desired removal of all hindrance; may in (7) denotes a possible removal of hindrance. It is hard to see why the former may is necessarily a mere auxiliary, and the latter a "notional," or independent, verb. These are some of the difficulties-not to say inconsistenciesmet by the student who is taught that there is no Potential Mode.

In a scholarly work revised by Skeat, Wrightson, speaking of I may, can, shall, or will love, says, "These auxiliary verbs had at some time such a clear and definite meaning that it would have been tolerably easy to determine the case function discharged by the infinitive ; but these verbs, after passing through various shades of meaning, have at last become little more than conventional symbols, so that it would be worse than useless to attempt to analyze these periphrastic tenses of our moods."