One need peruse no more than a few samples of the literature of analytic writers, of existentialists, or even of the classical philosophers to assure onself that a disquietude pervades their writings over the degree of looseness of discourse allowable in philosophic reasoning, and the value of the means suggested for reaching greater precision. The many distinctions between common speech and expert, between words and terms, between equivocal and univocal, betwen literal and metaphorical,

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... ordinary and ideal languages -these and a host of others have in their diverse ways pointed up the difficulties consequent to any use of words, and have been used to alleviate these difficulties by setting up boundaries not heed lessly to be crossed. But in practice the boundaries break down as often as erected. and what is therefore most needed seems not to be some new dichotomy to replace the old ones, but a map of the entire range of linguistic usages, a map such that even though no special prohibitions are set up, we can mark out the chief sorts of relations that a name may conceivably bear to what is named, hence can at least be sure of the ground we are on, even if our right to stand on this particular plot be disputed. In working this out I set myself against any attempt to match all names with individual things as if they were for some reason merely proper names; I do not hold to an atomic theory of meaning, yet would like to do justice to, the manifest advantages of such a theory, which finds oneone correspondence between name and thing. In the same 85