groundless fancies, that have been taken up about

them.

§ 17. Words and Species.

I HAVE mentioned this here, because I think we cannot be too cautious that words and fpecies, in the ordinary notions which we have been used to of them, impofe not upon us. For I am apt to think, therein lies one great obftacle to our clear and diftinct knowledge, especially in reference to fubftances; and from thence has rofe a great part of the difficulties about truth and certainty. Would we accuftom ourselves to feparate our contemplations and reafonings from words, we might, in a great measure, remedy this inconvenience within our own thoughts; but yet it would ftill difturb us in our difcourfe with others, as long as we retained the opinion, that Species and their ellences were any thing elfe but our abftract ideas (fuch as they are) with names annexed to them, to be the figus of them.

§ 18. Recapitulation.

WHEREVER we perceive the agreement or difagreement of any of our ideas, there is certain knowledge; and wherever we are fure thofe ideas agree with the reality of things, there is certain real knowledge. Of which agreement of our ideas with the reality of things, having here given the marks, I think I have fhown wherein it is, that certainty, real certainty confifts; which, whatever it was to others, was, I confefs, to me heretofore, one of thofe defiderata which I found great want of.

W

CHAP. V.

OF TRUTH IN GENERAL.

1. What Truth is.

THAT is truth, was an inquiry many ages fince; and it being that which all mankind either do or pretend to fearch after, it cannot but be 7th our while carefully to examine wherein it con

fifts, and fo acquaint ourfelves with. the nature of it, as to obferve how the mind diftinguishes it from falfe.

hood.

§ 2. A right joining or feparating of Signs; i. e. Ideas or Words.

TRUTH then feems to me, in the proper import of the word, to fignify nothing but the joining or feparating of figns, as the things fignified by them do agree or difagree one with another. The joining or feparating of figns here meant, is what by another name we call propofition; fo that truth properly belongs only to propofitions; whereof there are two forts, viz. mental and verbal, as there are two forts of figns commonly made ufe of, viz. ideas and words.

$3. Which make mental or verbal Propofitions. To form a clear notion of truth, it is very neceffary to confider truth of thought, and truth of words, diflinctly one from another; but yet it is very difficult to treat of them afunder; because it is unavoidable, in treating of mental propofitions, to make ufe of words; and then the inftances given of mental propofitions ceafe immediately to be barely mental, and become verbal. For a mental propofition being nothing but a bare confideration of the ideas, as they are in our minds ftripped of names, they lofe the nature of purely mental propofitions, as soon as they are put into words.

$4. Mental Propofitions are very hard to be treat

ed of.

AND that which makes it yet harder to treat of men-tal and verbal propofitions feparately, is, that most men, if not all, in their thinking and reafonings within themselves, make ufe of words inftead of ideas; at leaft when the subject of their meditation contains in it complex ideas; which is a great evidence of the imperfection and uncertainty of our ideas of that kind, and may, if attentively made ufe of, ferve for a mark to fhow us what are thofe things we have clear and perfect established ideas of, and what not; for if we will curioufly obferve the way our mind

Book IV. takes in thinking and reasoning, we fhall find, I fuppofe, that when we make any propofitions within our own thoughts about white or black, fweet or bitter, a triangle or a circle, we can and often do frame in our minds the ideas themfelves, without reflecting on the names. But when we would confider, or make propofitions about the more complex ideas, as of a man, vitriol, fortitude, glory, we ufually put the name for the idea; because the ideas these names ftand for being for the most part imperfect, confused, and undetermined, we reflect on the names themselves, because they are more clear, certain and diftinct, and readier occur to our thoughts than the pure ideas; and fo we make use of these words instead of the ideas themfelves, even when we would meditate and reason within ourfelves, and make tacit mental propofitions. In fubftances, as has been already noted, this is occafioned by the imperfection of our ideas; we making the name ftand for the real effence, of which we have no idea at all. In modes, it is occafioned by the great number of fimple ideas that go to the making them up; for many of them being compounded, the name occurs much easier than the complex idea itself, which requires time and attention to be recollected, and exactly reprefented to the mind, even in those men who have forinerly been at the pains to do it; and is utterly impoffible to be done by thofe, who, though they have ready in their memory the greatest part of the common words of their language, yet perhaps never troubled themselves in all their lives to confider what precife ideas the most of them ftood for. Some confufed or obfcure notions have ferved their turns; and many who talk very much of religion and confcience, of church and faith, of power and right, of

trullions and humours, melancholy and choler, would perhaps have little left in their thoughts and meditations, if one fhould defire them to think only of the things themselves, and lay by thofe words, with which they fo often confound others, and not feldom themfelves alfo.

§ 5. Being nothing but the joining or feparating Ideas without Words.

Bur to return to the confideration of truth; we must, I fay, obferve two forts of propofitions that we are capable of making.

Firft, Mental, wherein the ideas in our understandings are without the ufe of words put together, or feparated by the mind, perceiving or judging of their agreement or difagreement.

Secondly, Verbal propofitions, which are words, the figns of our ideas, put together or separated in affirmative or negative fentences. By which way of affirming or denying, thefe figns, made by founds, are as it were put together or feparated one from another. So that propofition confifts in joining or feparating figns, and truth confifts in the putting together or feparating thofe figns, according as the things which they stand for agree or difagree.

§ 6. When mental Propofitions contain real Truth, and when verbal.

EVERY one's experience will fatisfy him, that the mind, either by perceiving or fuppofing the agreement or difagreement of any of its ideas, does tacitly within itfelf put them into a kind of propofition affirmative or negative, which I have endeavoured to exprefs by the terms, putting together and feparating; but this action of the mind, which is fo familiar to every thinking and reafoning man, is easier to be conceived by reflecting on what paffes in us when we affirm or deny, than to be explained by words. When a man has in his mind the idea of two lines, viz. the fide and diagonal of a fquare, whereof the diagonal is an inch long, he may have the idea alfo of the divifion of that line into a certain number of equal parts; v. g. into five, ten, an hundred, a thousand, or any other number, and may have the idea of that inch-line being divisible or not divifible, into fuch equal parts, as a certain number of them will be equal to the fide-line. Now, whenever he perceives, believes, or fuppofes fuch a kind of divifibility to agree or difagree to his idea of

that line, he, as it were, joins or feparates those two ideas, viz. the idea of that line, and the idea of that kind of divifibility; and fo makes a mental propofi tion, which is true or falfe, according as fuch a kind of divifibility, a divifibility into fuch aliquot parts, does really agree to that line or no. When ideas are fo put together, or feparated in the mind, as they, or the things they ftand for, do agree or not, that is, as I may call it, mental truth; but truth of words is fomething more, and that is, the affirming or denying of words one of another, as the ideas they ftand for agree or difagree; and this again is twofold, either purely verbal and trifling, which I shall speak of, chap. 10., or real and inftructive, which is the objec of that real knowledge which we have fpoken of already.

$7. Objection against verbal Truth, that thus it may all be chimerical.

Bur here again will be apt to occur the fame doubt about truth, that did about knowledge; and it will be objected, that if truth be nothing but the joining or feparating of words in propofitions, as the ideas they stand for agree or difagree in mens minds, the knowledge of truth is not fo valuable a thing as it is taken to be, nor worth the pains and time men employ to the fearch of it; fince by this account it amounts to no more than the conformity of words to the chimeras of mens brains. Who knows not what odd notions many mens beads are filled with, and what ftrange ideas all mens brains are capable of? But if we left here, we know the truth of nothing by this rule, but of the vifionary world in our own imaginations; nor have other truth, but what as much concerns barpies and centaurs, as men and horfes; for those and the like may be ideas in our heads, and have their agreement and difagreement there, as well as the ideas of real beings, and fo have as true propofitions made about them; and it will be altogether as true a propofition to say, all centaurs are animals, as that all men are animals; and the certain