128 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



APPEXDIX B— DEMOXSTHATIYES. 



It was indicated on p. 13 that these express the egocentric 

 ideas which are not developed under influence of the act of 

 speech. Eew of them are recognized at all by Grammar, and 

 even these so indistinctly as to remain effective stumbling blocks. 

 Their determination and mutual differentiation form a strictlv 

 lexical problem, of which I can offer only the merest outline. 



Examining first 



THEIR CATEGORIES, 



I note that the condition of every egocentric idea — every 

 idea, that is, which takes its departure from self — is obviously 

 the establishment of self, as point of departure. Egocentric 

 thought of any kind assumes a prior distinction between the self 

 and all else — the I and the not-I. To this distinction the con- 

 stant presence of self in consciousness may be noted as an 

 excitant. For linguistic purposes the "I am always with you'^ 

 may be reformulated as ^^I am always with myself.'' Other 

 ideas are occasional ; the idea of self alone is ever present. That 

 the one abiding idea of self should serve as landmark for other 

 ideas is a foregone conclusion. 



Such a landmark is available in many fields of thought. In 

 the category of space it is plain that all that is not ^T' may 

 be subdivided according to its distance from self. Thus, in 

 English, what is near me I designate by "this," and what is 

 more remote by "that." Spanish recognizes three degrees of 

 distance marked by "esto," "eso" and "aquello." Indeed a 

 larger number of such degrees is possible and entirely practi- 

 cable.^ 



^ Under colloquial influence the regions of remoteness or of nearness somewhat 

 tend to use the hearer as a landmark, "that" inclining to confine itself to what 

 is near to you. and the "yonder" affecting what is far from us both. But evea 

 in conversation such a tendency is merely a putting of myself in your place, 

 that is, an application of my own egocentric classification to your point of view 

 (in soliloquy my personal point of view is unchanged) ; the definition of "that" 

 as what is near to you. must accordingly be rejected as giving neither its pri- 

 mary nor even its commoner meaning. 



