476. This is, however, but a feeble example of the pronominal use of the word man, a use which it has been our singular fortune to lose after having possessed it in its fulness. In place of it, we resort to a variety of shifts for what may justly be called a pronoun of pronouns, that is to say, a pronoun which is neither I nor we nor you nor they, but which may stand for either or all of these or any vague commixture of two or three of them. Sometimes we say 'you' not meaning, nor being taken to mean you at all, but to express a corporate personality which quite eludes personal application.

It is always pleasant to be forced to do what you wish to do, but what, until pressed, you dare not attempt.-Dean Hook, Archbishops, vol. iii. ch. 4.

This you is often convenient to the poet as a neutral medium of address, applicable either to one particular person, or to all the world:

Yet this, perchance, you'll not dispute,-
That true Wit has in Truth its root,
Surprise its flower, Delight its fruit.

Sometimes, again, it is we, and at other times it is they which represents this much-desired but long-lost or notyet-invented representative' pronoun. We render the French 'on dit' by they say.

477. Besides the resort to pronouns of a particular person in order to achieve the effect of a pronoun impersonal, we have also some substantives which have been pronominalised to this effect, as person, people, body, folk.

people.

Bothwell was not with her at Seton.

As to her shooting at the butts when there, this story, like most of the rest, is mere gossip. People do not shoot at the butts in a Scotch February.-Quarterly Review, vol. 128, P. 511.

People are always cowards when they are doing wrong.-M. Manley, When I was a Boy (William Macintosh), p. 24.

body.

The foolish body hath said in his heart, There is no God.-Psalm liii. 1, elder version.

And from this we get the composite pronouns somebody, nobody, everybody, and a-body, as little John Stirling, when he saw the new-born calf

Wull't eat a-body?-Thomas Carlyle, Life, ch. ii.

In like manner, but less fixed in habit, some people, and also some folk, as in the well known refrain

=

Some folk do, some folk do!

478. One. The first numeral has an intimate natural affinity with the pronominal principle, and this is widely acknowledged in the languages by pronominal uses which are very well known. Some of our pronominal uses of one are easily paralleled in other languages, the one and the other l'un et l'autre; one another = l'un l'autre. But there is an English use which is far from common, even if it is not absolutely unique; namely, when it is employed as a veiled Ego, thus: One may be excused for doubting whether such a policy as this can have its root in a desire for the public welfare'; or, 'One never knows what this sort of thing may lead to.' It would be impossible to put in these places l'un or ein or unus or eis.

The one of which we speak is quite distinct from those cases in which it is little removed from the numeral, as 'One thinks this, and one thinks that.' In this case one is fully toned, but not so in the case referred to, as when a person who is pressed to buy stands on the defensive with, 'One can't buy everything, you know'; here the one is

lightly passed over with that sensitiveness which accompanies egotism.

There are instances in which one language catches up a confused idea from another, and matches it with a like sound in its own vocabulary. And it is just possible that the French on has had some such undefined effect in this member of our language, guiding us through the association of sound to our peculiar use of the first numeral.

This pronoun appears in concord or under government in ways which it would be hard to parallel in other languages:

As nations ignorant of God contrive

A wooden one. William Cowper, The Timepiece.

The strictly logical deduction from the premises is not always found in practice the true one.-Sir J. T. Coleridge, Keble, p. 388.

Combinations with one: each one, every one (496), no one, some one, many one, many a one, such one, such a one.

such one.

The kinsman of whom Boaz had spoken, came by: and he sayd, Ho, such one, come, sit downe here.-Ruth iv. I.

Genevan, 1560.

479. None is the negative of one. Originally adjectival, and used before consonants and vowels alike, it was shortened to no before consonants, and none continued in use only before vowels: as, 'There is none end of the store and glory,' Nahum ii. 9; 'There was none other boat there,' John vi. 22. This is now obsolete, and the form none is only used substantivally, as 'I have none.'

Ought or aught, from Saxon AWUHT, a composite of wight or whit. It is now little used.

He asked him, if hee saw ought.-Mark viii. 23.

And when ye stand praying, forgiue, if ye haue ought against any.Mark xi. 25.

Nought or naught is composed of ne and ought or aught.

Few. Once common to the whole Gothic family, this pronoun survives only in the English and Scandinavian. Anglo-Saxon FEAWA, Moso-Gothic fawai, Danish faa.

A variety of other pronouns belong to this set, which we have only space just to hint at. Such are thing, something, everything, nothing; wight, whit, deal.

We have thus reached the natural termination of this section. Having started from the pronouns which were most nearly associated with definite substantival ideas, we have reached those whose characteristic it is (as their name conveys) to be indefinite, to sun fixed associations, and thus to be ever ready for a latitude of application as wide as the widest imaginable sweep of the mental horizon.

II. ADJECTIVAL PRONOUNS.

480. This section will run parallel to the former, as each group of Pronouns has its substantives and its adjectives. Yet it may be observed that the more subtle quality of pronouns, as compared with nouns, is the cause of a more ready transition from the substantival to the adjectival function, and reversely.

481. The Possessive Pronouns.

These were a genitival shoot from the personal pronouns which became, some more some less, adjectival: those which became most so were the possessives of the first and second persons.

These have, in the earlier stage of the language, had a complete adjectival development, and full means of concord

with substantives; and this began to be the case in some measure even with his, of which we meet with a plural hise (disyllabic), as in the following broken Saxon from the year 1123, in the Peterborough Chronicle :

Da sone þær æfter sende se kyng hise write ofer eall Engla lande, and bed hise biscopes and hise abbates and hise þeignes ealle pet hi scolden cumen to his gewitene mot on Candel messe deig to Gleaw ceastre him togeanes.

Then soon thereafter sent the king his writs over all England, and bade his bishops and his abbots and his thanes all, that they should come to his Witenagemot on Candelmas day at Gloucester to meet him.

All the possessives were originally genitives of the personal pronouns, of which some reached greater perfection in adjectival form than others.

We have now entirely lost that use of MIN or MINE which made it equivalent to of me, but the Germans retain this archaic member in gedenke mein, think of me.

Besides the four adjectival pronouns thus generated from the first and second persons, there are four more that have sprung from the third person, namely, his, her, their, and its. The last of these is a comparative modernism in the language.

482. Out of these again there branches a group of forms whose function is substantival. As among the presentive nouns we find substantives becoming adjectives and adjectives substantives; so likewise here in the more subtle region of the pronoun a substantival set parts off from the adjectival.

483. mine, thine. These forms were originally adjectival, but they have gradually become substantival; while the