Chapter 153

THE SYNTAX OF THE NEGATIVE.

§ 515. When the verb is in the infinitive mood, the negative precedes it.--_Not to advance is to retreat_.

When the verb is not in the infinitive mood, the negative follows it.--_He advanced not_. _I cannot_.

This rule is absolute. It only _seems_ to precede the verb in such expressions as _I do not advance_, _I cannot advance_, _I have not advanced_, &c. However, the words _do_, _can_, and _have_, are no infinitives; and it consequently follows them. The word _advance_ is an infinitive, and it consequently precedes it. Wallis's rule makes an equivalent statement, although differently. "Adverbium negandi _not_ (non) verbo postponitur (nempe auxiliari primo si adsit; aut si non adsit auxiliare, verbo principali): aliis tamen orationis partibus præfigi solet."--P. 113.

That the negative is rarely used, except with an auxiliary, in other words, that the presence of a negative converts a simple form like _it burneth not_ into the circumlocution it _does not burn_, is a fact in the practice of the English language. The syntax is the same in either expression.

§ 516. What may be called the _distribution_ of the negative is pretty regular in English. Thus, when the word _not_ comes between an indicative, imperative, or subjunctive mood and an infinitive verb, it almost always is taken with the word which it _follows_--_I can not eat_ may mean either _I can--not eat_ (i.e., _I can abstain_), or _I can not--eat_ (i.e., _I am unable to eat_); but, as stated above, it _almost_ always has the latter signification.

But not _always_. In Byron's "Deformed Transformed" we find the following lines:--

Clay! not dead but soulless, Though no mortal man would choose thee, An immortal no less Deigns _not to refuse_ thee.

Here _not to refuse_ = _to accept;_ and is probably a Grecism. _To not refuse_ would, perhaps, be better.

The next expression is still more foreign to the English idiom:--

For _not_ to have been dipped in Lethe's lake _Could save_ the son of Thetis from to die.

Here _not_ is to be taken with _could_.

§ 517. In the present English, two negatives make an affirmative. _I have not not seen him_ = _I have seen him_. In Greek this was not the case. _Duæ aut plures negativæ apud Græcos vehementius negant_ is a well known rule. The Anglo-Saxon idiom differed from the English and coincided with the Greek. The French negative is only apparently double; words like _point_, _pas_, mean not _not_, but _at all_. _Je ne parle pas_ = _I not speak at all_, not _I not speak no_.

§ 518. _Questions of appeal._--All questions imply want of information; want of information may then imply doubt; doubt, perplexity; and perplexity the absence of an alternative. In this way, what are called, by Mr. Arnold,[65] _questions of appeal_, are, practically speaking, negatives. _What should I do?_ when asked in extreme perplexity, means that nothing can well be done. In the following passage we have the presence of a question instead of a negative:--

Or hear'st thou (_cluis_, Lat.) rather pure ethereal stream, Whose fountain who (_no one_) shall tell?--_Paradise Lost._

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