  Locke's philosophy of language—which he shared in its broad outlines with predecessors Hobbes and Descartes—holds that thoughts in the mind, whether they are innate (he thought they mostly were not) or caused by the sensations we have, are the primary support for the words in our language. When we utter a word, we do so because that word means the idea we have in mind when we utter it. The Grebo analysis that Crummell offers takes Lockean philosophy seriously, in that if Grebo has “defects,” it is because it is not able to preserve the word-idea relationship in moral contexts. Though this prejudice about Grebo is unfounded, the theory driving the prejudice enjoyed wide acceptance.