ABSTRACT
After all this I discussed the paragraph, from John Stuart Mill’s astonishing three-hour Inaugural Lecture at St Andrews, reproduced on the opposite page. It would, I hoped, illustrate memorably the conception of Grammar against which the Usage Doctrine is a reaction. By discussing it I might also clear the view I wish to recommend from confusion with unacceptable views that at first sight seem like it, views that historically have often taken its place. I hoped, further, to use the passage to show again how much the merging of the different purposes of language study, which use the term ‘grammar’ in common, can be frustrating even with so acute a thinker as Mill. Moreover, some of its sentences offered opportunities for exhibiting general principles of interpretation, and the whole thing would serve as a transition from the problems of Grammar to those of Logic and be an occasion for warnings against a very common type of mistake about their relations. 281
