ABSTRACT
In the first flush of my belief in separate atoms, I thought that every word that can be used significantly must signify something, and I took this to mean that it must signify some THING. But the words that most interest logicians are difficult from this point of view. They are such words as ‘if’ and ‘or’ and ‘not.’ I tried to believe that in some logicians' limbo there are things that these words mean, and that perhaps virtuous logicians may meet them hereafter in a more logical cosmos. I felt fairly satisfied about ‘or’ and ‘if’ and ‘not,’ but I hesitated about such words as ‘nevertheless.’ My queer zoo contained some very odd monsters, such as the golden mountain and the present King of France — monsters which, although they roamed my zoo at will, had the odd property of non-existence. There are still a number of philosophers who believe this sort of thing, and it is their beliefs which have become the philosophical basis of Existentialism. But, for my part, I came to think that many words and phrases have no significance in isolation, but only contribute to the significance of whole sentences. I have therefore ceased to hope to meet ‘if’ and ‘or’ and ‘not’ in heaven. I was able, in fact, by the roundabout road of a complicated technique, to return to views much nearer to those of common sense than my previous speculations.
