[§ 514]. What is the rule in English?
Suppose we say John's is a good sword and so is Charles's; this cut through a thick rope, the other cut through an iron rod. Or instead of saying this and that we may say the one and the other. It is clear that, in determining to which of the
two swords the respective demonstratives refer, the meaning will not help us at all, so that our only recourse is to the rules of grammar; and it is the opinion of the present writer that the rules of grammar will help us just as little. The Latin rule is adopted by scholars, but still it is a Latin rule rather than an English one.
The truth is, that it is a question which no authority can settle; and all that grammar can tell us is (what we know without it) that this refers to the name of the idea which is logically the most close at hand, and that to the idea which is logically the most distant.
What constitutes nearness or distance of ideas, in other words, what determines the sequence of ideas is another question. That the idea, however, of sequence, and, consequently of logical proximity and logical distance, is the fundamental idea in regard to the expressions in question is evident from the very use of the words this and that.
Now the sequence of ideas is capable of being determined by two tests.
1. The idea to which the name was last given, or (changing the expression) the name of the last idea may be the nearest idea in the order of sequence, and, consequently, the idea referred to by the pronoun of proximity. In this case the idea closest at hand to the writer of the second line of the couplet quoted above was the idea of the atmosphere (aer), and it was, consequently, expressed by (this) hic.
2. Or the idea to which the name was first given, or (changing the expression) the name of the first idea may be the nearest idea in the order of sequence, and consequently the idea referred to it by the pronoun of proximity; inasmuch as the idea which occurs first is the most prominent one, and what is prominent appears near. In this case, the idea closest at hand to the writer of the second line of the couplet quoted above would have been the idea of the sea (pontus), and it would, consequently, have been the idea expressed by this (hic).
As Ovid, however, considered the idea at the end of the last half of one sentence to be the idea nearest to the
beginning of the next, we have him expressing himself as he does. On the other hand, it is easy to conceive a writer with whom the nearest idea is the idea that led the way to the others.