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Division of sections

1. To the reader
2. Language Machine
3. Theory of Knowledge
4. Theory of Connections
5. Theory of Instruments
6. List of the Chief Senses of some Key Words in Discussion

To the reader

This little book is in Basic English. It is a first attempt to put some chief parts of the science which has rightly been named ' the key to knowledge ' into the new language which is becoming month by month the international language of the Earth. For those who have no knowledge of Basic, a list of books about it has been printed on the last page. The rules for working the 850 words here used (all of which are printed at the front, on one side of a bit of business notepaper) are given in Basic English and in the ABC ; and the different forms and uses of the words themselves are made clear in The Basic Words.

As to my experience in using this language ; I am not conscious that at any point I have said anything which is in any way different from what I had in mind to say, or that I have been forced to say it in a way which is less clear, or less in harmony with my purpose than the other ways which would, with a longer Word List, have been open to me. In fact, very frequently the opposite has been true ; the simple language has been better for this sort of work than a more complex language. About half of the book is an account of views with which everyone who has any experience with these questions will be in agreement. The other half is only a statement of my opinions about points on which agreement is unhappily not possible in the present conditions of knowledge. But when what is said is wrong, the error is to my thought, not in the language, and may be put right without the use of more or different words.

For suggestions on points of detail in the writing I am in debt to Miss Lockhart of the Orthological Institute.
I. A. R.

Magdalene College, Cambridge

Langage Machine

An idea in the mind is to a Natural Law as the power of seeing is to light. S. T. Coleridge, on Shakespeare's use of language.

The purpose of this book is to give a clear account of how we may best put our thought in order, of if we are not able quite to do this, how we may best make a serious attempt in this direction. To put our thoughts in order is to make them come into agreement with things, to make them give us a truer picture, a representative map or instrument for guiding our acts, so that men may give effect to as great a number of their desires as possible. The name of the general theory of how to do this is ' Logic '. As Bentham said, ' Logic is the art which has for its end (or purpose) the giving, in the best way, direction to the mind '. This direction is chiefly a power of keeping the divisions between our thoughts in the right places, and the right places are only the places in which, for the purpose in view, we have a need to put them, and the places in which other for their purposes have put them.

Another very great authority -- Charles Saunders Pierce -- gave as his account of Logic : that it is the theory of good behaviour in thought, in the sense in which good behaviour is the use of self-control for the purpose of making our desires come about. (His words were, "Logic is the ethics of thinking, in the sense in which ethics is the bringing to bear of self control for the purpose of realizing our desires.") Because we are only able to put and keep our thoughts in control by the help of language, and because of control of language, for this purpose, is the control of the senses of our words, a great part of Logic, as Bentham and Pierce saw it, becomes the theory and right use of the senses of our chief words -- those upon which the ordering of the senses of our other words is dependent. The senses of these chief words -- and their ways of working with or against one another -- are the rules of reason There are not (1) the sense and (2) rules for putting them together ; but the senses themselves give us, in their ways of acting, the rules of reason.

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After these first pages about the purpose and need of a better apparatus for controlling the senses of our words, we may go on freely to the necessary work.

Theory of Knowledge

Let us take the most important word, in the theory of the comparison of senses and in the work of taking statements to bits for the purpose of comparison, and make lists of their chief senses. We will give numbers to these senses, so that we may put a finger on them, without trouble, when in the process of discussion it becomes necessary to give them separate attention. We will be able to see -- together and on one page -- the chief senses which may be coming into use at this point in the discussion. We will then see not only which tricks and twists we will have to keep in mind, but -- and this is more important -- the other possible theories.

The first reaction of most readers to number (12-112, 3-24 and so on) in pages put before them is normally fear mixed with disgust. It is hoped, however, that here the great help which such numbering gives in keeping different things separate will make you more kind to them. Without them I would be forced to make the discussion at least three times longer, and to say the same thing even more frequently than I do. A numbered list at the end of the book in which lists of all the senses of the key-words are printed together in their numbered order will make the necessary looking forward and back as little trouble as possible. These numbers are only names for the sense, names which make their positions in relation to one another clear to the eye. A number like 5-12 makes us see that the sense it is a name of is a division of sense 5-1 ; 9-211 and 9-212 are different divisions or special forms of 9-21 and so on.

I give in my account only some of the reasons for making the divisions where I do. The apparatus is a machine for separating the senses of other words when it is necessary to do so. The test of the value of our divisions is the amount of help they give us. It is important to keep in view this fact that we are not here putting on paper something which is given to us, so much as making a machine -- a machine for controlling thought which will let us do some things and keep us from doing other things. It is a good machine if it is of use to us ; any changes which will make it of more use to us will make it better. They are not able to be tested in any other way than this. If the reader is troubled by this word use here, a look at necessary, sense 17-12, in the list at the end of the book, may make the point clearer.

On the other hand, if it is to be of use, it is necessary to keep some of the divisions in the places in which our minds normally put them. The attempt to make a machine like this is, in fact, a way (and the best way) to the discovery of how our minds do their work. But, as we will see, our minds do their work in a number of different ways. They put the chief divisions, upon which all the other are dependent, in a number of different places for different purposes.

So a number of different machines are possible and necessary. Very little of the theory of the connections between these possible machines has been worked out. The history of thought is still waiting for such a theory. The experts have had enough to do putting their machines together or attacking the machines of other experts. They have not made the right sort of comparisons, and their machines have not been put together for this purpose. This sad condition of our theories will seem very strange in the future, because the work is important. The histories of different nations make their ways of thought different ; and the fact that they are different will, in the end, be of value to us all. But there is no need for them to be out of all relation to one another ; as they are now. The machine which is put together in these pages is for the connection of different systems of thought -- of different men, nations, governments, sciences, religions, societies -- with one another. To get things into clear relations to one another we have first to take them to bits. But the purpose is new knowledge and new buildings, not destruction. This machine is only one of a number of possible machines ; it will be tested by the work which it lets us do.

The most important words in this machine are :

I take them in these three groups because the sort of discussion I give them is changed from one group to another. The senses of the words int he last group, for example, have not quite the wide and free ways of being different from one another which those in the first group have. A group is a unit, but senses from all three of them have at times to be kept in view together.

With accounts of the chief senses of these key-words before us on paper in clear lists, the worst troubles of all discussion will in a short time be seen to give the best chances for new discoveries. they will no longer be, as they are now causes of unfertile doubt and complex errors. The lists in this book will at first not be complete and clear enough to give us every sense which is needed. But even list which are not complete will let us see much which we do not now naturally see without them. Even a bad attempt will be much better than no attempt at all.

In giving lists of the senses of those words which I take first I have to make use, in special senses, of those which come later. The numbers put with these special senses as directions to the reader to take a look at a later page will make the position clear. When at first you do not see how or why a word is being given some one of its senses, or do not make out which sense it has, go on to the place where the words used in giving it a sense are given their senses and then come back.

We will take the word thought first -— and let us not be troubled if at first we seem not to be saying anything new or important. All men have knowledge about most of these things from their early years, from the first steps in their learning. Here this knowledge is only being put into order

Thought

1-1 . In the widest sense, any event in the mind.
In this sense all the history of a mind is made up of thoughts; but for most purposes we have to make divisions between thoughts and feelings for example, or between thoughts and desires. Feelings and desires are equally events in the mind. So take as a narrower sense for thought :
1-2. An event in the mind which puts something before the mind.

Some writers say, or take as said, that the thing which is put, by thought, before the mind is a picture, or that, if it is not a picture, it is something which is like a picture in being a copy of something which is not before the mind (or in the mind) in this sense. These things which, on this theory, are before (in) the mind are frequently named images. For example, when we have a thought of a tree, we will be said to have an image (or picture) of a tree before the mind: and when we have a thought of a noise, we have an image (a copy) of the noise before us, and so on. This theory of images may be wrong. A great number of persons say that they do not ever have images, and persons who sometimes have images say that they are able to have thoughts without having any images. Even those who make use of images in their thought say that their images are sometimes not at all like the things they are having thoughts of. So it is wise not to make our account of thoughts dependent on any theory of images but to say that what is before the mind in thought is in some way the thing which the thought is about and not only some picture or other copy of it in the mind. It will be clear that, if we say this. the word before is not being used in the same way in which it is used when we say ‘this book is before my eyes’. We take before here in ' before the mind ' in a special sense (not quite like any other use of it) as the name of the relation which thoughts have to the things they are thoughts about.

What is important is that thoughts (in this sense, 1-2) put the mind into a special connection with things. A thought is of or about some thing and so it may be true (7-l) or false. A feeling or desire is not about something in the same way (when we are not, as we frequently are, giving to the words feeling or desire a sense which makes

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Sense

Theory of Connections

We not only have thoughts of things, we have thoughts of them as being together or in connection one with the another, in a number of ways. Language here gives us an idea that the number of these ways in which we take things together is without any limit (unlimited). It may be so, the structure of our thoughts may be as different from example to example as the 200,000 words we put them into. But this does not seem probably. From very early days in the thought of the West (from Aristotle on) experts in the comparison of thoughts have been able to make short lists of headings, under one or other of winch any thought we have may be put. Let us see which are the most important forms of connection which we give to things in our thought.

Four chief heads seem to be enough.
We have thoughts of :

• A as being the cause of B or as caused by B.
• A as being part of B or as having B as a part.
• A as being in space or time relations to B.
• A as being more or less like B.

A very great number of the connections used in thought, if taken to bits, may be seen to be made up of parts which have these forms. Or, if this is not the right account to give, we may at least say that by taking connections of these forms only and putting them together, we are able to get complex connections which will take the place of most relations. Here, again, a decision between these two accounts of what we are doing is a question not about how things are, but about how we are building and using our machine for making comparisons between thoughts.

An example is :—- to say that a man is the owner of a house may be to say that he has, in the past, done certain things (has been the cause of certain events, given money, put his name on bits of paper) which in turn have been the cause of other men doing or not doing other things (let him have the free use of the house, send him tax papers . . . ) and so on.

Let us take these forms of connection in turn the first, cause-effect, is the one which gives most trouble. It has a number of senses, some of them complex, and to get clear thoughts about these and so control of them we have to take the complex senses to bits.

Cause

Some are long in time and great —- the Himalayas. Any thing (or group of things) in a condition, may be said to be an event -— but

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Part

11-5 . Some writers take, as being very important, a sense in which a system is a group of things such that if any one of them is changed all the others are changed in some degree by that change. Everything there is, for some purposes, taken to be a system in this sense -- the changes in parts of it which are at a great distance from one another being small without limit. The motions of fish in the sea (or stars in the sky), in this view, make my size a very little different. And in a more special use of this sense it has been said that living things (or some of them) are unlike all other things in having a special organization of their parts in this way, and that minds have it in the highest degree. But we have to take care here to keep two different questions separate. To go back to our picture, 11-1 ; If AB is changed then BC is changed. but this is not the sort of system which those who make use of the sense, 11-5, have in view. Most of these writers, in fact, make a very sharp division between groups formed by addition (like the picture in 11-1) and groups said to be different from, or more than, the addition ('sum') of their parts. What they have in mind is the fact that a very small change made to one part of an animal, say to the cat's eye when it sees a mouse, may be the cause (9-1) of a very great number of complex changes in its other parts. But with a change in one leaf of a tree no such great number of other changes come. Even less with a change in one bit of dust, and so on. The important thing with this sense of system is to keep in mind that we are not able to put limits to groups of things and say that they are systems (' Minds are systems ', ' animals are systems ' and so on) without first getting a very great amount of detailed knowledge about the conditions under which changes in all parts come after changes in any parts. Some changes go with others under some conditions -- that is all we may say. In other words, some systems (11-3 or 11-4) have more connections between their parts than others. The form of the laws of cause for them is more complex. But to make one wide division between systems and say that, in some, changes in all parts take place with changes in any part is to go forward a long way in front of our knowledge.

Theory of Instruments

The space and time connections of things are special examples of the connections of parts in systems, and the questions which come up with them, for the detail of winch we have to go to mathematics, are outside the range of these pages. But the senses of name and of the other words which may take its place are part of Logic. With the discussion of them we come to the third division of this book, the Theory of Instruments.

The reader will have taken note of a number of words which have been used at important points without any special account of their sense being given. Among them have been agreement, same, different, property, quality, relation, general, special, degree, sort and is. What comes now is an attempt to put our uses of these words in a clear light. I take them together in a separate division under the name of Theory of Instruments because -- more, it may be, than with any other words -- we have to take care not to put the wrong questions about them. All words are instruments with winch we keep control of their senses : but these words are instruments with whose senses in addition to this we keep control of the senses of other words. It will be best to make a start with Property.

Property

12-1 . In the simple everyday sense, a property is that of which some man is the owner, that which some man has.

12-2. In a sense taken from 12-1, anything which anything (see thing, 2-2) may be said to be or to have (see is 13-1). For example : mountains are high —- have the property of being high; 6 is greater than 5 -- has the property of being greater than 5 ; men are not plants -— have the property of not being plants. No limit is necessary to the things we may, truly or falsely, say are properties of things. Everything is what it is -— has the property of being the same as itself. The moon has the property of having the property . . . of not being made of green cheese. This last is only another way of saying that the moon is not made of green cheese.

But there is a danger of our taking properties as something more than other ways of saying what may be said without them. Experts in mathematics have said, for example, that "even if there were no things at all, there would still be the property of being seven in number -— though nothing would have this property". This danger may be overcome by keeping in mind that all properties are like this property of the moon -— that it is not made of green cheese.

In other words a property is an instrument for making comparisons between statements, between thoughts, between the senses of words. But we commonly make use of properties as if they were something more, part of the structure of what we are having thoughts about or making statements about. ' X is green ' and X has the property of being green do not say different things -— the second is not a fuller account than the first. But they say the same thing in ways which are of use for different purposes, and these purposes for which the word property is of use have now to be taken into view.

Here comparison may be made with our use of the words being and existence. To say. ' There are cats and dogs ' and to say ' There are beings which are cats and dogs ' or to say ' Cats and dogs have existence ' or to say ' Cats and dogs are things (2-1) ', or to say ' Cats and dogs have the property of having existence ’ are only different ways of saying the same thing. Things, beings, existences, are words of use when we have a need to put into words thoughts which are not only about cats or only about dogs, or only about any limited sort of thing, but are about anything. In the same way property is a word of use when we have to do with thoughts not about green things only, or about coloured things only or about limited sorts of things, but about the ways in which things are in sorts. The danger is that we make use of property when there is no need for it, and so get the idea that ' X is green ' and ' X has the property of being green ' say different things.

This will be the best place in which to take the word is. It has three chief senses.

Is

13-1 . Existence . To say ' A is ' or ' There is an A ' is the same as saying ' A has existence ' or ' A has being ' or ' Something is A '.

13-2 . Part and Sort . The is of connection. To say ' A is B ' puts A into the greater sort B. This connection between A and B may be taken in two ways

13-21 . A is a part of the sort B. For example, ' Gold is a metal ' -- gold is part of the sort, metals : or

13-22 . The properties common to B are part of the properties of A. Gold has the properties common to all metals and some more —- those which make it different from all other metals. These two ways of taking ' A is B ' are of use for different purposes.

13-3 . Completely the same (in Logic ' identity '). To say ' A is B ' is the same as saying ' A has all the properties which B has and no others '. When this is so completely, and A and B are not different in any way, then they are not two things, but one thing. ' A ' and ' B ' are two names for one thing, and the statement ' A is B ' then becomes a bad way of saying this, because it is hard to keep in mind that A and B are not names for different things. We will see (pp. 101,119) some of the dangers which come from this.

It is clear from this that same has two important and different senses ; one in which to say that two things (or groups of things) are the same is to say that in certain ways they are not different, another in which we are only saying that one thing, or group of things, has two names, or is being taken in two sorts.

The three words property, sort and same, it will be noted, do almost the same work. So does the word general, to which we may now go on—coming back later to the discussion of the forms of properties.

General

This word has one very important sense —- and some others which in different ways have come from it but are now almost opposites to one another. This makes it a very interesting example of the ways in which senses become changed.

First take a look at these marks on the paper.
, . , . . . ? . ! . -- ; . ; . , , . . : . . ! -- " . . . ? . ;

14-1. They are all marks. What they all are is what is general about them -— a general property of them. In addition to being marks they are all marks-used-in-printing. This is another general property of them, equally general in this sense. It comes from the sense of all -— which is all of a sort. But in another sense it is less general because marks-used-in-printing axe only a part of all marks. In the same way marks which are not marks used in printing may be on paper. To be a mark- on-paper is a more general property than to be a mark-used-in-printing and to be a mark-on-something is more general than to be a mark-on-paper. So, to be coloured is more general than to be green. This is a more general (14-11) sense of general, but one which comes from 141, for marks on paper are a part only of all marks.

14-11. A thought (or a statement) which is about a greater group of things (having a group G as part of it) is more general than a thought about the things in group G or the things in a part of G.

14-12. A thought of anything as being of a sort is a general thought : it is more or less general as the sort is greater or less.

14-2. Most of these marks here are full stops. We frequently say that something is generally so, when the sense of general is

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A last word. If you do not clearly get the sense of what I have said you will, in making the attempt to get it, have gone through a great number of the possible senses of these words in your mind. It is not very important that you get my sense and no others, and not important if what I say is true or not. And it is not important for anyone to have any belief that what has been said here is so. What is important is to see that the sense of words may be taken in groups, and that if the form of one group of senses becomes clear to us, the form of other groups of senses, which we may not ever have put in connection with them, may become clear at the same time. This gives us new chances for the control of our thought and for taking over the knowledge we have of one field into other fields. As Colegidge said, ' that only is learning which comes again as power '. And to see how any sense is in relation to any other is to get a sort of learning which comes again as power.

List of the Chief Senses of some Key Words in Discussion

Thought
1.1 Any event in the mind.
1.2 Any event in the mind which put something before the mind.
1.21 Any event in the mind which puts something before the mind as so.
1.22 Any event in the mind which put something before the mind. (See Belief ).
1.3 The process of having thoughts (1.2).
1.3 The process of having thoughts (1.2) in an order which is in agreement with the order of facts (4.2) or the attempt to put thoughts into agreement with facts.
1.5 A group of general properties which a thought (1.2) has.

Thing
2.1 The word with the most general sense possible. Anything.
2.2 Those things (2.1) about which other things (2.1) are said.
2.3 A body.
2.4 Anything which has existence for some time.

Fiction
3.1 A story not put forward as fact (4-1) : See Belief ).
3.2 A thought (2-1) used as if there was a thing (2-4) in agreement with it, when there is in fact (4-2) no such thing.

Fact
4.1 Anything which is not so.
4.11 That which makes a thought false when it is false.
4.2 Anything which is (has been, will be).
4.21 Anything complex which is.
4.22 Anything which may be.
4.3 That which a thought in agreement with true thoughts (7-2) is of.
4.4 That which is in agreement with a general thought.

Knowledge
5-001 That which we have knowledge.
5-002 Those processes (Thoughts 1-2) by which we have knowledge.
5-1 A reaction to something.
5-101 That of which we have knowledge -- the causes of our reaction.
5-102 Those processes in us by which we have knowledge.
5-11 Our reaction taken without father reaction to it.
5-12 Our reaction to this reaction.
5-13 Reaction without any events between it and the causes of it.
5-2 An event in the mind,part of the history of a mind, a bit of experience.
5-3 A special relation between the mind (or some event in the mind) and things.
5-4 What is said by an authority not able to make errors.

Belief
6-1 A thought taken to be true without being tested.
6-11 A thought taken to be true which is not able to be tested.
6-2 A thought we take as a guide in our acts or feelings.
6-21 A feeling, desire, impulse, tendency in the mind as a guide in our acts or feelings.
6-3 A thought we are certain is true.
6-4 A special feeling which is the cause of our being certain.

True
7-001. A statement is true : when the thought using it is true.
7-1 . A thought is true when it is in agreement with what it is about.
7-2 . . . . . : in agreement with all other thoughts in comparison with which it may be taken.
7-2l . . . . . in comparison with which it is possible to take it.
7-22 . . . . . in comparison with which it is wise to take it.
7-3 . A thought (feeling, desire, etc. . .) which we have a need to take as a guide in our acts is frequently said to be true.
7-4 . A thought which comes with a feeling like the feelings which come with true (7-l, 7-2) thoughts is frequently said to be true.

Sense
8-1 . A general property of a thought by which what the thought is about is fixed.
8-2 . Seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting -— the five senses —- and any other way of getting knowledge which is like them.
8-3 . Good sense.

Cause -— Effect
9-l . C is a cause of B when B does not take place without C.
9-11. Condition. Any event in which we have a special interest in a chain of events on which B is dependent.
9-2 . An event by which another event is forced to take place.
9-21. A pull or push of which we have the feeling when we put bodies in motion (or make an attempt to do so) or when things put us in motion.
9-211. By fiction, the same sort of pull or push looked on as between bodies.
9-212. By fiction, the same sort of pull or push looked on as between things (2-1) which are not bodies -— events, desires, conditions, etc.
9-5 . An example of a general law of the form "With all a, b, c, d’s . . . come e’s".

Law
10-1 . In science, a general fact that with all a, b, c, d’s . . . come e’s.
10-2 . For the Judge, the rule (order, decision, desire) of an authority.
10-21. A statement of a rule or order.

Part, System, Change
11-1 . AB is a part of the system AC.
A B B1 C
*_____*_____*_____*
11-2 . When AB1 comes in place of AB, AB is said to be changed to AB1.
11-21. A change is a fiction by which we may give an account of how things are different.
11-22. A change (see Force 9-21) is a special way of feeling we have when one experience takes the place of another.
11-3 . A system is any group of things in any connection with one another.
11-31. A system is that of which something which is said to he changed is taken as a part.
11-32. A sort; any group of things which is made up of things which are the same in some way.
11-4 . A system is any group of properties which any one thing (2-1) has.
11-5 . 'Organic ‘ system. A system is a group of things or properties of one thing such that if any one of them is changed, all the others are changed in some degree by that change.

Property
12-1 . That of which someone is the owner.
12-2 . Anything which anything may be said to be or to have.

Is
13-1 . Existence. ' A is ' == ' A has existence ’. (See Thought 1-21, 1 -22.)
13-2 . Part of a sort. ' A is a B' == ‘ A is a part of the sort B '.
13-3 . Same completely. 'A is B ’ == ' A has all the properties B has, and no others ’.
The sign == is frequently used for ' is ' in 13-3. It has another use which comes from this, when ' A == B ' is taken to say that the two words (or other signs) A and B, though they may be different as words, have the same sense.

General—Special
14-1 . A thought (or a statement) which is about all the things of a sort is a general thought about them.
14-11. A thought (or a statement) which is about a greater group of things (having a group G as part of it) is more general than a thought about the things in group G, or the things in a part of G.
14-2 . A thought about most hut not all examples in a group is said to be general. Generally == in most examples.
14-21. A statement about a great number of a group of things is a more general statement than one about a smaller number of them.
14-22. Generally == frequently.

Quality
15-1 A quality is a property of which a complete account may be given without naming any other thing (2-2) than the one which has the quality.
15-2 Short for ' good quality '.

Relation
16-1 A relation is a property which puts two or more things (2-2) into connection with one another.

Necessary -- Chance
17-1 A necessary property is one which a thing has under all conditions.
17-11 That is necessary which, under fixed conditions, takes place (see Cause).
17-12 A way which is the only way (or the best way) to a fixed end.
17-2 A chance property is one which as thing has only under some conditions.
17-3 A chance is what takes place when we have no knowledge of he conditions under which it takes place.
17-31 . . . . . . . when such knowledge as we have makes us ready for some other event.

Possible
18-1 Something is possible when hits being so does not make any change in our language machine necessary (16-11).
18-2 That is possible which the rules of our language machine seem to let us say.
18-3 That is possible which is in agreement with our knowledge of things, of fact (4-2).
18-31 That is possible, which, with a change of condition, would not be out of agreement with our knowledge.