4 Owen—Meaning and Function of Thought- Connectives. 
knowledge of such affects lies also your own greatest gain. 
Your ability to inform me of your personal attitude toward 
your own ideas and combinations is the basis of my ability to 
serve you. I must know not merely that you are thinking of 
something; I must also know that something as liked or dis¬ 
liked, feared, hoped or desired, believed, doubted or disbelieved. 
In the linguistic beginning was, likely enough, the desire. 
It is at least quite in the line of evolutionary principles to con¬ 
ceive the development of language as aided by the survival of 
the fittest. And he no doubt was linguistically fittest who 
could tell what he wanted. To this primitive power time has 
added the ability to express the other personal attitudes; and 
now it may be said that the purpose of language is in general 
to express the speaker’s personal attitude toward an idea or 
combination. 
Something of this personal attitude all agree to find in the 
judgment. To form a generally acceptable definition of this 
thought-form is however hardly practicable — still less so to reach 
an agreement as to how far the sentence is confined to judg¬ 
ment-expression. It is however unnecessary to do either. Some 
forms of thought are recognized by all as judgments; and some 
sentences are universally felt to be their expression. 1 
To such judgments and such sentences I will, so far as may 
be, confine myself. The principles developed in their discussion 
will, I think, be found to apply to other thought-forms and 
other word-combinations, by whatever name it may seem best 
to call them. 
ANALYSIS OF THE JUDGMENT. 
The judgment may be analyzed in several ways. So, for that 
matter, may an insect. I may regard the creature as made up 
1 To my own mind a judgment is always the belief in the reality (or 
unreality) of a relation between two ideas. Even in its imperative form 
it vouches for the relation of wisher to what is wished. In the dubitativo 
aspect it assures uncertainty. Even interrogatively formed it asserts the 
desire for information. 
On the other hand what a sentence aims to express is always a judgment 
as above conceived, though plainly the sentence often leaves a gap to be 
filled by inference or external suggestion and often admits irrelevant 
elements. 
