ABSTRACT
It would be convenient to have a notation to use in this sort of examination. The first occurrence o f ‘grammar’ (line 1) is espe cially noteworthy. It is the use we must frequently make, at the beginning of a discussion, of words with challengeable and dis putable senses - that is, of nearly all words but those for concrete things and acts. It is the use of a word prior to fixing any specific sense for it; a sort of reservation we make with it - without having settled yet, for the company or even necessarily for our selves, who is going to be the passenger. Later, on re-reading, we know what meaning it is going to contain; but not yet. So far, for all we know, it is only equivalent to ‘whatever people who use this word may possibly mean by it’. It is like ‘the sublime’ in Croce’s most illuminating definition: ‘The sublime is every thing that is, has been, or shall be so called’. Its importance is that this non-committal use enables us to go on to enquire,
248 without being hampered, into the different things that people may mean by it, or that our author may himself be meaning.
