[157] “And the fish that is in the river shall die.”—­Exod., vii, 18.  “And the fish that was in the river died.”—­Ib., 21.  Here the construction is altogether in the singular, and yet the meaning seems to be plural.  This construction appears to be more objectionable, than the use of the word fish with a plural verb.  The French Bible here corresponds with ours:  but the Latin Vulgate, and the Greek Septuagint, have both the noun and the verb in the plural:  as, “The fishes that are in the river,”—­“The fishes that were,” &c.  In our Bible, fowl, as well fish, is sometimes plural; and yet both words, in some passages, have the plural form:  as, “And fowl that may fly,” &c.—­Gen., i, 20.  “I will consume the fowls of the heaven, and the fishes of the sea.”—­Zeph., i, 3.

[158] Some authors, when they give to mere words the construction of plural nouns, are in the habit of writing them in the form of possessives singular; as, “They have of late, ’tis true, reformed, in some measure, the gouty joints and darning work of whereunto’s, whereby’s, thereof’s, therewith’s, and the rest of this kind.”—­Shaftesbury.  “Here,” says Dr. Crombie, “the genitive singular is improperly used for the objective case plural.  It should be, whereuntos, wherebys, thereofs, therewiths.”—­ Treatise on Etym. and Synt., p. 338.  According to our rules, these words should rather be, whereuntoes, wherebies, thereofs, therewiths.  “Any word, when used as the name of itself, becomes a noun.”—­Goodenow’s Gram., p. 26.  But some grammarians say, “The plural of words, considered as words merely, is formed by the apostrophe and s; as, ’Who, that has any taste, can endure the incessant, quick returns of the also’s, and the likewise’s, and the moreover’s, and the however’s, and the notwithstanding’s?’—­CAMPBELL.”—­Wells’s School Gram., p. 54.  Practice is not altogether in favour of this principle, and perhaps it would be better to decide with Crombie that such a use of the apostrophe is improper.

[159] “The Supreme Being (God, [Greek:  Theos], Deus, Dieu, &c.) is, in all languages, masculine; in as much as the masculine sex is the superior and more excellent; and as He is the Creator of all, the Father of gods and men.”—­Harris’s Hermes, p. 54.  This remark applies to all the direct names of the Deity, but the abstract idea of Deity itself, [Greek:  To Theion], Numen, Godhead, or Divinity, is not masculine, but neuter.  On this point, some notions have been published for grammar, that are too heterodox to be cited or criticised here.  See O.  B. Peirce’s Gram., p. 208.

[160] That is, we give them sex, if we mean to represent them as persons.  In the following example, a character commonly esteemed feminine is represented as neuter, because the author would seem to doubt both the sex and the personality:  “I don’t know what a witch is, or what it was then.”—­N.  P. Rogers’s Writings, p. 154.