Owenr—Interrogative Thought—Means of Its Expression. 409 
her of your house, and plan to mend my ignorance by personal 
investigation, I meantime hardly feel the need of forming any 
judgment whatsoever, beyond the judgment which I may have 
based upon conception altogether insufficient—an imperfect 
judgment which may be expressed by “The number of your 
house is-.” 
But if I plan to utilize your aid to mend my ignorance, I 
must be conscious in the first place of my plan. Moreover, in 
order with success to operate my plan, I am forced to reveal it 
to you. Again, to accomplish this revelation, I must meet the 
usual conditions of communication; and these require that first 
of all I make you of my plan a mental picture of the sort that 
language is constructed to express. That is, I need to form for 
you a judgment descriptive of my mental status. 
Its essential content. 
Such a judgment must contain the element of my belief or 
knowledge. Bor if what I set before you seemed to you to be 
uncertain even to myself, you very well might turn your back 
on me at once, as one who very strictly “does not hnoiv what he 
is talking about.” 
In the present case my belief must, be in the truth of my 
description. For descriptions which are not true—that is, de¬ 
scriptions to which my mental status or experience does not 
correspond—are plainly quite irrelevant. 
M]y mental state is, in the rough, and roughly speaking, a 
desire. That is, I experience a quasi-emotion with respect to 
an effort (conceived as to be made by you) to make sufficient a 
prior conception which was insufficient. 
Obviously this desire and that effort must appear in the 
mental picture to be set before you. 
As that effort is to take linguistic form and be a revelation 
to myself, it may be known as a “telling me by you,” or as “your 
telling me,” or “that you tell me.” Accordingly my judgment, 
thus far constructed, is expressible byi “I believe to be true my 
desire that you tell me-.” 
Plainly this is not enough. I must put myself in your place 
—realize your ignorance' of my mental status, your inability to 
know that, status otherwise than by nay aid—particulaidy I must 
somehow help you to discover what it is that I desire you to 
tell me. 
