 For this reason, Cook Wilson considered it “repugnant to create a technical term out of all relation to ordinary language” (SI, 713) and SI is replete with appeals to ordinary language. For example, he argued in support of his views on universals that “ordinary language reflects faithfully a true metaphysics of universals” (SI (208), see section 7). But such appeals were not just meant to undermine ‘preconceived theories’, they were also constructive, e.g., when he distinguished between the activity of thinking and ‘what we think’, i.e., between ‘act’ and ‘content’ (SI, 63–64), arguing that this is “likely to be right” because “it is the natural and universal mode of expression in ordinary untechnical language, ancient and modern” (SI, 67) and “it comes from the very way of speaking which is natural and habitual with those who do not believe in any form of idealism” (SI, 64). As it turns out, Cook Wilson believed that the ‘content’, i.e., ‘what we think’ is not about the thing we think about, but the thing itself (so knowledge contains its object, see section 6). 