Owen—Interrogative Thought—Means of Its Expression. 445 
iking whick of course requires telling—sometking which, with¬ 
out jour telling, is not in my mind. This something, as preemi¬ 
nently part of interrogative judgment, I examine under the gen¬ 
eral title of 
ITS ELEMENTS 
and, in its primary aspect, under the special title of 
The missing element — belief. 
The examination of this may begin with the classification of 
essential judgment-elements (brought forward from Chap. I) 
-—which alone I propose to consider—as 
(1) Primary or essential elements of thought (or concep¬ 
tion), i. e., first term, mid-term or relation, last term,; 
(2) Truth or untruth of the thought consisting thereof; 
(3) Belief in such truth or untruth. 
In the judgment which the now considered form of question 
aims to make sufficient, all terms of (1) are present. To exhibit 
this, I choose an illustration in which the mid-term is ex¬ 
pressed by the word “to-be.” For, although this mid-term or re¬ 
lation is somewhat embarrassing by reason of its vagueness, this 
word has the advantage, in the now considered usage, of avoid¬ 
ing that even more embarrassing auxiliary which appears in 
suck a sentence as “Does A equal B ?” or “Did Booth kill Lin¬ 
coln ?” * Accordingly, “Is Brown honest ?” 
*In the question-asking sentence of the type considered in this chap¬ 
ter, it has been claimed that the question-asking power resides in 
"“Does” or “Did.” Among the many reasons why this claim should be 
disregarded, I note that no more interrogative force would seem to 
reside in “Did,” than might be claimed for other so-called auxiliaries 
in “Was Booth killing Lincoln?”, “ Has he killed him?”, “Will he kill 
Itim?” or even “Whom did he kill?”, although in the last expression the 
supporters of the “Did” hypothesis agree to put the interrogative bur¬ 
den on the “Whom?” 
Moreover, other languages in general have no word like “Did;” and 
even in English its aid is abrogated in poetic or exalted diction—for 
instance, “Saw ye him whom my soul loveth?” (Cant. Ill, 3). Accord¬ 
ingly the expression “Did Booth kill Lincoln?” should be ranked, I 
think, as merely a local and fortuitous variation from the prevalent 
interrogative type exemplified in English by “Killed Booth Lincoln?”— 
■a variation obviously explainable by whatever principles be found ex¬ 
planatory of the norm. 
