406 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
request you to tell me about Catiline, than to ask you a specific 
question. But if I knew that Catiline had suffered banishment* 
I might inquire what city banished him. In short, the question 
may occur when knowledge is incomplete, but not when it is 
null—and rather when that which is missing is a single element, 
than when it is two or more.* 
Its motive. 
This appears to be the desire for knowledge—the desire to 
make sufficient a conception consciously insufficient. Such in¬ 
sufficiency alone can hardly lead to a question. It must be at¬ 
tended by that dissatisfaction, of which a desire to mend the in¬ 
sufficiency may be regarded as the active phase. To illustrate, 
“Brown has gone somewhere.” Admitting that I do not know 
where he has gone, so long as I am personally satisfied with my 
absolutely rather insufficient statement, I shall not ask a ques¬ 
tion. I don’t know, don’t care and shall not try to learn. When, 
however, I not only do not know, but also care to know, then 
and then only shall I try to know. 
Means of making a conception sufficient. 
(a) By one’s own effort: 
To illustrate, not knowing the number of your house, and 
wishing to know it, I may go to your house and find out for my¬ 
self. Such expedients I discard, as plainly foreign to the mat¬ 
ter in hand. 
(b) By the effort of another : 
(1) extra-linguistic. 
(2) linguistic. 
The former I neglect entirely. The latter I consider, but 
only when direct and special. Your diary, for instance, and 
your published theses, constitute linguistic efforts eminently 
helpful, on occasion, to the seeker after knowledge. But you 
did not make them specially to meet my need, nor did you aim 
them; directly at me. Valuable as they are, they do not prom¬ 
ise to illuminate the problem of interrogation any more com¬ 
pletely or effectively than linguistic efforts made by you espe¬ 
cially in my behalf, and in my mental presence. 
*The case of momentary failure to remember—that is, momentary 
ignorance—may be dismissed as promising nothing of special value 
to the present investigation. 
