OBS. 8.—­The true Subjunctive mood, in English, is virtually rejected by some later grammarians, who nevertheless acknowledge under that name a greater number and variety of forms than have ever been claimed for it in any other tongue.  All that is peculiar to the Subjunctive, all that should constitute it a distinct mood, they represent as an archaism, an obsolete or antiquated mode of expression, while they willingly give to it every form of both the indicative and the potential, the two other moods which sometimes follow an if.  Thus Wells, in his strange entanglement of the moods, not only gives to the subjunctive, as well as to the indicative, a “Simple” or “Common Form,” and a “Potential Form;” not only recognizes in each an “Auxiliary Form,” and a “Progressive Form;” but encumbers the whole with distinctions of style,—­with what he calls the “Common Style,” and the “Ancient Style;” or the “Solemn Style,” and the “Familiar Style:”  yet, after all, his own example of the Subjunctive, “Take heed, lest any man deceive you,” is obviously different from all these, and not explainable under any of his paradigms!  Nor is it truly consonant with any part of his theory, which is this:  “The subjunctive of all verbs except be, takes the same form as the indicative.  Good writers were formerly much accustomed to drop the personal termination in the subjunctive present, and write ‘If he have,’ ‘If he deny,’ etc., for ‘If he has,’ ’If he denies,’ etc.; but this termination is now generally retained, unless an auxiliary is understood.  Thus, ‘If he hear,’ may properly be used for ‘If he shall hear’ or ‘If he should hear,’ but not for ’If he hears.’”—­Wells’s School Gram., 1st Ed., p. 83; 3d Ed., p. 87.  Now every position here taken is demonstrably absurd.  How could “good writers” indite “much” bad English by dropping from the subjunctive an indicative ending which never belonged to it?  And how can a needless “auxiliary” be “understood,” on the principle of equivalence, where, by awkwardly changing a mood or tense, it only helps some grammatical theorist to convert good English into bad, or to pervert a text?  The phrases above may all be right, or all be wrong, according to the correctness or incorrectness of their application:  when each is used as best it may be, there is no exact equivalence.  And this is true of half a dozen more of the same sort; as, “If he does hear,”—­“If he do hear,”—­“If he is hearing,”—­“If he be hearing,”—­“If he shall be hearing,”—­“If he should be hearing.”