Owen—Interrogative Thought—Means of Its Expression. 381 
Thought-untruth. 
By untruth I mean a failure to be matched, or a being-un¬ 
matched, by external reality.** T'o argue that untruth takes its 
place in mental structure as the attribute of a total thought re¬ 
garded as a unit, and to contend that untruth is quite as subjec¬ 
tive as truth, would be an essential repeating of pp. 377-380. 
MENTAL REACTIONS ON THOUGHT-ASSOCIATES. 
Such mind-activity as language aims to reveal contains an 
element which thus far has not been considered. To illustrate, 
- —_ i . , 
i 
ence” which I am supposed to incorporate in “The rose is red” would 
seem to be a portion of the outer-world’s reality. That is, my sentence 
would be regarded as declaring that, in the outer world, the mate to 
what I think of exists or is. Personally, however, I construe my sen¬ 
tence as declaring that what I think of is matched or mated in the outer 
world. 
The difference between the two I admit to have its analogy with that 
of tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. Yet, as the mental state presumably 
copies the outer world, if that which language deals with be the copy, 
it would seem more natural to say “The copy is that of a real original, 
or is matched by such an original,” than to say “The original of the 
copy is real, or exists.” My special reason for preferring the idea of 
truth to that of existence is, however, the possibility of greater brevity, 
and at the same time the ability to distinguish readily between the 
reality (= mere actual occcurrence in mind) of thought and that agree¬ 
ment with the outer world which I mean by truth. As I seem to take 
account of all thought-elements or adjuncts considered by the sup¬ 
porters of the “existence” theory, in a merely different perspective, I 
hope that even to those supporters the conclusions reached will be 
available. 
In all the above I am naturally not to be understood as denying that 
“is” occasionally has the meaning of “exists” or “is existent,” as in 
“Whatever is is right.” 
**It is possible of course to associate untruth with an individual 
thought-mem&er—that is, to make it the adjunct of an idea. With idea- 
untruth, I should however argue, the sentence deals as little as with 
idea-truth. 
To the modification of idea-truth, described on p. 377 (note) and 
known as rightness, there corresponds a modified idea-untruth, a 
wrongness, an unsuitableness to fellow terms in true-thought produc¬ 
tion. This wrongness, however, I neglect for reasons similar to those 
which seemed to justify the neglect of rightness. 
