α. In English, the present form expresses habit. See p. [455].
β. In Greek the aorist expresses habit.
Again, one tense, or one combination, may be used for another. I was speaking when he enters.
The results of these facts may now be noticed:
1. The emphatic present and præterite.—Expressed by do (or did), as stated above. A man says I do (or did) speak, read, &c., when, either directly or by implication, it is asserted or implied that he does not. As a question implies doubt, do is used in interrogations.
"Do et did indicant emphatice tempus præsens, et præteritum imperfectum. Uro, urebam; I burn, I burned: vel (emphatice) I do burn, I did burn."—Wallis, p. 106.
2. The predictive future.—I shall be there to-morrow. This means simply that the speaker will be present. It gives no clue to the circumstances that will determine his being so.
3. The promissive future.—I will be there to-morrow.—This means not only that the speaker will be present, but that he intends being so. For further observations on shall and will, see pp. [471]-474.
4. That the power of the present tense is, in English, not present, but habitual, has already been twice stated.
[§ 580]. The representative expression of past and future time.—An action may be past; yet, for the sake of bringing it more vividly before the hearers, we may make it present.