Owen — Be vision of Pronouns. 7 



rogative, and in some languages even still otherwise, meaning "one" 

 or the "other," "this one" or "that one." More objectively, the jack- 

 knife serves its owner in turn as gimlet, hammer and tooth-pick. Such 

 activities I can easily differentiate ; but I can not so easily express my 

 results. Language is not lavish of names for groups of distinctive 

 characteristics, especially those of the accidental or ephemeral order. 

 For the total of distinctives, whereby a knife is ranked for the moment 

 as a hammer, I need such a word as "hammerness;" but it does not 

 exist. Also, even if I had such words, they would be very ineffective, 

 an argument upon abstractions being notably hard to follow. Finding 

 it thus impracticable to discuss the different characteristics of words, 

 I must make my discussion, in form at least, one of words differently 

 characterized. This involves me at once in a formal contradiction. My 

 jack-knife is ranked as a gimlet, a hammer and a tooth-pick. The 

 word "v.ho" is classed as a demonstrative, a relative, and an interroga- 

 tive. I may indeed laboriously stipulate that neither knife nor word 

 is in three classes at the same time. Or I may resort to the clumsy 

 expedient of calling "who" three different words, or my knife three 

 different objects. But neither course is satisfactory. The best I can 

 do, to avoid wrong understanding on the one hand and no understand- 

 ing on the other, is to say that, while for convenience I shall seem to 

 classify words, I shall really be aiming to differentiate their functions, 

 their meanings and their methods of meaning-presentation. 



EEDIFFEEEXTIATIOX. 



In the efiort to bring order into tlie confusion wrought by 

 Grammar, I invite increased attention to the fundamental dis- 

 tinction between proxy and principal, reviving the illustration 

 ^'Brown says he is going to Europe.'^ As I utter the word 

 ^^Brown," it suggests to you an idea essentially the same as my 

 own, and this without the aid of any other word, being, it may 

 be argued, self-explanatory. The same is true of every element 

 of my sentence except the element '^he,'' which can not suggest 

 my idea except for explanatory aid, afforded in the present case 

 by ^^Brown." 



This simple distinction, of the highest value in word-study, 

 though strongly emphasized by Grammar, has been curiously 

 misapplied. Words of the ^'he" class have been isolated from 

 others on the ground that they revive an idea already suggested 

 by another word or, in grammatical parlance, " refer to an ante- 

 cedent.'' But such revival confers no distinction, being effected 



