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An intransitive verb “denotes action which is confined to the actor, and does not pass over to another object; as, I sit, he lives, they sleep.”

“A verb neuter expresses neither action nor passion, but being, or a state of being; as, I am, I sleep, I sit.”

These verbs are nearly allied in character; but we will examine them separately and fairly.  The examples are the same, with exception of the verb to be, which we will notice by itself, and somewhat at large, in another place.

Our first object will be to ascertain the meaning and use of the words which have been given as samples of neutrality.  It is unfortunate for the neuter systems that they can not define a “neuter verb” without making it express an action which terminates on some object.

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“The man sits in his chair.”

Sits, we are told, is a neuter verb.  What does it mean?  The man places himself in a sitting posture in his seat.  He keeps himself in his chair by muscular energy, assisted by gravitation.  The chair upholds him in that condition.  Bring a small child and sit it (active verb,) in a chair beside him.  Can it sit?  No; it falls upon the floor and is injured.  Why did it fall?  It was not able to keep itself from falling.  The lady fainted and fell from her seat.  If there is no action in sitting, why did she not remain as she was?  A company of ladies and gentlemen from the boarding school and college, entered the parlor of a teacher of neuter verbs; and he asked them to sit down, or be seated.  They were neutral.  He called them impolite.  But they replied, that sit “expresses neither action nor passion,” and hence he could not expect them to occupy his seats.

“Sit or set it away; sit near me; sit farther along; sit still;” are expressions used by every teacher in addressing his scholars.  On the system we are examining, what would they understand by such inactive expressions?  Would he not correct them for disobeying his orders?  But what did he order them to do?  Nothing at all, if sit denotes no action.

“I sat me down and wept.”

“He sat him down by a pillar’s base,
And drew his hand athwart his face.”
Byron.

“Then, having shown his wounds, he’d sit him down,
And, all the live long day, discourse of war.”
Tragedy of Douglass.

            “But wherefore sits he there? 
    Death on my state! This act convinces me
    That this retiredness of the duke and her,
    Is plain contempt.”
                              King Lear.

“Sitting, the act of resting on a seat.
Session, the act of sitting.”
Johnson’s Dictionary.