126 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



ing to him, and not at all be<3ause tie is a person. That is,, 

 whatever I have in mind, its presentation by a ^^personal" de- 

 pends by no means on its rank in my classification of things 

 animate or inanimate, but on my classification of participants 

 in the act of speech. If then I wish the word personality to 

 suggest the true distinctive of the personal words, I must define 

 it as meaning egocentricism of the specially colloquial type;^ 

 and this I take to be the meaning of ''person" as used by Gram- 

 mar in the more special sense. 



HOW FAR THEY ARE PRONOMINAL. 



To the strictly personal words, as noted in the second para- 

 graph of Chapter IL, Section 10, a vicarious value is sometimes 

 superadded. Such occasional double value has presumably 

 helped grammarians to regard the personals as pronouns, to 

 infer, that is, that personality entails pronominality. 



Without exhaustive examination, I will merely test this in- 

 ference by bringing, so to speak, a suit against a single one of 

 the personals, choosing as defendant the so-called pronoun ''I,"" 

 the usual leader of the pronominal list. Suppose then that, 

 meeting you for the first time, say in a stage-coach, I remark 

 that ^'I am glad to have a companion." It surely will not be 

 claimed that, in this sentence, ^^I" is in any sense a substitute 

 for any other word or phrase. In the first place ^^I" is not a 

 replacer ; that is, it does not, as sign of an idea already men- 

 tioned (or yet to be mentioned), take the place of any word 

 that is actually used and might be used again. "I," in the sec- 

 ond place, is not even a &placer ; that is, it does not, as sign 

 of an idea in its only mention, take the place of any word that 

 might he used. The word "I" stands for myself, not only 

 immediately, but also with such perfection, that no other word 

 or combination can advantageously take its place. Even my 

 legal name is comparatively uncertain. If you do not already 

 know me, and if another be present, you readily take that name 



^It goes without saying that such "personality" may appear In other symbols 

 by no means recognized by Grammar as personal pronouns. Thus, in "Our 

 Father, who art in Heaven," no doubt the "who" (while serving as an order to- 

 continue "E'afher," and as a sign that "Father" is, in second function, nomina- 

 tive), contemplates the "second personality" of "Father" in its second function. 



