ABSTRACT
We have been concerned hitherto with what may be called the “exclamatory” use of language, when it is used to denote some interesting feature of a man’s present experience. So long as this use alone is in question, a single word can function as a sentence in the indicative. When Xenophon’s Ten Thousand exclaimed “Sea! Sea!” they were using the word in this way. But a single word may also be used in other ways. A man found dying of thirst in the desert may murmur “water!” and is then uttering a request or expressing a desire; he may see a mirage and say “water?”; or he may see a spring and assert “water”. Sentences are needed to distinguish between these various uses of words. They are needed also—and this is perhaps their main use—to express what may be called “suspended reactions”. Suppose you intend to take a railway journey to-morrow, and you look up your train to-day: you do not propose, at the moment, to take any further action on the knowledge you have acquired, but when the time comes you will behave in the appropriate manner. Knowledge, in the sense in which it does not merely register present sensible impressions, consists essentially of preparations for such delayed reactions. Such preparations may in all cases be called “beliefs”, but they are only to be called “knowledge” when they prompt successful reactions, or at any rate show themselves related to the facts with which they are concerned in some way which distinguishes them from preparations that would be called “errors”.
