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HOW WE THINK

ing certain things designated in such a way as to fix attention upon some of their qualities. This method of delimiting a meaning by calling out a certain attitude toward objects may be called denotative or indicative. It is required for all sense qualities—sounds, tastes, colors—and equally for all emotional and moral qualities. The meanings of honesty, sympathy, hatred, fear, must be grasped by having them presented in an individual's first-hand experience. The reaction of educational reformers against linguistic and bookish training has always taken the form of demanding recourse to personal experience. However advanced the person is in knowledge and in scientific training, understanding of a new subject, or a new aspect of an old subject, must always be through these acts of experiencing directly the existence or quality in question.

and also by combining what is already more definite, 2. Expository. Given a certain store of meanings which have been directly or denotatively marked out, language becomes a resource by which imaginative combinations and variations may be built up. A color may be defined to one who has not experienced it as lying between green and blue; a tiger may be defined (i.e. the idea of it made more definite) by selecting some qualities from known members of the cat tribe and combining them with qualities of size and weight derived from other objects. Illustrations are of the nature of expository definitions; so are the accounts of meanings given in a dictionary. By taking better-known meanings and associating them,—the attained store of meanings of the community in which one resides is put at one's disposal. But in themselves these definitions are secondhand and conventional; there is danger that instead of inciting one to effort after personal experiences that