Tht, chief ultimate purpose for which the genitive case. is employed is, to add a particular circumstance for com pleting the description or an individual, or of a species of objects, already characterised by a term which is in itself too general for the purpose. " Man" is a general word. " A man of genius," " a country man,'• are instances in which the genitive is used to point out a relationslrip for designating a limited species contained in the genus " Man." This may be done when an individual, or a spe• cics, is introduced as the subject of discourse ; as, for ex ample, " A man of genius differs from other persons in his feelings and habits ;" or it may be introduced into the predicate of a sentence, and form a part of some new as sertion, as, " Bacon was a man of genius." The otber cases are distinguished from the genitive, by denoting an annexation to some part of speech different from the noun.
The Accusative and Dative have by some been consi dered as very nearly alike. By others some differences have been stated betwixt them, depending on differences in the objects, motions, or relations, represented by the governing word. Attempts of this last sort have proceed ed on principles which served to explain a limited set of phrases, while they were totally inadequate to explain others.
The most obvious circumstance which distinguishes the Accusative case in Latin from the genitive is, that it is governed not by nouns, but by active verbs and certain pre positions. It is by attending to the different occasions on which it is employed, and tracing the properties which uniformly adhere to it, that we shall make the most con venient approaches to an explanation of its use.
Sometimes it represents an object to which some action or motion passes, or in which it terminates, as lixc studio adolescentianz alunt, senectutcm oblectant. This character, however, has been ascribed to the accusative in phrases in which it will not apply. When the verb " to love" governs the noun signifying the object of that affection in the accusative, it expresses no transition of an act. The person who is loved may be ignorant of this passion, and totally unaffected by it. When we speak of " loving all mankind," we do not speak of any action which terminates in that extensive range of objects. This remark applies to all transitive verbs, expressing emotions of mind that have a reference to external objects, as " to hate," to dread," " to respect," " to esteem." These affections may be pro ductive of acts by which the objects of them are affected ; but such acts are not implied in the affections themselves. They are excited by the objects named in the accusative, but they terminate in the individual mentioned in the no minative. To represent them as terminating in the beings called their objects, is a mere fiction: it applies only to the range of ideas of the individual mentioned, not to the actual relative energies of the different objects. Some other verbs governing the accusative are expressive of quiescent qualities, which do not affect any object differ ent from that to which they belong. Yet these qualities imply a reference to other objects, and the mention of this reference is absolutely necessary. These other ob jects are put in the accusative case. Such are the verbs " resemble" in English, and similare or simulare, and referre, when used in that sense in Latin. Here, as no transition of any act or motion from one object to another takes place, the accusative cannot be considered in any respect as ex pressing such a transition. It will give but little satisfac
tion to say in reply, that, though nothing of this kind ex ists, yet it is figured in the speaker's mind, and that even in such a proposition as this, benevolent man loves the whole human race," we imagine a benignant emai•ition proceeding from the benevolent man to influence the whole species. This is an evasion of the argument. It is in like manner an evasion, rather than an explanation, to say that a person who asserts that one man resembles" another, seems to consider such a man as influencing the state and relations of the other. This is an unconscious acknowledg ment that the conceptions of the speaker, or the transitions of his thoughts, and the transitions which he studies to produce in those of the hearer, are the foundation of the use of the accusative case. This is the view which we consider as on all occasions the true one. Such mental transitions have a certain degree of rapidity, which corres ponds more closely with the idea of an action terminating in an object named, than with the greater part of our asso ciated ideas. On this account the regimen or the accusa tive case is more frequently applied to signify these than any other trains of thought.
When the accusative is governed by prepositions, these prepositions prepare us for a transition equally rapid with that of the active transitive verb. In order to chew that this regimen does not depend on the idea expressed by the governing word, we shall take this opportunity of stating a circumstance, which might otherwise appear an anticipa tion of our observations on the verb : to wit, that some verbs, which are completely synonymous in the ideas which they express, are totally different in the transitions of ideas which they are intended to create in the mind of the hearer. The Verbs " to speak," and " to say," sig nify precisely the same act. Their difference consists in this, that the verb "to speak" does not intimate an inten tion to state what was spoken, but the verb "say" always does. \Vhen we say " Cicero spoke," we may probably rest satisfied with mentioning the act in connection with the agent. Our hearer may, if prompted by curiosity, ask what Cicero said when he spoke ? But, if we use the phrase " Cicero said," we pledge ourselves to give some account of what he said, or to subjoin the accusative of some noun, such as the word " nothing." if we do not pro ceed further than the words " Cicero said," the person who hears us asks the question now mentioned in a dif ferent tone : he reminds us that we have stopped short in our discourse, and have not fulfilled the promise implied in the use of the verb "to say." The Dative case might easily receive a plausible ex planation in a large proportion of the phrases in which it is employed. But a difficulty has arisen, in consequence of the approximation which some of its uses seem to make to that of the accusative. Some verbs which govern the accusative are synonymous with others which govern the dative. An example of this exists in the verbs and nocere. Antonius nocuit Ciceroni is equivalent to Antonius lxsit Ciceronem.. But though these phrases are synonymous, it is possible that the words of which they respectively con sist are not equivalent. It is possible that in one of the phrases a greater share of the meaning may be contained in the verb, and less of it in the governed noun. This is rendered probable from one circumstance, that there are no verbs which admit of either case indiscriminately, so as to form with them two synonymous phrases.