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النشر الإلكتروني

OF

HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.

BOOK IV. CHAP. V.

Of Truth in General.

§. 1. WHAT is truth was an inquiry many What truth 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. Truth then seems to me, in the A right joinproper import of the word, to signify no- ing or sepa thing but the joining or separating of signs, rating of as the things signified by them do agree or ideas or signs, i. e. disagree one with another. The joining or words. separating of signs, here meant, is what by another name we call proposition. So that truth properly be longs 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. To form a clear notion of truth, it is very necessary to consider truth of thought, mental or and truth of words, distinctly one from an- verbal proother: but yet it is very difficult to treat of positions. them asunder. Because it is unavoidable, in treating

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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.

Mental pro §. 4. And that which makes it yet harder positions are to treat of mental and verbal propositions very hard to separately, is, that most men, if not all, in be treated of. 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 triangle 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 noticed, 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 impos sible to be done by those, who, though they have ready in their memory the greatest part of the common words of that language, yet perhaps never troubled 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 humours, 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.

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§. 5. But to return to the consideration Being noof truth; we must, I say, observe two sorts thing but the of propositions that we are capable of mak

joining or separating ideas with

out words.

ing. 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. Every one's experience will satisfy When menhim, that the mind, either by perceiving or tal proposisupposing the agreement or disagreement of tions contain any of its ideas, does tacitly within itself real truth, put them into a kind of proposition affirmative or negative, which I have endeavoured

and when verbal.

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 con ceived by reflecting on what passes in us when we affirm or deny, than to be explained by words. When a man has in his head 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. When 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 affiming 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. viii. or real and instructive, which is the object of that real knowledge which we have spoken of already.

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Objection §. 7. But here again will be apt to occur against ver- the same doubt about truth, that did about bal truth. knowledge: and it will be objected, that that thus it if truth be nothing but the joining and sepachimerical, rating 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 in the search of it; since by this account it amounts to no more than the conformity of words to

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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 words in our own imaginations; nor have other truth, but what as much concerns 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 ani. mals; 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 agree ment 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. Though what has been said in the Answered, foregoing chapter, to distinguish real from real truth is imaginary knowledge, might suffice here, about ideas in answer to this doubt, to distinguish real agreeing to truth from chimerical, or (if you please) things. barely nominal, they depending both on the same foundation; yet it may not be amiss here again to consi der, 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

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