8 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts, and Letters, 



by miiltitiides of other words. Tlius, suppose I say ^^Brown saw 

 Mr. McKinley today. The president is looking welL" Lik& 

 the word ^^he" the word ''president" reviyes an idea suggested 

 by a preceding word, doing all, in short, that can be done by 

 ''he/' and merely doing it better. It is therefore not in what 

 the word ^^he" can do, bnt in what it can not do, not in its 

 powers bnt in its limitations, that we must find the gronnd for 

 isolating it from others. And what it can 7iot do, as previously 

 shown, is to suggest without aid an intended idea. 



The difference then between other words and words like '^he'^ 

 is roughly that of candle and mirror. The one emits a light of 

 its own ; the other is a mere reflector. Such a difference may 

 safely be used as primary; for it is absolute and fundamental. 

 It is also psychologically initial. The process by which I call up 

 inyourmindan idea is necessarily prior in time to its appearance 

 in your mental field. Before you can cook or even have your 

 hare, you must catch it. In comparison, then, to the question 

 how an idea is obtained, all other questions are actually subse- 

 quent and may plausibly rank as subsidiary ; by these I mean the 

 questions of the idea's nature, of its use in thought-structure 

 (function), of its sentential neighbors (association), of what in 

 grammatical parlance it is said "to do" — the tests, in short^^ 

 which Grammar has applied in distinguishing the other parts of 

 speech and the pronominal subdivisions. 



Seeking now to prepare the way for a suitable terminology, I 

 slightly change my previous form of statement. In the exam- 

 ple ''Brown says he is going to Europe," I prefer to put it that 

 "Brown" is able to take the initiative in the complete suggestion 

 of an idea. Self-sufficient words of this order may therefore be 

 kno^^Ti as initiatives. 



The word "he," on the other hand, is unable to perform the 

 initiative act. AVhen, however, this act has once been per- 

 formed by "Brown," the hearer, looking mentally backward to 

 the idea suggested by "Brown," can use it as the meaning of 

 "he." Indeed, the use of "he" is a virtual order to the hearer 

 thus to look backward, to find a previously used idea, and to use 

 that idea again as part of a present thought. Words of this type- 

 may be known as retrospectives. 



