Owen—Hybrid Parts of Speech. 229 
Of the infinite variation in the personnel of thought-constit¬ 
uency, I propose to examine chiefly that occasioned by the 
presence or absence of the speaker’s belief in the truth or un¬ 
truth (the being matched or not, in external reality) of what 
he intends to express. The occurrence or non-occurrence of 
this belief, in the speaker’s mind, cannot perhaps directly be 
controlled; hut its incorporation into what the speaker elects 
for expression is an altogether different matter, and doubtless 
quite within the speaker’s jurisdiction, as will be somewhat 
fully indicated in another connection. Meantime, in the ex¬ 
amination now to be undertaken, I confine myself, for the mo¬ 
ment, to minimal thought, by which I mean such thought as 
cannot be reduced without its ceasing to be a thought. 
Such a thought, when void of belief, is not expressed, as I 
have elsewhere argued at some length, except in the poetical 
vein. To illustrate, suppose that you are ill, and that you 
dread the outcome of your illness. As your physician, I should 
hardly set before you, unattended by belief, the thought ex¬ 
pressed by “you to be better.” If, however, instead of tanta¬ 
lizing you with a mental picture pure and simple, I could add 
the assuring element of my belief, as in the expression “You 
are better”, I should be warranted in saying so. In short, 
in the every-day matter-of-fact use of speech, it is the speaker’s 
conviction—and conviction I say instead of knowledge, as much 
apparent knowledge is illusory—that invests his thought with 
value. 80 
On the other hand, in the poetical vein, a thought may be 
offered for the sake of its beauty or otherwise attractiveness, 
apart from any utilitarian estimate of its value. Thus “A 
night in June—a rising moon—a warm wind from the south” 
may on occasion be preferred to “The night was one in June; 
the moon was rising; and a warm wind was blowing from the 
south.” Yet in the former utterance I not only do not express 
80 The difference in practical value between what is believed and 
what is unattended by belief, is recognizable even when belief is in¬ 
direct in its bearing on the mental counterpart of outer reality. Com¬ 
pare “me to hope you are better” (which does not vouch for my hop¬ 
ing) and “I hope (i. e. believe the truth of my hoping) you are better.” 
