Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 / Devoted to Literature and National Policy

by Various

It is here, in the Domain of Movement and Time, the Motismus of Language, and especially of Grammar,—the Relationismus of Language,—that the Grand Lingual Illustration or Type of the Second Subdivision of Kant's Group of Relation occurs;—the subdivision which he should have denominated Tempic, as distinguished from the former Subdivision (of Substance and Inherence), which should then have been called Spacic.

This Tempic Sub-Group of Relation again subdivides, as already stated, into 1. Cause, and 2. Dependence.

The Subject of a Proposition, in the Active Voice, which is the Typical or Direct Expression of Action, is the Agent or Actor in the performance of the given Action. To be an agent is to act; and to act is to exhibit an effect, the Cause of which resides in the Agent. Agent and Cause are thus identified. In other words, the Nominative Case, in the Active Transitive Locution, is the type and illustration of the Sub-Category, Cause, in the Group of Relation, as conceived by the great German metaphysician. His Correlative Sub-Category, Dependence, is the Action itself, resulting from the Activity of the Agent, and expressed by the Verb and its dependencies.

The Cause and Dependence of Kant, as a Sub-Group of Relation, are therefore, when translated into their typical expression in Language, simply The Nominative and The Verb; and belong to the Domain of Movement, and hence to that of Time.

It is only, however, when the Verb is Active that the Nominative is Agent or Cause. In the Passive Locution or Voice, a Conversion into Opposites occurs;—the Direct is exchanged for the Inverse Order of the Action. The Nominative then names the Object which receives, suffers, or endures the force of the Action, and the Agent is then thrown into the Category of an Accident, and expressed in an Oblique Case; thus, Charles is struck by John.

The term Subject, applied to the Nominative Case, is made, by a happy équivoque, to cover both these aspects; that in which the Nominative is Agent or Cause, and that in which it is not so. It is only in the latter instance that it is really or literally a subject, that is to say, subjected to, or made to suffer the force of the action of the Verb; but action is a reaction from such invasion or infliction of suffering or impression upon the person (or thing); and the term Subject, changing its meaning, accompanies the person nominated or named by the Nominative Case over into this new positive relation to the action. It is interesting to observe that precisely the same doubleness of meaning arises, in the same way, in respect to the word Passion, from Latin patior, to suffer. When we speak of the passion of Christ, we retain the primitive and etymological meaning of the word; but, ordinarily, passion means just the opposite; that violent reaction of the feeling side of the mind from Impression (or passion in the first sense), which is nearly allied to Rage.

Intermediate between the Active and the Passive Locutions is a compound Active and Reactive state—the action put forth by the agent, and yet terminating upon himself—which is expressed lingually by what is appropriately called in Greek the Middle Voice (Sanscrit, At mane pada), and in our modern Grammars, as the French, The Reflective Verb.

This last, the Reflective or Reciprocal Locution, is the grammatical type and illustration of Kant's third subdivision of the Group of Relation, that, namely, which he denominates Reciprocal Action.

The correspondences between Language and the Universe at large are here too obvious to require to be enlarged or insisted upon. The Active Voice in Grammar repeats the World of Direct Actions; the Passive Voice, the World of Inverse Actions; and the Middle Voice the World of Reciprocal Actions, in the Universe at large. The Nominative Case (in the first and leading of these Locutions) is the Analogue of Cause, and the Verb, of Dependence, or the Chain of Effects resulting from the Cause.

The I, the Me, the Ego, as Subject, in the domain of Philosophy, is first Subject (-ed) under Impression from the world without, and afterward becomes Cause (in Expression); and the term Subject has here, therefore, precisely the same ambiguity as in Grammar, and stands contrasted in the same way with the word Object; the Accusative Case of the old Grammarians being now called the Objective Case, and denoting that upon which the force of the (direct) action is expended.