Owen—-Relations Expressed by the Passive Voice. 103 
about all that I further seeni to even vaguely recognize at first, 
is that in what occurs the apples somehow get the worst of it. 
In postulating such a state of mind I am emboldened by the 
recollection of some English friends whose mental operations 
were distinguished in their talk by greater strength than nim¬ 
bleness. For instance, failing often for a moment, like the 
rest of us, to marshall with success the many details of a more 
than ordinarily involved assertion, these gentlemen were usu¬ 
ally quite unable to reorganize their scattered forces. To coin 
an illustration, “The more you’re sure that it’ll never do to own 
up that you can’t do what’s expected of you, all the more—I 
would say, all the less—I mean —you know” or “don’t you 
know ?” That is, the speaker knows, although he cannot at the 
moment tell; and he is sure the hearer knows what is not told. 
The ground of this assurance seems to be the presence in both 
minds of a distinctly' indicated situation, the embarrassment 
attending which is a familiar corollary. What is absolutely 
indispensable to thought-inception, is successfully exhibited. 
Thought-completion is entrusted to the hearer with no fear that 
he will not accomplish it. One might express the speaker’s 
estimate of what he has in mind by “Somehow it’s all right, 
although I don’t see just exactly how.” 
Such a status seems for a while to prevail in the minds of 
all who use a given language, when, as happens with some fre¬ 
quency, the thought conveyed by this or that expression having 
been torn down, the old materials have not yet been put to¬ 
gether in a second mental structure. Meantime in the mind 
there lie about disjoined masses of thought-masonry in much 
disorder—not too much; for, if there were too much—if the 
intended structure could not be approximately recognized—ma¬ 
terials surely soon would cease to cumber mind, and their ex¬ 
pression would no longer be attempted. 
The inconvenience of disorder, keenly felt, may be supposed 
to stimulate the mind to orderly thinking—to excite an effort to 
rejoin, arrange, reorganize disorganized materials of thought. 
ETow organization of thought-materials is to me the recognition 
of relations that obtain between them. Supposing, as I do, 
