Note note 59 — ANALYSIS OF THE PHENOMENA OF THE HUMAN MIND James Mill

59 There is really no well marked distinction between relative pronouns and demonstrative pronouns, either in their origin or in their use. Of the demonstrative roots ka, sa, ta, ja, derivatives from the guttural ka prevail as relatives in Latin and its modern descendants (Lat. qui, It. che, Fr. qui), and in the Teutonic languages (Goth. hva, Eng. who, Ger. wer, welch), but by no means exclusively. In Greek the relative differs little from the article, which is also used as a demonstrative and a personal pronoun. Modern Italian uses as a demonstrative a compound of the Latin qui with iste and illa—questo, quella. In German the relative proper, viz. welch, is comparatively little used, its place being supplied by the article der, which is merely an unemphatic demonstrative; and in English that is perhaps as often used as who or which.

The relative serves for two purposes, which it is useful to distinguish. (1) It may add on either a clause containing an independent proposition, as in the example in the text, “John received a wound, which occasioned his death;” or a clause dependent in some way upon the preceding—e.g. assigning the reason of it, as, “It was unjust to punish the servant, who only did what he was ordered.” (2) The clause introduced by the relative may serve simply to limit or define a noun, in the way that an adjective or another noun in apposition does, as “The man who spoke to you is my father.” It is in this latter use of the relative, and in no other, that it is permissible in English to use that; to substitute that for which in the first of the other two sentences, or for who in the second, would give a different meaning. Now it is only in the cases in which that could not be substituted for who or which that the relative involves the force of a conjunction; and it is not always and that is the conjunction involved. The conjunction has no verbal expression, and never had; it is only suggested, and the mind supplies that which best suits the logical connection. When the predication of the relative clause is co-ordinate with the preceding, as in the first example, and is the proper conjunction to supply. In the sentence about the punishment of the servant, who is equivalent to for he; and in that about Erasmus, in the text, to inasmuch as he. When the relative clause merely defines, no conjunction of any kind is even implied. In such a sentence as “He rewarded the man that rescued him,” the relative clause is the answer to a question naturally suggested by “He rewarded the man”—what man? “The or that (man) rescued him;” which is equivalent to, “his rescuer.” To resolve it into “And that man rescued him,” gives quite a different meaning; namely, that he rewarded some man (otherwise known to the hearers) for something (likewise known to them), and that this man now rescued him.—F.