"I need, surely, name no more, among the dead, who found is being built, or the like, acceptable. 'Simple-minded common people and those of culture were alike protected against it by their attachment to the idiom of their mother tongue, with which they felt it to be directly at variance.' So Mr. White informs us. But the writers whom I have quoted are formidable exceptions. Even Mr. White will scarcely deny to them the title of 'people of culture.'
"So much for offenders past repentance; and we all know that the sort of phraseology under consideration is daily becoming more and more common. The best written of the English reviews, magazines, and journals are perpetually marked by it; and some of the choicest of living English writers employ it freely. Among these, it is enough if I specify Bishop Wilberforce and Mr. Charles Reade.[13]
"Extracts from Bishop Jewel downward being also given, Lord Macaulay, Mr. Dickens, 'The Atlantic Monthly,' and 'The Brooklyn Eagle' are alleged by Mr. White in proof that people still use such phrases as 'Chelsea Hospital was building,' and 'the train was preparing.' 'Hence we see,' he adds,[14] 'that the form is being done, is being made, is being built, lacks the support of authoritative usage from the period of the earliest classical English to the present day.' I fully concur with Mr. White in regarding 'neither "The Brooklyn Eagle" nor Mr. Dickens as a very high authority in the use of language'; yet, when he has renounced the aid of these contemned straws, what has he to rest his inference on, as to the present day, but the practice of Lord Macaulay and 'The Atlantic Monthly'? Those who think fit will bow to the dictatorship here prescribed to them; but there may be those with whom the classic sanction of Southey, Coleridge, and Landor will not be wholly void of weight. All scholars are aware that, to convey the sense of the imperfects passive, our ancestors, centuries ago, prefixed, with is, etc., in, afterward corrupted into a, to a verbal substantive. 'The house is in building' could be taken to mean nothing but ædes ædificantur; and, when the in gave place to a,[15] it was still manifest enough, from the context, that building was governed by a preposition. The second stage of change, however, namely, when the a was omitted, entailed, in many cases, great danger of confusion. In the early part of the last century, when English was undergoing what was then thought to be purification, the polite world substantially resigned is a-building to the vulgar. Toward the close of the same century, when, under the influence of free thought, it began to be felt that even ideas had a right to faithful and unequivocal representation, a just resentment of ambiguity was evidenced in the creation of is being built. The lament is too late that the instinct of reformation did not restore the old form. It has gone forever; and we are now to make the best of its successors. '"The brass is forging,"' in the opinion of Dr. Johnson, is 'a vicious expression, probably corrupted from a phrase more pure, but now somewhat obsolete, ... "the brass is a-forging."' Yet, with a true Tory's timidity and aversion to change, it is not surprising that he went on preferring what he found established, vicious as it confessedly was, to the end. But was the expression 'vicious' solely because it was a corruption? In 1787 William Beckford wrote as follows of the fortune-tellers of Lisbon: 'I saw one dragging into light, as I passed by the ruins of a palace thrown down by the earthquake. Whether a familiar of the Inquisition was griping her in his clutches, or whether she was taking to account by some disappointed votary, I will not pretend to answer.' Are the expressions here italicized either perspicuous or graceful? Whatever we are to have in their place, we should be thankful to get quit of them.
"Inasmuch as, concurrently with building for the active participle, and being built for the corresponding passive participle, we possessed the former, with is prefixed, as the active present imperfect, it is in rigid accordance with the symmetry of our verb that, to construct the passive present-imperfect, we prefix is to the latter, producing the form is being built. Such, in its greatest simplicity, is the procedure which, as will be seen, has provoked a very levanter of ire and vilification. But anything that is new will be excepted to by minds of a certain order. Their tremulous and impatient dread of removing ancient landmarks even disqualifies them for thoroughly investigating its character and pretensions. In has built and will build, we find the active participle perfect and the active infinitive subjoined to auxiliaries; and so, in has been built and will be built, the passive participle perfect and the passive infinitive are subjoined to auxiliaries. In is building and is being built, we have, in strict harmony with the constitution of the perfect and future tenses, an auxiliary followed by the active participle present and the passive participle present. Built is determined as active or passive by the verbs which qualify it, have and be; and the grammarians are right in considering it, when embodied in has built, as active, since its analogue, embodied in has been built, is the exclusively passive been built. Besides this, has been + built would signify something like has existed, built,[16] which is plainly neuter. We are debarred, therefore, from such an analysis; and, by parity of reasoning, we may not resolve is being built into is being + built. It must have been an inspiration of analogy, felt or unfelt, that suggested the form I am discussing. Is being + built, as it can mean, pretty nearly, only exists, built, would never have been proposed as adequate to convey any but a neuter sense; whereas it was perfectly natural for a person aiming to express a passive sense to prefix is to the passive concretion being built.[17]
"The analogical justification of is being built which I have brought forward is so obvious that, as it occurred to myself more than twenty years ago, so it must have occurred spontaneously to hundreds besides. It is very singular that those who, like Mr. Marsh and Mr. White, have pondered long and painfully over locutions typified by is being built, should have missed the real ground of their grammatical defensibleness, and should have warmed themselves, in their opposition to them, into uttering opinions which no calm judgment can accept.
"'One who is being beaten' is, to Archbishop Whately, 'uncouth English.' '"The bridge is being built," and other phrases of the like kind, have pained the eye' of Mr. David Booth. Such phrases, according to Mr. M. Harrison, 'are not English.' To Professor J. W. Gibbs 'this mode of expression ... appears formal and pedantic'; and 'the easy and natural expression is, "The house is building."'[18] In all this, little or nothing is discernible beyond sheer prejudice, the prejudice of those who resolve to take their stand against an innovation, regardless of its utility, and who are ready to find an argument against it in any random epithet of disparagement provoked by unreasoning aversion. And the more recent denouncers in the same line have no more reason on their side than their elder brethren.
"In Mr. Marsh's estimation, is being built illustrates 'corruption of language'; it is 'clumsy and unidiomatic'; it is 'at best but a philological coxcombry'; it 'is an awkward neologism, which neither convenience, intelligibility, nor syntactical congruity demands, and the use of which ought, therefore, to be discountenanced, as an attempt at the artificial improvement of the language in a point which needed no amendment.' Again, 'To reject' is building in favor of the modern phrase 'is to violate the laws of language by an arbitrary change; and, in this particular case, the proposed substitute is at war with the genius of the English tongue.' Mr. Marsh seems to have fancied that, wherever he points out a beauty in is building, he points out, inclusively, a blemish in is being built.
"The fervor and feeling with which Mr. White advances to the charge are altogether tropical. 'The full absurdity of this phrase, the essence of its nonsense, seems not to have been hitherto pointed out.' It is not 'consistent with reason'; and it is not 'conformed to the normal development of the language.' It is 'a monstrosity, the illogical, confusing, inaccurate, unidiomatic character of which I have at some length, but yet imperfectly, set forth.' Finally, 'In fact, it means nothing, and is the most incongruous combination of words and ideas that ever attained respectable usage in any civilized language.' These be 'prave 'ords'; and it seems a pity that so much sterling vituperative ammunition should be expended in vain. And that it is so expended thinks Mr. White himself; for, though passing sentence in the spirit of a Jeffreys, he is not really on the judgment-seat, but on the lowest hassock of despair. As concerns the mode of expression exemplified by is being built, he owns that 'to check its diffusion would be a hopeless undertaking.' If so, why not reserve himself for service against some evil not avowedly beyond remedy?
"Again we read, 'Some precise and feeble-minded soul, having been taught that there is a passive voice in English, and that, for instance, building is an active participle, and builded or built a passive, felt conscientious scruples at saying "the house is building." For what could the house build?' As children say at play, Mr. White burns here. If it had occurred to him that the 'conscientious scruples' of his hypothetical, 'precise, and feeble-minded soul' were roused by been built, not by built, I suspect his chapter on is being built would have been much shorter than it is at present, and very different. 'The fatal absurdity in this phrase consists,' he tells us, 'in the combination of is with being; in the making of the verb to be a supplement, or, in grammarians' phrase, an auxiliary to itself—an absurdity so palpable, so monstrous, so ridiculous, that it should need only to be pointed out to be scouted.'[19] Lastly, 'The question is thus narrowed simply to this, Does to be being (esse ens) mean anything more or other than to be?'
"Having convicted Mr. White of a mistaken analysis, I am not concerned with the observations which he founds on his mistake. However, even if his analysis had been correct, some of his arguments would avail him nothing. For instance, is being built, on his understanding of it, that is to say, is being + built, he represents by ens ædificatus est, as 'the supposed corresponding Latin phrase.'[20] The Latin is illegitimate; and he infers that, therefore, the English is the same. But ædificans est, a translation, on the model which he offers, of the active is building, is quite as illegitimate as ens æedificatus est. By parity of non-sequitur, we are, therefore, to surrender the active is building. Assume that a phrase in a given language is indefensible unless it has its counterpart in some other language; from the very conception and definition of an idiom every idiom is illegitimate.