48 Owen—Meaning and Function of Thought-Connectives. 
First comes a sentence declaring A. Then follows a sentence 
declaring B and, further, the relation between B and reinstated 
A. Next appears a sentence declaring C and, further, the rela¬ 
tion between C and reinstated B. But the B which is on this 
occasion reinstated, is a B which contained A by a previous 
reinstatement. That is, C, in a way, contains both A and B. 
And so also N, when reached, will be found to contain all the 
thoughts from A to M inclusive. That is, by a series of rein¬ 
statements, the last statement of the series is made to contain the 
last thought plus all preceding thoughts and their relations to 
each other. And such, no doubt, is the thought actually pres¬ 
ent, at the end of an extended reasoning process, in the mind 
of an intelligent reasoner. 
The succession of thoughts is often called a chain. It were 
better to compare it to the sphere-in-sphere of the Chinese carver. 
The smallest sphere is contained in a larger, and that again in 
one still larger, the outer sphere containing all the others by 
successive inclusion. 
Like this final sphere is the final thought in continued reason¬ 
ing. I do not mean that, as the complexity of the total 
thought increases, each particular member preserves its original 
distinctness of parts. Rather each thought, presented first 
as a combination of elements, enters its successor as a unit, used 
with other units to form a second combination. And this new 
combination fading in turn upon the thinker’s consciousness, 
its elements blend together till they also lose their discreteness, 
appear as one, and as one form part of still another combina¬ 
tion. 
But the last thought of the series contains some representa¬ 
tion of every preceding thought. In other words, successive 
thought -connection is successive incorporation. 
Madispn , Wis ., February , 1898. 
Though attention has been confined to English, it may be added that the 
connectives of other languages, so far as examined, seem without excep¬ 
tion to confirm the opinions advanced. Those of German in particular 
(e. g. dagegen, dessenungeachtet) are conspicuously rich in elements of 
unmistakably reinstative and relation-naming value. 
