422 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
tion of one from the other should occur, is somewhat to he ex¬ 
pected. The development of speech being a successive adapta¬ 
tion of old means to new ends, it is a priori likely that the 
question he an, adaptation of a preexisting means of expression. 
I shall not therefore be surprised, if the interrogation prove to 
be merely an adaptation of the statement. I feel, however, 
that such proving must come from further indications. 
Of these, the practical indication has some value; I mean 
that the mental cargo' carried by the verbal vehicle must be as¬ 
sertive, to justify the expense of transportation. Such is peculi¬ 
arly the feeling of the hearer, whose share of the effort entailed 
by thought-communication is even greater than the speaker’s. 
Given, for instance, the assertion “I believe it to be raining”— 
or, more briefly, “It rains”—you find some value in the personal 
quasi-knowledge which it offers you. But to the expression 
“It to be raining” (and nothing more) you very properly object 
that, if the speaker is without assurance that the figment of his 
brain is matched by something more substantial, he might as 
well—or even better—'maintain a golden silence. 
This proposition obviously holds of language, only in its 
service of the understanding. Undoubtedly it does not hold of 
poetic utterance, in which the extra-utilitarian value of a mere 
imagining—say, to go no further, its sublimity or beauty—is 
ground enough for its exhibition, altogether independently of 
any one’s belief that it is true. Admitting then that, in a 
frequent, valid and important usage, speech is free of any 
obligation to assert, I merely claim the right to examine ex¬ 
clusively the other usage, believing that in it the operative 
method of the question will be most easily discovered, and also 
thatl whatever be discovered will be quite available with what is 
not examined. Accordingly, in every independent expression 
of the type to be examined, the interrogative as well as any 
other, I expect to find the speaker’s knowledge or, to be more 
accurate, his supposition that he knows—'that is, his belief. In 
other words the question itself will presumably be assertive. 
The indications thus far noted in this section would, so far 
as valid, establish only this—that, in the thought expressed by 
a question, there is assertion somewhere. That assertion bears 
upon the particular element of desire, can be established only, 
so far as I can see, by the speaker’s introspective study of the 
thought which, by a question, he proposes to express. The effort 
