Owen■—Hybrid Parts of Speech. 
173 
cates, and drag yon out. Are yon not content ? Did yon ex¬ 
pect me to get a stretcher under yon and lift yon decorously, all 
together, on an even keel? I have not impaired or ignored 
yonr bodily integrity. Indeed it was my confidence that yon 
would hold together that led me to adopt my plan. The re¬ 
sult completely vindicates that confidence. I have rescued 
yon in toto. 
But, leaving now objective illustration, you perhaps object 
that, although a pull is exerted, on the nucleary factor of lateral 
thought—a pull which brings that factor into central thought— 
and although the pull at the same time moves the total lateral 
thought, it does not however bring the whole of it into central 
thought. That such is the case I concede, believing moreover 
that it cannot be otherwise. If rightly argued on pp. 134-139, 
the complete incorporation of lateral thought in central thought 
is possible only wdien the former is so blended as to lose exist¬ 
ence as a proper thought, appearing in thought-construction 
rather in the aspect of a single idea. 
We may, however, well believe that lateral thought is not so 
blended. Tor, in the first place, words being signs of ideas, 
the occurrence of the individual words (“the sun,” “to ex¬ 
ceed” and “the moon”) establishes the individual thinking of 
the ideas which they express, at the moment of their individual 
expression. 
Trying now to ascertain precisely how these individually 
thought ideas enter into thought-construction, I note that the 
infinitive clearly shows its substantive function in the govern¬ 
ing phrase—or, say, in major syntax. As prepositions are 
followed only by nouns or words at the moment regarded as 
such, the commonly prepositional English “to” is warning that 
the following word, or else the whole infinitive phrase*, 41 must 
be construed as a noun. In other languages a similar warn¬ 
ing, often additional, is effected by a sometimes inflected arti¬ 
cle, and even by the occasional substantive inflection of the in¬ 
finitive itself. 
41 In my illustration it is hardly rational, and would apparently he 
without a precedent, to rank “the sun” or “the moon” or any pair of 
words as the object of “declare.” 
