Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind
John Stuart Mill · en
[Findlater's footnote 59: There is really no well marked distinction
between relative pronouns and demonstrative pronouns, either in
their origin or in their use. Of the demonstrative roots _ka_, _sa_,
_ta_, _ja_, derivatives from the *guttural _ka_ prevail as relatives
in Latin and its modern descendants (Lat. _qui_, It. _che_, Fr.
_qui_), and in the Teutonic languages (Goth. _hva_, Eng. _who_, Ger.
_wer_, _welch_), but by no means exclusively. In Greek the relative
differs little from the article, which is also used as a
demonstrative and a personal pronoun. Modern Italian uses as a
demonstrative a compound of the Latin _qui_ with _iste_ and
_illa_--_questo_, _quella_. In German the relative proper, viz.
_welch_, is comparatively little used, its place being supplied by
the article _der_, which is merely an unemphatic demonstrative; and
in English _that_ is perhaps as often used as who or which.
The relative serves for two purposes, which it is useful to
distinguish. (1) It may add on either a clause containing an
independent proposition, as in the example in the text, "John
received a wound, which occasioned his death;" or a clause dependent
in some way upon the preceding--_e.g._ assigning the reason of it,
as, "It was unjust to punish the servant, who only did what he was
ordered." (2) The clause introduced by the relative may serve simply
to limit or define a noun, in the way that an adjective or another
noun in apposition does, as "The man who spoke to you is my father."
It is in this latter use of the relative, and in no other, that it
is permissible in English to use _that_; to substitute _that_ for
_which_ in the first of the other two sentences, or for _who_ in the
second, would give a different meaning. Now it is only in the cases
in which _that_ could not be substituted for who or which that the
relative involves the force of a conjunction; and it is not always
_and_ that is the conjunction involved. The conjunction has no
verbal expression, and never had; it is only suggested, and the mind
supplies that which best suits the logical connection. When the
predication of the relative clause is co-ordinate with the
preceding, as in the first example, _and_ is the proper conjunction
to supply. In the sentence about the punishment of the servant,
_who_ is equivalent to _for he_; and in that about Erasmus, in the
text, to _inasmuch as he_. When the relative clause merely defines,
no conjunction of any kind is even implied. In such a sentence as
"He rewarded the man that rescued him," the relative clause is the
answer to a question naturally suggested by "He rewarded the
man"--what man? "The or that (man) rescued him;" which is equivalent
to, "his rescuer." To resolve it into "And that man rescued him,"
gives quite a different meaning; namely, that he rewarded some man
(otherwise known to the hearers) for something (likewise known to
them), and that this man now rescued him.--_F._]