Owen — Revision of Pronouns. 43 



more dominant than the others may converge for a moment and 

 then diverge^ the other becoming more dominant than the one; 

 that is, two lines of thought may cross each other, or exchange 

 supremacy.^ 



In normal thought-expression, which is all I wish at present 

 to consider, it is not required to take account of these various 

 forms of multiple thinking. I can tell you and you can success- 

 fully listen to one thought only at a time. Even in exchange of 

 thought-supremacy the presenting effort of the moment is single. 

 Written and printed language, being, as thus far developed, mere 

 transliterations of oral speech, are subject to its law, which may 

 therefore be more broadly formulated by saying that, howsoever 

 many thoughts occur together in the speaker's mind, he must 

 present them to the hearer one at a time. That is, simultaneous 

 thoughts must be made successive before linguistic presentation. 

 Attention may therefore be confined to 



II. SINGLE THINKING. 



•It is obvious that in a single series of successive thoiights one 

 member may or may not be linked to its neighbor. That is, 

 single thinking may be 



(a) Incoliei^ent. 

 Thus, given "I just met Brown. Peace is concluded with 

 Spain," it may provisionally be admitted that the two thoughts 

 of this series do not cohere or, in other words, are incoherent. 



(h) Coherent. 



Given, on the other hand, "I have a book will please you," 

 it may be assumed that the thoughts expressed, namely, "I have 

 a book" and "a book will please you" are coherent. 



III. EXPRESSION OF INCOHEKENT THOUGHT. 



(a) Interrupted. 

 This mode of expression was followed in "I just met Brown. 

 Peace is concluded." Such expression only is in such a case 



^Thus in the French "Je crains qu'il ne vienne" a fear that he will and a hope 

 that he will not come may be regarded as exchanging supremacy at "ne." But 

 such change in mid-sentence from fear-expression to hope-expression may be 

 relegated to the special field of sentence pathology. 



