122. The fitness of the term indefinite here cannot be shown better than by examining the following sentences:—
1. There is something so overruling in whatever inspires us with awe, in all things which belong ever so remotely to terror, that nothing else can stand in their presence.—Burke.
2. Death is there associated, not with everything that is most endearing in social and domestic charities, but with whatever is darkest in human nature and in human destiny.—Macaulay.
It is clear that in 1, whatever is equivalent to all things which, and in 2, to everything that; no certain antecedent, no particular thing, being referred to. So with the other indefinites.
What simple relative and what indefinite relative.
123. The above helps us to discriminate between what as a simple and what as an indefinite relative.
As shown in Sec. 120, the simple relative what is equivalent to that which or the thing which,—some particular thing; as shown by the last sentence in Sec. 121, what means anything that, everything that (or everything which). The difference must be seen by the meaning of the sentence, as what hardly ever has an antecedent.
The examples in sentences 5 and 6, Sec. 121, show that who and which have no antecedent expressed, but mean any one whom, either one that, etc.
OTHER WORDS USED AS RELATIVES.
But and as.