[120] We have derived our substantive verb from two radical verbs; _beon_, whence come the English _be_, and the German _bist_; and _weorthan_, to be or _become_, fieri; from which probably, the Danes have their _varer_, and the English their _were_. [121] The great source of these errors is this: Grammarians have considered _that_ as a conjunction, and supposed that "conjunctions couple like cases and modes;" a Latin rule that does not always hold in English. But Mr. Horne Tooke has clearly proved the word _that_ to be always a relative pronoun: It always relates to a word or sentence; and the reason why grammarians have called it a conjunction, may be this; they could not find any word to govern it as a relative, and therefore did not know what to do with it. But it is in fact a relative word, thus, "two men have made a discovery;" this is one assertion. What discovery? "_that_ or _this_ is the discovery;" the word _that_ carrying the force of a complete affirmation; "there _was_ a God." Here we see the absurdity of Swift's declaration and the common notions of a subjunctive mode. There is no subjunctive; in strictness of speech, all sentences are resolvable into distinct declaratory phrases. "There _is_ a God;" "two young men have discovered _that_;" so the sentence should be written to show the true construction. [122] A passage in Dr. Middleton's Life of Cicero, is remarkably accurate; "The celebrated orator, L. Cassius, died of the same disease (the pleurisy,) which might probably be then, as I _was_ told in Rome it _is now_, the peculiar distemper of the place." _Was_ refers to time completely _past_; but _is_ declares a fact that exists generally, at all times; the verb is therefore in the present tense, or as Harris terms it,[123] the _aorist of the present_. So also in Dr. Reid's Essays, vol. 1. p. 18. "Those philosophers _held_, that there _are_ three first principles of all things;" which is correct English. "Aristotle _thought_ every object of human understanding _enters_ at first by the senses."--Page 110. The following passage is equally correct. "There is a courage depending on nerves and blood, which _was_ improved to the highest pitch among the Greeks."----Gillies, Hist. of Greece, vol. 1. p. 248. This courage is derived from the constitution of the human body; it exists therefore at _all times_; and had our author said, "there _was_ a courage depending on nerves and blood, which the Greeks _improved_ to the highest pitch," the sense would have been left imperfect. Here then we see the indefinite use of this form of the present tense; for were the verb is, in the foregoing example, limited to time _now present_, it would make the author write nonsense; it being absurd to say, "the Greeks 2000 years ago _improved_ a courage which exists only _at the present time_." So that verbs, in the _present_ tense, express facts that have an uninterrupted existence in _past_, _present_, and _future_ time. [123] Hermes, page 123.