Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/131

Rh Violating then is not an ordinary participle. It does not follow yet that it is a gerund. It may be an extraordinary participle, fused into one notion with the noun, so that a friend violating means the-violation-by-a-friend. The Latin scholar here at once puts in the idiom of occisus Caesar, which does not generally mean Caesar after he was killed, as it naturally should, but the killing of Caesar, or the fact that Caesar had been killed. The parallel is close (though the use is practically confined to the passive in Latin), and familiar to all who know any Latin at all. But it shows not so much what the English construction is as how educated people have been able to reconcile themselves to an ambiguous and not very reasonable idiom—not very reasonable, that is, after language has thrown off its early limitations, and got over the first difficulty of accomplishing abstract expression of any kind. The sort of fusion assumed is further illustrated for the Latinist, though not so closely, by the Latin accusative and infinitive. This theory then takes violating for a participle fused into one notion with friend. There are two difficulties.

I. The construction in English is, though in the nature of things not as common, yet as easy in the passive as in the active. Now the passive of violating is either violated or being violated. It is quite natural to say, Privacy violated once is no longer inviolable. Why then should it be most unnatural to say, The worst of privacy violated once is that it is no longer inviolable? No one, not purposely seeking the unusual for some reason or other, would omit being before violated in the second. Yet as participles violated and being violated are equally good—not indeed always, but in this context, as the simpler Privacy sentence shows. The only difference between the two participles (except that in brevity, which tells against being violated) is that the longer form can also be the gerund, and the shorter cannot. The almost invariable choice of it is due to the instinctive feeling that what we are using is or ought to be the gerund. A more