that a mis-shaped fœtus is a monster, run into the same fault they are arguing against, by constituting a species between man and beast. For what else, I pray, is their monster in the case (if the word monster signifies any thing at all) but something neither man nor beast, but partaking somewhat of either? And just so is the changeling before mentioned. So necessary is it to quit the common notion of species and essences, if we will truly look into the nature of things, and examine them, by what our faculties can discover in them as they exist, and not by 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 species, in the ordinary notions which we have been used to of them, impose not upon us. For I am apt to think, therein lies one great obstacle to our clear and distinct knowledge, especially in reference to substances; and from thence has rose a great part of the difficulties about truth and certainty. Would we accustom ourselves to separate our contemplations and reasonings from words, we might, in a great measure, remedy this inconvenience within our own thoughts: but yet it would still disturb us in our discourse with others, as long as we retained the opinion, that species and their essences were any thing else but our abstract ideas (such as they are) with names annexed to them, to be the signs of them.

§ 18. Recapitulation.

WHEREVER we perceive the agreement or disagreement of any of our ideas, there is certain knowledge; and wherever we are sure those 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 shown wherein it is, that certainty, real certainty, consists: which, whatever it was to others, was, I confess, to me heretofore, one of those desiderata which I found great want of.

CHAP. V.

OF TRUTH IN GENERAL.

§ 1. What truth is.

WHAT is truth, was an inquiry many ages since; and it being that which all mankind either do, or pretend to search after, it cannot but be worth our while carefully to examine wherein it consists,

and so acquaint ourselves with the nature of it, as to observe how the mind distinguishes it from falsehood.

§ 2. A right joining or separating of signs: i. e. ideas or words. TRUTH then seems to me in the proper import of the word, to signify nothing but the joining or separating of signs, as the things signified by them do agree or disagree one with another. The joining or separating of signs here meant, is what by another name we call proposition. So that truth properly belongs only to propositions whereof there are two sorts, viz. mental and verbal; as there are two sorts of signs commonly made use of, viz. ideas and words.

§ 3. Which makes mental or verbal propositions. To form a clear notion of truth, it is very necessary to consider truth of thought, and truth of words, distinctly one from another : but yet it is very difficult to treat of them asunder. Because it is unavoidable in treating of mental propositions, to make use of words and then the instances given of mental propositions cease immediately to be barely mental, and become verbal. For a mental proposition being nothing but a bare consideration of the ideas, as they are in our minds stripped of names, they lose the nature of purely mental propositions, as soon as they are put into words.

§ 4. Mental propositions are very hard to be treated of. AND that which makes it yet harder to treat of mental and verbal propositions separately, is, that most men, if not all, in their thinking and reasonings within themselves, make use of words instead of ideas; at least 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 use of, serve for a mark to show us, what are those things we have clear and perfect established ideas of, and what not. For if we will curiously observe the way our mind takes in thinking and reasoning, we shall find, I suppose, that when we make any propositions within our own thoughts about white or black, sweet or bitter, a triangie or a circle, we can and often do frame in our minds the ideas themselves, without reflecting on the names. But when we would consider, or make propositions about the more complex ideas, as of a man, vitriol, fortitude, glory, we usually put the name for the idea because the ideas these names stand for, being for the most part imperfect, confused, and undetermined, we reflect on the names themselves, because they are more clear, certain and distinct, and readier occur to our thoughts than the.

pure ideas and so we make use of these words instead of the ideas themselves, even when we would meditate and reason within ourselves, and make tacit mental propositions. In substances, as has been already noted, this is occasioned by the imperfection of our ideas; we making the name stand for the real essence, of which we have no idea at all. In modes, it is occasioned by the great number of simple 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 represented to the mind, even in those men who have formerly been at the pains to do it; and is utterly impossible to be done by those, who, though they have ready in their memory the greatest part of the common words of their language, yet perhaps never trouble themselves in all their lives to consider what precise ideas the most of them stood for. Some confused or obscure notions have served their turns and many who talk very much of religion and conscience, of church and faith, of power and right, of obstructions and humors, melancholy and choler, would perhaps have little left in their thoughts and meditations, if one should desire them to think only of the things themselves, and lay by those words with which they so often confound others, and not seldom themselves also.

§ 5. Being nothing but the joining or separating ideas without words.

BUT to return to the consideration of truth: we must, I say, ebserve two sorts of propositions that we are capable of making.

First, Mental, wherein the ideas in our understandings are without the use of words put together, or separated by the mind, perceiving or judging of their agreement or disagreement.

Secondly, Verbal propositions, which are words, the signs of our ideas, put together or separated in affirmative or negative sentences. By which way of affirming or denying, these signs, made by sounds, are as it were put together or separated one from another. So that proposition consists in joining or separating signs, and truth consists in the putting together or separating those signs, according as the things which they stand for agree or disagree.

§ 6. When mental propositions contain real truth, and when verbal.

EVERY one's experience will satisfy him, that the mind, either by perceiving or supposing the agreement or disagreement of any of its ideas, does tacitly within itself put them into a kind of proposi

tion affirmative or negative, which I have endeavored to express by the terms, putting together and separating. But this action of the mind, which is so familiar to every thinking and reasoning man, is easier to be conceived by reflecting on what passes 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 side and diagonal of a square, whereof the diagonal is an inch long, he may have the idea also of the division 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 divisible, into such equal parts, as a certain number of them will be equal to the side-line. Now whenever he perceives, believes, or supposes such a kind of divisibility to agree or disagree to his idea of that line, he, as it were, joins or separates those two ideas, viz. the idea of that line, and the idea of that kind of divisibility; and so makes a mental proposition, which is true or false, according as such a kind of divisibility, a divisibility into such aliquot parts, does really agree to that line or no. ideas are so put together, or separated in the mind, as they, or the things they stand for do agree or not, that is, as I may call it, mental truth. But truth of words is something more; and that is, the affirming or denying of words one of another, as the ideas they stand for agree or disagree: and this again is twofold; either purely verbal and trifling, which I shall speak of, chap. 10. or real and instructive; which is the object of that real knowledge which we have spoken of already.

When

§7. Objection against verbal truth, that thus it may all be chimerical,

BUT here again will be apt to occur the same doubt about truth, that did about knowledge and it will be objected, that if truth be nothing but the joining or separating of words in propositions, as the ideas they stand for agree or disagree in men's minds, the knowledge of truth is not so valuable a thing as it is taken to be, nor worth the pains and time men employ to the search of it since by this account it amounts to no more than the conformity of words to the chimeras of men's brains. Who knows not what odd notions many men's heads are filled with, and what strange ideas all men's brains are capable of? But if we rest here, we know the truth of nothing by this rule, but of the visionary world in our own imaginations; nor have other truth, but what as much concerne harpies and centaurs, as men and horses. For those, and the like,

may be ideas in our heads, and have their agreement and disagreement there, as well as the ideas of real beings, and so have as true propositions made about them. And it will be altogether as true a proposition, to say all centaurs are animals, as that all men are animals; and the certainty of one as great as the other. For in both the propositions, the words are put together, according to the agreement of the ideas in our minds: and the agreement of the idea of animal with that of centaur, is as clear and visible to the mind, as the agreement of the idea of animal with that of man ; and so these two propositions are equally true, equally certain. But of what use is all such truth to us?

§ 8. Answered, Real truth is about ideas agreeing to things. THOUGH What has been said in the foregoing chapter, to distinguish real from imaginary knowledge, might suffice here, in answer to this doubt, to distinguish real truth from chimerical, or (if you please) barely nominal, they depending both on the same foundation, yet it may not be amiss here again to consider, that though our words signify nothing but our ideas, yet being designed by them to signify things, the truth they contain, when put into propositions, will be only verbal, when they stand for ideas in the mind, that have not an agreement with the reality of things. And therefore truth, as well as knowledge, may well come under the distinction of verbal and real; that being only verbal truth, wherein terms are joined according to the agreement or disagreement of the ideas they stand for, without regarding whether our ideas are such as really have, or are capable of having, an existence in nature. But then it is they contain real truth, when these signs are joined, as our ideas agree; and when our ideas are such, as we know are capable of having an existence in nature: which in substances we cannot know, but by knowing that such have existed. § 9. Falsehood is the joining of names otherwise than their ideas

agree.

TRUTH is the marking down in words the agreement or disagreement of ideas as it is. Falsehood is the marking down in words the agreement or disagreement of ideas otherwise than it is. And so far as these ideas, thus marked by sounds, agree to their archetypes, so far only is the truth real. The knowledge of this truth consists in knowing what ideas the words stand for, and the perception of the agreement or disagreement of those ideas, according as it is marked by those words.