ABSTRACT
Reason, Richards is concerned only with the general category itself. "The trouble we have in giving order to our thoughts almost all comes from taking one thought for another through the use of one word for two thoughts" (10-11). Particularly it comes from confusing definitions with assertions. In accordance with his functional theory of language, he insists on freedom of definition. What Richards claims happens is that advancing a theory, say, about poetry, is in fact presenting a new definition, a view implicit already in the use of multiple definition in The Meaning 0/ Meaning.
