Owen—Interrogative Thought—Means of Its Expression. 393 
—as true or untrue ?” A. “As true.” Q. “Do you believe tbis 
truth?” A. “Yes.” 
Scope of belief. 
By this I mean the extent of that to which belief applies, there 
being opportunity for variation of that extent, in the case of 
general or multiple propositions. Thus the general thought ex¬ 
pressed by “Lemons to exceed oranges” may be regarded as a 
group of individual thoughts, consisting of “The lemon a to 
exceed the orange: f” “The lemon a to exceed the orange g” 
“The lemon b to exceed the orange h” etc. Yow when I say 
that “Lemons occasionally exceed oranges,” I mean to indicate 
that some only of these individual thoughts are true. 
If I said that “Some lemons exceed oranges,” I should ob¬ 
viously be cutting down the number of lemons available in my 
multiple thought. If I said “Lemons exceed some oranges,” I 
should do the same by the oranges. In saying “Lemons oc¬ 
casionally exceed oranges,” it might be that I should similarly 
cut down the number of lemon-orange relations to be thought of. 
Each individual thought, however, being associable with its own 
respective idea, of truth (or untruth), it seems to me that what 
I have cut down is rather the total of these truths. That is, 
among the ideas associated with my individual thoughts, I 
reckon some truths (as also some untruths). Or, changing per¬ 
spective, I may say that the associated truth is occasional. That 
is, the occasionalness, or variation from universalness, belongs to 
the truth of my multiple thought. 
So far as I know myself, it is thus that I do my thinking. 
But on this I do not insist, my contention being merely that 
either the thought conceived as true, or the truth conceived of 
that thought, may vary in extension. With a personal prefer¬ 
ence however for the latter, I add the following illustrations: 
“That lemons exceed oranges I believe to be true in actual cases 
(when the lemons are very large), true in possible cases (if the 
lemons be very large), true in impossible cases (if the lemons 
be grape-fruits), true in all cases, many cases, some cases, few 
cases, no cases.” 
IVIJy immediate purpose in presenting this variation in the 
scope of belief, is to use it as a back-ground on which to pro¬ 
ject 
