“…I n order to realize the special subgroups with degenerate vacua, one can show from general considerations of the two-point functions and positive definiteness of Hilbert space, that the end points must be essentially singular. Now regarding the physical quantities or nlatrix elements as continuous functions of the symmetry-breaking parameter under consideration in the physical domain, and using general principles such as current algebra, soft-meson methods, and variational techniques, we can impose considerable restrictions on the functional dependence, which leads to several interesting results, some of which have been derived in I. I n this way, one can, for instance, fix the "physical" value of the symmetry-breaking parameters, and one finds, in agreement with the worli of Gell-Mann, Oalies, and R e n n e~,~.~ that whereas the Hamiltonian is approxin~ately invariant under the TV (2) symmetry, the vacuum state is predominantly an SU(3) singlet.…”