Owen — Revision of Pronouns. 11 



is eliminated. East ic in mj conception ''cast", no matter who 

 I am or where I am or how I face or what may be the status of 

 any other person. The idea, as far as it can be, is objective and 

 absolute. The points of compass could hardly change, were the 

 race removed to another planet. Such ideas assume, it is true, 

 and must assume, a standard of comparison ; and this standard 

 no doubt is recognized by man alone; but the standard is not 

 man himself, the species or the individual ; and it is not a sec- 

 ondary standard, reckoned from man as a primary. Be it the 

 ^North Star or the sun or the path of the sun across the sky ; be 

 it the meridian of Greenwich, as for longitude ; or be it an origin 

 of co-ordinates, as in analytic geometry; in ideas of the pres- 

 ent class the standard is never self. 



With numerous other words the standard is always self. 

 Given again the objeets of my last illustration, I may elect to 

 say, ''The bush is on the right of the tree". With the same rela- 

 tion of bush and tree in your mind as in my owti, suppose that 

 you yourself now wish to make a statement equivalent to mine; 

 you will say, "The bush is on the left of the tree". Our differ- 

 ence in statement of the same actual relation indicates that we 

 conceive the relation differently. In other words, the relational 

 idea changes with the change in the relation-thinker. This co- 

 variance is occasioned by the fact that something of the thinker's 

 self enters or affects the relation. The categories "right" and 

 "left" are not obtained, like "east" and "west," from the ex- 

 ternal universe; they are obtained directly from the material 

 self. Were my body symmetrical in all directions, or were I 

 a disembodied spirit of the conventional type, it is difficult to 

 imagine how such ideas could arise. Constituted even as I am, 

 these ideas vary with the changes of my position. They may be 

 valid not only for self alone, but for the self only of the moment. 

 Hence their passage from my usage to your own involves some 

 taking out of my personality and some putting in of yours. 

 Their peculiarity may be indicated by saying that they are ego- 

 centric. That is, the individual self affects the nature of the 

 idea. Self is the point of departure, the center from which the 

 mental outreach proceeds. 



Egocentric ideas may be obtained from phenomena different 



