well as to his pos­ses­sions. He _has_ a hard task to per­form. He _has_ much pain _to suf­fer_. He _has_ suf­fered much un­hap­pi­ness.

I _have writ­ten_ a let­ter. I _have_ a writ­ten let­ter. I _have_ a let­ter _writ­ten_. These ex­pres­sions dif­fer very lit­tle in mean­ing, but the verb _have_ is the same in each case. By the first ex­pres­sion, I sig­ni­fy that I have _caused_ the let­ter to be _writ­ten_; by the sec­ond that I have a let­ter on which such ac­tion has been per­formed; and by the third, that such writ­ten let­ter stands in such re­la­tion to my­self.

I _have writ­ten_ a let­ter and sent it away. _Writ­ten_ is the past par­tici­ple from _write_; as an ad­jec­tive it de­scribes the let­ter in the con­di­tion I placed it; so that it will be de­fined, wher­ev­er it is found, as my let­ter; that is, some way _re­lat­ed_ to me.

We can here ac­count for the old _per­fect tense_, which is said, “not on­ly to re­fer to what is _past_, but al­so _to con­vey an al­lu­sion to the present time_.” The verb is in the _present_ tense, the par­tici­ple is in the _past_, and hence the rea­son of this al­lu­sion. I _have_ no _space al­lowed_ me to go in­to a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion of this word, in its ap­pli­ca­tion to the ex­pres­sion of ideas. But it is nec­es­sary to _have_ it well _un­der­stood_, as it _has_ an im­por­tant _ser­vice en­trust­ed_ to it; and I hope you will _have_ clear _views pre­sent­ed_ to your minds, strong enough to _have_ for­mer _er­rors erad­icat­ed_ there­from.

If you _have_ leisure _grant­ed_, and pa­tience and dis­po­si­tion equal-_ed_ to the task, you have my con­sent to go back and read this sen­tence over again. You will find it _has_ in it em­bod­ied much im­por­tant in­for­ma­tion in re­la­tion to the use of _have_ and the per­fect tense.