Thus, "Who created
the worlds by the word of his power" means "Who created the
worlds by his powerful word." "The body of our humiliation" is
"our humiliating body." "Who shall deliver me from the body of
this death?" is "from this deadly body," as the context of the
passage clearly shows. In each case the second noun is the
adjective modifying the first.
Moreover, the most interesting deduction from this division of
the parts of speech is that the partitives are far the highest in
rank among words, because they express pure relations, which only
the royal mind of man can so distinctly perceive as to make words
for them. Thus, a dog can learn his own name, and understand the
verbs "go" and "come," especially with the imperative tone of his
master; but he could never understand the words "outgoing year"
or "incoming year."
Prepositions belong to the partitives, and, with different
prepositions attached to one and the same thing or noun, the
human mind can step through the vast regions of thought as easily
as the ether can vibrate through space. Thus the Latin scriptio,
the name of a thing, a writing, gives us the following changes,
according to the preposition: An Ascription is not a
CONscription, by any means; nor does a conscription mean anything
like a DEScription; nor is that the same thing with an
INscription; nor when we PREscribe for a man are we PROscribing
him; and every one of us knows, when the agent of a worthy cause
enters, what the difference is between a SUBscription and a
SUPERscription.
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