The word action, when thus invented, and used, is afterwards applied metaphorically to motions which do not originate in the moving body, as when we say the action of a sword; and also to certain processes of the mind, which, as they are accompanied with the feeling we call effort, resembling that which accompanies the voluntary motions, are sometimes classed along with them, and, by an extension of the meaning of the word, receive the name of actions. In this manner, remembering, computing, comparing, even hearing, and seeing, are denominated actions. 2. In applying the term Acting, or the terms expressive of the several kinds of acting, the Time the action is a material circumstance. The grand divisions of time are the Past, the Present, and the Future. There is great utility in a short method of marking these divisions of time in conjunction with the mark of the action. This is effected by the Tenses of Verbs. 3. When the name of an act is applied to an agent the agent is either the person speaking, the person spoken to, or some other person. The word denoting {154} the action is, by what are called the Persons of the verb, made to connote these diversities. Thus _amo_ notes the act, and connotes the person speaking as the actor; _amas_ notes the act, and connotes the person spoken to, as the actor; _amat_ notes the act, and connotes some person, as the actor, who is neither the person speaking, nor the person spoken to.[46] [Editor's footnote 46: There is here a fresh instance of the oversight already pointed out, that of not including in the function for which general names are required, their employment in Predication. Amo, amas, and amamus, cannot, I conceive, with any propriety be called names of actions, or names at all. They are entire predications. It is one of the properties of the kind of general names called verbs, that they cannot be used except in a Proposition or Predication, and indeed only as the predicate of it: (for the infinitive is not a verb, but the abstract of a verb). What else there is to distinguish verbs from other general names will be more particularly considered further on.--_Ed._] 4. When the names of actions are applied to agents, they are applied to one or a greater number. A short method of connoting this grand distinction of numbers is effected by the marks of the Singular and Plural number. Thus _amo_ notes the act, and connotes one actor; _amamus_ notes the act, and connotes more than one actor.