see?” might do for an epitaph, but “Who did you see?” is the natural form for an eager inquiry.  It is of course the uncontrolled speech of the folk to which we must look for advance information as to the general linguistic movement.  It is safe to prophesy that within a couple of hundred years from to-day not even the most learned jurist will be saying “Whom did you see?” By that time the “whom” will be as delightfully archaic as the Elizabethan “his” for “its."[132] No logical or historical argument will avail to save this hapless “whom.”  The demonstration “I:  me = he:  him = who:  whom” will be convincing in theory and will go unheeded in practice.

[Footnote 131:  In relative clauses too we tend to avoid the objective form of “who.”  Instead of “The man whom I saw” we are likely to say “The man that I saw” or “The man I saw.”]

[Footnote 132:  “Its” was at one time as impertinent a departure as the “who” of “Who did you see?” It forced itself into English because the old cleavage between masculine, feminine, and neuter was being slowly and powerfully supplemented by a new one between thing-class and animate-class.  The latter classification proved too vital to allow usage to couple males and things ("his”) as against females ("her").  The form “its” had to be created on the analogy of words like “man’s,” to satisfy the growing form feeling.  The drift was strong enough to sanction a grammatical blunder.]

Even now we may go so far as to say that the majority of us are secretly wishing they could say “Who did you see?” It would be a weight off their unconscious minds if some divine authority, overruling the lifted finger of the pedagogue, gave them carte blanche.  But we cannot too frankly anticipate the drift and maintain caste.  We must affect ignorance of whither we are going and rest content with our mental conflict—­uncomfortable conscious acceptance of the “whom,” unconscious desire for the “who."[133] Meanwhile we indulge our sneaking desire for the forbidden locution by the use of the “who” in certain twilight cases in which we can cover up our fault by a bit of unconscious special pleading.  Imagine that some one drops the remark when you are not listening attentively, “John Smith is coming to-night.”  You have not caught the name and ask, not “Whom did you say?” but “Who did you say?” There is likely to be a little hesitation in the choice of the form, but the precedent of usages like “Whom did you see?” will probably not seem quite strong enough to induce a “Whom did you say?” Not quite relevant enough, the grammarian may remark, for a sentence like “Who did you say?” is not strictly analogous to “Whom did you see?” or “Whom did you mean?” It is rather an abbreviated form of some such sentence as “Who, did you say, is coming to-night?” This is the special pleading that I have referred to, and it has a certain logic on its side.  Yet the case is more hollow than the grammarian thinks it to be, for