454 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
expression of belief. Or, vice versa, although the question of 
the now considered kind expects and even aims to obtain its 
answer in the form of a belief that a particular thought is true, 
or that it is untrue, nevertheless such question actually invites 
a belief or a disbelief in a thought already posed as true, or a 
thought already posed as untrue. 
ITS STRUCTURE. 
Reviewing the mental operations which lead to the now con¬ 
sidered form of the interrogative act, I find that, in attempting 
to form a judgment, although I successfully assembled all ma¬ 
terials of a mere conception plus its truth, I was unable to add 
that belief or disbelief, which is indispensable to a judgment; 
that, from the perception of a void in my would-be judgment, 
I passed to the imagination of a void-filler formable; though not 
by me, presumably by you; that this void-filler was necessarily 
indefinite; that, from the scope of this indefinite, I excluded 
fear, liking, purpose and other mental attitudes which might be 
taken by you toward a thought, reducing the scope of the indefi¬ 
nite to belief or disbelief ; that this belief or disbelief, to be 
of use to me, I felt must be experienced by you in the presence 
of a thought the duplicate of my own; that finally I wished you 
to tell me this belief or disbelief. 
Before attempting an interrogative sentence, I must build, as 
what it shall express, a mental structure—& somewhat complex 
interrogative judgment—which shall resume the scattered 
mental acts described. 
In doing this, I note that, from every point of view, the most 
important element of my interrogative judgment will be the 
judgment-element with which I expect you, so to speak, to fill 
the void in my first attempted, unsuccessful judgment—that is, 
belief or disbelief experienced by you. As I do not know which 
one of the two you will actually experience, I can picture it 
only as indefinitely one or the other. As first constituent then 
of my interrogative mental total, I bring in what may be ex¬ 
pressed by “belief-or-disbelief experienced by you”—or, more 
simply, “your belief-or-disbelief. ” 
As this belief-or-disbelief must be: the one which you experi¬ 
ence under the influence of a particular thought conceived as 
