Owen—Interrogative Thought—Means of Its Expression. 433 
tial accuracy—and that, in that total meaning, the particular 
meaning of the question-asking word would necessarily be in¬ 
cluded. 
That total meaning, reached by a priori reasoning upon the 
influences which mould an interrogative judgment, was, in the 
case of my illustration, claimed (on p. 431) to he 
“I wish you to tell me him who killed Lincoln.” 
In support of this claim I have mainly relied on personal 
introspection, appealing for confirmation to the introspection of 
others. If a consensus ha.s been reached, it is presumably not 
only gratifying, but also correct—and more surely so than I 
have thus far indicated; for we have been half-wittingly sub¬ 
mitting our interpretation of the question; to tests severe and 
numerous, derived from our linguistic experience. Of these 
the most conspicuous is the required agreement of interpreta¬ 
tion with the indications offered by the speaker’s gesture, facial 
expression, tone of voice, and by the environment of the sen¬ 
tence, either circumstantial or contextual—that is, objective or 
ideal. These, repeated thousands of times, establish the total 
meaning of the question, as it seems to me, beyond a peradven- 
ture. 
To illustrate the force of these indications, suppose that, an¬ 
swering my invitation to meet me at my house, my hearer say, 
“I don’t know but what I’ll come,” or “I don’t know as I will, 
and I don’t know as I will.” Some of the words employed in 
these illustrations are quite beyond my understanding; yet I 
am absolutely certain of the total thought intended by either 
expression. 
In the case of the question, I regard the absoluteness of our 
certainty as even greater. For I do not concede that any mem¬ 
ber of a question is beyond the ordinary understanding. If any 
member were so, it would doubtless be the specially interrogative 
word—or say the “Who ?but even this, I believe to have a 
meaning, accurate and recognized. Our perception of this mean¬ 
ing, I suppose, like that of countless other such, to have faded 
somewhat, becoming rather indistinct—and largely because the 
interrogative act is performed so often, and so easily, that we 
have ceased to heed its details. In exhibiting this meaning, I 
shall w 7 ork, however, to the best advantage by treating it first as 
if it were unknown, and seeking to deduce it from the known— 
that is, from the interpretation which I have assumed as known. 
28 
