MIDDLE VOICE is a term employed in Greek grammar to indicate a cleft, of verbs which are called reflective in some other languages. The reflective meaning is supposed to be the original and main significa tion of the middle voice, but it is difficult in many of the middle verbs in Greek to trace the reflective notion. Although a separate voice, that is, a distinct mode of conjugation, has been assigned to verbs with a middle theta are only two tenses in the Greek verb which have a form peculiar to the middle notion, namely, the first and second wrists in ramp and Den.; which in the model verb, are ins4efenv and That the passive signification should in course of time have taken the place of the middle, will not appear surprising, when it is recol lected that a reflective verb is actually used in many languages, where a passive is used in others to express the same thing. An instance occurs in snob a phrase as tubas sc rendent ici, stockings sell themselves here ; and in the same manner in Italian we have such phrases as si dicono melte case, many things say themselves, or aro said; ri lode Nome modesto, a modest man praises himself, that is, is praised ; net ri do monde uno scudo, a dollar demands itself of me, that is, is demanded of me. The same idiom occurs both in Spanish and Portuguese.
It. has been the practice to deny to the Latin language the possession of a middle, except in the case of deponent verbs. But in such a phrase a8 Menu Occano miscctur, the verb ie rather of the middle than the passive character, and this certainly must be allowed when it is said of a soldier indsilur galcom, or when a general traffics arraari Juliet ; or as in the line of Virgil (' Georg.; iii. 219)—
easeltur In maims sslva formosa Juvenca.
The above explanation of the middle form or voice is one which has been proposed ; still the matter may require further discussion. The truth is, that the classification of verbs into active and passive, or into active, passive and middle, is a very imperfect one, and for the pur poses of a philosophical exhibition of grammar a new classification is wanting. The expreasions " I walk," " I eat," &c., are in signification allied to the middle voice, though the form of these words does not differ from the form " I kill," " I cut." fie. In order to express the notion of the person " I " being " killed," some modification of the primitive form " kill " must be made, and another modification may be necessary to express the act of " self-killing." Thus in French we have II fee, it fat tee, and it .'rat inf. In the last instance the act of " self-killing" is distinguished from tho act of " being killed" by the addition of a word. In the Greek language the present tense of the passive form may be used to express either the act of the person being killed, or killing himself. In the first and second wrist tenses a pecu liar form is used to express the act of self-killing; but as this peculiar form has the characteristic termination of what I. called a passive verb, and not of an active, it might be classed under the passive voice as a peculiar tense, and the term middle voice might be got rid of altogether.