392 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
sufficient to occasion a. preponderating inclination toward belief. 
But if one only of the two, belief or disbelief, could be expressed 
by speech, considerations of the sort described would seem to me 
sufficient to determine choice. Now just that “if” is realized in 
all expressions taken up in this investigation. In these there is 
no separate symbol for belief or disbelief. Whichever I experi¬ 
ence must be incorporated in the meaning of my verb. For 
instance, given “Orange to exceed lemon,” all that I do to express 
belief is to substitute the word “exceeds.” If now I wish instead 
to incorporate in the verb my disbelief, I need a form analogous 
to “exceeds,” but meaning “I disbelieve ... to ex¬ 
ceed . . . .” But such a word I do not find. I might 
indeed require the form “exceeds” to do double duty, now for be¬ 
lief and now for disbelief. But if “exceeds” should sometimes 
mean “I believe to exceed,” and sometimes “I disbelieve to ex¬ 
ceed,” my hearer would be hopelessly confused; the aim of 
speech would be completely thwarted. By one of those two 
meanings I must then unswervingly abide. Accordingly, from 
what is meant by words of the assertive type, linguistic usage 
utterly excludes the idea of disbelief, admitting only belief, 
which however has its election between truth, which commonly 
is not expressed by any special word, and untruth, which is 
specially expressed by such a word as “not.” 
On what belief bears. 
The main importance of this topic appears in the study of 
negative expressions. In them] indeed the bearing of belief may 
be most surely and most easily determined. At present I shall 
exhibit this bearing merely as indicated by introspection. 
Belief, as it appears in language, is an adhesion to one of two 
alternatives, truth or untruth. Neglecting, as before, the indi¬ 
vidual thought-member, and spreading attention over the total 
thought, I feel that, whatever be my thought, it is either true or 
untrue. With one of these possibilities, truth or untruth, I may 
ally myself, but not with both. “No man can serve two mas¬ 
ters . . . .he will hold fast to the one and despise the 
other.” 
To this truth then (or untruth) it is, that I add my belief, 
procedure being somewhat as may be indicated by answers to 
questions: Q. “What is your thought?” A. “Orange to ex¬ 
ceed lemon.” Q. “In which aspect do you regard this thought 
