| Future Perfect. | |||
| I shall have | We shall have | } | |
| Thou shalt have | Ye shall have | } | written. |
| He shall have | They shall have | } | |
This tense denotes that a future action will be perfected, before the commencement or completion of another action, or before a certain future time; as, “Before you can have an answer, I shall have written a second letter.” “By the time he shall have arrived, you will have conquered every difficulty.” In short, it denotes, that at some future time an action will be perfected.
As it has been a subject of great controversy among grammarians, what tenses should be called definite and what indefinite, I shall now offer a few observations which may serve to illustrate the point in question.
Duration, like space, is continuous and uninterrupted. It is divisible in idea only. It is past or future, merely in respect to some intermediate point, which the mind fixes as the limit between the one and the other. Present time, in truth, does not exist, any more than a mathematical line can have breadth, or a mathematical point be composed of parts. This position has, indeed, been controverted by Dr. Beattie; but, in my judgment, without the shadow of philosophical argument[61]. Harris, Reid, and several others, have incontrovertibly proved it. But though present time, philosophically speaking, has no existence, we find it convenient to assume a certain portion of the past and the future, as intermediate spaces between these extremes, and to consider these spaces as present; for example, the present day, the present week, the present year, the present century, though part of these several periods be past, and part to come. We speak of them, however, as present, as “this month,” “this year,” “this day.” Time being thus in its nature continuous, and past and future being merely relative terms, some, portion or point of time being conceived where the one begins and the other ends, it is obvious that all tenses indicative of any of these two general divisions must denote relative time, that is, time past or future, in relation to some conceived or assumed space; thus it may be past or future, in respect to the present hour, the present day, the present week.
Again. The term indefinite is applicable either to time or to action. It may, therefore, be the predicate of a tense denoting either that the precise time is left undetermined, or that the action specified is not signified, as either complete or imperfect. Hence the controversy has been partly verbal. Hence, also, the contending parties have seemed to differ, while, in fact, they were agreed; and, on the contrary, have seemed to accord, while their opinions were, in truth, mutually repugnant.
Dr. Browne confines the term to action only, and pleads the authority of Mr. Harris in his favour. It is true, indeed, that Mr. Harris calls those tenses definite which denote the beginning, the middle, or the perfection of an action: but it is obvious, from the most superficial examination of his theory, that he denominates the tenses definite or indefinite, not in respect to action, but to time. When, in the passage from Milton,
“Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth,
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep;”
he considers “walk” as indefinite, is it in regard to action? No. “It is,” says he, “because they were walking, not at that instant only, but indefinitely, at any instant whatever.” And when he terms, Thou shalt not kill, an indefinite tense, is it because it has no reference to the completion or the imperfection of the action? No; it is “because,” says he, “this means no particular future time, but is extended indefinitely to every part of time.” Besides, if Mr. Harris’s and Dr. Browne’s ideas coincide, how comes it that the one calls that a definite tense, which the other terms indefinite? This does not look like accordance in sentiment, or in the application of terms. Yet the tenses in such examples as these,
“The wicked flee when no man pursueth;”