While these critics allow only two degrees, we might in fact with more propriety say, that there are five: 1, the quality in its standard state, or positive degree; as wise: 2, in a higher state, or the comparative ascending; more wise: 3, in a lower, or the comparative descending; less wise: 4, in the highest state, or superlative ascending; most wise: 5, in the lowest state, or superlative descending; least wise.

The superlative degree increases or lessens the positive to the highest or [the] lowest degree; as, wisest, greatest, least wise.

What is the superlative degree?

It is not more correct to say, that the comparative or the superlative degree, "increases or lessens the positive," than it would be to aver, that the plural number increases or lessens the singular, or the feminine gender, the masculine.

Nor does the superlative mean, what a certain learned Doctor understands by itnamely, "the greatest or least possible degree."

It is improper to say, "The simple word becomes [the] comparative by adding r or er; and the superlative by adding st or est."

"The same effect," cannot here be taken for any effect previously described; unless we will have it to be, that these words, more and most, "become comparative by adding r or er; and the superlative by adding st or est, to the end of them:" all of which is grossly absurd.

Besides, unless it involves the additional error of presenting the same word in different senses, it makes one degree swell or diminish an other to itself; whereas, in the very next sentence, this singular agency is forgotten, and a second equally strange takes its place: "The positive becomes the superlative by adding st or est, to the end of it;" i. e., to the end of itself.

Besides, the comparative or the superlative may appear, and in such a manner as to be, or seem to be, in the point of contrast.

The riches contemplated here, are of different sorts; and the comparative or the superlative of one sort, may be exceeded by either of these degrees of an other sort, though the same epithet be used for both.

Again, as soon as any given comparative or superlative is, by a further elevation or intension of the quality, surpassed and exceeded, that particular degree, whatever it was, becomes merely positive; for the positive degree of a quality, though it commonly includes the very lowest measure, and is understood to exceed nothing, may at any time equal the very highest.

That the comparative degree is implied between the positive and the superlative, so that there must needs be three terms before the latter is applicable, is a doctrine which I deny.

Some grammarians, observing this, and knowing that the Romans often used their superlative in a sense merely intensive, as altissimus for very high, have needlessly divided our English superlative into two, "the definite, and the indefinite;" giving the latter name to that degree which we mark by the adverb very, and the former to that which alone is properly called the superlative.

10.The true nature of the Superlative degree is this: it denotes, in a quality, some extreme or unsurpassed extent.

"The superlative expresses a quality in the greatest or [the] least possible degree; as, wisest, coldest, least wise.

"This degree is called the Superlative degree, from its raising the amount of the quality above that of all others.

"From its raising the amount," is in itself a vicious and untranslatable phrase, here put for "because it raises the amount;" and who can conceive of the superlative degree, as "raising the amount of the quality above that of all other qualities?"

12.The common assertion of the grammarians, that the superlative degree is not applicable to two objects, is not only unsupported by any reason in the nature of things, but it is contradicted in practice by almost every man who affirms it.

It is true, the comparative might here have been used; but the superlative is clearer, and more agreeable to custom.

So Blair: "When only two things are compared, the comparative degree should be used, and not the superlative.

When three or more persons or things are compared, the superlative must be used.

The superlative degree increases or lessens the positive to the greatest extent, and denotes a comparison between more than two persons or things.

In the former part of this example, the superlative is twice applied where only two things are spoken of; and, in the latter, it is twice made equivalent to the comparative, with a like reference.

So Latham and Child: "It is better, in speaking of only two objects, to use the comparative degree rather than the superlative, even, where we use the article the.

Adjectives are regularly compared, when the comparative degree is expressed by adding er, and the superlative, by adding est to them: as, Pos., great, Comp., greater, Superl., greatest; Pos., mild, Comp., milder, Superl., mildest.