to say that the action proceeds of the object itself: thus vertitur, literally he turns himself, is often used for he is turned. A reflective so used is called a passive. “This passive use of a verb with a reflective suffix is more common than the proper reflective use. “Hence passive verbs can only be formed from transitives.” In a foot-note Key calls attention to the parallel use in modern European languages. In Metaphysics, the causes assignable for this priority of use seem to be logically adequate. It is reason to suppose that, after the primary notion of the verb as active has developed itself—that is, as soon as the subjective notion of the verb as expressing the agent is fully established—the next step in thought and in expression will be towards the object. As the object grows out of the subject in conscious thought, so the object grows out of the subject in expression. Between the myself and the not-myself there is a whole mass of actions, coincidences, and sequences belonging to the mutual relationships of the myself and the not-myself. This condition of consciousness represents a stage of experience, ultimately expressed with relative clearness by development of the appropriate suffixes. At this medial stage, the union of the subject-object being substantially prominent in consciousness, there is a corresponding mode of expression, the medial or reflexive suffix. The final stage in the growth of the verb is the establishment of difference between subject and object, as when in predication the subject of the statement is also the object of the action indicated in the statement. Hence arises the passive voice. This development is not attended by amplification of the verbal suffix; for there is a law of parsimony. Suffixes cannot be invented, and language adapts old forms for new conditions. Accordingly the medial verbal suffix is charged with this new meaning, and, as the phenomena of experience increase, the passive voice is more frequently used than the middle voice, and in Latin partially displaces it. That the final r of the Latin passive is the s of the reflexive pronominal stem was observed seventy years ago. “It was in the Annals of Oriental Literature,” says Bopp, “that it was observed that the passive r might owe its origin to the reflexive*” (cf. Serial for 1820, p. 62). Key (Lat. Gr., § 405) arrives at the conclusion that—” The verb has two forms or voices, the simple voice (commonly called the active), which does not take the reflective suffix; the reflective voice (commonly called the passive), which does take it.”