But the name of a material is readily used as that of an individual object, and, on the other hand, the name of an individual object may easily come to be the designation of a material. The imagination supplies or withdraws, as it may be, the form and definite shape which, as we have seen, is essential to number. Take such instances as hair, grass, bloom, fruit, weed, grain, cloth, stone, wood, field, meadow, marsh, heath, earth, land, bread, cake, etc. Similarly, when we talk of fowl as a viand, we individualise and give form to a general conception; as, in French, when we talk about du porc, du mouton. In the same way, we have in Latin such expressions as leporem et gallinam et anserem for ‘the flesh of the hare, the fowl, and the goose;’ and fagum atque abietem for ‘the beech tree and the fir-tree’ (Cæsar, Bell. Gall., v. 12). In the same way, we must explain the singular in cases like The enemy is approaching; The Russian is within hail. Similarly, Livy uses the singular, as Romanus for ‘the Romans,’ Poenus for ‘the Carthaginians,’ eques for ‘the cavalry,’ pedes for ‘the infantry,’ etc.; nay, he even goes as far as to combine Hispani milites et funditor Balearis (xxvii. 2).
Thus, too, Horace ventures on the combination miles nautæque (Sat. I., i.). Vergil has plurima mortis imago, ‘many an image of death’ (Æn., ii. 369); in Seneca, we even find multo hoste, ‘many an enemy.’
In German, the singular of many words stands constantly after numerals; as, tausend mann, ‘a thousand men,’ zehn stück Pferde, ‘ten head (lit. pieces) of horses.’ Similarly it was usual to write in English such expressions as many score thousand: twenty score paces.[151] The fact is, that there is no need for any special designation of plurality to follow a number; the plurality is already sufficiently denoted by the number itself.[152] We thus see that the form taken by such a word would naturally be numberless, or absolute, in fact, would be treated in the same way as it would have been treated before the rise of grammatical number.
Tense.
It is the function of the various ‘tenses’ to express the temporal relation of an event, when considered with regard to a certain moment. At the outset, however, we must observe that the tenses actually existing in any given language do not by any means perfectly correspond to the varieties possible and logically distinguishable in these relations. We will first consider what would be indispensable to a logically complete system.
Any event whatever must necessarily be anterior, contemporary, or posterior, to the moment with respect to which it is considered; and this moment must itself be past, present, or future. Hence, according as the moment of comparison is varied, we get the following sets:—
I. Moment of comparison Present.
The event is stated as—
(a1) NOW past.
(b1) NOW present.
(c1) NOW still to come.
II. Moment of comparison Past.
The event is stated to have been—
(a2) THEN already past.
(b2) THEN present.
(c2) THEN still to come.