OBS. 15.—­The reciprocal terms each other and one an other divide, according to some mutual act or interchangeable relation, the persons or things spoken of, and are commonly of the singular number only. Each other, if rightly used, supposes two, and only two, to be acting and acted upon reciprocally; one an other, if not misapplied, supposes more than two, under like circumstances, and has an indefinite reference to all taken distributively:  as, “Brutus and Aruns killed each other.”  That is, Each combatant killed the other.  “The disciples were commanded to love one an other, and to be willing to wash one an other’s feet.”  That is, All the disciples were commanded to love mutually; for both terms, one and other, or one disciple and an other disciple, must be here understood as taken indefinitely.  The reader will observe, that the two terms thus brought together, if taken substantively or pronominally in parsing, must be represented as being of different cases; or, if we take them adjectively the noun, which is twice to be supplied, will necessarily be so.

OBS. 16.—­Misapplications of the foregoing reciprocal terms are very frequent in books, though it is strange that phrases so very common should not be rightly understood.  Dr. Webster, among his explanations of the word other, has the following:  “Correlative to each, and applicable to any number of individuals.”—­Octavo Dict. “Other is used as a substitute for a noun, and in this use has the plural number and the sign of the possessive case.”—­Ib. Now it is plain, that the word other, as a “correlative to each,” may be so far “a substitute for a noun” as to take the form of the possessive case singular, and perhaps also the plural; as, “Lock’d in each other’s arms they lay.”  But, that the objective other, in any such relation, can convey a plural idea, or be so loosely applicable—­“to any number of individuals,” I must here deny.  If it were so, there would be occasion, by the foregoing rule, to make it plural in form; as, “The ambitious strive to excel each others.”  But this is not English.  Nor can it be correct to say of more than two, “They all strive to excel each other.”  Because the explanation must be, “Each strives to excel other;” and such a construction of the word other is not agreeable to modern usage. Each other is therefore not equivalent to one an other, but nearer perhaps to the one the other:  as, “The two generals are independent the one of the other.”—­Voltaire’s Charles XII, p. 67.  “And these are contrary the one to the other.”—­Gal., v, 17.  “The necessary connexion of the one with the other.”—­Blair’s Rhet., p. 304.  The latter phraseology, being definite and formal, is now seldom used, except the terms be separated by a verb or a preposition.  It is a literal version of the French l’un l’autre, and in some instances to be preferred to each other; as,