4 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



This interpretation is confirmed by abundant definitions and 

 descriptions which agree in this, that the pronoun is a sort of 

 proxy, and not a linguistic principal; in other words, it presents 

 ideas by an indirect or mediate process. To illustrate, using for 

 convenience the conversational forms, suppose you enter my 

 room as I utter the words ''He is going to Europe."^ It is 

 plain that you will not know of w^hom I am thinking. But had 

 you come in a moment sooner, you would have heard an ampler 

 statement, namely, ''Brown says he is going to Europe." In 

 this foiTQ of mv example vou know without a doubt of whom I 

 am thinking, and that I think of him twice, once as saying, and 

 once as going. My first thinking is indicated by the word 

 "Brown," my second, by the word "he." But the powers of 

 these words are veiy different. The symbol "Brown" reveals 

 the subject of my thought without recourse to the aid of any 

 other word. The symbol "he" can not, on the other hand, ex- 

 press my meaning except as a proxy, taking the place of 



"Brown," its linguistic principal. 



That the exploitation of this distinction has been attended by ex- 

 treme confusion is perhaps suflBciently shown by illustrations already 

 offered. That the distinction itself is eminently just and will ration- 

 ally differentiate the pronouns I shall endeavor to show in the follow- 

 ing Section. Meantime this distinction may be used to aid the further 

 appreciation of Grammar's extraordinary achievement, of which I of- 

 fer the following objective illustration: Having on my farm a con- 

 siderable number of animals, I find it convenient to classify them by 

 structural differences. I thus obtain two classes, the equine and the 

 bovine. The latter, as it happens is somewhat numerous, while of 

 the former there are very few. Indeed this obvious difference in num- 

 ber, and therefore in commonness, rather supplants in my attention 

 the structural difference first utilized. The horses come to impress me 

 most conspicuously as exceptions. Of my cows, too, the most indeed are 

 Jerseys; a few, however, are black, that is again, exceptions. So I fall 

 into the habit of grouping the black cows with the horses in what I 

 cannot properly now distinguish as anything but an exceptional class. 

 But the nucleus of this class was, after all, the horses, originally known 

 as the equine class. Noting merely that this nucleus has been aug- 

 mented, but overlooking the change of criterion which allowed the aug- 

 mentation, I continue the use of the title equine with a class which 

 now contains not only horses but also cov/s. Developing the possibili- 



^I bar the occasional use of "he" to name the person par excellence of com- 

 mon acquaintance. This usage will be examined under another head. 



