Owen — Revision of Pronouns. 117 



While I may or may not expect from you an answer, the pos- 

 sibility of an answer seems to be always contemplated. Even 

 while I speak, you are the condition of thought-communication ; 

 a moment later you may become its cause. While I then am 

 the actual senior partner of the moment, you are the potential 

 senior "oartner of the moment to come. In your present par- 

 ticipation, you deserve at least as high a rank as that of junior 

 partner. 



Besides the speaker and the intended hearer, there may be an- 

 other hearer (or several), present, perceived, accepted, but not 

 intended. Such a one it is simplest to conceive for the present 

 as also not expected to assume the lead. You and I then, in the 

 alternating role of speaker, have no objection to his hearing 

 what we say ; but neither of us is talking for his sake. If you 

 or I w^ere absent, what either now is saying for the other's sake 

 w^ould not be said at all. 



The colloquial rank of such a hearer is plainly quite inferior 

 to our own. Far from being indispensable, he is distinctly su- 

 pernumerary. Our thought-exchange may be not more com- 

 plete, because he is present, nor less so, be he absent. His par- 

 ticipation in the act of speech concerns not us at all, but him- 

 self alone. He does not even merit the name of a hearer. He 

 is rather an overhearer, or a silent partner. 



If now I wish to mention such a hearer, I may speak either 

 to or of him. The former alternative merely makes him a jun- 

 ior partner, suggesting nothing new to our examination. The 

 latter allows me to designate him absolutely by his name (a 

 method foreign to the present inquiry, or egocentrically. But 

 even egocentric design a tion^ to deserve our notice, must not be 

 merely in the broader meaning egocentric. "That man" and 

 "this person" are egocentric in such broader meaning ; but they 

 lie without the present field. To lie within this field, the desig- 

 nation must be an egocentric of the specially colloquial type ; it 

 must name the overhearer by a word suggesting a colloquial par- 

 ticipant, but not a speaker or an intended hearer. Such a word 

 is "he" (or "she"). 



I do not mean that this is the only or even the common mean- 

 ing of "he." Indeed this meaning is somewhat rare. From 

 the usage of the polite it has disappeared, for the very obvious 



