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She looked at me for a moment with unutterable things in the depths of her golden-brown eyes. "I'm sorry," she said slowly, "that you had to tell a lie." I took her remark as the natural corollary of mine, but some sub-conscious sense in me insisted that its very ambiguity was designed. Almost at that moment I heard footsteps in the hall, and knew that the servants had just come home.
M. Halévy has translated an Assyrian text, whose meaning he thus epitomizes: "What becomes of the individual deposited in a tomb? A curious passage in one of the 'books' from the library of Assurbanipal answers this question, indirectly, indeed, but without any ambiguity. If well treated by the children of the defunct, he becomes their protector; if not, their evil genius and scourge.
One of the most singular examples of the length to which a thinker of eminence may be led away by an ambiguity of language, is afforded by this very case.
I do not say that for certain logical purposes it may not be useful to treat propositions as absolute entities, with truth or falsehood inside of them respectively, or to make of a complex like 'that Caesar is dead' a single term and call it a 'truth. But the 'that' here has the extremely convenient ambiguity for those who wish to make trouble for us pragmatists, that sometimes it means the FACT that, and sometimes the BELIEF that, Caesar is no longer living.
But taking advantage of the ambiguity of the word 'hypostasis', sometimes used to signify substance, and sometimes person, you contrive a fallacy. Ib. p. 354. Let me desire you not to give so great a loose to your fancy in divine things: you seem to consider every thing under the notion of extension and sensible images. Very true.
Milton tells us, without the least ambiguity, what a spectator of these marvellous occurrences would have witnessed. I doubt not that his poem is familiar to all of you, but I should like to recall one passage to your minds, in order that I may be justified in what I have said regarding the perfectly concrete, definite, picture of the origin of the animal world which Milton draws. He says:
The ambiguity of the phrase, and its misapplication by the Church of Rome, have induced many of our divines to repudiate it, etc." Realize that of the work from which this "valuable observation" is quoted, there are at least two volumes, the second volume containing not less than 757 pages! Realize that in Gibson's "Preservative" there are not less than ten volumes of such writing!
In this letter it was announced with much preliminary ambiguity, that Mortimer Gazebee who had been found to be a treasure in every way; quite a paragon of men was about to be taken into the de Courcy bosom as a child of that house. On that day fortnight, he was destined to lead to the altar the Lady Amelia.
"I can't make head or tail of this," said Dr. Livesey. "The thing is as clear as noonday," cried the squire. "This is the black-hearted hound's account-book. These crosses stand for the names of ships or towns that they sank or plundered. The sums are the scoundrel's share, and where he feared an ambiguity, you see he added something clearer.
Although there is a variety in colour and size, there is no ambiguity about species or genus. Wherever the English language is spoken, it has but one name, the "raccoon." In America, every man, woman and child knows the "sly ole 'coon." This animal has been placed by naturalists in the family Ursidae, genus Procyon. Linnaeus made it a bear, and classed it with Ursus.
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