124 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 
every detail of the most extended mental total; and this very 
locality of momentary attention entails the synchronous mar- 
ginality of the detail which has been or is about to be in its 
own turn focal. 
^Neither nearness implies the other. For doubtless, on the 
one hand, in the act of exhibiting each idea, I make it for the 
instant focal, without, however, being able to give to each idea 
the central place in expressional purpose. On the other hand 
the center of my purpose may all the time be so extremely mar¬ 
ginal as almost to be unheeded—notably in the case of questions. 
A question may be defined (See “Interrogatives,” pages 437 
and 468) as the linguistic expression of the speaker’s desire 
that the hearer give him information—an expression necessarily 
attended by adequate indication of the information to be given. 
It has its rather close analogy with the following order to my 
tailor: “(I want you to) send me a coat of the following color 
and dimensions.” In this order the description of what I want 
is plainly subordinate to my wanting to get it; and in every 
question the like is presumably the case. Yet in the question 
“Are you ill ?” the position of “ill,” its emphasis, the suspen¬ 
sory tone (which might seem to suggest a dwelling on the idea 
which “ill” evokes) combine to indicate an even greater focal- 
ity than belongs to my desire and your giving information.. 
These, indeed, are so far from focal that quite an effort is re¬ 
quired to find in “Are you ill?” the meaning presumably 
rightly expressed by “I desire you to inform me as to your be¬ 
ing ill.” Again, my curtains being ablaze, in crying “Fire!” 
I cherish no doubt the central wish that you come to the fire 
and help me put it out—a wish less distantly inferable from the 
Frenchman’s “A l’incendie!”—and yet this wish is not suffi¬ 
ciently focalized even to reach expression. 
One kind of nearness doubtless, however, often coincides- 
with the other. As, with reference to expressional purpose, I 
take the perspective view of a complex thought, and recognize 
the solar nucleus of it surrounded by its planetary attendants, 
themselves in turn accompanied by their satellites, which also- 
have their own sub-satellites, no doubt, as a rule, the central 
element of the system is also more precisely focal in my con- 
