Owen—Interrogative Thought—Means of Its Expression. 413 
CHAPTER III. 
THE JUDGMENT INTERROGATIVE; AS TO A TEEM 
OR ADJUNCT. 
To illustrate this, recalling the assassination of Lincoln, and 
wishing to form a judgment containing the actor, the action 
and the victim, or say the actee, I can get no further than 
what might be expressed by “——< killed Lincoln.” But, hav¬ 
ing faith in your superior power or knowledge, I am going to 
ask you to put into my mind an idea which, shall fill what may 
be called a thus far vacant mental space. 
My case has some analogy with that of Nebuchadnezzar, re¬ 
quiring “the magicians and the astrologers and the sorcerers 
and the Chaldeans” to tell him a dream unknown to them and 
forgotten by himself—or that of Huckleberry Finn, who expects 
the dictionary to give him the spelling of a word which he can 
not, however, indicate, because he does not know its spelling. 
To me accordingly the linguistic feat to be accomplished by 
a question is simply astounding. Before you can aid me by 
an answer to my question, I must cause you to think of an idea 
which is not in your mind; and this idea I can not arouse in 
your mind by the usual verbal stimulus, because the word for 
that idea, and even the idea itself are absent from my own mind. 
Though difficulties^ to 1 be met are extraordinarily great, the 
means employed to meet them are absurdly small (Conf. “Who 
killed Lincoln?”). Their success—overriding, as it does, all 
adverse probability—seems to me a challenge to investigation, 
which the languagenstudent can not honorably decline. 
ITS ELEMENTS. 
In trying to' establish these a little 1 more exactly than was done 
above (pp. 409-410) it is well to begin with what apparently de¬ 
termines the selection and arrangement of the others, namely, 
that which roughly may be called 
