Owen — Revision of Pronouns. 115 



different, your "right" and "left" of space or yonr "before" and 

 "after" of time being, it may be, opposite to mine. Yet, so to 

 speak, by a turn of the wheel, our categories coincide ; and I as- 

 sume that also in the field of thought-exchange the case will be 

 the same; that is, our categories tally, though we apply them 

 differently. 



I further confine myself to oral speech, regarding written lan- 

 guage as a mere transliteration, a trifle different from the oral 

 in its use of personals, because the colloquial participants are 

 not in mutual presence. But I assume that such difference is 

 the easy corollary of mutual absence and will not essentially 

 modify conclusions drawn from the study of oral speech. For 

 analogous reasons I mainly neglect the examination of solilo- 

 quy, of speech "in concert," of the figurative address to that 

 which can not answer or understand, and of the use of language 

 as a mere notation. 



Used as a means of oral thought-communication, language re- 

 quires two participants at least. Choosing in illustration the 

 leading role for myself, to avoid entanglement otherwise im- 

 minent, I note that, while speaking, I am active; you are com- 

 paratively passive. In thought formation I am an originator; 

 you are at best an imitator only; you merely "think my 

 thoughts after me." I give; you receive. The source of a 

 stream of energy is in me ; in you it discharges. Without you, 

 indeed, the message is not received ; but without me there is no 

 message. 



Indeed my every statement contains me by implication, even 

 "when I am not mentioned. For instance, suppose I say that 

 '^The moon exceeds the sun." It is true that my sentence con- 

 tains no mention of myself; yet you appreciate that this sen- 

 tence does not stand of necessity for a fact, but for an opinion,, 

 and that this opinion is mine. Fully rendered, my statement 

 would take the form: "I believe in the reality^ of the moon's 



again from persons otherwise implicated in speech, without being modified In 

 my conception. It is possible, no doubt, that the "I," as antagonized to "this" 

 and "that," is conceived especially as having location and that the "I," as an- 

 tagonized to "thou" and "he," is conceived as colloquially active. But it seema 

 to me that the "I" is rather absolute and invariable, an origin of coordinates, 

 unaffected by the point of view because itself the point of view. I shc^uld ac- 

 cordingly tabulate: "I" (absolute), "this" and "that" (spatially related to- 

 "I") ; "I" (absolute), "thou" and "he" (colloquially related to "I"). 



^My belief in unreality, etc., would be expressed by "The moon not exceeds 

 the sun," or an equivalent. 



