and (3) to express suppositions in which the events are treated as if they were facts.

(ii) The Imperative Mood contains the form used to give commands.

(iii) The Subjunctive Mood contains the forms used to represent actions or states conceived as possible or contingent, but not asserted as facts.

(iv) The Infinitive Mood is the form which denotes actions or states without reference to person, number, or time.

150. (i) Uses of the Indicative Mood. The Indicative Mood is used (1) to state facts; "The man stole the watch,' 'He will be punished': (2) to ask questions; 'Which man stole the watch?' 'Will he be punished?' (3) to express suppositions in which the conditions are dealt with as if they were facts; 'If it is fine to-morrow (the condition may be fulfilled, or it may not, but assuming that as a fact it is,) we will go for a pic-nic.'

151. (ii) Use of the Imperative Mood. Commands must be addressed to the person who is to obey them. The person addressed is the second person. Accordingly the Imperative Mood can be used only in the second person singular and plural. Such expressions as 'Go we forth together,' or 'Let us go forth together,' in which we utter a wish or exhortation respecting the first person, are not instances of the Imperative mood: they are substitutes for it. Go we is subjunctive: let us go is a circumlocution, or roundabout form of expression, which contains an imperative of let in the second person and an infinitive go: expanded it becomes you let, or allow (imperative) us (object) go, or to go (infinitive).

152. A tense which is expressed by a single word is called a Simple Tense: a tense which is expressed by the help of an auxiliary verb is called a Compound Tense.

English verbs contain only two simple tenses in the Indicative and Subjunctive moods, namely, the Present and the Past Indefinite. The verb to be possesses a fairly complete set of distinct forms in the two tenses of these moods, but in other verbs a difference of inflexion is seen only in the 2nd and 3rd persons singular of the present subjunctive as compared with the indicative. Now as the 2nd person singular is used to-day exclusively in the language of prayer and of poetry, the difference of form between the indicative and the subjunctive mood can be detected in ordinary speech only in the 3rd person singular of the present tense, so long as we confine ourselves to the simple Thou stealest, He steals, are indicative forms: If thou steal, if he steal, are subjunctive forms. But as we no longer employ thou in the language of every-day life, the sum-total of inflexional differences in the simple tenses, according as the mood is indicative or subjunctive, is represented by the forms he steals and if he steal.

tenses.

153. The student should make a careful study of the tenses conjugated below:

There are no separate forms for a Past Tense in the subjunctive of any verb except the verb to be. Consequently, to illustrate the uses of the subjunctive we have recourse to this verb. In other verbs the inflexions are reduced to two, one of which, as we said, has no place in ordinary speech, while the use of the other is passing away from modern English. The subjunctive mood has decayed

till it is almost dead. It is really alive only in the Past Subjunctive of the verb to be, especially in its 1st person singular. A speaker who employed the Present Subjunctive of to be, and said, quite correctly, 'If I be there, I shall see him,' would be supposed by many people of average education, (unless their education had included the facts of English Grammar,) to be making the same blunder as a labourer makes when he says 'I be here; I be just going home.' Let the reader ask himself whether he would be more likely to say 'I shall play tennis this afternoon, if it be fine,' subjunctive, or if it is fine,' indicative: 'I shall stay in, if it rain,' subjunctive, or 'if it rains,' indicative. There is a quaint formalism about the employment of the subjunctive which makes us avoid it in every-day conversation.

154. (iii) Uses of the Subjunctive Mood. There are cases however in which we still use the subjunctive mood, and there are other cases in which its use would be legiti mate, though it has been ousted from its place by the indi. cative. We still say 'If I were you,' not 'If I was you,' and we ought to say 'If he were you,' though 'If he was you' is to be heard quite as often. Of these actual or possible uses a book on Grammar must take cognisance.

The Subjunctive Mood may be employed to express

(1) a wish: 'O that I were dead!'' Perish idolatry !' 'God save the Queen!' or an exhortation: 'Go we forth,' 'Tell me he that knows.' This latter use of the subjunctive is almost obsolete, even in poetry. We should now say 'Let us go,' 'Let him tell.'

(2) a purpose: 'Work lest thou lose the prize,' 'Mind that the letter be written.'

(3) uncertainty: 'I'll tell him so, whoever he be.' (4) supposition: 'If I were you, I would go.'

There is thus a scarcity of inflected forms in the Subjunctive, and we manifest a growing reluctance to use those which we still possess. Of

the ten or twelve tenses with which the Subjunctive mood is credited in the Conjugation of an Active Verb, as set out in many works on English Grammar, some are identical in form with the tenses of the Indicative, and others which differ, differ only in the form of the auxiliary. If we are asked whether any particular tense-form, which is identical in appearance in both moods, is subjunctive or indicative in a certain context, the answer will be suggested, if we substitute for the tense-form in question an equivalent expression compounded with the verb to be, as the verb to be marks the difference between subjunctive and indicative by a variation in its inflexions. Thus, suppose we wish to determine the mood of spoke, in 'The master asked who spoke'; if we convert spoke into was speaking we see that the mood is indicative. Again, supposing we are asked the mood of told, in ‘I should not believe him even if he told the truth,' if told=was telling, the mood is indicative, if told=were telling, the mood is subjunctive. Similarly, 'I could do it if I liked' resolves itself into 'I were able to do it if I were willing': it would be impossible to replace could by was able, so we may say that could is used with the force of the subjunctive here; but as 'if I liked' might be replaced by either 'were willing' or 'was willing,' we may regard liked either as subjunctive or as indicative.

155. Finite and Infinite forms of the Verb. Thus far we have dealt with those parts of the verb which are called finite. When we say 'I ran,' the action expressed by the verb is limited in various ways. Thus it is limited as regards number; it is one person who ran. It is limited as regards person; it is I, not thou nor he, that ran. It is limited as regards the time when the running took place; the running is not occurring now, nor is it going to occur in the future; it occurred in the past. A verb, with the action which it denotes thus limited or restricted as regards person, number, and time, is said to be a finite verb, because finite means 'limited,' 'bounded,' 'restricted,' (from Latin fines, 'boundaries').

Now the verb can also be used in various forms without these limitations, and it will then express merely the idea of the action (or state) without denoting that the action is done by one agent or by more than one, or by any particular agent at all, or at any particular time'. These forms belong

1 On this point see Question 28 at the end of this chapter.

to what is called the Verb Infinite, that is to say, the verb unlimited, unrestricted, unbounded.

156. The Verb Infinite contains the Infinitive Mood, the Gerund, the Verbal Noun, and the Participles.

(iv) The Infinitive Mood commonly occurs in modern English with to before it, but there are many verbs which are followed by an infinitive without to: the verbs may, can, shall, will, must, let, do; verbs expressing sensation, see, hear, feel, need; and the verbs make and dare are examples. Thus we say 'I may, can, shall, will, must do it,' not 'to do it': 'Let him do it,' not 'to do it': 'You do think so,' not 'to think so': 'We saw, heard, and felt it shake,' not 'to shake': 'They made him tell,' not 'to tell': 'You need not go,' not 'to go': 'I dare say this,' though the to is admissible here, 'I dare to say this.' But after several of these verbs in the passive, to is inserted: 'He was seen to take it and made to return it.'

The Infinitive mood is equivalent to a Noun. It resembles a noun in this respect, that it can be used as the subject or object of a verb:

'To read improves the mind': to read is here subject. 'He likes to read': to read is here object.

The infinitive resembles a noun in this respect also, that it can follow certain prepositions: 'I want nothing except to live quietly,' 'He has no hope but to escape punishment,' 'You care for nothing save to make money.'

157. Simple and Gerundial Infinitive. In an earlier stage of the language, to was not used with the simple infinitive any more than it is now used with infinitives which follow the verbs mentioned above. The infinitive had an inflexion which showed what part of the verb it was, and the preposition to was prefixed to the dative case of this infinitive in order to mark purpose. Thus in 'I came to see him,' where to signifies 'in order to' and expresses purpose, see would have appeared in the dative with to prefixed in Old English, but in 'I wish to see him,' where to does not signify 'in order to' and no purpose is expressed, see would