The most difficult branch of this subject is the verb. Next to the noun, this is the most important part of speech, and as it includes all the terms by which we express action and existence, in their numberless varieties, it must, in all languages, be very comprehensive. The English verb suffers very few inflections or changes of termination, to express the different circumstances of person, number, time and mode. Its inflections are confined to the three persons of the singular number, in the present tense, indicative mode, and the first and second persons of the past tense; unless we consider the irregular participles as a species of inflection belonging to the verb. All the other varieties of person, number, time and mode, are expressed by prefixing other words, by various combinations of words, or by a particular manner of utterance. This simplicity, as it is erroneously called, is said to render our language easy of acquisition. The reverse however of this is true; for the use of auxiliaries or combinations of words, constitutes the most perplexing branch of grammar; it being much easier to learn to change the termination of the verb, than to combine two, three or four words for the same purpose. Grammarians have usually divided the English verbs into _active_, _passive_ and _neuter_. "_Active_ verbs," say they,[105] "express action, and necessarily imply an agent and an object acted upon." But is not a man _passive_ in _hearing_? Yet _hear_ is called an _active_ verb. "A verb _neuter_ expresses being, or a state or condition of being; when the agent and object coincide, and the event is properly neither action nor passion, but rather something between both." But is there neither _action_ nor _passion_ in _walking_, _running_, _existing_? One would think that _running_ at least might be called _action_. The common definitions, copied, in some measure, from the Latin Grammars, are very inaccurate. The most correct and general division of English verbs, is, into _transitive_ and _intransitive_; the former term comprehending all verbs that may be followed by any object receiving the action, or of which any thing is affirmed; the latter, all those verbs, the affirmation in which is limited to the agent. Thus _hear_ is a _transitive_ verb, for it affirms something of an object; _I hear the bell_. _Run_ is an _intransitive_ verb, for the action mentioned is confined to the agent; _he runs_. Yet the last is an _active_ verb, and the first, strictly speaking, is not;[106] so that there is a distinction to be made between a verb _active_ and _transitive_.