AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
BY
JOHN LOCKE
[Based on the 2d Edition] CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME
BOOK III. OF WORDS.
CHAP.
I. OF WORDS OR LANGUAGE IN GENERAL
II. OF THE SIGNIFICATION OF WORDS
III. OF GENERAL TERMS
IV. OF THE NAMES OF SIMPLE IDEAS
V. OF THE NAMES OF MIXED MODES AND RELATIONS
VI. OF THE NAMES OF SUBSTANCES
VII. OF PARTICLES
VIII. OF ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE TERMS
IX. OF THE IMPERFECTION OF WORDS
X. OF THE ABUSE OF WORDS
XI. OF THE REMEDIES OF THE FOREGOING IMPERFECTION AND ABUSES
BOOK IV. OF KNOWLEDGE AND PROBABILITY.
CHAP.
I. OF KNOWLEDGE IN GENERAL
II. OF THE DEGREES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE
III. OF THE EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
IV. OF THE REALITY OF OUR KNOWLEDGE
V. OF TRUTH IN GENERAL
VI. OF UNIVERSAL PROPOSITIONS: THEIR TRUTH AND CERTAINTY
VII. OF MAXIMS
VIII. OF TRIFLING PROPOSITIONS
IX. OF OUR THREEFOLD KNOWLEDGE OF EXISTENCE
X. OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXISTENCE OF A GOD
XI. OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXISTENCE OF OTHER THINGS
XII. OF THE IMPROVEMENT OF OUR KNOWLEDGE
XIII. SOME OTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING OUR KNOWLEDGE
XIV. OF JUDGMENT
XV. OF PROBABILITY
XVI. OF THE DEGREES OF ASSENT
XVII. OF REASON [AND SYLLOGISM]
XVIII. OF FAITH AND REASON, AND THEIR DISTINCT PROVINCES
XIX. [OF ENTHUSIASM]
XX. OF WRONG ASSENT, OR ERROR
XXI. OF THE DIVISION OF THE SCIENCES
BOOK III
OF WORDS
CHAPTER I.
OF WORDS OR LANGUAGE IN GENERAL.
1. Man fitted to form articulated Sounds.
God, having designed man for a sociable creature, made him not only with
an inclination, and under a necessity to have fellowship with those of
his own kind, but furnished him also with language, which was to be
the great instrument and common tie of society. Man, therefore, had by
nature his organs so fashioned, as to be fit to frame articulate sounds,
which we call words. But this was not enough to produce language; for
parrots, and several other birds, will be taught to make articulate
sounds distinct enough, which yet by no means are capable of language.
2. To use these sounds as Signs of Ideas.
Besides articulate sounds, therefore, it was further necessary that he
should be able to use these sounds as signs of internal conceptions; and
to make them stand as marks for the ideas within his own mind, whereby
they might be made known to others, and the thoughts of men's minds be
conveyed from one to another.
3. To make them general Signs.
But neither was this sufficient to make words so useful as they ought to
be. It is not enough for the perfection of language, that sounds can
be made signs of ideas, unless those signs can be so made use of as to
comprehend several particular things: for the multiplication of words
would have perplexed their use, had every particular thing need of
a distinct name to be signified by. [To remedy this inconvenience,
language had yet a further improvement in the use of GENERAL TERMS,
whereby one word was made to mark a multitude of particular existences:
which advantageous use of sounds was obtained only by the difference of
the ideas they were made signs of: those names becoming general, which
are made to stand for GENERAL IDEAS, and those remaining particular,
where the IDEAS they are used for are PARTICULAR.]
4. To make them signify the absence of positive Ideas.
Besides these names which stand for ideas, there be other words which
men make use of, not to signify any idea, but the want or absence of
some ideas, simple or complex, or all ideas together; such as are NIHIL
in Latin, and in English, IGNORANCE and BARRENNESS. All which negative
or privative words cannot be said properly to belong to, or signify no
ideas: for then they would be perfectly insignificant sounds; but they
relate to positive ideas, and signify their absence.
5. Words ultimately derived from such as signify sensible Ideas.
It may also lead us a little towards the original of all our notions and
knowledge, if we remark how great a dependence our words have on common
sensible ideas; and how those which are made use of to stand for actions
and notions quite removed from sense, have their rise from thence, and
from obvious sensible ideas are transferred to more abstruse
significations, and made to stand for ideas that come not under the
cognizance of our senses; v.g. to IMAGINE, APPREHEND, COMPREHEND,
ADHERE, CONCEIVE, INSTIL, DISGUST, DISTURBANCE, TRANQUILLITY, &c., are
all words taken from the operations of sensible things, and applied to
certain modes of thinking. SPIRIT, in its primary signification, is
breath; ANGEL, a messenger: and I doubt not but, if we could trace them
to their sources, we should find, in all languages, the names which
stand for things that fall not under our senses to have had their first
rise from sensible ideas. By which we may give some kind of guess what
kind of notions they were, and whence derived, which filled their minds
who were the first beginners of languages, and how nature, even in the
naming of things, unawares suggested to men the originals and principles
of all their knowledge: whilst, to give names that might make known to
others any operations they felt in themselves, or any other ideas that
came not under their senses, they were fain to borrow words from
ordinary known ideas of sensation, by that means to make others the more
easily to conceive those operations they experimented in themselves,
which made no outward sensible appearances; and then, when they had got
known and agreed names to signify those internal operations of their own
minds, they were sufficiently furnished to make known by words all their
other ideas; since they could consist of nothing but either of outward
sensible perceptions, or of the inward operations of their minds about
them; we having, as has been proved, no ideas at all, but what
originally come either from sensible objects without, or what we feel
within ourselves, from the inward workings of our own spirits, of which
we are conscious to ourselves within.
6. Distribution of subjects to be treated of.
But to understand better the use and force of Language, as subservient
to instruction and knowledge, it will be convenient to consider:
First, TO WHAT IT IS THAT NAMES, IN THE USE OF LANGUAGE, ARE IMMEDIATELY
APPLIED.
Secondly, Since all (except proper) names are general, and so stand not
particularly for this or that single thing, but for sorts and ranks of
things, it will be necessary to consider, in the next place, what the
sorts and kinds, or, if you rather like the Latin names, WHAT THE
SPECIES AND GENERA OF THINGS ARE, WHEREIN THEY CONSIST, AND HOW THEY
COME TO BE MADE. These being (as they ought) well looked into, we shall
the better come to find the right use of words; the natural advantages
and defects of language; and the remedies that ought to be used,
to avoid the inconveniences of obscurity or uncertainty in the
signification of words: without which it is impossible to discourse with
any clearness or order concerning knowledge: which, being conversant
about propositions, and those most commonly universal ones, has greater
connexion with words than perhaps is suspected. These considerations,
therefore, shall be the matter of the following chapters.
CHAPTER II.
OF THE SIGNIFICATION OF WORDS.
1. Words are sensible Signs, necessary for Communication of Ideas.
Man, though he have great variety of thoughts, and such from which
others as well as himself might receive profit and delight; yet they are
all within his own breast, invisible and hidden from others, nor can of
themselves be made to appear. The comfort and advantage of society not
being to be had without communication of thoughts, it was necessary
that man should find out some external sensible signs, whereof those
invisible ideas, which his thoughts are made up of, might be made known
to others. For this purpose nothing was so fit, either for plenty or
quickness, as those articulate sounds, which with so much ease and
variety he found himself able to make. Thus we may conceive how WORDS,
which were by nature so well adapted to that purpose, came to be made
use of by men as the signs of their ideas; not by any natural connexion
that there is between particular articulate sounds and certain ideas,
for then there would be but one language amongst all men; but by a
voluntary imposition, whereby such a word is made arbitrarily the mark
of such an idea. The use, then, of words, is to be sensible marks of
ideas; and the ideas they stand for are their proper and immediate
signification.
2. Words, in their immediate Signification, are the sensible Signs of
his Ideas who uses them.
The use men have of these marks being either to record their own
thoughts, for the assistance of their own memory; or, as it were, to
bring out their ideas, and lay them before the view of others: words,
in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing but THE
IDEAS IN THE MIND OF HIM THAT USES THEM, how imperfectly soever or
carelessly those ideas are collected from the things which they are
supposed to represent. When a man speaks to another, it is that he may
be understood: and the end of speech is, that those sounds, as marks,
may make known his ideas to the hearer. That then which words are the
marks of are the ideas of the speaker: nor can any one apply them as
marks, immediately, to anything else but the ideas that he himself hath:
for this would be to make them signs of his own conceptions, and yet
apply them to other ideas; which would be to make them signs and not
signs of his ideas at the same time; and so in effect to have no
signification at all. Words being voluntary signs, they cannot be
voluntary signs imposed by him on things he knows not. That would be to
make them signs of nothing, sounds without signification. A man
cannot make his words the signs either of qualities in things, or of
conceptions in the mind of another, whereof he has none in his own. Till
he has some ideas of his own, he cannot suppose them to correspond with
the conceptions of another man; nor can he use any signs for them: for
thus they would be the signs of he knows not what, which is in truth to
be the signs of nothing. But when he represents to himself other men's
ideas by some of his own, if he consent to give them the same names that
other men do, it is still to his own ideas; to ideas that he has, and
not to ideas that he has not.
3. Examples of this.
This is so necessary in the use of language, that in this respect the
knowing and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned, use the words
they speak (with any meaning) all alike. They, in every man's mouth,
stand for the ideas he has, and which he would express by them. A child
having taken notice of nothing in the metal he hears called GOLD, but
the bright shining yellow colour, he applies the word gold only to his
own idea of that colour, and nothing else; and therefore calls the same
colour in a peacock's tail gold. Another that hath better observed, adds
to shining yellow great weight: and then the sound gold, when he uses
it, stands for a complex idea of a shining yellow and a very weighty
substance. Another adds to those qualities fusibility: and then the word
gold signifies to him a body, bright, yellow, fusible, and very heavy.
Another adds malleability. Each of these uses equally the word gold,
when they have occasion to express the idea which they have applied it
to: but it is evident that each can apply it only to his own idea; nor
can he make it stand as a sign of such a complex idea as he has not.
4. Words are often secretly referred, First to the Ideas supposed to be
in other men's minds.
But though words, as they are used by men, can properly and immediately
signify nothing but the ideas that are in the mind of the speaker; yet
they in their thoughts give them a secret reference to two other things.
First, THEY SUPPOSE THEIR WORDS TO BE MARKS OF THE IDEAS IN THE MINDS
ALSO OF OTHER MEN, WITH WHOM THEY COMMUNICATE; for else they should talk
in vain, and could not be understood, if the sounds they applied to one
idea were such as by the hearer were applied to another, which is to
speak two languages. But in this men stand not usually to examine,
whether the idea they, and those they discourse with have in their
minds be the same: but think it enough that they use the word, as they
imagine, in the common acceptation of that language; in which they
suppose that the idea they make it a sign of is precisely the same to
which the understanding men of that country apply that name.
5. Secondly, to the Reality of Things.
Secondly, Because men would not be thought to talk barely of their own
imagination, but of things as really they are; therefore they often
suppose the WORDS TO STAND ALSO FOR THE REALITY OF THINGS. But this
relating more particularly to substances and their names, as perhaps
the former does to simple ideas and modes, we shall speak of these two
different ways of applying words more at large, when we come to treat of
the names of mixed modes and substances in particular: though give me
leave here to say, that it is a perverting the use of words, and brings
unavoidable obscurity and confusion into their signification, whenever
we make them stand for anything but those ideas we have in our own
minds.
6. Words by Use readily excite Ideas of their objects.
Concerning words, also, it is further to be considered:
First, that they being immediately the signs of men's ideas, and by that
means the instruments whereby men communicate their conceptions, and
express to one another those thoughts and imaginations they have within
their own breasts; there comes, by constant use, to be such a connexion
between certain sounds and the ideas they stand for, that the names
heard, almost as readily excite certain ideas as if the objects
themselves, which are apt to produce them, did actually affect the
senses. Which is manifestly so in all obvious sensible qualities, and in
all substances that frequently and familiarly occur to us.
7. Words are often used without Signification, and Why.
Secondly, That though the proper and immediate signification of words
are ideas in the mind of the speaker, yet, because by familiar use from
our cradles, we come to learn certain articulate sounds very perfectly,
and have them readily on our tongues, and always at hand in our
memories, but yet are not always careful to examine or settle their
significations perfectly; it often happens that men, even when they
would apply themselves to an attentive consideration, do set their
thoughts more on words than things. Nay, because words are many of them
learned before the ideas are known for which they stand: therefore some,
not only children but men, speak several words no otherwise than parrots
do, only because they have learned them, and have been accustomed to
those sounds. But so far as words are of use and signification, so far
is there a constant connexion between the sound and the idea, and a
designation that the one stands for the other; without which application
of them, they are nothing but so much insignificant noise.
8. Their Signification perfectly arbitrary, not the consequence of a
natural connexion.
Words, by long and familiar use, as has been said, come to excite in men
certain ideas so constantly and readily, that they are apt to suppose
a natural connexion between them. But that they signify only men's
peculiar ideas, and that BY A PERFECT ARBITRARY IMPOSITION, is evident,
in that they often fail to excite in others (even that use the same
language) the same ideas we take them to be signs of: and every man has
so inviolable a liberty to make words stand for what ideas he pleases,
that no one hath the power to make others have the same ideas in their
minds that he has, when they use the same words that he does. And
therefore the great Augustus himself, in the possession of that power
which ruled the world, acknowledged he could not make a new Latin word:
which was as much as to say, that he could not arbitrarily appoint what
idea any sound should be a sign of, in the mouths and common language of
his subjects. It is true, common use, by a tacit consent, appropriates
certain sounds to certain ideas in all languages, which so far limits
the signification of that sound, that unless a man applies it to the
same idea, he does not speak properly: and let me add, that unless a
man's words excite the same ideas in the hearer which he makes them
stand for in speaking, he does not speak intelligibly. But whatever be
the consequence of any man's using of words differently, either from
their general meaning, or the particular sense of the person to whom
he addresses them; this is certain, their signification, in his use of
them, is limited to his ideas, and they can be signs of nothing else.
CHAPTER III.
OF GENERAL TERMS.
1. The greatest Part of Words are general terms.
All things that exist being particulars, it may perhaps be thought
reasonable that words, which ought to be conformed to things, should
be so too,--I mean in their signification: but yet we find quite the
contrary. The far greatest part of words that make all languages are
general terms: which has not been the effect of neglect or chance, but
of reason and necessity.
2. That every particular Thing should have a Name for itself is
impossible.
First, It is impossible that every particular thing should have a
distinct peculiar name. For, the signification and use of words
depending on that connexion which the mind makes between its ideas and
the sounds it uses as signs of them, it is necessary, in the application
of names to things, that the mind should have distinct ideas of the
things, and retain also the particular name that belongs to every one,
with its peculiar appropriation to that idea. But it is beyond the
power of human capacity to frame and retain distinct ideas of all the
particular things we meet with: every bird and beast men saw; every tree
and plant that affected the senses, could not find a place in the
most capacious understanding. If it be looked on as an instance of a
prodigious memory, that some generals have been able to call every
soldier in their army by his proper name, we may easily find a reason
why men have never attempted to give names to each sheep in their flock,
or crow that flies over their heads; much less to call every leaf of
plants, or grain of sand that came in their way, by a peculiar name.
3. And would be useless, if it were possible.
Secondly, If it were possible, it would yet be useless; because it would
not serve to the chief end of language. Men would in vain heap up names
of particular things, that would not serve them to communicate their
thoughts. Men learn names, and use them in talk with others, only that
they may be understood: which is then only done when, by use or consent,
the sound I make by the organs of speech, excites in another man's mind
who hears it, the idea I apply it to in mine, when I speak it. This
cannot be done by names applied to particular things; whereof I alone
having the ideas in my mind, the names of them could not be significant
or intelligible to another, who was not acquainted with all those very
particular things which had fallen under my notice.
4. A distinct name for every particular thing not fitted for enlargement
of knowledge.
Thirdly, But yet, granting this also feasible, (which I think is not,)
yet a distinct name for every particular thing would not be of any
great use for the improvement of knowledge: which, though founded in
particular things, enlarges itself by general views; to which things
reduced into sorts, under general names, are properly subservient.
These, with the names belonging to them, come within some compass, and
do not multiply every moment, beyond what either the mind can contain,
or use requires. And therefore, in these, men have for the most part
stopped: but yet not so as to hinder themselves from distinguishing
particular things by appropriated names, where convenience demands it.
And therefore in their own species, which they have most to do with, and
wherein they have often occasion to mention particular persons, they
make use of proper names; and there distinct individuals have distinct
denominations.
5. What things have proper Names, and why.
Besides persons, countries also, cities, rivers, mountains, and other
the like distinctions of place have usually found peculiar names, and
that for the same reason; they being such as men have often as occasion
to mark particularly, and, as it were, set before others in their
discourses with them. And I doubt not but, if we had reason to mention
particular horses as often as as have reason to mention particular men,
we should have proper names for the one, as familiar as for the other,
and Bucephalus would be a word as much in use as Alexander. And
therefore we see that, amongst jockeys, horses have their proper names
to be known and distinguished by, as commonly as their servants:
because, amongst them, there is often occasion to mention this or that
particular horse when he is out of sight.
6. How general Words are made.
The next thing to be considered is,--How general words come to be made.
For, since all things that exist are only particulars, how come we by
general terms; or where find we those general natures they are supposed
to stand for? Words become general by being made the signs of
general ideas: and ideas become general, by separating from them the
circumstances of time and place, and any other ideas that may determine
them to this or that particular existence. By this way of abstraction
they are made capable of representing more individuals than one; each of
which having in it a conformity to that abstract idea, is (as we call
it) of that sort.
7. Shown by the way we enlarge our complex ideas from infancy.
But, to deduce this a little more distinctly, it will not perhaps be
amiss to trace our notions and names from their beginning, and observe
by what degrees we proceed, and by what steps we enlarge our ideas from
our first infancy. There is nothing more evident, than that the ideas of
the persons children converse with (to instance in them alone) are, like
the persons themselves, only particular. The ideas of the nurse and the
mother are well framed in their minds; and, like pictures of them there,
represent only those individuals. The names they first gave to them are
confined to these individuals; and the names of NURSE and MAMMA, the
child uses, determine themselves to those persons. Afterwards, when time
and a larger acquaintance have made them observe that there are a great
many other things in the world, that in some common agreements of shape,
and several other qualities, resemble their father and mother, and those
persons they have been used to, they frame an idea, which they find
those many particulars do partake in; and to that they give, with
others, the name MAN, for example. And thus they come to have a general
name, and a general idea. Wherein they make nothing new; but only leave
out of the complex idea they had of Peter and James, Mary and Jane, that
which is peculiar to each, and retain only what is common to them all.
8. And further enlarge our complex ideas, by still leaving out
properties contained in them.
By the same way that they come by the general name and idea of MAN, they
easily advance to more general names and notions. For, observing that
several things that differ from their idea of man, and cannot therefore
be comprehended out under that name, have yet certain qualities wherein
they agree with man, by retaining only those qualities, and uniting them
into one idea, they have again another and more general idea; to which
having given a name they make a term of a more comprehensive extension:
which new idea is made, not by any new addition, but only as before, by
leaving out the shape, and some other properties signified by the name
man, and retaining only a body, with life, sense, and spontaneous
motion, comprehended under the name animal.
9. General natures are nothing but abstract and partial ideas of more
complex ones.
That this is the way whereby men first formed general ideas, and general
names to them, I think is so evident, that there needs no other proof
of it but the considering of a man's self, or others, and the ordinary
proceedings of their minds in knowledge. And he that thinks GENERAL
NATURES or NOTIONS are anything else but such abstract and partial ideas
of more complex ones, taken at first from particular existences, will, I
fear, be at a loss where to find them. For let any one effect, and then
tell me, wherein does his idea of MAN differ from that of PETER and
PAUL, or his idea of HORSE from that of BUCEPHALUS, but in the leaving
out something that is peculiar to each individual, and retaining so much
of those particular complex ideas of several particular existences as
they are found to agree in? Of the complex ideas signified by the names
MAN and HORSE, leaving out but those particulars wherein they differ,
and retaining only those wherein they agree, and of those making a new
distinct complex idea, and giving the name ANIMAL to it, one has a more
general term, that comprehends with man several other creatures. Leave
out of the idea of ANIMAL, sense and spontaneous motion, and the
remaining complex idea, made up of the remaining simple ones of body,
life, and nourishment, becomes a more general one, under the more
comprehensive term, VIVENS. And, not to dwell longer upon this
particular, so evident in itself; by the same way the mind proceeds to
BODY, SUBSTANCE, and at last to BEING, THING, and such universal terms,
which stand for any of our ideas whatsoever. To conclude: this whole
mystery of genera and species, which make such a noise in the schools,
and are with justice so little regarded out of them, is nothing else but
ABSTRACT IDEAS, more or less comprehensive, with names annexed to them.
In all which this is constant and unvariable, That every more general
term stands for such an idea, and is but a part of any of those
contained under it.
10. Why the Genus is ordinarily made Use of in Definitions.
This may show us the reason why, in the defining of words, which is
nothing but declaring their signification, we make use of the GENUS, or
next general word that comprehends it. Which is not out of necessity,
but only to save the labour of enumerating the several simple ideas
which the next general word or GENUS stands for; or, perhaps, sometimes
the shame of not being able to do it. But though defining by GENUS and
DIFFERENTIA (I crave leave to use these terms of art, though originally
Latin, since they most properly suit those notions they are applied to),
I say, though defining by the GENUS be the shortest way, yet I think it
may be doubted whether it be the best. This I am sure, it is not the
only, and so not absolutely necessary. For, definition being nothing but
making another understand by words what idea the term defined stands
for, a definition is best made by enumerating those simple ideas that
are combined in the signification of the term defined: and if, instead
of such an enumeration, men have accustomed themselves to use the
next general term, it has not been out of necessity, or for greater
clearness, but for quickness and dispatch sake. For I think that, to one
who desired to know what idea the word MAN stood for; if it should be
said, that man was a solid extended substance, having life, sense,
spontaneous motion, and the faculty of reasoning, I doubt not but the
meaning of the term man would be as well understood, and the idea it
stands for be at least as clearly made known, as when it is defined
to be a rational animal: which, by the several definitions of ANIMAL,
VIVENS, and CORPUS, resolves itself into those enumerated ideas. I have,
in explaining the term MAN, followed here the ordinary definition of
the schools; which, though perhaps not the most, exact, yet serves well
enough to my present purpose. And one may, in this instance, see what
gave occasion to the rule, that a definition must consist of GENUS and
DIFFERENTIA; and it suffices to show us the little necessity there is
of such a rule, or advantage in the strict observing of it. For,
definitions, as has been said, being only the explaining of one word
by several others, so that the meaning or idea it stands for may be
certainly known; languages are not always so made according to the rules
of logic, that every term can have its signification exactly and clearly
expressed by two others. Experience sufficiently satisfies us to the
contrary; or else those who have made this rule have done ill, that they
have given us so few definitions conformable to it. But of definitions
more in the next chapter.
11. General and Universal are Creatures of the Understanding, and belong
not to the Real Existence of things.
To return to general words: it is plain, by what has been said, that
GENERAL and UNIVERSAL belong not to the real existence of things; but
are the inventions and creatures of the understanding, made by it for
its own use, and concern only signs, whether words or ideas. Words are
general, as has been said, when used for signs of general ideas, and so
are applicable indifferently to many particular things; and ideas are
general when they are set up as the representatives of many particular
things: but universality belongs not to things themselves, which are all
of them particular in their existence, even those words and ideas which
in their signification are general. When therefore we quit particulars,
the generals that rest are only creatures of our own making; their
general nature being nothing but the capacity they are put into, by the
understanding, of signifying or representing many particulars. For the
signification they have is nothing but a relation that, by the mind of
man, is added to them.
12. Abstract Ideas are the Essences of Genera and Species.
The next thing therefore to be considered is, What kind of signification
it is that general words have. For, as it is evident that they do not
signify barely one particular thing; for then they would not be general
terms, but proper names, so, on the other side, it is as evident they do
not signify a plurality; for MAN and MEN would then signify the same;
and the distinction of numbers (as the grammarians call them) would be
superfluous and useless. That then which general words signify is a SORT
of things; and each of them does that, by being a sign of an abstract
idea in the mind; to which idea, as things existing are found to agree,
so they come to be ranked under that name, or, which is all one, be of
that sort. Whereby it is evident that the ESSENCES of the sorts, or, if
the Latin word pleases better, SPECIES of things, are nothing else but
these abstract ideas. For the having the essence of any species, being
that which makes anything to be of that species; and the conformity to
the idea to which the name is annexed being that which gives a right to
that name; the having the essence, and the having that conformity, must
needs be the same thing: since to be of any species, and to have a right
to the name of that species, is all one. As, for example, to be a MAN,
or of the SPECIES man, and to have right to the NAME man, is the same
thing. Again, to be a man, or of the species man, and have the ESSENCE
of a man, is the same thing. Now, since nothing can be a man, or have a
right to the name man, but what has a conformity to the abstract idea
the name man stands for, nor anything be a man, or have a right to the
species man, but what has the essence of that species; it follows, that
the abstract idea for which the name stands, and the essence of the
species, is one and the same. From whence it is easy to observe, that
the essences of the sorts of things, and, consequently, the sorting of
things, is the workmanship of the understanding that abstracts and makes
those general ideas.
13. They are the Workmanship of the Understanding, but have their
Foundation in the Similitude of Things.
I would not here be thought to forget, much less to deny, that Nature,
in the production of things, makes several of them alike: there is
nothing more obvious, especially in the races of animals, and all things
propagated by seed. But yet I think we may say, THE SORTING OF THEM
UNDER NAMES IS THE WORKMANSHIP OF THE UNDERSTANDING, TAKING OCCASION,
FROM THE SIMILITUDE IT OBSERVES AMONGST THEM, TO MAKE ABSTRACT GENERAL
IDEAS, and set them up in the mind, with names annexed to them, as
patterns or forms, (for, in that sense, the word FORM has a very proper
signification,) to which as particular things existing are found to
agree, so they come to be of that species, have that denomination, or
are put into that CLASSIS. For when we say this is a man, that a horse;
this justice, that cruelty; this a watch, that a jack; what do we else
but rank things under different specific names, as agreeing to those
abstract ideas, of which we have made those names the signs? And what
are the essences of those species set out and marked by names, but those
abstract ideas in the mind; which are, as it were, the bonds between
particular things that exist, and the names they are to be ranked under?
And when general names have any connexion with particular beings, these
abstract ideas are the medium that unites them: so that the essences of
species, as distinguished and denominated by us, neither are nor can
be anything but those precise abstract ideas we have in our minds. And
therefore the supposed real essences of substances, if different from
our abstract ideas, cannot be the essences of the species WE rank
things into. For two species may be one, as rationally as two different
essences be the essence of one species: and I demand what are the
alterations [which] may, or may not be made in a HORSE or LEAD, without
making either of them to be of another species? In determining the
species of things by OUR abstract ideas, this is easy to resolve: but if
any one will regulate himself herein by supposed REAL essences, he will
I suppose, be at a loss: and he will never be able to know when anything
precisely ceases to be of the species of a HORSE or LEAD.
14. Each distinct abstract Idea is a distinct Essence.
Nor will any one wonder that I say these essences, or abstract ideas
(which are the measures of name, and the boundaries of species) are
the workmanship of the understanding, who considers that at least the
complex ones are often, in several men, different collections of simple
ideas; and therefore that is COVETOUSNESS to one man, which is not so to
another. Nay, even in substances, where their abstract ideas seem to be
taken from the things themselves, they are not constantly the same; no,
not in that species which is most familiar to us, and with which we have
the most intimate acquaintance: it having been more than once doubted,
whether the FOETUS born of a woman were a MAN, even so far as that it
hath been debated, whether it were or were not to be nourished and
baptized: which could not be, if the abstract idea or essence to
which the name man belonged were of nature's making; and were not
the uncertain and various collection of simple ideas, which the
understanding put together, and then, abstracting it, affixed a name
to it. So that, in truth, every distinct abstract idea is a distinct
essence; and the names that stand for such distinct ideas are the
names of things essentially different. Thus a circle is as essentially
different from an oval as a sheep from a goat; and rain is as
essentially different from snow as water from earth: that abstract idea
which is the essence of one being impossible to be communicated to the
other. And thus any two abstract ideas, that in any part vary one
from another, with two distinct names annexed to them, constitute two
distinct sorts, or, if you please, SPECIES, as essentially different as
any two of the most remote or opposite in the world.
15. Several significations of the word Essence.
But since the essences of things are thought by some (and not without
reason) to be wholly unknown, it may not be amiss to consider the
several significations of the word ESSENCE.
Real essences.
First, Essence may be taken for the very being of anything, whereby it
is what it is. And thus the real internal, but generally (in substances)
unknown constitution of things, whereon their discoverable qualities
depend, may be called their essence. This is the proper original
signification of the word, as is evident from the formation of it;
essential in its primary notation, signifying properly, being. And in
this sense it is still used, when we speak of the essence of PARTICULAR
things, without giving them any name.
Nominal Essences.
Secondly, The learning and disputes of the schools having been much
busied about genus and species, the word essence has almost lost its
primary signification: and, instead of the real constitution of things,
has been almost wholly applied to the artificial constitution of
genus and species. It is true, there is ordinarily supposed a real
constitution of the sorts of things; and it is past doubt there must
be some real constitution, on which any collection of simple ideas
co-existing must depend. But, it being evident that things are ranked
under names into sorts or species, only as they agree to certain
abstract ideas, to which we have annexed those names, the essence of
each GENUS, or sort, comes to be nothing but that abstract idea which
the general, or sortal (if I may have leave so to call it from sort, as
I do general from genus,) name stands for. And this we shall find to be
that which the word essence imports in its most familiar use.
These two sorts of essences, I suppose, may not unfitly be termed, the
one the REAL, the other NOMINAL ESSENCE.
16. Constant Connexion between the Name and nominal Essence.
Between the NOMINAL ESSENCE and the NAME there is so near a connexion,
that the name of any sort of things cannot be attributed to any
particular being but what has this essence, whereby it answers that
abstract idea whereof that name is the sign.
17. Supposition, that Species are distinguished by their real Essences
useless.
Concerning the REAL ESSENCES of corporeal substances (to mention these
only) there are, if I mistake not, two opinions. The one is of those
who, using the word essence for they know not what, suppose a certain
number of those essences, according to which all natural things are
made, and wherein they do exactly every one of them partake, and so
become of this or that species. The other and more rational opinion is
of those who look on all natural things to have a real, but unknown,
constitution of their insensible parts; from which flow those sensible
qualities which serve us to distinguish them one from another, according
as we have occasion to rank them into sorts, under common denominations.
The former of these opinions, which supposes these essences as a certain
number of forms or moulds, wherein all natural things that exist are
cast, and do equally partake, has, I imagine, very much perplexed the
knowledge of natural things. The frequent productions of monsters, in
all the species of animals, and of changelings, and other strange issues
of human birth, carry with them difficulties, not possible to consist
with this hypothesis; since it is as impossible that two things
partaking exactly of the same real essence should have different
properties, as that two figures partaking of the same real essence of a
circle should have different properties. But were there no other reason
against it, yet the supposition of essences that cannot be known; and
the making of them, nevertheless, to be that which distinguishes the
species of things, is so wholly useless and unserviceable to any part of
our knowledge, that that alone were sufficient to make us lay it by, and
content ourselves with such essences of the sorts or species of things
as come within the reach of our knowledge: which, when seriously
considered, will be found, as I have said, to be nothing else but, those
ABSTRACT complex ideas to which we have annexed distinct general names.
18. Real and nominal Essence
Essences being thus distinguished into nominal and real, we may further
observe, that, in the species of simple ideas and modes, they are always
the same; but in substances always quite different. Thus, a figure
including a space between three lines, is the real as well as nominal
essence of a triangle; it being not only the abstract idea to which the
general name is annexed, but the very ESSENTIA or being of the thing
itself; that foundation from which all its properties flow, and to which
they are all inseparably annexed. But it is far otherwise concerning
that parcel of matter which makes the ring on my finger; wherein these
two essences are apparently different. For, it is the real constitution
of its insensible parts, on which depend all those properties of colour,
weight, fusibility, fixedness, &c., which are to be found in it; which
constitution we know not, and so, having no particular idea of, having
no name that is the sign of it. But yet it is its colour, weight,
fusibility, fixedness, &c., which makes it to be gold, or gives it
a right to that name, which is therefore its nominal essence. Since
nothing can be called gold but what has a conformity of qualities to
that abstract complex idea to which that name is annexed. But this
distinction of essences, belonging particularly to substances, we shall,
when we come to consider their names, have an occasion to treat of more
fully.
19. Essences ingenerable and incorruptible.
That such abstract ideas, with names to them, as we have been speaking
of are essences, may further appear by what we are told concerning
essences, viz. that they are all ingenerable and incorruptible. Which
cannot be true of the real constitutions of things, which begin and
perish with them. All things that exist, besides their Author, are all
liable to change; especially those things we are acquainted with, and
have ranked into bands under distinct names or ensigns. Thus, that which
was grass to-day is to-morrow the flesh of a sheep; and, within a few
days after, becomes part of a man: in all which and the like changes,
it is evident their real essence--i. e. that constitution whereon the
properties of these several things depended--is destroyed, and perishes
with them. But essences being taken for ideas established in the mind,
with names annexed to them, they are supposed to remain steadily the
same, whatever mutations the particular substances are liable to. For,
whatever becomes of ALEXANDER and BUCEPHALUS, the ideas to which MAN and
HORSE are annexed, are supposed nevertheless to remain the same; and
so the essences of those species are preserved whole and undestroyed,
whatever changes happen to any or all of the individuals of those
species. By this means the essence of a species rests safe and entire,
without the existence of so much as one individual of that kind. For,
were there now no circle existing anywhere in the world, (as perhaps
that figure exists not anywhere exactly marked out,) yet the idea
annexed to that name would not cease to be what it is; nor cease to be
as a pattern to determine which of the particular figures we meet with
have or have not a right to the NAME circle, and so to show which of
them, by having that essence, was of that species. And though there
neither were nor had been in nature such a beast as an UNICORN, or such
a fish as a MERMAID; yet, supposing those names to stand for complex
abstract ideas that contained no inconsistency in them, the essence of a
mermaid is as intelligible as that of a man; and the idea of an unicorn
as certain, steady, and permanent as that of a horse. From what has been
said, it is evident, that the doctrine of the immutability of essences
proves them to be only abstract ideas; and is founded on the relation
established between them and certain sounds as signs of them; and
will always be true, as long as the same name can have the same
signification.
20. Recapitulation.
To conclude. This is that which in short I would say, viz. that all the
great business of GENERA and SPECIES, and their ESSENCES, amounts to no
more but this:--That men making abstract ideas, and settling them in
their minds with names annexed to them, do thereby enable themselves to
consider things, and discourse of them, as it were in bundles, for the
easier and readier improvement and communication of their knowledge,
which would advance but slowly were their words and thoughts confined
only to particulars.
CHAPTER IV.
OF THE NAMES OF SIMPLE IDEAS.
1. Names of simple Ideas, Modes, and Substances, have each something
peculiar.
Though all words, as I have shown, signify nothing immediately but the
ideas in the mind of the speaker; yet, upon a nearer survey, we shall
find the names of SIMPLE IDEAS, MIXED MODES (under which I comprise
RELATIONS too), and NATURAL SUBSTANCES, have each of them something
peculiar and different from the other. For example:--
2. First, Names of simple Ideas, and of Substances intimate real
Existence.
First, the names of SIMPLE IDEAS and SUBSTANCES, with the abstract ideas
in the mind which they immediately signify, intimate also some real
existence, from which was derived their original pattern. But the names
of MIXED MODES terminate in the idea that is in the mind, and lead not
the thoughts any further; as we shall see more at large in the following
chapter.
3. Secondly, Names of simple Ideas and Modes signify always both real
and nominal Essences.
Secondly, The names of simple ideas and modes signify always the real
as well as nominal essence of their species. But the names of natural
substances signify rarely, if ever, anything but barely the nominal
essences of those species; as we shall show in the chapter that treats
of the names of substances in particular.
4. Thirdly, Names of simple Ideas are undefinable.
Thirdly, The names of simple ideas are not capable of any definition;
the names of all complex ideas are. It has not, that I know, been yet
observed by anybody what words are, and what are not, capable of being
defined; the want whereof is (as I am apt to think) not seldom the
occasion of great wrangling and obscurity in men's discourses, whilst
some demand definitions of terms that cannot be defined; and others
think they ought not to rest satisfied in an explication made by a more
general word, and its restriction, (or to speak in terms of art, by a
genus and difference,) when, even after such definition, made according
to rule, those who hear it have often no more a clear conception of the
meaning of the word than they had before. This at least I think, that
the showing what words are, and what are not, capable of definitions,
and wherein consists a good definition, is not wholly besides our
present purpose; and perhaps will afford so much light to the nature
of these signs and our ideas, as to deserve a more particular
consideration.
5. If all names were definable, it would be a Process IN INFINITUM.
I will not here trouble myself to prove that all terms are not
definable, from that progress IN INFINITUM, which it will visibly lead
us into, if we should allow that all names could be defined. For, if the
terms of one definition were still to be defined by another, where at
last should we stop? But I shall, from the nature of our ideas, and the
signification of our words, show WHY SOME NAMES CAN, AND OTHERS CANNOT
BE DEFINED; and WHICH THEY ARE.
6. What a Definition is.
I think it is agreed, that a DEFINITION is nothing else but THE SHOWING
THE MEANING OF ONE WORD BY SEVERAL OTHER NOT SYNONYMOUS TERMS. The
meaning of words being only the ideas they are made to stand for by him
that uses them, the meaning of any term is then showed, or the word is
defined, when, by other words, the idea it is made the sign of, and
annexed to, in the mind of the speaker, is as it were represented, or
set before the view of another; and thus its signification ascertained.
This is the only use and end of definitions; and therefore the only
measure of what is, or is not a good definition.
7. Simple Ideas, why undefinable.
This being premised, I say that the NAMES OF SIMPLE IDEAS, AND THOSE
ONLY, ARE INCAPABLE OF BEING DEFINED. The reason whereof is this, That
the several terms of a definition, signifying several ideas, they can
all together by no means represent an idea which has no composition
at all: and therefore a definition, which is properly nothing but the
showing the meaning of one word by several others not signifying each
the same thing, can in the names of simple ideas have no place.
8. Instances: Scholastic definitions of Motion.
The not observing this difference in our ideas, and their names, has
produced that eminent trifling in the schools, which is so easy to be
observed in the definitions they give us of some few of these simple
ideas. For, as to the greatest part of them, even those masters
of definitions were fain to leave them untouched, merely by the
impossibility they found in it. What more exquisite jargon could the wit
of man invent, than this definition:--'The act of a being in power, as
far forth as in power;' which would puzzle any rational man, to whom it
was not already known by its famous absurdity, to guess what word it
could ever be supposed to be the explication of. If Tully, asking a
Dutchman what BEWEEGINGE was, should have received this explication
in his own language, that it was 'actus entis in potentia quatenus in
potentia;' I ask whether any one can imagine he could thereby have
understood what the word BEWEEGINGE signified, or have guessed what idea
a Dutchman ordinarily had in his mind, and would signify to another,
when he used that sound?
9. Modern definition of Motion.
Nor have the modern philosophers, who have endeavoured to throw off the
jargon of the schools, and speak intelligibly, much better succeeded
in defining simple ideas, whether by explaining their causes, or any
otherwise. The atomists, who define motion to be 'a passage from one
place to another,' what do they more than put one synonymous word for
another? For what is PASSAGE other than MOTION? And if they were asked
what passage was, how would they better define it than by motion? For is
it not at least as proper and significant to say, Passage is a motion
from one place to another, as to say, Motion is a passage, &c.? This is
to translate, and not to define, when we change two words of the same
signification one for another; which, when one is better understood than
the other, may serve to discover what idea the unknown stands for; but
is very far from a definition, unless we will say every English word in
the dictionary is the definition of the Latin word it answers, and that
motion is a definition of MOTUS. Nor will 'the successive application of
the parts of the superficies of one body to those of another,' which the
Cartesians give us, prove a much better definition of motion, when well
examined.
10. Definitions of Light.
'The act of perspicuous, as far forth as perspicuous,' is another
Peripatetic definition of a simple idea; which, though not more
absurd than the former of motion, yet betrays its uselessness and
insignificancy more plainly; because experience will easily convince any
one that it cannot make the meaning of the word LIGHT (which it pretends
to define) at all understood by a blind man, but the definition of
motion appears not at first sight so useless, because it escapes this
way of trial. For this simple idea, entering by the touch as well as
sight, it is impossible to show an example of any one who has no other
way to get the idea of motion, but barely by the definition of that
name. Those who tell us that light is a great number of little globules,
striking briskly on the bottom of the eye, speak more intelligibly than
the Schools: but yet these words never so well understood would make the
idea the word light stands for no more known to a man that understands
it not before, than if one should tell him that light was nothing but a
company of little tennis-balls, which fairies all day long struck with
rackets against some men's foreheads, whilst they passed by others. For
granting this explication of the thing to be true, yet the idea of the
cause of light, if we had it never so exact, would no more give us the
idea of light itself, as it is such a particular perception in us, than
the idea of the figure and motion of a sharp piece of steel would give
us the idea of that pain which it is able to cause in us. For the cause
of any sensation, and the sensation itself, in all the simple ideas of
one sense, are two ideas; and two ideas so different and distant one
from another, that no two can be more so. And therefore, should Des
Cartes's globules strike never so long on the retina of a man who was
blind by a gutta serena, he would thereby never have any idea of light,
or anything approaching it, though he understood never so well what
little globules were, and what striking on another body was. And
therefore the Cartesians very well distinguish between that light which
is the cause of that sensation in us, and the idea which is produced in
us by it, and is that which is properly light.
11. Simple Ideas, why undefinable, further explained.
Simple ideas, as has been shown, are only to be got by those impressions
objects themselves make on our minds, by the proper inlets appointed
to each sort. If they are not received this way, all the words in the
world, made use of to explain or define any of their names, will never
be able to produce in us the idea it stands for. For, words being
sounds, can produce in us no other simple ideas than of those very
sounds; nor excite any in us, but by that voluntary connexion which is
known to be between them and those simple ideas which common use has
made them the signs of. He that thinks otherwise, let him try if any
words can give him the taste of a pine apple, and make him have the true
idea of the relish of that celebrated delicious fruit. So far as he
is told it has a resemblance with any tastes whereof he has the ideas
already in his memory, imprinted there by sensible objects, not
strangers to his palate, so far may he approach that resemblance in his
mind. But this is not giving us that idea by a definition, but exciting
in us other simple ideas by their known names; which will be still
very different from the true taste of that fruit itself. In light and
colours, and all other simple ideas, it is the same thing: for the
signification of sounds is not natural, but only imposed and arbitrary.
And no DEFINITION of light or redness is more fitted or able to produce
either of those ideas in us, than the SOUND light or red, by itself.
For, to hope to produce an idea of light or colour by a sound, however
formed, is to expect that sounds should be visible, or colours audible;
and to make the ears do the office of all the other senses. Which is all
one as to say, that we might taste, smell, and see by the ears: a sort
of philosophy worthy only of Sancho Panza, who had the faculty to see
Dulcinea by hearsay. And therefore he that has not before received into
his mind, by the proper inlet, the simple idea which any word stands
for, can never come to know the signification of that word by any other
words or sounds whatsoever, put together according to any rules of
definition. The only way is, by applying to his senses the proper
object; and so producing that idea in him, for which he has learned the
name already. A studious blind man, who had mightily beat his head
about visible objects, and made use of the explication of his books and
friends, to understand those names of light and colours which often
came in his way, bragged one day, That he now understood what SCARLET
signified. Upon which, his friend demanding what scarlet was? The
blind man answered, It was like the sound of a trumpet. Just such an
understanding of the name of any other simple idea will he have, who
hopes to get it only from a definition, or other words made use of to
explain it.
12. The contrary shown in complex ideas, by instances of a Statue and
Rainbow.
The case is quite otherwise in COMPLEX IDEAS; which, consisting of
several simple ones, it is in the power of words, standing for the
several ideas that make that composition, to imprint complex ideas in
the mind which were never there before, and so make their names be
understood. In such collections of ideas, passing under one name,
definition, or the teaching the signification of one word by several
others, has place, and may make us understand the names of things which
never came within the reach of our senses; and frame ideas suitable to
those in other men's minds, when they use those names: provided that
none of the terms of the definition stand for any such simple ideas,
which he to whom the explication is made has never yet had in his
thought. Thus the word STATUE may be explained to a blind man by other
words, when PICTURE cannot; his senses having given him the idea of
figure, but not of colours, which therefore words cannot excite in him.
This gained the prize to the painter against the statuary: each of which
contending for the excellency of his art, and the statuary bragging that
his was to be preferred, because it reached further, and even those who
had lost their eyes could yet perceive the excellency of it. The painter
agreed to refer himself to the judgment of a blind man; who being
brought where there was a statue made by the one, and a picture drawn by
the other; he was first led to the statue, in which he traced with his
hands all the lineaments of the face and body, and with great admiration
applauded the skill of the workman. But being led to the picture, and
having his hands laid upon it, was told, that now he touched the head,
and then the forehead, eyes, nose, &c., as his hand moved over the
parts of the picture on the cloth, without finding any the least
distinction: whereupon he cried out, that certainly that must needs be a
very admirable and divine piece of workmanship, which could represent to
them all those parts, where he could neither feel nor perceive anything.
13. Colours indefinable to the born-blind.
He that should use the word RAINBOW to one who knew all those colours,
but yet had never seen that phenomenon, would, by enumerating the
figure, largeness, position, and order of the colours, so well
define that word that it might be perfectly understood. But yet that
definition, how exact and perfect soever, would never make a blind
man understand it; because several of the simple ideas that make
that complex one, being such as he never received by sensation and
experience, no words are able to excite them in his mind.
14. Complex Ideas definable only when the simple ideas of which they
consist have been got from experience.
Simple ideas, as has been shown, can only be got by experience from
those objects which are proper to produce in us those perceptions. When,
by this means, we have our minds stored with them, and know the names
for them, then we are in a condition to define, and by definition to
understand, the names of complex ideas that are made up of them. But
when any term stands for a simple idea that a man has never yet had in
his mind, it is impossible by any words to make known its meaning to
him. When any term stands for an idea a man is acquainted with, but is
ignorant that that term is the sign of it, then another name of the
same idea, which he has been accustomed to, may make him understand
its meaning. But in no case whatsoever is any name of any simple idea
capable of a definition.
15. Fourthly, Names of simple Ideas of less doubtful meaning than those
of mixed modes and substances.
Fourthly, But though the names of simple ideas have not the help of
definition to determine their signification, yet that hinders not but
that they are generally less doubtful and uncertain than those of
mixed modes and substances; because they, standing only for one simple
perception, men for the most part easily and perfectly agree in their
signification; and there is little room for mistake and wrangling about
their meaning. He that knows once that whiteness is the name of that
colour he has observed in snow or milk, will not be apt to misapply that
word, as long as he retains that idea; which when he has quite lost, he
is not apt to mistake the meaning of it, but perceives he understands it
not. There is neither a multiplicity of simple ideas to be put together,
which makes the doubtfulness in the names of mixed modes; nor a
supposed, but an unknown, real essence, with properties depending
thereon, the precise number whereof is also unknown, which makes the
difficulty in the names of substances. But, on the contrary, in simple
ideas the whole signification of the name is known at once, and consists
not of parts, whereof more or less being put in, the idea may be varied,
and so the signification of name be obscure, or uncertain.
16. Simple Ideas have few Ascents in linea praedicamentali.
Fifthly, This further may be observed concerning simple Simple ideas and
their names, that they have but few ascents in linea praedicamentali,
(as they call it,) from the lowest species to the summum genus. The
reason whereof is, that the lowest species being but one simple idea,
nothing can be left out of it, that so the difference being taken away,
it may agree with some other thing in one idea common to them both;
which, having one name, is the genus of the other two: v.g. there is
nothing that can be left out of the idea of white and red to make
them agree in one common appearance, and so have one general name; as
RATIONALITY being left out of the complex idea of man, makes it agree
with brute in the more general idea and name of animal. And therefore
when, to avoid unpleasant enumerations, men would comprehend both white
and red, and several other such simple ideas, under one general name,
they have been fain to do it by a word which denotes only the way they
get into the mind. For when white, red, and yellow are all comprehended
under the genus or name colour, it signifies no more but such ideas
as are produced in the mind only by the sight, and have entrance only
through the eyes. And when they would frame yet a more general term to
comprehend both colours and sounds, and the like simple ideas, they do
it by a word that signifies all such as come into the mind only by one
sense. And so the general term QUALITY, in its ordinary acceptation,
comprehends colours, sounds, tastes, smells, and tangible qualities,
with distinction from extension, number, motion, pleasure, and pain,
which make impressions on the mind and introduce their ideas by more
senses than one.
17. Sixthly, Names of simple Ideas not arbitrary, but perfectly taken
from the existence of things.
Sixthly, The names of simple ideas, substances, and mixed modes have
also this difference: that those of MIXED MODES stand for ideas
perfectly arbitrary; those of SUBSTANCES are not perfectly so, but refer
to a pattern, though with some latitude; and those of SIMPLE IDEAS are
perfectly taken from the existence of things, and are not arbitrary at
all. Which, what difference it makes in the significations of their
names, we shall see in the following chapters.
Simple modes.
The names of SIMPLE MODES differ little from those of simple ideas.
CHAPTER V.
OF THE NAMES OF MIXED MODES AND RELATIONS.
1. Mixed modes stand for abstract Ideas, as other general Names.
The names of MIXED MODES, being general, they stand, as has been shewed,
for sorts or species of things, each of which has its peculiar essence.
The essences of these species also, as has been shewed, are nothing but
the abstract ideas in the mind, to which the name is annexed. Thus far
the names and essences of mixed modes have nothing but what is common to
them with other ideas: but if we take a little nearer survey of them, we
shall find that they have something peculiar, which perhaps may deserve
our attention.
2. First, The abstract Ideas they stand for are made by the
Understanding.
The first particularity I shall observe in them, is, that the abstract
ideas, or, if you please, the essences, of the several species of mixed
modes, are MADE BY THE UNDERSTANDING, wherein they differ from those of
simple ideas: in which sort the mind has no power to make any one, but
only receives such as are presented to it by the real existence of
things operating upon it.
3. Secondly, Made arbitrarily, and without Patterns.
In the next place, these essences of the species of mixed modes are not
only made by the mind, but MADE VERY ARBITRARILY, MADE WITHOUT PATTERNS,
OR REFERENCE TO ANY REAL EXISTENCE. Wherein they differ from those of
substances, which carry with them the supposition of some real being,
from which they are taken, and to which they are conformable. But, in
its complex ideas of mixed modes, the mind takes a liberty not to
follow the existence of things exactly. It unites and retains certain
collections, as so many distinct specific ideas; whilst others, that as
often occur in nature, and are as plainly suggested by outward things,
pass neglected, without particular names or specifications. Nor does the
mind, in these of mixed modes, as in the complex idea of substances,
examine them by the real existence of things; or verify them by patterns
containing such peculiar compositions in nature. To know whether his
idea of ADULTERY or INCEST be right, will a man seek it anywhere amongst
things existing? Or is it true because any one has been witness to such
an action? No: but it suffices here, that men have put together such a
collection into one complex idea, that makes the archetype and specific
idea; whether ever any such action were committed in rerum natura or no.
4. How this is done.
To understand this right, we must consider wherein this making of these
complex ideas consists; and that is not in the making any new idea, but
putting together those which the mind had before. Wherein the mind does
these three things: First, It chooses a certain number; Secondly, It
gives them connexion, and makes them into one idea; Thirdly, It ties
them together by a name. If we examine how the mind proceeds in these,
and what liberty it takes in them, we shall easily observe how these
essences of the species of mixed modes are the workmanship of the mind;
and, consequently, that the species themselves are of men's making.
5. Evidently arbitrary, in that the Idea is often before the Existence.
Nobody can doubt but that these ideas of mixed modes are made by a
voluntary collection of ideas, put together in the mind, independent
from any original patterns in nature, who will but reflect that this
sort of complex ideas may be made, abstracted, and have names given
them, and so a species be constituted, before any one individual of
that species ever existed. Who can doubt but the ideas of SACRILEGE or
ADULTERY might be framed in the minds of men, and have names given them,
and so these species of mixed modes be constituted, before either of
them was ever committed; and might be as well discoursed of and reasoned
about, and as certain truths discovered of them, whilst yet they had no
being but in the understanding, as well as now, that they have but too
frequently a real existence? Whereby it is plain how much the sorts of
mixed modes are the creatures of the understanding, where they have a
being as subservient to all the ends of real truth and knowledge, as
when they really exist. And we cannot doubt but law-makers have often
made laws about species of actions which were only the creatures of
their own understandings; beings that had no other existence but in
their own minds. And I think nobody can deny but that the RESURRECTION
was a species of mixed modes in the mind, before it really existed.
6. Instances: Murder, Incest, Stabbing.
To see how arbitrarily these essences of mixed modes are made by the
mind, we need but take a view of almost any of them. A little looking
into them will satisfy us, that it is the mind that combines several
scattered independent ideas into one complex one; and, by the common
name it gives them, makes them the essence of a certain species, without
regulating itself by any connexion they have in nature. For what greater
connexion in nature has the idea of a man than the idea of a sheep with
killing, that this is made a particular species of action, signified by
the word MURDER, and the other not? Or what union is there in nature
between the idea of the relation of a father with killing than that of
a son or neighbour, that those are combined into one complex idea, and
thereby made the essence of the distinct species PARRICIDE, whilst the
other makes no distinct species at all? But, though they have made
killing a man's father or mother a distinct species from killing his son
or daughter, yet, in some other cases, son and daughter are taken in
too, as well as father and mother: and they are all equally comprehended
in the same species, as in that of INCEST. Thus the mind in mixed modes
arbitrarily unites into complex ideas such as it finds convenient;
whilst others that have altogether as much union in nature are left
loose, and never combined into one idea, because they have no need of
one name. It is evident then that the mind, by its free choice, gives
a connexion to a certain number of ideas, which in nature have no more
union with one another than others that it leaves out: why else is the
part of the weapon the beginning of the wound is made with taken notice
of, to make the distinct species called STABBING, and the figure and
matter of the weapon left out? I do not say this is done without reason,
as we shall see more by and by; but this I say, that it is done by the
free choice of the mind, pursuing its own ends; and that, therefore,
these species of mixed modes are the workmanship of the understanding.
And there is nothing more evident than that, for the most part, in the
framing these ideas, the mind searches not its patterns in nature, nor
refers the ideas it makes to the real existence of things, but puts such
together as may best serve its own purposes, without tying itself to a
precise imitation of anything that really exists.
7. But still subservient to the End of Language, and not made at random.
But, though these complex ideas or essences of mixed modes depend on the
mind, and are made by it with great liberty, yet they are not made at
random, and jumbled together without any reason at all. Though these
complex ideas be not always copied from nature, yet they are always
suited to the end for which abstract ideas are made: and though they be
combinations made of ideas that are loose enough, and have as little
union in themselves as several other to which the mind never gives a
connexion that combines them into one idea; yet they are always made for
the convenience of communication, which is the chief end of language.
The use of language is, by short sounds, to signify with ease and
dispatch general conceptions; wherein not only abundance of particulars
may be contained, but also a great variety of independent ideas
collected into one complex one. In the making therefore of the species
of mixed modes, men have had regard only to such combinations as they
had occasion to mention one to another. Those they have combined into
distinct complex ideas, and given names to; whilst others, that in
nature have as near a union, are left loose and unregarded. For, to go
no further than human actions themselves, if they would make distinct
abstract ideas of all the varieties which might be observed in them, the
number must be infinite, and the memory confounded with the plenty, as
well as overcharged to little purpose. It suffices that men make and
name so many complex ideas of these mixed modes as they find they have
occasion to have names for, in the ordinary occurrence of their affairs.
If they join to the idea of killing the idea of father or mother, and
so make a distinct species from killing a man's son or neighbour, it
is because of the different heinousness of the crime, and the distinct
punishment is due to the murdering a man's father and mother, different
to what ought to be inflicted on the murder of a son or neighbour; and
therefore they find it necessary to mention it by a distinct name, which
is the end of making that distinct combination. But though the ideas of
mother and daughter are so differently treated, in reference to the idea
of killing, that the one is joined with it to make a distinct abstract
idea with a name, and so a distinct species, and the other not; yet, in
respect of carnal knowledge, they are both taken in under INCEST: and
that still for the same convenience of expressing under one name, and
reckoning of one species, such unclean mixtures as have a peculiar
turpitude beyond others; and this to avoid circumlocutions and tedious
descriptions.
8. Whereof the intranslatable Words of divers Languages are a Proof.
A moderate skill in different languages will easily satisfy one of the
truth of this, it being so obvious to observe great store of words in
one language which have not any that answer them in another. Which
plainly shows that those of one country, by their customs and manner of
life, have found occasion to make several complex ideas, and given names
to them, which others never collected into specific ideas. This could
not have happened if these species were the steady workmanship of
nature, and not collections made and abstracted by the mind, in order to
naming, and for the convenience of communication. The terms of our law,
which are not empty sounds, will hardly find words that answer them in
the Spanish or Italian, no scanty languages; much less, I think, could
any one translate them into the Caribbee or Westoe tongues: and the
VERSURA of the Romans, or CORBAN of the Jews, have no words in other
languages to answer them; the reason whereof is plain, from what has
been said. Nay, if we look a little more nearly into this matter, and
exactly compare different languages, we shall find that, though they
have words which in translations and dictionaries are supposed to answer
one another, yet there is scarce one often amongst the names of complex
ideas, especially of mixed modes, that stands for the same precise idea
which the word does that in dictionaries it is rendered by. There are
no ideas more common and less compounded than the measures of time,
extension, and weight; and the Latin names, HORA, PES, LIBRA, are
without difficulty rendered by the English names, HOUR, FOOT, and POUND:
but yet there is nothing more evident than that the ideas a Roman
annexed to these Latin names, were very far different from those which
an Englishman expresses by those English ones. And if either of these
should make use of the measures that those of the other language
designed by their names, he would be quite out in his account. These are
too sensible proofs to be doubted; and we shall find this much more so
in the names of more abstract and compounded ideas, such as are the
greatest part of those which make up moral discourses: whose names, when
men come curiously to compare with those they are translated into, in
other languages, they will find very few of them exactly to correspond
in the whole extent of their significations.
9. This shows Species to be made for Communication.
The reason why I take so particular notice of this is, that we may not
be mistaken about GENERA and SPECIES, and their ESSENCES, as if they
were things regularly and constantly made by nature, and had a real
existence in things; when they appear, upon a more wary survey, to
be nothing else but an artifice of the understanding, for the easier
signifying such collections of ideas as it should often have occasion to
communicate by one general term; under which divers particulars, as far
forth as they agreed to that abstract idea, might be comprehended. And
if the doubtful signification of the word SPECIES may make it sound
harsh to some, that I say the species of mixed modes are 'made by the
understanding'; yet, I think, it can by nobody be denied that it is the
mind makes those abstract complex ideas to which specific names are
given. And if it be true, as it is, that the mind makes the patterns for
sorting and naming of things, I leave it to be considered who makes the
boundaries of the sort or species; since with me SPECIES and SORT have
no other difference than that of a Latin and English idiom.
10. In mixed Modes it is the Name that ties the Combination of simple
ideas together, and makes it a Species.
The near relation that there is between SPECIES, ESSENCES, and their
GENERAL NAME, at least in mixed modes, will further appear when we
consider, that it is the name that seems to preserve those essences, and
give them their lasting duration. For, the connexion between the loose
parts of those complex ideas being made by the mind, this union, which
has no particular foundation in nature, would cease again, were there
not something that did, as it were, hold it together, and keep the parts
from scattering. Though therefore it be the mind that makes the
collection, it is the name which is as it were the knot that ties them
fast together. What a vast variety of different ideas does the word
TRIUMPHUS hold together, and deliver to us as one species! Had this name
been never made, or quite lost, we might, no doubt, have had
descriptions of what passed in that solemnity: but yet, I think, that
which holds those different parts together, in the unity of one complex
idea, is that very word annexed to it; without which the several parts
of that would no more be thought to make one thing, than any other show,
which having never been made but once, had never been united into one
complex idea, under one denomination. How much, therefore, in mixed
modes, the unity necessary to any essence depends on the mind; and how
much the continuation and fixing of that unity depends on the name in
common use annexed to it, I leave to be considered by those who look
upon essences and species as real established things in nature.
11.
Suitable to this, we find that men speaking of mixed modes, seldom
imagine or take any other for species of them, but such as are set out
by name: because they, being of man's making only, in order to naming,
no such species are taken notice of, or supposed to be, unless a name be
joined to it, as the sign of man's having combined into one idea several
loose ones; and by that name giving a lasting union to the parts which
would otherwise cease to have any, as soon as the mind laid by that
abstract idea, and ceased actually to think on it. But when a name
is once annexed to it, wherein the parts of that complex idea have
a settled and permanent union, then is the essence, as it were,
established, and the species looked on as complete. For to what purpose
should the memory charge itself with such compositions, unless it were
by abstraction to make them general? And to what purpose make them
general, unless it were that they might have general names for the
convenience of discourse and communication? Thus we see, that killing a
man with a sword or a hatchet are looked on as no distinct species of
action; but if the point of the sword first enter the body, it passes
for a distinct species, where it has a distinct name, as in England, in
whose language it is called STABBING: but in another country, where it
has not happened to be specified under a peculiar name, it passes not
for a distinct species. But in the species of corporeal substances,
though it be the mind that makes the nominal essence, yet, since those
ideas which are combined in it are supposed to have an union in nature
whether the mind joins them or not, therefore those are looked on as
distinct species, without any operation of the mind, either abstracting,
or giving a name to that complex idea.
12. For the Originals of our mixed Modes, we look no further than the
Mind; which also shows them to be the Workmanship of the Understanding.
Conformable also to what has been said concerning the essences of the
species of mixed modes, that they are the creatures of the understanding
rather than the works of nature; conformable, I say, to this, we find
that their names lead our thoughts to the mind, and no further. When we
speak of JUSTICE, or GRATITUDE, we frame to ourselves no imagination of
anything existing, which we would conceive; but our thoughts terminate
in the abstract ideas of those virtues, and look not further; as they do
when we speak of a HORSE, or IRON, whose specific ideas we consider not
as barely in the mind, but as in things themselves, which afford the
original patterns of those ideas. But in mixed modes, at least the most
considerable parts of them, which are moral beings, we consider the
original patterns as being in the mind, and to those we refer for the
distinguishing of particular beings under names. And hence I think it
is that these essences of the species of mixed modes are by a more
particular name called NOTIONS; as, by a peculiar right, appertaining to
the understanding.
13. Their being made by the Understanding without Patterns, shows the
Reason why they are so compounded.
Hence, likewise, we may learn why the complex ideas of mixed modes
are commonly more compounded and decompounded than those of natural
substances. Because they being the workmanship of the understanding,
pursuing only its own ends, and the conveniency of expressing in short
those ideas it would make known to another, it does with great liberty
unite often into one abstract idea things that, in their nature, have
no coherence; and so under one term bundle together a great variety of
compounded and decompounded ideas. Thus the name of PROCESSION: what a
great mixture of independent ideas of persons, habits, tapers, orders,
motions, sounds, does it contain in that complex one, which the mind of
man has arbitrarily put together, to express by that one name? Whereas
the complex ideas of the sorts of substances are usually made up of only
a small number of simple ones; and in the species of animals, these two,
viz. shape and voice, commonly make the whole nominal essence.
14. Names of mixed Modes stand alway for their real Essences, which are
the workmanship of our minds.
Another thing we may observe from what has been said is, That the
names of mixed modes always signify (when they have any determined
signification) the REAL essences of their species. For, these abstract
ideas being the workmanship of the mind, and not referred to the real
existence of things, there is no supposition of anything more signified
by that name, but barely that complex idea the mind itself has formed;
which is all it would have expressed by it; and is that on which all the
properties of the species depend, and from which alone they all flow:
and so in these the real and nominal essence is the same; which, of what
concernment it is to the certain knowledge of general truth, we shall
see hereafter.
15. Why their Names are usually got before their Ideas.
This also may show us the reason why for the most part the names of
mixed modes are got before the ideas they stand for are perfectly known.
Because there being no species of these ordinarily taken notice of but
what have names, and those species, or rather their essences, being
abstract complex ideas, made arbitrarily by the mind, it is convenient,
if not necessary, to know the names, before one endeavour to frame
these complex ideas: unless a man will fill his head with a company
of abstract complex ideas, which, others having no names for, he has
nothing to do with, but to lay by and forget again. I confess that, in
the beginning of languages, it was necessary to have the idea before one
gave it the name: and so it is still, where, making a new complex idea,
one also, by giving it a new name, makes a new word. But this concerns
not languages made, which have generally pretty well provided for ideas
which men have frequent occasion to have and communicate; and in such, I
ask whether it be not the ordinary method, that children learn the names
of mixed modes before they have their ideas? What one of a thousand ever
frames the abstract ideas of GLORY and AMBITION, before he has heard the
names of them? In simple ideas and substances I grant it is otherwise;
which, being such ideas as have a real existence and union in nature,
the ideas and names are got one before the other, as it happens.
16. Reason of my being so large on this Subject.
What has been said here of MIXED MODES is, with very little difference,
applicable also to RELATIONS; which, since every man himself may
observe, I may spare myself the pains to enlarge on: especially, since
what I have here said concerning Words in this third Book, will possibly
be thought by some to this be much more than what so slight a subject
required. I allow it might be brought into a narrower compass; but I was
willing to stay my reader on an argument that appears to me new and a
little out of the way, (I am sure it is one I thought not of when I
began to write,) that, by searching it to the bottom, and turning it on
every side, some part or other might meet with every one's thoughts, and
give occasion to the most averse or negligent to reflect on a general
miscarriage, which, though of great consequence, is little taken notice
of. When it is considered what a pudder is made about ESSENCES, and how
much all sorts of knowledge, discourse, and conversation are pestered
and disordered by the careless and confused use and application of
words, it will perhaps be thought worth while thoroughly to lay it open.
And I shall be pardoned if I have dwelt long on an argument which I
think, therefore, needs to be inculcated, because the faults men are
usually guilty of in this kind, are not only the greatest hindrances of
true knowledge, but are so well thought of as to pass for it. Men would
often see what a small pittance of reason and truth, or possibly none at
all, is mixed with those huffing opinions they are swelled with; if they
would but look beyond fashionable sounds, and observe what IDEAS are or
are not comprehended under those words with which they are so armed at
all points, and with which they so confidently lay about them. I shall
imagine I have done some service to truth, peace, and learning, if, by
any enlargement on this subject, I can make men reflect on their own use
of language; and give them reason to suspect, that, since it is frequent
for others, it may also be possible for them, to have sometimes very
good and approved words in their mouths and writings, with very
uncertain, little, or no signification. And therefore it is not
unreasonable for them to be wary herein themselves, and not to be
unwilling to have them examined by others. With this design, therefore,
I shall go on with what I have further to say concerning this matter.
CHAPTER VI.
OF THE NAMES OF SUBSTANCES.
1. The common Names of Substances stand for Sorts.
The common names of substances, as well as other general terms, stand
for SORTS: which is nothing else but the being made signs of such
complex ideas wherein several particular substances do or might agree,
by virtue of which they are capable of being comprehended in one common
conception, and signified by one name. I say do or might agree: for
though there be but one sun existing in the world, yet the idea of it
being abstracted, so that more substances (if there were several) might
each agree in it, it is as much a sort as if there were as many suns as
there are stars. They want not their reasons who think there are, and
that each fixed star would answer the idea the name sun stands for, to
one who was placed in a due distance: which, by the way, may show us how
much the sorts, or, if you please, GENERA and SPECIES of things (for
those Latin terms signify to me no more than the English word sort)
depend on such collections of ideas as men have made, and not on the
real nature of things; since it is not impossible but that, in propriety
of speech, that might be a sun to one which is a star to another.
2. The Essence of each Sort of substance is our abstract Idea to which
the name is annexed.
The measure and boundary of each sort or species, whereby it is
constituted that particular sort, and distinguished from others, is that
we call its ESSENCE, which is nothing but that abstract idea to which
the name is annexed; so that everything contained in that idea is
essential to that sort. This, though it be all the essence of natural
substances that WE know, or by which we distinguish them into sorts, yet
I call it by a peculiar name, the NOMINAL ESSENCE, to distinguish it
from the real constitution of substances, upon which depends this
nominal essence, and all the properties of that sort; which, therefore,
as has been said, may be called the REAL ESSENCE: v.g. the nominal
essence of gold is that complex idea the word gold stands for, let
it be, for instance, a body yellow, of a certain weight, malleable,
fusible, and fixed. But the real essence is the constitution of the
insensible parts of that body, on which those qualities and all the
other properties of gold depend. How far these two are different, though
they are both called essence, is obvious at first sight to discover.
3. The nominal and real Essence different.
For, though perhaps voluntary motion, with sense and reason, joined to a
body of a certain shape, be the complex idea to which I and others annex
the name MAN, and so be the nominal essence of the species so called:
yet nobody will say that complex idea is the real essence and source of
all those operations which are to be found in any individual of that
sort. The foundation of all those qualities which are the ingredients
of our complex idea, is something quite different: and had we such a
knowledge of that constitution of man; from which his faculties of
moving, sensation, and reasoning, and other powers flow, and on which
his so regular shape depends, as it is possible angels have, and it is
certain his Maker has, we should have a quite other idea of his essence
than what now is contained in our definition of that species, be it what
it will: and our idea of any individual man would be as far different
from what it is now, as is his who knows all the springs and wheels and
other contrivances within of the famous clock at Strasburg, from that
which a gazing countryman has of it, who barely sees the motion of the
hand, and hears the clock strike, and observes only some of the outward
appearances.
4. Nothing essential to Individuals.
That ESSENCE, in the ordinary use of the word, relates to sorts, and
that it is considered in particular beings no further than as they are
ranked into sorts, appears from hence: that, take but away the abstract
ideas by which we sort individuals, and rank them under common names,
and then the thought of anything essential to any of them instantly
vanishes: we have no notion of the one without the other, which plainly
shows their relation. It is necessary for me to be as I am; God and
nature has made me so: but there is nothing I have is essential to me.
An accident or disease may very much alter my colour or shape; a fever
or fall may take away my reason or memory, or both; and an apoplexy
leave neither sense, nor understanding, no, nor life. Other creatures of
my shape may be made with more and better, or fewer and worse faculties
than I have; and others may have reason and sense in a shape and body
very different from mine. None of these are essential to the one or the
other, or to any individual whatever, till the mind refers it to some
sort or species of things; and then presently, according to the abstract
idea of that sort, something is found essential. Let any one examine his
own thoughts, and he will find that as soon as he supposes or speaks
of essential, the consideration of some species, or the complex idea
signified by some general name, comes into his mind; and it is in
reference to that that this or that quality is said to be essential.
So that if it be asked, whether it be essential to me or any other
particular corporeal being, to have reason? I say, no; no more than it
is essential to this white thing I write on to have words in it. But if
that particular being be to be counted of the sort MAN, and to have the
name MAN given it, then reason is essential to it; supposing reason
to be a part of the complex idea the name man stands for: as it is
essential to this thing I write on to contain words, if I will give it
the name TREATISE, and rank it under that species. So that essential and
not essential relate only to our abstract ideas, and the names annexed
to them; which amounts to no more than this, That whatever particular
thing has not in it those qualities which are contained in the abstract
idea which any general term stands for, cannot be ranked under that
species, nor be called by that name; since that abstract idea is the
very essence of that species.
5. The only essences perceived by us in individual substances are those
qualities which entitle them to receive their names.
Thus, if the idea of BODY with some people be bare extension or space,
then solidity is not essential to body: if others make the idea to which
they give the name BODY to be solidity and extension, then solidity is
essential to body. That therefore, and that alone, is considered as
essential, which makes a part of the complex idea the name of a sort
stands for; without which no particular thing can be reckoned of that
sort, nor be entitled to that name. Should there be found a parcel of
matter that had all the other qualities that are in iron, but wanted
obedience to the loadstone, and would neither be drawn by it nor receive
direction from it, would any one question whether it wanted anything
essential? It would be absurd to ask, Whether a thing really existing
wanted anything essential to it. Or could it be demanded, Whether this
made an essential or specific difference or no, since WE have no other
measure of essential or specific but our abstract ideas? And to talk of
specific differences in NATURE, without reference to general ideas in
names, is to talk unintelligibly. For I would ask any one, What is
sufficient to make an essential difference in nature between any two
particular beings, without any regard had to some abstract idea, which
is looked upon as the essence and standard of a species? All such
patterns and standards being quite laid aside, particular beings,
considered barely in themselves, will be found to have all their
qualities equally essential; and everything in each individual will be
essential to it; or, which is more, nothing at all. For, though it may
be reasonable to ask, Whether obeying the magnet be essential to iron?
yet I think it is very improper and insignificant to ask, whether it be
essential to the particular parcel of matter I cut my pen with; without
considering it under the name IRON, or as being of a certain species.
And if, as has been said, our abstract ideas, which have names annexed
to them, are the boundaries of species, nothing can be essential but
what is contained in those ideas.
6. Even the real essences of individual substances imply potential
sorts.
It is true, I have often mentioned a REAL ESSENCE, distinct in
substances from those abstract ideas of them, which I call their
nominal essence. By this real essence I mean, that real constitution
of anything, which is the foundation of all those properties that are
combined in, and are constantly found to co-exist with the nominal
essence; that particular constitution which everything has within
itself, without any relation to anything without it. But essence, even
in this sense, RELATES TO A SORT, AND SUPPOSES A SPECIES. For, being
that real constitution on which the properties depend, it necessarily
supposes a sort of things, properties belonging only to species, and not
to individuals: v. g. supposing the nominal essence of gold to be a body
of such a peculiar colour and weight, with malleability and fusibility,
the real essence is that constitution of the parts of matter on which
these qualities and their union depend; and is also the foundation of
its solubility in aqua regia and other properties, accompanying that
complex idea. Here are essences and properties, but all upon supposition
of a sort or general abstract idea, which is considered as immutable;
but there is no individual parcel of matter to which any of these
qualities are so annexed as to be essential to it or inseparable from
it. That which is essential belongs to it as a condition whereby it
is of this or that sort: but take away the consideration of its being
ranked under the name of some abstract idea, and then there is nothing
necessary to it, nothing inseparable from it. Indeed, as to the real
essences of substances, we only suppose their being, without precisely
knowing what they are; but that which annexes them still to the species
is the nominal essence, of which they are the supposed foundation and
cause.
7. The nominal Essence bounds the Species to us.
The next thing to be considered is, by which of those essences it is
that substances are determined into sorts or species; and that, it is
evident, is by the nominal essence. For it is that alone that the name,
which is the mark of the sort, signifies. It is impossible, therefore,
that anything should determine the sorts of things, which WE rank under
general names, but that idea which that name is designed as a mark for;
which is that, as has been shown, which we call nominal essence. Why
do we say this is a horse, and that a mule; this is an animal, that an
herb? How comes any particular thing to be of this or that sort, but
because it has that nominal essence; or, which is all one, agrees to
that abstract idea, that name is annexed to? And I desire any one but
to reflect on his own thoughts, when he hears or speaks any of those or
other names of substances, to know what sort of essences they stand for.
8. The nature of Species as formed by us.
And that the species of things to us are nothing but the ranking them
under distinct names, according to the complex ideas in US, and not
according to precise, distinct, real essences in THEM, is plain from
hence:--That we find many of the individuals that are ranked into
one sort, called by one common name, and so received as being of one
species, have yet qualities, depending on their real constitutions,
as far different one from another as from others from which they are
accounted to differ specifically. This, as it is easy to be observed
by all who have to do with natural bodies, so chemists especially are
often, by sad experience, convinced of it, when they, sometimes in vain,
seek for the same qualities in one parcel of sulphur, antimony, or
vitriol, which they have found in others. For, though they are bodies of
the same species, having the same nominal essence, under the same name,
yet do they often, upon severe ways of examination, betray qualities so
different one from another, as to frustrate the expectation and labour
of very wary chemists. But if things were distinguished into species,
according to their real essences, it would be as impossible to find
different properties in any two individual substances of the same
species, as it is to find different properties in two circles, or
two equilateral triangles. That is properly the essence to US, which
determines every particular to this or that CLASSIS; or, which is the
same thing, to this or that general name: and what can that be else, but
that abstract idea to which that name is annexed; and so has, in truth,
a reference, not so much to the being of particular things, as to their
general denominations?
9. Not the real Essence, or texture of parts, which we know not.
Nor indeed can we rank and sort things, and consequently (which is the
end of sorting) denominate them, by their real essences; because we know
them not. Our faculties carry us no further towards the knowledge and
distinction of substances, than a collection of THOSE SENSIBLE IDEAS
WHICH WE OBSERVE IN THEM; which, however made with the greatest
diligence and exactness we are capable of, yet is more remote from the
true internal constitution from which those qualities flow, than, as I
said, a countryman's idea is from the inward contrivance of that famous
clock at Strasburg, whereof he only sees the outward figure and motions.
There is not so contemptible a plant or animal, that does not confound
the most enlarged understanding. Though the familiar use of things about
us take off our wonder, yet it cures not our ignorance. When we come
to examine the stones we tread on, or the iron we daily handle, we
presently find we know not their make; and can give no reason of
the different qualities we find in them. It is evident the internal
constitution, whereon their properties depend, is unknown to us: for to
go no further than the grossest and most obvious we can imagine amongst
them, What is that texture of parts, that real essence, that makes lead
and antimony fusible, wood and stones not? What makes lead and iron
malleable, antimony and stones not? And yet how infinitely these come
short of the fine contrivances and inconceivable real essences of
plants or animals, every one knows. The workmanship of the all-wise
and powerful God in the great fabric of the universe, and every part
thereof, further exceeds the capacity and comprehension of the most
inquisitive and intelligent man, than the best contrivance of the most
ingenious man doth the conceptions of the most ignorant of rational
creatures. Therefore we in vain pretend to range things into sorts, and
dispose them into certain classes under names, by their real essences,
that are so far from our discovery or comprehension. A blind man may as
soon sort things by their colours, and he that has lost his smell as
well distinguish a lily and a rose by their odours, as by those internal
constitutions which he knows not. He that thinks he can distinguish
sheep and goats by their real essences, that are unknown to him, may
be pleased to try his skill in those species called CASSIOWARY and
QUERECHINCHIO; and by their internal real essences determine the
boundaries of those species, without knowing the complex idea of
sensible qualities that each of those names stand for, in the countries
where those animals are to be found.
10. Not the substantial Form, which know Not.
Those, therefore, who have been taught that the several species of
substances had their distinct internal SUBSTANTIAL FORMS, and that it
was those FORMS which made the distinction of substances into their true
species and genera, were led yet further out of the way by having their
minds set upon fruitless inquiries after 'substantial forms'; wholly
unintelligible, and whereof we have scarce so much as any obscure or
confused conception in general.
11. That the Nominal Essence is that only whereby we distinguish Species
of Substances, further evident, from our ideas of finite Spirits and of
God.
That our ranking and distinguishing natural substances into species
consists in the nominal essences the mind makes, and not in the real
essences to be found in the things themselves, is further evident from
our ideas of spirits. For the mind getting, only by reflecting on its
own operations, those simple ideas which it attributes to spirits, it
hath or can have no other notion of spirit but by attributing all those
operations it finds in itself to a sort of beings; without consideration
of matter. And even the most advanced notion we have of GOD is but
attributing the same simple ideas which we have got from reflection on
what we find in ourselves, and which we conceive to have more perfection
in them than would be in their absence; attributing, I say, those simple
ideas to Him in an unlimited degree. Thus, having got from reflecting on
ourselves the idea of existence, knowledge, power and pleasure--each of
which we find it better to have than to want; and the more we have of
each the better--joining all these together, with infinity to each of
them, we have the complex idea of an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent,
infinitely wise and happy being. And though we are told that there are
different species of angels; yet we know not how to frame distinct
specific ideas of them: not out of any conceit that the existence of
more species than one of spirits is impossible; but because having no
more simple ideas (nor being able to frame more) applicable to such
beings, but only those few taken from ourselves, and from the actions of
our own minds in thinking, and being delighted, and moving several parts
of our bodies; we can no otherwise distinguish in our conceptions the
several species of spirits, one from another, but by attributing those
operations and powers we find in ourselves to them in a higher or lower
degree; and so have no very distinct specific ideas of spirits, except
only of GOD, to whom we attribute both duration and all those other
ideas with infinity; to the other spirits, with limitation: nor, as
I humbly conceive, do we, between GOD and them in our ideas, put any
difference, by any number of simple ideas which we have of one and not
of the other, but only that of infinity. All the particular ideas of
existence, knowledge, will, power, and motion, &c., being ideas derived
from the operations of our minds, we attribute all of them to all sorts
of spirits, with the difference only of degrees; to the utmost we can
imagine, even infinity, when we would frame as well as we can an idea of
the First Being; who yet, it is certain, is infinitely more remote, in
the real excellency of his nature, from the highest and perfectest of
all created beings, than the greatest man, nay, purest seraph, is from
the most contemptible part of matter; and consequently must infinitely
exceed what our narrow understandings can conceive of Him.
12. Of finite Spirits there are probably numberless Species in a
continuous series of gradations.
It is not impossible to conceive, nor repugnant to reason, that there
may be many species of spirits, as much separated and diversified one
from another by distinct properties whereof we have no ideas, as the
species of sensible things are distinguished one from another by
qualities which we know and observe in them. That there should be more
species of intelligent creatures above us, than there are of sensible
and material below us, is probable to me from hence: that in all the
visible corporeal world, we see no chasms or gaps. All quite down from
us the descent is by easy steps, and a continued series of things, that
in each remove differ very little one from the other. There are fishes
that have wings, and are not strangers to the airy region: and there are
some birds that are inhabitants of the water, whose blood is cold as
fishes, and their flesh so like in taste that the scrupulous are allowed
them on fish-days. There are animals so near of kin both to birds and
beasts that they are in the middle between both: amphibious animals link
the terrestrial and aquatic together; seals live at land and sea, and
porpoises have the warm blood and entrails of a hog; not to mention what
is confidently reported of mermaids, or sea-men. There are some brutes
that seem to have as much knowledge and reason as some that are called
men: and the animal and vegetable kingdoms are so nearly joined, that,
if you will take the lowest of one and the highest of the other, there
will scarce be perceived any great difference between them: and so on,
till we come to the lowest and the most inorganical parts of matter, we
shall find everywhere that the several species are linked together,
and differ but in almost insensible degrees. And when we consider the
infinite power and wisdom of the Maker, we have reason to think that it
is suitable to the magnificent harmony of the universe, and the great
design and infinite goodness of the Architect, that the species of
creatures should also, by gentle degrees, ascend upward from us toward
his infinite perfection, as we see they gradually descend from us
downwards: which if it be probable, we have reason then to be persuaded
that there are far more species of creatures above us than there are
beneath; we being, in degrees of perfection, much more remote from the
infinite being of God than we are from the lowest state of being, and
that which approaches nearest to nothing. And yet of all those distinct
species, for the reasons abovesaid, we have no clear distinct ideas.
13. The Nominal Essence that of the Species, as conceived by us, proved
from Water and Ice.
But to return to the species of corporeal substances. If I should ask
any one whether ice and water were two distinct species of things, I
doubt not but I should be answered in the affirmative: and it cannot be
denied but he that says they are two distinct species is in the right.
But if an Englishman bred in Jamaica, who perhaps had never seen nor
heard of ice, coming into England in the winter, find the water he put
in his basin at night in a great part frozen in the morning, and, not
knowing any peculiar name it had, should call it hardened water; I ask
whether this would be a new species to him, different from water? And I
think it would be answered here, It would not be to him a new species,
no more than congealed jelly, when it is cold, is a distinct species
from the same jelly fluid and warm; or than liquid gold in the furnace
is a distinct species from hard gold in the hands of a workman. And
if this be so, it is plain that OUR DISTINCT SPECIES are NOTHING BUT
DISTINCT COMPLEX IDEAS, WITH DISTINCT NAMES ANNEXED TO THEM. It is true
every substance that exists has its peculiar constitution, whereon
depend those sensible qualities and powers we observe in it; but the
ranking of things into species (which is nothing but sorting them under
several titles) is done by us according to the ideas that WE have of
them: which, though sufficient to distinguish them by names, so that we
may be able to discourse of them when we have them not present
before us; yet if we suppose it to be done by their real internal
constitutions, and that things existing are distinguished by nature into
species, by real essences, according as we distinguish them into species
by names, we shall be liable to great mistakes.
14. Difficulties in the supposition of a certain number of real Essences
To distinguish substantial beings into species, according to the usual
supposition, that there are certain precise essences or forms of things,
whereby all the individuals existing are, by nature distinguished into
species, these things are necessary:--
15. A crude supposition.
First, To be assured that nature, in the production of things, always
designs them to partake of certain regulated established essences, which
are to be the models of all things to be produced. This, in that crude
sense it is usually proposed, would need some better explication, before
it can fully be assented to.
16. Monstrous births.
Secondly, It would be necessary to know whether nature always attains
that essence it designs in the production of things. The irregular and
monstrous births, that in divers sorts of animals have been observed,
will always give us reason to doubt of one or both of these.
17. Are monsters really a distinct species?
Thirdly, It ought to be determined whether those we call monsters be
really a distinct species, according to the scholastic notion of the
word species; since it is certain that everything that exists has its
particular constitution. And yet we find that some of these monstrous
productions have few or none of those qualities which are supposed to
result from, and accompany, the essence of that species from whence they
derive their originals, and to which, by their descent, they seem to
belong.
18. Men can have no ideas of Real Essences.
Fourthly, The real essences of those things which we distinguish into
species, and as so distinguished we name, ought to be known; i.e. we
ought to have ideas of them. But since we are ignorant in these four
points, the supposed real essences of things stand US not in stead for
the distinguishing substances into species.
19. Our Nominal Essences of Substances not perfect collections of the
properties that flow from the Real Essence.
Fifthly, The only imaginable help in this case would be, that, having
framed perfect complex ideas of the properties of things flowing from
their different real essences, we should thereby distinguish them into
species. But neither can this be done. For, being ignorant of the real
essence itself, it is impossible to know all those properties that flow
from it, and are so annexed to it, that any one of them being away, we
may certainly conclude that that essence is not there, and so the thing
is not of that species. We can never know what is the precise number of
properties depending on the real essence of gold, any one of which
failing, the real essence of gold, and consequently gold, would not be
there, unless we knew the real essence of gold itself, and by that
determined that species. By the word GOLD here, I must be understood to
design a particular piece of matter; v. g. the last guinea that was
coined. For, if it should stand here, in its ordinary signification, for
that complex idea which I or any one else calls gold, i. e. for the
nominal essence of gold, it would be jargon. So hard is it to show the
various meaning and imperfection of words, when we have nothing else but
words to do it by.
20. Hence names independent of Real Essence.
By all which it is clear, that our distinguishing substances into
species by names, is not at all founded on their real essences; nor can
we pretend to range and determine them exactly into species, according
to internal essential differences.
21. But stand for such collections of simple ideas as we have made the
Name stand for.
But since, as has been remarked, we have need of GENERAL words, though
we know not the real essences of things; all we can do is, to collect
such a number of simple ideas as, by examination, we find to be united
together in things existing, and thereof to make one complex idea.
Which, though it be not the real essence of any substance that exists,
is yet the specific essence to which our name belongs, and is
convertible with it; by which we may at least try the truth of these
nominal essences. For example: there be that say that the essence of
body is EXTENSION; if it be so, we can never mistake in putting the
essence of anything for the thing itself. Let us then in discourse put
extension for body, and when we would say that body moves, let us say
that extension moves, and see how ill it will look. He that should say
that one extension by impulse moves another extension, would, by the
bare expression, sufficiently show the absurdity of such a notion. The
essence of anything in respect of us, is the whole complex idea
comprehended and marked by that name; and in substances, besides the
several distinct simple ideas that make them up, the confused one of
substance, or of an unknown support and cause of their union, is always
a part: and therefore the essence of body is not bare extension, but an
extended solid thing; and so to say, an extended solid thing moves, or
impels another, is all one, and as intelligible, as to say, BODY moves
or impels. Likewise, to say that a rational animal is capable of
conversation, is all one as to say a man; but no one will say that
rationality is capable of conversation, because it makes not the whole
essence to which we give the name man.
22. Our Abstract Ideas are to us the Measures of the Species we make in
instance in that of Man.
There are creatures in the world that have shapes like ours, but are
hairy, and want language and reason. There are naturals amongst us that
have perfectly our shape, but want reason, and some of them language
too. There are creatures, as it is said, (sit fides penes authorem, but
there appears no contradiction that there should be such,) that, with
language and reason and a shape in other things agreeing with ours, have
hairy tails; others where the males have no beards, and others where
the females have. If it be asked whether these be all men or no, all
of human species? it is plain, the question refers only to the nominal
essence: for those of them to whom the definition of the word man, or
the complex idea signified by that name, agrees, are men, and the other
not. But if the inquiry be made concerning the supposed real essence;
and whether the internal constitution and frame of these several
creatures be specifically different, it is wholly impossible for us
to answer, no part of that going into our specific idea: only we have
reason to think, that where the faculties or outward frame so much
differs, the internal constitution is not exactly the same. But what
difference in the real internal constitution makes a specific difference
it is in vain to inquire; whilst our measures of species be, as they
are, only our abstract ideas, which we know; and not that internal
constitution, which makes no part of them. Shall the difference of hair
only on the skin be a mark of a different internal specific constitution
between a changeling and a drill, when they agree in shape, and want of
reason and speech? And shall not the want of reason and speech be a sign
to us of different real constitutions and species between a changeling
and a reasonable man? And so of the rest, if we pretend that distinction
of species or sorts is fixedly established by the real frame and secret
constitutions of things.
23. Species in Animals not distinguished by Generation.
Nor let any one say, that the power of propagation in animals by the
mixture of male and female, and in plants by seeds, keeps the supposed
real species distinct and entire, For, granting this to be true, it
would help us in the distinction of the species of things no further
than the tribes of animals and vegetables. What must we do for the rest?
But in those too it is not sufficient: for if history lie not, women
have conceived by drills; and what real species, by that measure, such a
production will be in nature will be a new question: and we have reason
to think this is not impossible, since mules and jumarts, the one from
the mixture of an ass and a mare, the other from the mixture of a bull
and a mare, are so frequent in the world. I once saw a creature that was
the issue of a cat and a rat, and had the plain marks of both about it;
wherein nature appeared to have followed the pattern of neither sort
alone, but to have jumbled them both together. To which he that shall
add the monstrous productions that are so frequently to be met with in
nature, will find it hard, even in the race of animals, to determine by
the pedigree of what species every animal's issue is; and be at a
loss about the real essence, which he thinks certainly conveyed by
generation, and has alone a right to the specific name. But further,
if the species of animals and plants are to be distinguished only by
propagation, must I go to the Indies to see the sire and dam of the one,
and the plant from which the seed was gathered that produced the other,
to know whether this be a tiger or that tea?
24. Not by substantial Forms.
Upon the whole matter, it is evident that it is their own collections of
sensible qualities that men make the essences of THEIR several sorts of
substances; and that their real internal structures are not considered
by the greatest part of men in the sorting them. Much less were any
SUBSTANTIAL FORMS ever thought on by any but those who have in this one
part of the world learned the language of the schools: and yet those
ignorant men, who pretend not any insight into the real essences, nor
trouble themselves about substantial forms, but are content with knowing
things one from another by their sensible qualities, are often better
acquainted with their differences; can more nicely distinguish them
from their uses; and better know what they expect from each, than those
learned quick-sighted men, who look so deep into them, and talk so
confidently of something more hidden and essential.
25. The specific Essences that are common made by Men.
But supposing that the REAL essences of substances were discoverable by
those that would severely apply themselves to that inquiry, yet we could
not reasonably think that the ranking of things under general names was
regulated by those internal real constitutions, or anything else but
their OBVIOUS appearances; since languages, in all countries, have
been established long before sciences. So that they have not been
philosophers or logicians, or such who have troubled themselves about
forms and essences, that have made the general names that are in use
amongst the several nations of men: but those more or less comprehensive
terms have, for the most part, in all languages, received their birth
and signification from ignorant and illiterate people, who sorted
and denominated things by those sensible qualities they found in them;
thereby to signify them, when absent, to others, whether they had an
occasion to mention a sort or a particular thing.
26. Therefore very various and uncertain in the ideas of different men.
Since then it is evident that we sort and name substances by their
nominal and not by their real essences, the next thing to be considered
is how, and by whom these essences come to be made. As to the latter, it
is evident they are made by the mind, and not by nature: for were they
Nature's workmanship, they could not be so various and different in
several men as experience tells us they are. For if we will examine it,
we shall not find the nominal essence of any one species of substances
in all men the same: no, not of that which of all others we are the most
intimately acquainted with. It could not possibly be that the abstract
idea to which the name MAN is given should be different in several men,
if it were of Nature's making; and that to one it should be animal
rationale, and to another, animal implume bipes latis unguibus. He that
annexes the name man to a complex idea, made up of sense and spontaneous
motion, joined to a body of such a shape, has thereby one essence of the
species man; and he that, upon further examination, adds rationality,
has another essence of the species he calls man: by which means the same
individual will be a true man to the one which is not so to the other.
I think there is scarce any one will allow this upright figure, so well
known, to be the essential difference of the species man; and yet how
far men determine of the sorts of animals rather by their shape than
descent, is very visible; since it has been more than once debated,
whether several human foetuses should be preserved or received to
baptism or no, only because of the difference of their outward
configuration from the ordinary make of children, without knowing
whether they were not as capable of reason as infants cast in another
mould: some whereof, though of an approved shape, are never capable of
as much appearance of reason all their lives as is to be found in an
ape, or an elephant, and never give any signs of being acted by a
rational soul. Whereby it is evident, that the outward figure, which
only was found wanting, and not the faculty of reason, which nobody
could know would be wanting in its due season, was made essential to the
human species. The learned divine and lawyer must, on such occasions,
renounce his sacred definition of animal rationale, and substitute some
other essence of the human species. [Monsieur Menage furnishes us with
an example worth the taking notice of on this occasion: 'When the abbot
of Saint Martin,' says he, 'was born, he had so little of the figure of
a man, that it bespake him rather a monster. It was for some time under
deliberation, whether he should be baptized or no. However, he was
baptized, and declared a man provisionally [till time should show what
he would prove]. Nature had moulded him so untowardly, that he was
called all his life the Abbot Malotru; i.e. ill-shaped. He was of Caen.
(Menagiana, 278, 430.) This child, we see, was very near being excluded
out of the species of man, barely by his shape. He escaped very narrowly
as he was; and it is certain, a figure a little more oddly turned had
cast him, and he had been executed, as a thing not to be allowed to pass
for a man. And yet there can be no reason given why, if the lineaments
of his face had been a little altered, a rational soul could not have
been lodged in him; why a visage somewhat longer, or a nose flatter, or
a wider mouth, could not have consisted, as well as the rest of his ill
figure, with such a soul, such parts, as made him, disfigured as he was,
capable to be a dignitary in the church.]
27. Nominal Essences of particular substances are undetermined by
nature, and therefore various as men vary.
Wherein, then, would I gladly know, consist the precise and unmovable
boundaries of that species? It is plain, if we examine, there is no
such thing made by Nature, and established by her amongst men. The real
essence of that or any other sort of substances, it is evident, we know
not; and therefore are so undetermined in our nominal essences, which we
make ourselves, that, if several men were to be asked concerning some
oddly-shaped foetus, as soon as born, whether it were a man or no, it
is past doubt one should meet with different answers. Which could not
happen, if the nominal essences, whereby we limit and distinguish the
species of substances, were not made by man with some liberty; but
were exactly copied from precise boundaries set by nature, whereby it
distinguished all substances into certain species. Who would undertake
to resolve what species that monster was of which is mentioned by
Licetus (lib. i. c. 3), with a man's head and hog's body? Or those other
which to the bodies of men had the heads of beasts, as dogs, horses, &c.
If any of these creatures had lived, and could have spoke, it would have
increased the difficulty. Had the upper part to the middle been of human
shape, and all below swine, had it been murder to destroy it? Or must
the bishop have been consulted, whether it were man enough to be
admitted to the font or no? As I have been told it happened in France
some years since, in somewhat a like case. So uncertain are the
boundaries of species of animals to us, who have no other measures
than the complex ideas of our own collecting: and so far are we from
certainly knowing what a MAN is; though perhaps it will be judged great
ignorance to make any doubt about it. And yet I think I may say, that
the certain boundaries of that species are so far from being determined,
and the precise number of simple ideas which make the nominal essence so
far from being settles and perfectly known, that very material doubts
may still arise about it. And I imagine none of the definitions of the
word MAN which we yet have, nor descriptios of that sort of animal, are
so perfect and exact as to satisfy a considerate inquisitive person;
much less to obtain a general consent, and to be that which men would
everywhere stick by, in the decision of cases, and determining of life
and death, baptism or no baptism, in productions that mights happen.
28. But not so arbitrary as Mixed Modes.
But though these nominal essences of substances are made by the mind,
they are not yet made so arbitrarily as those of mixed modes. To the
making of any nominal essence, it is necessary, First, that the ideas
whereof it consists have such a union as to make but one idea, how
compounded soever. Secondly, that the particular ideas so united be
exactly the same, neither more nor less. For if two abstract complex
ideas differ either in number or sorts of their component parts, they
make two different, and not one and the same essence. In the first of
these, the mind, in making its complex ideas of substances, only follows
nature; and puts none together which are not supposed to have a union in
nature. Nobody joins the voice of a sheep with the shape of a horse;
nor the colour of lead with the weight and fixedness of gold, to be the
complex ideas of any real substances; unless he has a mind to fill his
head with chimeras, and his discourse with unintelligible words. Men
observing certain qualities always joined and existing together, therein
copied nature; and of ideas so united made their complex ones of
substances. For, though men may make what complex ideas they please, and
give what names to them they will; yet, if they will be understood WHEN
THEY SPEAK OF THINGS REALLY EXISTING, they must in some degree conform
their ideas to the things they would speak of; or else men's language
will be like that of Babel; and every man's words, being intelligible
only to himself, would no longer serve to conversation and the ordinary
affairs of life, if the ideas they stand for be not some way answering
the common appearances and agreement of substances as they really exist.
29. Our Nominal Essences of substances usually consist of a few obvious
qualities observed in things.
Secondly, Though the mind of man, in making its complex ideas of
substances, never puts any together that do not really, or are not
supposed to, co-exist; and so it truly borrows that union from nature:
yet the number it combines depends upon the various care, industry, or
fancy of him that makes it. Men generally content themselves with some
few sensible obvious qualities; and often, if not always, leave out
others as material and as firmly united as those that they take. Of
sensible substances there are two sorts: one of organized bodies, which
are propagated by seed; and in these the SHAPE is that which to us is
the leading quality, and most characteristical part, that determines
the species. And therefore in vegetables and animals, an extended solid
substance of such a certain figure usually serves the turn. For however
some men seem to prize their definition of animal rationale, yet should
there a creature be found that had language and reason, but partaked not
of the usual shape of a man, I believe it would hardly pass for a man,
how much soever it were animal rationale. And if Balaam's ass had all
his life discoursed as rationally as he did once with his master, I
doubt yet whether any one would have thought him worthy the name man, or
allowed him to be of the same species with himself. As in vegetables
and animals it is the shape, so in most other bodies, not propagated by
seed, it is the COLOUR we most fix on, and are most led by. Thus
where we find the colour of gold, we are apt to imagine all the other
qualities comprehended in our complex idea to be there also: and we
commonly take these two obvious qualities, viz. shape and colour, for so
presumptive ideas of several species, that in a good picture, we readily
say, this is a lion, and that a rose; this is a gold, and that a silver
goblet, only by the different figures and colours represented to the eye
by the pencil.
30. Yet, imperfect as they thus are, they serve for common converse.
But though this serves well enough for gross and confused conceptions,
and inaccurate ways of talking and thinking; yet MEN ARE FAR ENOUGH
FROM HAVING AGREED ON THE PRECISE NUMBER OF SIMPLE IDEAS OR QUALITIES
BELONGING TO ANY SORT OF THINGS, SIGNIFIED BY ITS NAME. Nor is it a
wonder; since it requires much time, pains, and skill, strict inquiry,
and long examination to find out what, and how many, those simple ideas
are, which are constantly and inseparably united in nature, and are
always to be found together in the same subject. Most men, wanting
either time, inclination, or industry enough for this, even to some
tolerable degree, content themselves with some few obvious and outward
appearances of things, thereby readily to distinguish and sort them for
the common affairs of life: and so, without further examination, give
them names, or take up the names already in use. Which, though in common
conversation they pass well enough for the signs of some few obvious
qualities co-existing, are yet far enough from comprehending, in a
settled signification, a precise number of simple ideas, much less all
those which are united in nature. He that shall consider, after so
much stir about genus and species, and such a deal of talk of specific
differences, how few words we have yet settled definitions of, may with
reason imagine, that those FORMS which there hath been so much noise
made about are only chimeras, which give us no light into the specific
natures of things. And he that shall consider how far the names of
substances are from having significations wherein all who use them do
agree, will have reason to conclude that, though the nominal essences of
substances are all supposed to be copied from nature, yet they are all,
or most of them, very imperfect. Since the composition of those complex
ideas are, in several men, very different: and therefore that these
boundaries of species are as men, and not as Nature, makes them, if at
least there are in nature any such prefixed bounds. It is true that many
particular substances are so made by Nature, that they have agreement
and likeness one with another, and so afford a foundation of being
ranked into sorts. But the sorting of things by us, or the making of
determinate species, being in order to naming and comprehending them
under general terms, I cannot see how it can be properly said, that
Nature sets the boundaries of the species of things: or, if it be so,
our boundaries of species are not exactly conformable to those in
nature. For we, having need of general names for present use, stay not
for a perfect discovery of all those qualities which would BEST show us
their most material differences and agreements; but we ourselves divide
them, by certain obvious appearances, into species, that we may the
easier under general names communicate our thoughts about them. For,
having no other knowledge of any substance but of the simple ideas that
are united in it; and observing several particular things to agree with
others in several of those simple ideas; we make that collection our
specific idea, and give it a general name; that in recording our
thoughts, and in our discourse with others, we may in one short word
designate all the individuals that agree in that complex idea, without
enumerating the simple ideas that make it up; and so not waste our time
and breath in tedious descriptions: which we see they are fain to do who
would discourse of any new sort of things they have not yet a name for.
31. Essences of Species under the same Name very different in different
minds.
But however these species of substances pass well enough in ordinary
conversation, it is plain that this complex idea wherein they observe
several individuals to agree, is by different men made very differently;
by some more, and others less accurately. In some, this complex idea
contains a greater, and in others a smaller number of qualities; and so
is apparently such as the mind makes it. The yellow shining colour makes
gold to children; others add weight, malleableness, and fusibility; and
others yet other qualities, which they find joined with that yellow
colour, as constantly as its weight and fusibility. For in all these and
the like qualities, one has as good a right to be put into the complex
idea of that substance wherein they are all joined as another. And
therefore different men, leaving out or putting in several simple ideas
which others do not, according to their various examination, skill, or
observation of that subject, have different essences of gold, which must
therefore be of their own and not of nature's making.
32. The more general our Ideas of Substances are, the more incomplete
and partial they are.
If the number of simple ideas that make the nominal essence of the
lowest species, or first sorting, of individuals, depends on the mind of
man, variously collecting them, it is much more evident that they do so
in the more comprehensive classes, which, by the masters of logic, are
called genera. These are complex ideas designedly imperfect: and it is
visible at first sight, that several of those qualities that are to
be found in the things themselves are purposely left out of generical
ideas. For, as the mind, to make general ideas comprehending several
particulars, leaves out those of time and place, and such other, that
make them incommunicable to more than one individual; so to make other
yet more general ideas, that may comprehend different sorts, it leaves
out those qualities that distinguish them, and puts into its new
collection only such ideas as are common to several sorts. The same
convenience that made men express several parcels of yellow matter
coming from Guinea and Peru under one name, sets them also upon making
of one name that may comprehend both gold and silver, and some other
bodies of different sorts. This is done by leaving out those qualities,
which are peculiar to each sort, and retaining a complex idea made up
of those that are common to them all. To which the name METAL being
annexed, there is a genus constituted; the essence whereof being that
abstract idea, containing only malleableness and fusibility, with
certain degrees of weight and fixedness, wherein some bodies of several
kinds agree, leaves out the colour and other qualities peculiar to gold
and silver, and the other sorts comprehended under the name metal.
Whereby it is plain that men follow not exactly the patterns set them by
nature, when they make their general ideas of substances; since there is
no body to be found which has barely malleableness and fusibility in
it, without other qualities as inseparable as those. But men, in making
their general ideas, seeking more the convenience of language, and quick
dispatch by short and comprehensive signs, than the true and precise
nature of things as they exist, have, in the framing their abstract
ideas, chiefly pursued that end; which was to be furnished with store
of general and variously comprehensive names. So that in this whole
business of genera and species, the genus, or more comprehensive, is but
a partial conception of what is in the species; and the species but a
partial idea of what is to be found in each individual. If therefore any
one will think that a man, and a horse, and an animal, and a plant, &c.,
are distinguished by real essences made by nature, he must think nature
to be very liberal of these real essences, making one for body, another
for an animal, and another for a horse; and all these essences liberally
bestowed upon Bucephalus. But if we would rightly consider what is done
in all these genera and species, or sorts, we should find that there is
no new thing made; but only more or less comprehensive signs, whereby we
may be enabled to express in a few syllables great numbers of particular
things, as they agree in more or less general conceptions, which we
have framed to that purpose. In all which we may observe, that the more
general term is always the name of a less complex idea; and that each
genus is but a partial conception of; the species comprehended under it.
So that if these abstract general ideas be thought to be complete, it
can only be in respect of a certain established relation between them
and certain names which are made use of to signify them; and not in
respect of anything existing, as made by nature.
33. This all accommodated to the end of the Speech.
This is adjusted to the true end of speech, which is to be the easiest
and shortest way of communicating our notions. For thus he that would
discourse of things, as they agreed in the complex idea of extension and
solidity, needed but use the word BODY to denote all such. He that
to these would join others, signified by the words life, sense, and
spontaneous motion, needed but use the word ANIMAL to signify all which
partaked of those ideas, and he that had made a complex idea of a body,
with life, sense, and motion, with the faculty of reasoning, and a
certain shape joined to it, needed but use the short monosyllable MAN,
to express all particulars that correspond to that complex idea. This is
the proper business of genus and species: and this men do without any
consideration of real essences, or substantial forms; which come not
within the reach of our knowledge when we think of those things, nor
within the signification of our words when we discourse with others.
34. Instance in Cassowaries.
Were I to talk with any one of a sort of birds I lately saw in St.
James's Park, about three or four feet high, with a covering of
something between feathers and hair, of a dark brown colour, without
wings, but in the place thereof two or three little branches coming down
like sprigs of Spanish broom, long great legs, with feet only of three
claws, and without a tail; I must make this description of it, and so
may make others understand me. But when I am told that the name of it
is CASSUARIS, I may then use that word to stand in discourse for all my
complex idea mentioned in that description; though by that word, which
is now become a specific name, I know no more of the real essence
or constitution of that sort of animals than I did before; and knew
probably as much of the nature of that species of birds before I learned
the name, as many Englishmen do of swans or herons, which are specific
names, very well known, of sorts of birds common in England.
35. Men determine the Sorts of Substances, which may be sorted
variously.
From what has been said, it is evident that MEN make sorts of things.
For, it being different essences alone that make different species, it
is plain that they who make those abstract ideas which are the nominal
essences do thereby make the species, or sort. Should there be a body
found, having all the other qualities of gold except malleableness, it
would no doubt be made a question whether it were gold or not, i.e.
whether it were of that species. This could be determined only by that
abstract idea to which every one annexed the name gold: so that it
would be true gold to him, and belong to that species, who included not
malleableness in his nominal essence, signified by the sound gold; and
on the other side it would not be true gold, or of that species, to him
who included malleableness in his specific idea. And who, I pray, is it
that makes these diverse species, even under one and the same name, but
men that make two different abstract ideas, consisting not exactly
of the same collection of qualities? Nor is it a mere supposition to
imagine that a body may exist wherein the other obvious qualities of
gold may be without malleableness; since it is certain that gold itself
will be sometimes so eager, (as artists call it,) that it will as little
endure the hammer as glass itself. What we have said of the putting in,
or leaving out of malleableness, in the complex idea the name gold is by
any one annexed to, may be said of its peculiar weight, fixedness, and
several other the like qualities: for whatever is left out, or put in,
it is still the complex idea to which that name is annexed that makes
the species: and as any particular parcel of matter answers that idea,
so the name of the sort belongs truly to it; and it is of that species.
And thus anything is true gold, perfect metal. All which determination
of the species, it is plain, depends on the understanding of man, making
this or that complex idea.
36. Nature makes the Similitudes of Substances.
This, then, in short, is the case: Nature makes many PARTICULAR THINGS,
which do agree one with another in many sensible qualities, and probably
too in their internal frame and constitution: but it is not this real
essence that distinguishes them into species; it is men who, taking
occasion from the qualities they find united in them, and wherein they
observe often several individuals to agree, range them into sorts, in
order to their naming, for the convenience of comprehensive signs;
under which individuals, according to their conformity to this or that
abstract idea, come to be ranked as under ensigns: so that this is of
the blue, that the red regiment; this is a man, that a drill: and in
this, I think, consists the whole business of genus and species.
37. The manner of sorting particular beings the work of fallible men,
though nature makes things alike.
I do not deny but nature, in the constant production of particular
beings, makes them not always new and various, but very much alike
and of kin one to another: but I think it nevertheless true, that the
boundaries of the species, whereby men sort them, are made by men; since
the essences of the species, distinguished by different names, are, as
has been proved, of man's making, and seldom adequate to the internal
nature of the things they are taken from. So that we may truly say, such
a manner of sorting of things is the workmanship of men.
38. Each abstract Idea, with a name to it, makes a nominal Essence.
One thing I doubt not but will seem very strange in this doctrine, which
is, that from what has been said it will follow, that each abstract
idea, with a name to it, makes a distinct species. But who can help it,
if truth will have it so? For so it must remain till somebody can show
us the species of things limited and distinguished by something else;
and let us see that general terms signify not our abstract ideas, but
something different from them. I would fain know why a shock and a hound
are not as distinct species as a spaniel and an elephant. We have no
other idea of the different essence of an elephant and a spaniel,
than we have of the different essence of a shock and a hound; all the
essential difference, whereby we know and distinguish them one from
another, consisting only in the different collection of simple ideas, to
which we have given those different names.
39. How Genera and Species are related to naming.
How much the making of species and genera is in order to general names;
and how much general names are necessary, if not to the being, yet at
least to the completing of a species, and making it pass for such, will
appear, besides what has been said above concerning ice and water, in
a very familiar example. A silent and a striking watch are but one
species, to those who have but one name for them: but he that has the
name WATCH for one, and CLOCK for the other, and distinct complex ideas
to which those names belong, to HIM they are different species. It
will be said perhaps, that the inward contrivance and constitution is
different between these two, which the watchmaker has a clear idea of.
And yet it is plain they are but one species to him, when he has but one
name for them. For what is sufficient in the inward contrivance to make
a new species? There are some watches that are made with four wheels,
others with five; is this a specific difference to the workman? Some
have strings and physics, and others none; some have the balance loose,
and others regulated by a spiral spring, and others by hogs' bristles.
Are any or all of these enough to make a specific difference to
the workman, that knows each of these and several other different
contrivances in the internal constitutions of watches? It is certain
each of these hath a real difference from the rest; but whether it be an
essential, a specific difference or no, relates only to the complex idea
to which the name watch is given: as long as they all agree in the idea
which that name stands for, and that name does not as a generical name
comprehend different species under it, they are not essentially nor
specifically different. But if any one will make minuter divisions, from
differences that he knows in the internal frame of watches, and to such
precise complex ideas give names that shall prevail; they will then be
new species, to them who have those ideas with names to them, and can by
those differences distinguish watches into these several sorts; and
then WATCH will be a generical name. But yet they would be no distinct
species to men ignorant of clock-work, and the inward contrivances of
watches, who had no other idea but the outward shape and bulk, with the
marking of the hours by the hand. For to them all those other names
would be but synonymous terms for the same idea, and signify no more,
nor no other thing but a watch. Just thus I think it is in natural
things. Nobody will doubt that the wheels or springs (if I may so say)
within, are different in a RATIONAL MAN and a CHANGELING; no more
than that there is a difference in the frame between a DRILL and a
CHANGELING. But whether one or both these differences be essential or
specifical, is only to be known to us by their agreement or disagreement
with the complex idea that the name man stands for: for by that alone
can it be determined whether one, or both, or neither of those be a man.
40. Species of Artificial Things less confused than Natural.
From what has been before said, we may see the reason why, in the
species of artificial things, there is generally less confusion and
uncertainty than in natural. Because an artificial thing being a
production of man, which the artificer designed, and therefore well
knows the idea of, the name of it is supposed to stand for no other
idea, nor to import any other essence, than what is certainly to be
known, and easy enough to be apprehended. For the idea or essence of
the several sorts of artificial things, consisting for the most part
in nothing but the determinate figure of sensible parts, and sometimes
motion depending thereon, which the artificer fashions in matter, such
as he finds for his turn; it is not beyond the reach of our faculties to
attain a certain idea thereof; and so settle the signification of the
names whereby the species of artificial things are distinguished, with
less doubt, obscurity, and equivocation than we can in things natural,
whose differences and operations depend upon contrivances beyond the
reach of our discoveries.
41. Artificial Things of distinct Species.
I must be excused here if I think artificial things are of distinct
species as well as natural: since I find they are as plainly and orderly
ranked into sorts, by different abstract ideas, with general names
annexed to them, as distinct one from another as those of natural
substances. For why should we not think a watch and pistol as distinct
species one from another, as a horse and a dog; they being expressed in
our minds by distinct ideas, and to others by distinct appellations?
42. Substances alone, of all our several sorts of ideas, have proper
Names.
This is further to be observed concerning substances, that they alone of
all our several sorts of ideas have particular or proper names, whereby
one only particular thing is signified. Because in simple ideas, modes,
and relations, it seldom happens that men have occasion to mention often
this or that particular when it is absent. Besides, the greatest part of
mixed modes, being actions which perish in their birth, are not capable
of a lasting duration, as substances which are the actors; and wherein
the simple ideas that make up the complex ideas designed by the name
have a lasting union.
43. Difficult to lead another by words into the thoughts of things
stripped of those abstract ideas we give them.
I must beg pardon of my reader for having dwelt so long upon this
subject, and perhaps with some obscurity. But I desire it may be
considered, how difficult it is to lead another by words into the
thoughts of things, stripped of those specifical differences we give
them: which things, if I name not, I say nothing; and if I do name them,
I thereby rank them into some sort or other, and suggest to the mind the
usual abstract idea of that species; and so cross my purpose. For,
to talk of a man, and to lay by, at the same time, the ordinary
signification of the name man, which is our complex idea usually annexed
to it; and bid the reader consider man, as he is in himself, and as he
is really distinguished from others in his internal constitution, or
real essence, that is, by something he knows not what, looks like
trifling: and yet thus one must do who would speak of the supposed real
essences and species of things, as thought to be made by nature, if it
be but only to make it understood, that there is no such thing signified
by the general names which substances are called by. But because it is
difficult by known familiar names to do this, give me leave to endeavour
by an example to make the different consideration the mind has of
specific names and ideas a little more clear; and to show how the
complex ideas of modes are referred sometimes to archetypes in the minds
of other intelligent beings, or, which is the same, to the signification
annexed by others to their received names; and sometimes to no
archetypes at all. Give me leave also to show how the mind always refers
its ideas of substances, either to the substances themselves, or to the
signification of their names, as to the archetypes; and also to make
plain the nature of species or sorting of things, as apprehended and
made use of by us; and of the essences belonging to those species: which
is perhaps of more moment to discover the extent and certainty of our
knowledge than we at first imagine.
44. Instances of mixed Modes names KINNEAH and NIOUPH.
Let us suppose Adam, in the state of a grown man, with a good
understanding, but in a strange country, with all things new and unknown
about him; and no other faculties to attain the knowledge of them but
what one of this age has now. He observes Lamech more melancholy than
usual, and imagines it to be from a suspicion he has of his wife Adah,
(whom he most ardently loved) that she had too much kindness for another
man. Adam discourses these his thoughts to Eve, and desires her to take
care that Adah commit not folly: and in these discourses with Eve he
makes use of these two new words KINNEAH and NIOUPH. In time, Adam's
mistake appears, for he finds Lamech's trouble proceeded from having
killed a man: but yet the two names KINNEAH and NIOUPH, (the one
standing for suspicion in a husband of his wife's disloyalty to him; and
the other for the act of committing disloyalty,) lost not their distinct
significations. It is plain then, that here were two distinct complex
ideas of mixed modes, with names to them, two distinct species of
actions essentially different; I ask wherein consisted the essences of
these two distinct species of actions? And it is plain it consisted in a
precise combination of simple ideas, different in one from the other. I
ask, whether the complex idea in Adam's mind, which he called KINNEAH,
were adequate or not? And it is plain it was; for it being a combination
of simple ideas, which he, without any regard to any archetype, without
respect to anything as a pattern, voluntarily put together, abstracted,
and gave the name KINNEAH to, to express in short to others, by that one
sound, all the simple ideas contained and united in that complex one;
it must necessarily follow that it was an adequate idea. His own choice
having made that combination, it had all in it he intended it should,
and so could not but be perfect, could not but be adequate; it being
referred to no other archetype which it was supposed to represent.
45. These words, KINNEAH and NIOUPH, by degrees grew into common use,
and then the case was somewhat altered. Adam's children had the same
faculties, and thereby the same power that he had, to make what complex
ideas of mixed modes they pleased in their own minds; to abstract them,
and make what sounds they pleased the signs of them: but the use of
names being to make our ideas within us known to others, that cannot be
done, but when the same sign stands for the same idea in two who would
communicate their thoughts and discourse together. Those, therefore,
of Adam's children, that found these two words, KINNEAH and NIOUPH, in
familiar use, could not take them for insignificant sounds, but must
needs conclude they stood for something; for certain ideas, abstract
ideas, they being general names; which abstract ideas were the essences
of the species distinguished by those names. If therefore, they would
use these words as names of species already established and agreed on,
they were obliged to conform the ideas in their minds, signified by
these names, to the ideas that they stood for in other men's minds, as
to their patterns and archetypes; and then indeed their ideas of
these complex modes were liable to be inadequate, as being very apt
(especially those that consisted of combinations of many simple ideas)
not to be exactly conformable to the ideas in other men's minds, using
the same names; though for this there be usually a remedy at hand, which
is to ask the meaning of any word we understand not of him that uses it:
it being as impossible to know certainly what the words jealousy and
adultery (which I think answer [Hebrew] and [Hebrew]) stand for in
another man's mind, with whom I would discourse about them; as it was
impossible, in the beginning of language, to know what KINNEAH and
NIOUPH stood for in another man's mind, without explication; they being
voluntary signs in every one.
46. Instances of a species of Substance named ZAHAB.
Let us now also consider, after the same manner, the names of substances
in their first application. One of Adam's children, roving in the
mountains, lights on a glittering substance which pleases his eye. Home
he carries it to Adam, who, upon consideration of it, finds it to be
hard, to have a bright yellow colour, and an exceeding great weight.
These perhaps, at first, are all the qualities he takes notice of in it;
and abstracting this complex idea, consisting of a substance having that
peculiar bright yellowness, and a weight very great in proportion to its
bulk, he gives the name ZAHAB, to denominate and mark all substances
that have these sensible qualities in them. It is evident now, that,
in this case, Adam acts quite differently from what he did before, in
forming those ideas of mixed modes to which he gave the names KINNEAH
and NIOUPH. For there he put ideas together only by his own imagination,
not taken from the existence of anything; and to them he gave names to
denominate all things that should happen to agree to those his abstract
ideas, without considering whether any such thing did exist or not: the
standard there was of his own making. But in the forming his idea of
this new substance, he takes the quite contrary course; here he has
a standard made by nature; and therefore, being to represent that to
himself, by the idea he has of it, even when it is absent, he puts in no
simple idea into his complex one, but what he has the perception of from
the thing itself. He takes care that his idea be conformable to this
archetype, and intends the name should stand for an idea so conformable.
47.
This piece of matter, thus denominated ZAHAB by Adam, being quite
different from any he had seen before, nobody, I think, will deny to be
a distinct species, and to have its peculiar essence; and that the name
ZAHAB is the mark of the species, and a name belonging to all things
partaking in that essence. But here it is plain the essence Adam made
the name ZAHAB stand for was nothing but a body hard, shining, yellow,
and very heavy. But the inquisitive mind of man, not content with the
knowledge of these, as I may say, superficial qualities, puts Adam upon
further examination of this matter. He therefore knocks, and beats it
with flints, to see what was discoverable in the inside: he finds it
yield to blows, but not easily separate into pieces: he finds it will
bend without breaking. Is not now ductility to be added to his former
idea, and made part of the essence of the species that name ZAHAB stands
for? Further trials discover fusibility and fixedness. Are not they
also, by the same reason that any of the others were, to be put into the
complex idea signified by the name ZAHAB? If not, what reason will there
be shown more for the one than the other? If these must, then all the
other properties, which any further trials shall discover in this
matter, ought by the same reason to make a part of the ingredients of
the complex idea which the name ZAHAB stands for, and so be the essence
of the species marked by that name. Which properties, because they are
endless, it is plain that the idea made after this fashion, by this
archetype, will be always inadequate.
48. The Abstract Ideas of Substances always imperfect and therefore
various.
But this is not all. It would also follow that the names of substances
would not only have, as in truth they have, but would also be supposed
to have different significations, as used by different men, which would
very much cumber the use of language. For if every distinct quality
that were discovered in any matter by any one were supposed to make a
necessary part of the complex idea signified by the common name given
to it, it must follow, that men must suppose the same word to signify
different things in different men: since they cannot doubt but different
men may have discovered several qualities, in substances of the same
denomination, which others know nothing of.
49. Therefore to fix the Nominal Species Real Essence supposed.
To avoid this therefore, they have supposed a real essence belonging to
every species, from which these properties all flow, and would have
their name of the species stand for that. But they, not having any idea
of that real essence in substances, and their words signifying nothing
but the ideas they have, that which is done by this attempt is only to
put the name or sound in the place and stead of the thing having that
real essence, without knowing what the real essence is, and this is that
which men do when they speak of species of things, as supposing them
made by nature, and distinguished by real essences.
50. Which Supposition is of no Use.
For, let us consider, when we affirm that 'all gold is fixed,' either
it means that fixedness is a part of the definition, i. e., part of the
nominal essence the word gold stands for; and so this affirmation, 'all
gold is fixed,' contains nothing but the signification of the term gold.
Or else it means, that fixedness, not being a part of the definition of
the gold, is a property of that substance itself: in which case it is
plain that the word gold stands in the place of a substance, having the
real essence of a species of things made by nature. In which way of
substitution it has so confused and uncertain a signification,
that, though this proposition--'gold is fixed'--be in that sense an
affirmation of something real; yet it is a truth will always fail us in
its particular application, and so is of no real use or certainty. For
let it be ever so true, that all gold, i. e. all that has the real
essence of gold, is fixed, what serves this for, whilst we know not, in
this sense, WHAT IS OR IS NOT GOLD? For if we know not the real essence
of gold, it is impossible we should know what parcel of matter has that
essence, and so whether IT be true gold or no.
51. Conclusion.
To conclude: what liberty Adam had at first to make any complex ideas of
MIXED MODES by no other pattern but by his own thoughts, the same have
all men ever since had. And the same necessity of conforming his ideas
of SUBSTANCES to things without him, as to archetypes made by nature,
that Adam was under, if he would not wilfully impose upon himself, the
same are all men ever since under too. The same liberty also that Adam
had of affixing any new name to any idea, the same has any one still,
(especially the beginners of languages, if we can imagine any such;) but
only with this difference, that, in places where men in society have
already established a language amongst them, the significations of words
are very warily and sparingly to be altered. Because men being furnished
already with names for their ideas, and common use having appropriated
known names to certain ideas, an affected misapplication of them cannot
but be very ridiculous. He that hath new notions will perhaps venture
sometimes on the coining of new terms to express them: but men think it
a boldness, and it is uncertain whether common use will ever make them
pass for current. But in communication with others, it is necessary that
we conform the ideas we make the vulgar words of any language stand for
to their known proper significations, (which I have explained at large
already,) or else to make known that new signification we apply them to.
CHAPTER VII.
OF PARTICLES.
1. Particles connect Parts, or whole Sentences together.
Besides words which are names of ideas in the mind, there are a great
many others that are made use of to signify the CONNEXION that the mind
gives to ideas, or to propositions, one with another. The mind, in
communicating its thoughts to others, does not only need signs of the
ideas it has then before it, but others also, to show or intimate some
particular action of its own, at that time, relating to those ideas.
This it does several ways; as _I_S and _I_S NOT, are the general marks,
of the mind, affirming or denying. But besides affirmation or negation,
without which there is in words no truth or falsehood, the mind does,
in declaring its sentiments to others, connect not only the parts of
propositions, but whole sentences one to another, with their several
relations and dependencies, to make a coherent discourse.
2. In right use of Particles consists the Art of Well-speaking
The words whereby it signifies what connexion it gives to the several
affirmations and negations, that it unites in one continued reasoning or
narration, are generally called PARTICLES: and it is in the right use of
these that more particularly consists the clearness and beauty of a good
style. To think well, it is not enough that a man has ideas clear
and distinct in his thoughts, nor that he observes the agreement or
disagreement of some of them; but he must think in train, and observe
the dependence of his thoughts and reasonings upon one another. And to
express well such methodical and rational thoughts, he must have words
to show what connexion, restriction, distinction, opposition, emphasis,
&c., he gives to each respective part of his discourse. To mistake
in any of these, is to puzzle instead of informing his hearer: and
therefore it is, that those words which are not truly by themselves
the names of any ideas are of such constant and indispensable use in
language, and do much contribute to men's well expressing themselves.
3. They say what Relation the Mind gives to its own Thoughts.
This part of grammar has been perhaps as much neglected as some others
over-diligently cultivated. It is easy for men to write, one after
another, of cases and genders, moods and tenses, gerunds and supines: in
these and the like there has been great diligence used; and particles
themselves, in some languages, have been, with great show of exactness,
ranked into their several orders. But though PREPOSITIONS and
CONJUNCTIONS, &c., are names well known in grammar, and the particles
contained under them carefully ranked into their distinct subdivisions;
yet he who would show the right use of particles, and what significancy
and force they have, must take a little more pains, enter into his
own thoughts, and observe nicely the several postures of his mind in
discoursing.
4. They are all marks of some action or intimation of the mind.
Neither is it enough, for the explaining of these words, to render them,
as is usual in dictionaries, by words of another tongue which come
nearest to their signification: for what is meant by them is commonly as
hard to be understood in one as another language. They are all marks of
some action or intimation of the mind; and therefore to understand them
rightly, the several views, postures, stands, turns, limitations, and
exceptions, and several other thoughts of the mind, for which we have
either none or very deficient names, are diligently to be studied. Of
these there is a great variety, much exceeding the number of particles
that most languages have to express them by: and therefore it is not
to be wondered that most of these particles have divers and sometimes
almost opposite significations. In the Hebrew tongue there is a particle
consisting of but one single letter, of which there are reckoned up, as
I remember, seventy, I am sure above fifty, several significations.
5. Instance in But.
'But' is a particle, none more familiar in our language: and he that
says it is a discretive conjunction, and that it answers to sed Latin,
or mais in French, thinks he has sufficiently explained it. But yet it
seems to me to intimate several relations the mind gives to the several
propositions or parts of them which it joins by this monosyllable.
First, 'But to say no more:' here it intimates a stop of the mind in the
course it was going, before it came quite to the end of it.
Secondly, 'I saw but two plants;' here it shows that the mind limits the
sense to what is expressed, with a negation of all other.
Thirdly,'You pray; but it is not that God would bring you to the true
religion.'
Fourthly, 'But that he would confirm you in your own.' The first of
these BUTS intimates a supposition in the mind of something otherwise
than it should be; the latter shows that the mind makes a direct
opposition between that and what goes before it.
Fifthly, 'All animals have sense, but a dog is an animal:' here it
signifies little more but that the latter proposition is joined to the
former, as the minor of a syllogism.
6. This Matter of the use of Particles but lightly touched here.
To these, I doubt not, might be added a great many other significations
of this particle, if it were my business to examine it in its full
latitude, and consider it in all the places it is to be found: which if
one should do, I doubt whether in all those manners it is made use of,
it would deserve the title of DISCRETIVE, which grammarians give to it.
But I intend not here a full explication of this sort of signs. The
instances I have given in this one may give occasion to reflect on their
use and force in language, and lead us into the contemplation of several
actions of our minds in discoursing, which it has found a way to
intimate to others by these particles, some whereof constantly, and
others in certain constructions, have the sense of a whole sentence
contained in them.
CHAPTER VIII.
OF ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE TERMS.
1. Abstract Terms predicated one on another and why.
The ordinary words of language, and our common use of them, would have
given us light into the nature of our ideas, if they had been but
considered with attention. The mind, as has been shown, has a power
to abstract its ideas, and so they become essences, general essences,
whereby the sorts of things are distinguished. Now each abstract idea
being distinct, so that of any two the one can never be the other, the
mind will, by its intuitive knowledge, perceive their difference, and
therefore in propositions no two whole ideas can ever be affirmed one of
another. This we see in the common use of language, which permits not
any two abstract words, or names of abstract ideas, to be affirmed one
of another. For how near of kin soever they may seem to be, and how
certain soever it is that man is an animal, or rational, or white,
yet every one at first hearing perceives the falsehood of these
propositions: HUMANITY IS ANIMALITY, or RATIONALITY, or WHITENESS:
and this is as evident as any of the most allowed maxims. All our
affirmations then are only in concrete, which is the affirming, not
one abstract idea to be another, but one abstract idea to be joined to
another; which abstract ideas, in substances, may be of any sort; in all
the rest are little else but of relations; and in substances the most
frequent are of powers: v.g. 'a man is white,' signifies that the thing
that has the essence of a man has also in it the essence of whiteness,
which is nothing but a power to produce the idea of whiteness in one
whose eyes can discover ordinary objects: or, 'a man is rational,'
signifies that the same thing that hath the essence of a man hath also
in it the essence of rationality, i.e. a power of reasoning.
2. They show the Difference of our Ideas.
This distinction of names shows us also the difference of our ideas:
for if we observe them, we shall find that OUR SIMPLE IDEAS HAVE ALL
ABSTRACT AS WELL AS CONCRETE NAMES: the one whereof is (to speak the
language of grammarians) a substantive, the other an adjective; as
whiteness, white; sweetness, sweet. The like also holds in our ideas of
modes and relations; as justice, just; equality, equal: only with this
difference, that some of the concrete names of relations amongst men
chiefly are substantives; as, paternitas, pater; whereof it were easy to
render a reason. But as to our ideas of substances, we have very few
or no abstract names at all. For though the Schools have introduced
animalitas, humanitas, corporietas, and some others; yet they hold no
proportion with that infinite number of names of substances, to which
they never were ridiculous enough to attempt the coining of abstract
ones: and those few that the Schools forged, and put into the mouths
of their scholars, could never yet get admittance into common use, or
obtain the license of public approbation. Which seems to me at least to
intimate the confession of all mankind, that they have no ideas of the
real essences of substances, since they have not names for such ideas:
which no doubt they would have had, had not their consciousness to
themselves of their ignorance of them kept them from so idle an attempt.
And therefore, though they had ideas enough to distinguish gold from a
stone, and metal from wood; yet they but timorously ventured on such
terms, as aurietas and saxietas, metallietas and lignietas, or the
like names, which should pretend to signify the real essences of those
substances whereof they knew they had no ideas. And indeed it was only
the doctrine of SUBSTANTIAL FORMS, and the confidence of mistaken
pretenders to a knowledge that they had not, which first coined and then
introduced animalitas and humanitas, and the like; which yet went very
little further than their own Schools, and could never get to be current
amongst understanding men. Indeed, humanitas was a word in familiar use
amongst the Romans; but in a far different sense, and stood not for the
abstract essence of any substance; but was the abstracted name of a
mode, and its concrete humanus, not homo.
CHAPTER IX.
OF THE IMPERFECTION OF WORDS.
1. Words are used for recording and communicating our Thoughts.
From what has been said in the foregoing chapters, it is easy to
perceive what imperfection there is in language, and how the very nature
of words makes it almost unavoidable for many of them to be doubtful
and uncertain in their significations. To examine the perfection or
imperfection of words, it is necessary first to consider their use and
end: for as they are more or less fitted to attain that, so they are
more or less perfect. We have, in the former part of this discourse
often, upon occasion, mentioned a double use of words.
First, One for the recording of our own thoughts.
Secondly, The other for the communicating of our thoughts to others.
2. Any Words will serve for recording.
As to the first of these, FOR THE RECORDING OUR OWN THOUGHTS FOR THE
HELP OF OUR OWN MEMORIES, whereby, as it were, we talk to ourselves,
any words will serve the turn. For since sounds are voluntary and
indifferent signs of any ideas, a man may use what words he pleases to
signify his own ideas to himself: and there will be no imperfection in
them, if he constantly use the same sign for the same idea: for then he
cannot fail of having his meaning understood, wherein consists the right
use and perfection of language.
3. Communication by Words either for civil or philosophical purposes.
Secondly, As to COMMUNICATION BY WORDS, that too has a double use.
I. Civil.
II. Philosophical. First, By, their CIVIL use, I mean such a
communication of thoughts and ideas by words, as may serve for the
upholding common conversation and commerce, about the ordinary affairs
and conveniences of civil life, in the societies of men, one amongst
another.
Secondly, By the PHILOSOPHICAL use of words, I mean such a use of them
as may serve to convey the precise notions of things, and to express in
general propositions certain and undoubted truths, which the mind may
rest upon and be satisfied with in its search after true knowledge.
These two uses are very distinct; and a great deal less exactness will
serve in the one than in the other, as we shall see in what follows.
4. The imperfection of Words is the Doubtfulness or ambiguity of their
Signification, which is caused by the sort of ideas they stand for.
The chief end of language in communication being to be understood,
words serve not well for that end, neither in civil nor philosophical
discourse, when any word does not excite in the hearer the same idea
which it stands for in the mind of the speaker. Now, since sounds have
no natural connexion with our ideas, but have all their signification
from the arbitrary imposition of men, the doubtfulness and uncertainty
of their signification, which is the imperfection we here are speaking
of, has its cause more in the ideas they stand for than in any
incapacity there is in one sound more than in another to signify any
idea: for in that regard they are all equally perfect.
That then which makes doubtfulness and uncertainty in the signification
of some more than other words, is the difference of ideas they stand
for.
5. Natural Causes of their Imperfection, especially in those that stand
for Mixed Modes, and for our ideas of Substances.
Words having naturally no signification, the idea which each stands for
must be learned and retained, by those who would exchange thoughts, and
hold intelligible discourse with others, in any language. But this is
the hardest to be done where,
First, The ideas they stand for are very complex, and made up of a great
number of ideas put together.
Secondly, Where the ideas they stand for have no certain connexion in
nature; and so no settled standard anywhere in nature existing, to
rectify and adjust them by.
Thirdly, When the signification of the word is referred to a standard,
which standard is not easy to be known.
Fourthly, Where the signification of the word and the real essence of
the thing are not exactly the same.
These are difficulties that attend the signification of several words
that are intelligible. Those which are not intelligible at all, such
as names standing for any simple ideas which another has not organs or
faculties to attain; as the names of colours to a blind man, or sounds
to a deaf man, need not here be mentioned.
In all these cases we shall find an imperfection in words; which I shall
more at large explain, in their particular application to our several
sorts of ideas: for if we examine them, we shall find that the NAMES OF
_M_IXED _M_ODES ARE MOST LIABLE TO DOUBTFULNESS AND IMPERFECTION, FOR
THE TWO FIRST OF THESE REASONS; and the NAMES OF _S_UBSTANCES CHIEFLY
FOR THE TWO LATTER.
6. The Names of mixed Modes doubtful.
First, The names of MIXED MODES are, many of them, liable to great
uncertainty and obscurity in their signification.
I. Because the Ideas they stand for are so complex.
Because of that GREAT COMPOSITION these complex ideas are often made
up of. To make words serviceable to the end of communication, it is
necessary, as has been said, that they excite in the hearer exactly the
same idea they stand for in the mind of the speaker. Without this, men
fill one another's heads with noise and sounds; but convey not thereby
their thoughts, and lay not before one another their ideas, which is the
end of discourse and language. But when a word stands for a very complex
idea that is compounded and decompounded, it is not easy for men to form
and retain that idea so exactly, as to make the name in common use stand
for the same precise idea, without any the least variation. Hence it
comes to pass that men's names of very compound ideas, such as for the
most part are moral words, have seldom in two different men the same
precise signification; since one man's complex idea seldom agrees with
another's, and often differs from his own--from that which he had
yesterday, or will have tomorrow.
7. Secondly because they have no Standards in Nature.
Because the names of mixed modes for the most part WANT STANDARDS
IN NATURE, whereby men may rectify and adjust their significations;
therefore they are very various and doubtful. They are assemblages of
ideas put together at the pleasure of the mind, pursuing its own ends of
discourse, and suited to its own notions; whereby it designs not to copy
anything really existing, but to denominate and rank things as they
come to agree with those archetypes or forms it has made. He that first
brought the word SHAM, or WHEEDLE, or BANTER, in use, put together as he
thought fit those ideas he made it stand for; and as it is with any new
names of modes that are now brought into any language, so it was with
the old ones when they were first made use of. Names, therefore, that
stand for collections of ideas which the mind makes at pleasure must
needs be of doubtful signification, when such collections are nowhere
to be found constantly united in nature, nor any patterns to be shown
whereby men may adjust them. What the word MURDER, or SACRILEGE, &c.,
signifies can never be known from things themselves: there be many of
the parts of those complex ideas which are not visible in the action
itself; the intention of the mind, or the relation of holy things, which
make a part of murder or sacrilege, have no necessary connexion with the
outward and visible action of him that commits either: and the pulling
the trigger of the gun with which the murder is committed, and is all
the action that perhaps is visible, has no natural connexion with those
other ideas that make up the complex one named murder. They have their
union and combination only from the understanding which unites them
under one name: but, uniting them without any rule or pattern, it cannot
be but that the signification of the name that stands for such voluntary
collections should be often various in the minds of different men, who
have scarce any standing rule to regulate themselves and their notions
by, in such arbitrary ideas.
8. Common use, or propriety not a sufficient Remedy.
It is true, common use, that is, the rule of propriety may be supposed
here to afford some aid, to settle the signification of language; and it
cannot be denied but that in some measure it does. Common use regulates
the meaning of words pretty well for common conversation; but nobody
having an authority to establish the precise signification of words,
nor determine to what ideas any one shall annex them, common use is
not sufficient to adjust them to Philosophical Discourses; there being
scarce any name of any very complex idea (to say nothing of others)
which, in common use, has not a great latitude, and which, keeping
within the bounds of propriety, may not be made the sign of far
different ideas. Besides, the rule and measure of propriety itself being
nowhere established, it is often matter of dispute, whether this or that
way of using a word be propriety of speech or no. From all which it is
evident, that the names of such kind of very complex ideas are
naturally liable to this imperfection, to be of doubtful and uncertain
signification; and even in men that have a mind to understand one
another, do not always stand for the same idea in speaker and hearer.
Though the names GLORY and GRATITUDE be the same in every man's mouth
through a whole country, yet the complex collective idea which every one
thinks on or intends by that name, is apparently very different in men
using the same language.
9. The way of learning these Names contributes also to their
Doubtfulness.
The way also wherein the names of mixed modes are ordinarily learned,
does not a little contribute to the doubtfulness of their signification.
For if we will observe how children learn languages, we shall find that,
to make them understand what the names of simple ideas or substances
stand for, people ordinarily show them the thing whereof they would have
them have the idea; and then repeat to them the name that stands for
it; as WHITE, SWEET, MILK, SUGAR, CAT, DOG. But as for mixed modes,
especially the most material of them, MORAL WORDS, the sounds are
usually learned first; and then, to know what complex ideas they stand
for, they are either beholden to the explication of others, or (which
happens for the most part) are left to their own observation and
industry; which being little laid out in the search of the true and
precise meaning of names, these moral words are in most men's mouths
little more than bare sounds; or when they have any, it is for the most
part but a very loose and undetermined, and, consequently, obscure and
confused signification. And even those themselves who have with more
attention settled their notions, do yet hardly avoid the inconvenience
to have them stand for complex ideas different from those which other,
even intelligent and studious men, make them the signs of. Where shall
one find any, either controversial debate, or familiar discourse,
concerning honour, faith, grace, religion, church, &c., wherein it is
not easy to observe the different notions men have of them? Which is
nothing but this, that they are not agreed in the signification of those
words, nor have in their minds the same complex ideas which they make
them stand for, and so all the contests that follow thereupon are
only about the meaning of a sound. And hence we see that, in the
interpretation of laws, whether divine or human, there is no end;
comments beget comments, and explications make new matter for
explications; and of limiting, distinguishing, varying the signification
of these moral words there is no end. These ideas of men's making are,
by men still having the same power, multiplied in infinitum. Many a man
who was pretty well satisfied of the meaning of a text of Scripture, or
clause in the code, at first reading, has, by consulting commentators,
quite lost the sense of it, and by these elucidations given rise or
increase to his doubts, and drawn obscurity upon the place. I say not
this that I think commentaries needless; but to show how uncertain the
names of mixed modes naturally are, even in the mouths of those who had
both the intention and the faculty of speaking as clearly as language
was capable to express their thoughts.
10. Hence unavoidable Obscurity in ancient Authors.
What obscurity this has unavoidably brought upon the writings of men who
have lived in remote ages, and different countries, it will be needless
to take notice. Since the numerous volumes of learned men, employing
their thoughts that way, are proofs more than enough, to show what
attention, study, sagacity, and reasoning are required to find out the
true meaning of ancient authors. But, there being no writings we have
any great concernment to be very solicitous about the meaning of, but
those that contain either truths we are required to believe, or laws
we are to obey, and draw inconveniences on us when we mistake or
transgress, we may be less anxious about the sense of other authors;
who, writing but their own opinions, we are under no greater necessity
to know them, than they to know ours. Our good or evil depending not on
their decrees, we may safely be ignorant of their notions: and therefore
in the reading of them, if they do not use their words with a due
clearness and perspicuity, we may lay them aside, and without any injury
done them, resolve thus with ourselves,
Si non vis intelligi, debes negligi.
11. Names of Substances of doubtful Signification, because the ideas
they stand for relate to the reality of things.
If the signification of the names of mixed modes be uncertain, because
there be no real standards existing in nature to which those ideas are
referred, and by which they may be adjusted, the names of SUBSTANCES are
of a doubtful signification, for a contrary reason, viz. because the
ideas they stand for are supposed conformable to the reality of things,
and are referred to as standards made by Nature. In our ideas of
substances we have not the liberty, as in mixed modes, to frame what
combinations we think fit, to be the characteristical notes to rank and
denominate things by. In these we must follow Nature, suit our complex
ideas to real existences, and regulate the signification of their names
by the things themselves, if we will have our names to be signs of them,
and stand for them. Here, it is true, we have patterns to follow; but
patterns that will make the signification of their names very uncertain:
for names must be of a very unsteady and various meaning, if the ideas
they stand for be referred to standards without us, that either cannot
be known at all, or can be known but imperfectly and uncertainly.
12. Names of Substances referred, I. To real Essences that cannot be
known.
The names of substances have, as has been shown, a double reference in
their ordinary use.
First, Sometimes they are made to stand for, and so their signification
is supposed to agree to, THE REAL CONSTITUTION OF THINGS, from which
all their properties flow, and in which they all centre. But this real
constitution, or (as it is apt to be called) essence, being utterly
unknown to us, any sound that is put to stand for it must be very
uncertain in its application; and it will be impossible to know what
things are or ought to be called a HORSE, or ANTIMONY, when those words
are put for real essences that we have no ideas of at all. And therefore
in this supposition, the names of substances being referred to standards
that cannot be known, their significations can never be adjusted and
established by those standards.
13. Secondly, To co-existing Qualities, which are known but imperfectly.
Secondly, The simple ideas that are FOUND TO CO-EXIST IN SUBSTANCES
being that which their names immediately signify, these, as united in
the several sorts of things, are the proper standards to which their
names are referred, and by which their significations may be best
rectified. But neither will these archetypes so well serve to this
purpose as to leave these names without very various and uncertain
significations. Because these simple ideas that co-exist, and are united
in the same subject, being very numerous, and having all an equal right
to go into the complex specific idea which the specific name is to stand
for, men, though they propose to themselves the very same subject to
consider, yet frame very different ideas about it; and so the name they
use for it unavoidably comes to have, in several men, very different
significations. The simple qualities which make up the complex ideas,
being most of them powers, in relation to changes which they are apt
to make in, or receive from other bodies, are almost infinite. He that
shall but observe what a great variety of alterations any one of the
baser metals is apt to receive, from the different application only of
fire; and how much a greater number of changes any of them will receive
in the hands of a chymist, by the application of other bodies, will not
think it strange that I count the properties of any sort of bodies not
easy to be collected, and completely known, by the ways of inquiry which
our faculties are capable of. They being therefore at least so many,
that no man can know the precise and definite number, they are
differently discovered by different men, according to their various
skill, attention, and ways of handling; who therefore cannot choose
but have different ideas of the same substance, and therefore make the
signification of its common name very various and uncertain. For the
complex ideas of substances, being made up of such simple ones as are
supposed to co-exist in nature, every one has a right to put into his
complex idea those qualities he has found to be united together. For,
though in the substance of gold one satisfies himself with colour and
weight, yet another thinks solubility in aqua regia as necessary to
be joined with that colour in his idea of gold, as any one does its
fusibility; solubility in aqua regia being a quality as constantly
joined with its colour and weight as fusibility or any other; others
put into it ductility or fixedness, &c., as they have been taught by
tradition or experience. Who of all these has established the right
signification of the word, gold? Or who shall be the judge to determine?
Each has his standard in nature, which he appeals to, and with reason
thinks he has the same right to put into his complex idea signified by
the word gold, those qualities, which, upon trial, he has found united;
as another who has not so well examined has to leave them out; or a
third, who has made other trials, has to put in others. For the union in
nature of these qualities being the true ground of their union in one
complex idea, who can say one of them has more reason to be put in or
left out than another? From hence it will unavoidably follow, that the
complex ideas of substances in men using the same names for them,
will be very various, and so the significations of those names very
uncertain.
14. Thirdly, To co-existing Qualities which are known but imperfectly.
Besides, there is scarce any particular thing existing, which, in some
of its simple ideas, does not communicate with a greater, and in others
a less number of particular beings: who shall determine in this case
which are those that are to make up the precise collection that is to
be signified by the specific name? or can with any just authority
prescribe, which obvious or common qualities are to be left out;
or which more secret, or more particular, are to be put into the
signification of the name of any substance? All which together, seldom
or never fail to produce that various and doubtful signification in
the names of substances, which causes such uncertainty, disputes, or
mistakes, when we come to a philosophical use of them.
15. With this imperfection, they may serve for civil, but not well for
philosophical Use.
It is true, as to civil and common conversation, the general names of
substances, regulated in their ordinary signification by some obvious
qualities, (as by the shape and figure in things of known seminal
propagation, and in other substances, for the most part by colour,
joined with some other sensible qualities,) do well enough to design the
things men would be understood to speak of: and so they usually
conceive well enough the substances meant by the word gold or apple, to
distinguish the one from the other. But in PHILOSOPHICAL inquiries and
debates, where general truths are to be established, and consequences
drawn from positions laid down, there the precise signification of the
names of substances will be found not only not to be well established
but also very hard to be so. For example: he that shall make
malleability, or a certain degree of fixedness, a part of his complex
idea of gold, may make propositions concerning gold, and draw
consequences from them, that will truly and clearly follow from gold,
taken in such a signification: but yet such as another man can never
be forced to admit, nor be convinced of their truth, who makes not
malleableness, or the same degree of fixedness, part of that complex
idea that the name gold, in his use of it, stands for.
16. Instance, Liquor.
This is a natural and almost unavoidable imperfection in almost all the
names of substances, in all languages whatsoever, which men will easily
find when, once passing from confused or loose notions, they come to
more strict and close inquiries. For then they will be convinced how
doubtful and obscure those words are in their signification, which in
ordinary use appeared very clear and determined. I was once in a meeting
of very learned and ingenious physicians, where by chance there arose a
question, whether any liquor passed through the filaments of the nerves.
The debate having been managed a good while, by variety of arguments on
both sides, I (who had been used to suspect, that the greatest part
of disputes were more about the signification of words than a real
difference in the conception of things) desired, that, before they went
any further on in this dispute, they would first examine and establish
amongst them, what the word LIQUOR signified. They at first were a
little surprised at the proposal; and had they been persons less
ingenious, they might perhaps have taken it for a very frivolous or
extravagant one: since there was no one there that thought not himself
to understand very perfectly what the word liquor stood for; which I
think, too, none of the most perplexed names of substances. However,
they were pleased to comply with my motion; and upon examination found
that the signification of that word was not so settled or certain
as they had all imagined; but that each of them made it a sign of a
different complex idea. This made them perceive that the main of their
dispute was about the signification of that term; and that they differed
very little in their opinions concerning SOME fluid and subtle matter,
passing through the conduits of the nerves; though it was not so easy
to agree whether it was to be called LIQUOR or no, a thing, which, when
considered, they thought it not worth the contending about.
17. Instance, Gold.
How much this is the case in the greatest part of disputes that men are
engaged so hotly in, I shall perhaps have an occasion in another place
to take notice. Let us only here consider a little more exactly the
fore-mentioned instance of the word GOLD, and we shall see how hard it
is precisely to determine its signification. I think all agree to make
it stand for a body of a certain yellow shining colour; which being the
idea to which children have annexed that name, the shining yellow part
of a peacock's tail is properly to them gold. Others finding fusibility
joined with that yellow colour in certain parcels of matter, make of
that combination a complex idea to which they give the name gold, to
denote a sort of substances; and so exclude from being gold all such
yellow shining bodies as by fire will be reduced to ashes; and admit to
be of that species, or to be comprehended under that name gold, only
such substances as having that shining yellow colour, will by fire be
reduced to fusion, and not to ashes. Another, by the same reason, adds
the weight, which, being a quality as straightly joined with that colour
as its fusibility, he thinks has the same reason to be joined in its
idea, and to be signified by its name: and therefore the other made up
of body, of such a colour and fusibility, to be imperfect; and so on
of all the rest: wherein no one can show a reason why some of the
inseparable qualities, that are always united in nature, should be put
into the nominal essence, and others left out, or why the word gold,
signifying that sort of body the ring on his finger is made of, should
determine that sort rather by its colour, weight, and fusibility,
than by its colour, weight, and solubility in aqua regia: since the
dissolving it by that liquor is as inseparable from it as the fusion
by fire, and they are both of them nothing but the relation which
that substance has to two other bodies, which have a power to operate
differently upon it. For by what right is it that fusibility comes to be
a part of the essence signified by the word gold, and solubility but
a property of it? Or why is its colour part of the essence, and its
malleableness but a property? That which I mean is this, That these
being all but properties, depending on its real constitution, and
nothing but powers, either active or passive, in reference to other
bodies, no one has authority to determine the signification of the
word gold (as referred to such a body existing in nature) more to one
collection of ideas to be found in that body than to another: whereby
the signification of that name must unavoidably be very uncertain.
Since, as has been said, several people observe several properties in
the same substance; and I think I may say nobody all. And therefore we
have but very imperfect descriptions of things, and words have very
uncertain significations.
18. The Names of simple Ideas the least doubtful.
From what has been said, it is easy to observe what has been before
remarked, viz. that the NAMES OF SIMPLE IDEAS are, of all others, the
least liable to mistakes, and that for these reasons. First, Because the
ideas they stand for, being each but one single perception, are much
easier got, and more clearly retained, than the more complex ones, and
therefore are not liable to the uncertainty which usually attends those
compounded ones of substances and mixed modes, in which the precise
number of simple ideas that make them up are not easily agreed, so
readily kept in mind. And, Secondly, Because they are never referred to
any other essence, but barely that perception they immediately signify:
which reference is that which renders the signification of the names
of substances naturally so perplexed, and gives occasion to so many
disputes. Men that do not perversely use their words, or on purpose set
themselves to cavil, seldom mistake, in any language which they are
acquainted with, the use and signification of the name of simple ideas.
WHITE and SWEET, YELLOW and BITTER, carry a very obvious meaning with
them, which every one precisely comprehends, or easily perceives he is
ignorant of, and seeks to be informed. But what precise collection of
simple ideas MODESTY or FRUGALITY stand for, in another's use, is not
so certainly known. And however we are apt to think we well enough know
what is meant by GOLD or IRON; yet the precise complex idea others make
them the signs of is not so certain: and I believe it is very seldom
that, in speaker and hearer, they stand for exactly the same collection.
Which must needs produce mistakes and disputes, when they are made use
of in discourses, wherein men have to do with universal propositions,
and would settle in their minds universal truths, and consider the
consequences that follow from them.
19. And next to them, simple Modes.
By the same rule, the names of SIMPLE MODES are, next to those of simple
ideas, least liable to doubt and uncertainty; especially those of figure
and number, of which men have so clear and distinct ideas. Who ever that
had a mind to understand them mistook the ordinary meaning of SEVEN, or
a TRIANGLE? And in general the least compounded ideas in every kind have
the least dubious names.
20. The most doubtful are the Names of very compounded mixed Modes and
Substances.
Mixed modes, therefore, that are made up but of a few and obvious simple
ideas, have usually names of no very uncertain signification. But the
names of mixed modes, which comprehend a great number of simple ideas,
are commonly of a very doubtful and undetermined meaning, as has been
shown. The names of substances, being annexed to ideas that are neither
the real essences, nor exact representations of the patterns they are
referred to, are liable to yet greater imperfection and uncertainty,
especially when we come to a philosophical use of them.
21. Why this Imperfection charged upon Words.
The great disorder that happens in our names of substances, proceeding,
for the most part, from our want of knowledge, and inability to
penetrate into their real constitutions, it may probably be wondered
why I charge this as an imperfection rather upon our words than
understandings. This exception has so much appearance of justice, that I
think myself obliged to give a reason why I have followed this method.
I must confess, then, that, when I first began this Discourse of the
Understanding, and a good while after, I had not the least thought that
any consideration of words was at all necessary to it. But when, having
passed over the original and composition of our ideas, I began to
examine the extent and certainty of our knowledge, I found it had so
near a connexion with words, that, unless their force and manner of
signification were first well observed, there could be very little said
clearly and pertinently concerning knowledge: which being conversant
about truth, had constantly to do with propositions. And though it
terminated in things, yet it was for the most part so much by the
intervention of words, that they seemed scarce separable from our
general knowledge. At least they interpose themselves so much between
our understandings, and the truth which it would contemplate and
apprehend, that, like the medium through which visible objects pass, the
obscurity and disorder do not seldom cast a mist before our eyes, and
impose upon our understandings. If we consider, in the fallacies men put
upon themselves, as well as others, and the mistakes in men's disputes
and notions, how great a part is owing to words, and their uncertain or
mistaken significations, we shall have reason to think this no small
obstacle in the way to knowledge; which I conclude we are the more
carefully to be warned of, because it has been so far from being taken
notice of as an inconvenience, that the arts of improving it have
been made the business of men's study, and obtained the reputation of
learning and subtilty, as we shall see in the following chapter. But
I am apt to imagine, that, were the imperfections of language, as the
instrument of knowledge, more thoroughly weighed, a great many of the
controversies that make such a noise in the world, would of themselves
cease; and the way to knowledge, and perhaps peace too, lie a great deal
opener than it does.
22. This should teach us Moderation in imposing our own Sense of old
Authors.
Sure I am that the signification of words in all languages, depending
very much on the thoughts, notions, and ideas of him that uses them,
must unavoidably be of great uncertainty to men of the same language and
country. This is so evident in the Greek authors, that he that shall
peruse their writings will find in almost every one of them, a distinct
language, though the same words. But when to this natural difficulty in
every country, there shall be added different countries and remote ages,
wherein the speakers and writers had very different notions, tempers,
customs, ornaments, and figures of speech, &c., every one of which
influenced the signification of their words then, though to us now they
are lost and unknown; it would become us to be charitable one to another
in our interpretations or misunderstandings of those ancient writings;
which, though of great concernment to be understood, are liable to the
unavoidable difficulties of speech, which (if we except the names of
simple ideas, and some very obvious things) is not capable, without a
constant defining the terms, of conveying the sense and intention of the
speaker, without any manner of doubt and uncertainty to the hearer. And
in discourses of religion, law, and morality, as they are matters of the
highest concernment, so there will be the greatest difficulty.
23. Especially of the Old and New Testament Scriptures.
The volumes of interpreters and commentators on the Old and New
Testament are but too manifest proofs of this. Though everything said in
the text be infallibly true, yet the reader may be, nay, cannot choose
but be, very fallible in the understanding of it. Nor is it to be
wondered, that the will of God, when clothed in words, should be liable
to that doubt and uncertainty which unavoidably attends that sort of
conveyance, when even his Son, whilst clothed in flesh, was subject to
all the frailties and inconveniences of human nature, sin excepted. And
we ought to magnify his goodness, that he hath spread before all the
world such legible characters of his works and providence, and given all
mankind so sufficient a light of reason, that they to whom this written
word never came, could not (whenever they set themselves to search)
either doubt of the being of a God, or of the obedience due to him.
Since then the precepts of Natural Religion are plain, and very
intelligible to all mankind, and seldom come to be controverted; and
other revealed truths, which are conveyed to us by books and languages,
are liable to the common and natural obscurities and difficulties
incident to words; methinks it would become us to be more careful and
diligent in observing the former, and less magisterial, positive, and
imperious, in imposing our own sense and interpretations of the latter.
CHAPTER X.
OF THE ABUSE OF WORDS.
1. Woeful abuse of Words.
Besides the imperfection that is naturally in language, and the
obscurity and confusion that is so hard to be avoided in the use of
words, there are several WILFUL faults and neglects which men are guilty
of in this way of communication, whereby they render these signs less
clear and distinct in their signification than naturally they need to
be.
2. First, Words are often employed without any, or without clear Ideas.
FIRST, In this kind the first and most palpable abuse is, the using
of words without clear and distinct ideas; or, which is worse, signs
without anything signified. Of these there are two sorts:--
I. Some words introduced without clear ideas annexed to them, even in
their first original.
One may observe, in all languages, certain words that, if they be
examined, will be found in their first original, and their appropriated
use, not to stand for any clear and distinct ideas. These, for the most
part, the several sects of philosophy and religion have introduced. For
their authors or promoters, either affecting something singular, and out
of the way of common apprehensions, or to support some strange opinions,
or cover some weakness of their hypothesis, seldom fail to coin new
words, and such as, when they come to be examined, may justly be called
INSIGNIFICANT TERMS. For, having either had no determinate collection of
ideas annexed to them when they were first invented; or at least such
as, if well examined, will be found inconsistent, it is no wonder, if,
afterwards, in the vulgar use of the same party, they remain empty
sounds, with little or no signification, amongst those who think it
enough to have them often in their mouths, as the distinguishing
characters of their Church or School, without much troubling their heads
to examine what are the precise ideas they stand for. I shall not need
here to heap up instances; every man's reading and conversation will
sufficiently furnish him. Or if he wants to be better stored, the
great mint-masters of this kind of terms, I mean the Schoolmen and
Metaphysicians (under which I think the disputing natural and moral
philosophers of these latter ages may be comprehended) have wherewithal
abundantly to content him.
3. II. Other Words, to which ideas were annexed at first, used
afterwards without distinct meanings.
Others there be who extend this abuse yet further, who take so little
care to lay by words, which, in their primary notation have scarce
any clear and distinct ideas which they are annexed to, that, by an
unpardonable negligence, they familiarly use words which the propriety
of language HAS affixed to very important ideas, without any distinct
meaning at all. WISDOM, GLORY, GRACE, &c., are words frequent enough in
every man's mouth; but if a great many of those who use them should be
asked what they mean by them, they would be at a stand, and not know
what to answer: a plain proof, that, though they have learned those
sounds, and have them ready at their tongues ends, yet there are no
determined ideas laid up in their minds, which are to be expressed to
others by them.
4. This occasioned by men learning Names before they have the Ideas the
names belong to.
Men having been accustomed from their cradles to learn words which are
easily got and retained, before they knew or had framed the complex
ideas to which they were annexed, or which were to be found in the
things they were thought to stand for, they usually continue to do so
all their lives; and without taking the pains necessary to settle in
their minds determined ideas, they use their words for such unsteady and
confused notions as they have, contenting themselves with the same words
other people use; as if their very sound necessarily carried with it
constantly the same meaning. This, though men make a shift with in
the ordinary occurrences of life, where they find it necessary to be
understood, and therefore they make signs till they are so; yet this
insignificancy in their words, when they come to reason concerning
either their tenets or interest, manifestly fills their discourse with
abundance of empty unintelligible noise and jargon, especially in moral
matters, where the words for the most part standing for arbitrary and
numerous collections of ideas, not regularly and permanently united in
nature, their bare sounds are often only thought on, or at least very
obscure and uncertain notions annexed to them. Men take the words
they find in use amongst their neighbours; and that they may not seem
ignorant what they stand for, use them confidently, without much
troubling their heads about a certain fixed meaning; whereby, besides
the ease of it, they obtain this advantage, That, as in such discourses
they seldom are in the right, so they are as seldom to be convinced that
they are in the wrong; it being all one to go about to draw those men
out of their mistakes who have no settled notions, as to dispossess a
vagrant of his habitation who has no settled abode. This I guess to be
so; and every one may observe in himself and others whether it be so or
not.
5. Secondly Unsteady Application of them.
SECONDLY, Another great abuse of words is INCONSTANCY in the use of
them. It is hard to find a discourse written on any subject, especially
of controversy, wherein one shall not observe, if he read with
attention, the same words (and those commonly the most material in the
discourse, and upon which the argument turns) used sometimes for one
collection of simple ideas, and sometimes for another; which is a
perfect abuse of language. Words being intended for signs of my ideas,
to make them known to others, not by any natural signification, but by
a voluntary imposition, it is plain cheat and abuse, when I make them
stand sometimes for one thing and sometimes for another; the wilful
doing whereof can be imputed to nothing but great folly, or greater
dishonesty. And a man, in his accounts with another may, with as much
fairness make the characters of numbers stand sometimes for one and
sometimes for another collection of units: v.g. this character 3, stand
sometimes for three, sometimes for four, and sometimes for eight, as
in his discourse or reasoning make the same words stand for different
collections of simple ideas. If men should do so in their reckonings, I
wonder who would have to do with them? One who would speak thus in the
affairs and business of the world, and call 8 sometimes seven, and
sometimes nine, as best served his advantage, would presently have
clapped upon him, one of the two names men are commonly disgusted with.
And yet in arguings and learned contests, the same sort of proceedings
passes commonly for wit and learning; but to me it appears a greater
dishonesty than the misplacing of counters in the casting up a debt; and
the cheat the greater, by how much truth is of greater concernment and
value than money.
6. Thirdly, Affected Obscurity, as in the Peripatetic and other sects of
Philosophy.
THIRDLY. Another abuse of language is an AFFECTED OBSCURITY; by either
applying old words to new and unusual significations; or introducing new
and ambiguous terms, without defining either; or else putting them
so together, as may confound their ordinary meaning. Though the
Peripatetick philosophy has been most eminent in this way, yet other
sects have not been wholly clear of it. There are scarce any of them
that are not cumbered with some difficulties (such is the imperfection
of human knowledge,) which they have been fain to cover with obscurity
of terms, and to confound the signification of words, which, like a
mist before people's eyes, might hinder their weak parts from being
discovered. That BODY and EXTENSION in common use, stand for two
distinct ideas, is plain to any one that will but reflect a little. For
were their signification precisely the same, it would be as proper, and
as intelligible to say, 'the body of an extension,' as the 'extension of
a body;' and yet there are those who find it necessary to confound their
signification. To this abuse, and the mischiefs of confounding the
signification of words, logic, and the liberal sciences as they have
been handled in the schools, have given reputation; and the admired Art
of Disputing hath added much to the natural imperfection of languages,
whilst it has been made use of and fitted to perplex the signification
of words, more than to discover the knowledge and truth of things: and
he that will look into that sort of learned writings, will find the
words there much more obscure, uncertain, and undetermined in their
meaning, than they are in ordinary conversation.
7. Logic and Dispute have much contributed to this.
This is unavoidably to be so, where men's parts and learning are
estimated by their skill in disputing. And if reputation and reward
shall attend these conquests, which depend mostly on the fineness and
niceties of words, it is no wonder if the wit of man so employed, should
perplex, involve, and subtilize the signification of sounds, so as never
to want something to say in opposing or defending any question; the
victory being adjudged not to him who had truth on his side, but the
last word in the dispute.
8. Calling it Subtlety.
This, though a very useless skill, and that which I think the direct
opposite to the ways of knowledge, hath yet passed hitherto under the
laudable and esteemed names of SUBTLETY and ACUTENESS, and has had the
applause of the schools, and encouragement of one part of the learned
men of the world. And no wonder, since the philosophers of old, (the
disputing and wrangling philosophers I mean, such as Lucian wittily and
with reason taxes,) and the Schoolmen since, aiming at glory and esteem,
for their great and universal knowledge, easier a great deal to be
pretended to than really acquired, found this a good expedient to cover
their ignorance, with a curious and inexplicable web of perplexed words,
and procure to themselves the admiration of others, by unintelligible
terms, the apter to produce wonder because they could not be understood;
whilst it appears in all history, that these profound doctors were no
wiser nor more useful than their neighbours, and brought but small
advantage to human life or the societies wherein they lived; unless the
coining of new words, where they produced no new things to apply them
to, or the perplexing or obscuring the signification of old ones, and so
bringing all things into question and dispute, were a thing profitable
to the life of man, or worthy commendation and reward.
9. This Learning very little benefits Society.
For, notwithstanding these learned disputants, these all-knowing
doctors, it was to the unscholastic statesman that the governments
of the world owed their peace, defence, and liberties; and from the
illiterate and contemned mechanic (a name of disgrace) that they
received the improvements of useful arts. Nevertheless, this artificial
ignorance, and learned gibberish, prevailed mightily in these last ages,
by the interest and artifice of those who found no easier way to that
pitch of authority and dominion they have attained, than by amusing
the men of business, and ignorant, with hard words, or employing the
ingenious and idle in intricate disputes about unintelligible terms, and
holding them perpetually entangled in that endless labyrinth. Besides,
there is no such way to gain admittance, or give defence to strange and
absurd doctrines, as to guard them round about with legions of obscure,
doubtful, and undefined words. Which yet make these retreats more like
the dens of robbers, or holes of foxes, than the fortresses of fair
warriors; which, if it be hard to get them out of, it is not for the
strength that is in them, but the briars and thorns, and the obscurity
of the thickets they are beset with. For untruth being unacceptable
to the mind of man, there is no other defence left for absurdity but
obscurity.
10. But destroys the instruments of Knowledge and communication.
Thus learned ignorance, and this art of keeping even inquisitive men
from true knowledge, hath been propagated in the world, and hath much
perplexed, whilst it pretended to inform the understanding. For we see
that other well-meaning and wise men, whose education and parts had not
acquired that ACUTENESS, could intelligibly express themselves to one
another; and in its plain use make a benefit of language. But though
unlearned men well enough understood the words white and black; &c., and
had constant notions of the ideas signified by those words; yet there
were philosophers found who had learning and subtlety enough to prove
that snow was black; i.e. to prove that white was black. Whereby they
had the advantage to destroy the instruments and means of discourse,
conversation, instruction, and society; whilst, with great art and
subtlety, they did no more but perplex and confound the signification of
words, and thereby render language less useful than the real defects of
it had made it; a gift which the illiterate had not attained to.
11. As useful as to confound the sound that the Letters of the Alphabet
stand for.
These learned men did equally instruct men's understandings, and
profit their lives, as he who should alter the signification of known
characters, and, by a subtle device of learning, far surpassing the
capacity of the illiterate, dull, and vulgar, should in his writing show
that he could put A for B, and D for E, &c., to the no small admiration
and benefit of for his reader. It being as senseless to put BLACK,
which is a word agreed on to stand for one sensible idea, to put it, I
say, for another, or the contrary idea; i.e. to call SNOW BLACK, as
to put this mark A, which is a character agreed on to stand for one
modification of sound, made by a certain motion of the organs of speech,
for B, which is agreed on to stand for another modification of sound,
made by another certain mode of the organs of speech.
12. This Art has perplexed Religion and Justice.
Nor hath this mischief stopped in logical niceties, or curious empty
speculations; it hath invaded the great concernments of human life and
society; obscured and perplexed the material truths of law and divinity;
brought confusion, disorder, and uncertainty into the affairs of
mankind; and if not destroyed, yet in a great measure rendered useless,
these two great rules, religion and justice. What have the greatest part
of the comments and disputes upon the laws of God and man served for,
but to make the meaning more doubtful, and perplex the sense? What have
been the effect of those multiplied curious distinctions, and acute
niceties, but obscurity and uncertainty, leaving the words more
unintelligible, and the reader more at a loss? How else comes it to pass
that princes, speaking or writing to their servants, in their ordinary
commands are easily understood; speaking to their people, in their laws,
are not so? And, as I remarked before, doth it not often happen that a
man of an ordinary capacity very well understands a text, or a law, that
he reads, till he consults an expositor, or goes to counsel; who, by
that time he hath done explaining them, makes the words signify either
nothing at all, or what he pleases.
13. and ought not to pass for Learning.
Whether any by-interests of these professions have occasioned this, I
will not here examine; but I leave it to be considered, whether it would
not be well for mankind, whose concernment it is to know things as they
are, and to do what they ought, and not to spend their lives in talking
about them, or tossing words to and fro;--whether it would not be well,
I say, that the use of words were made plain and direct; and that
language, which was given us for the improvement of knowledge and bond
of society, should not be employed to darken truth and unsettle people's
rights; to raise mists, and render unintelligible both morality and
religion? Or that at least, if this will happen, it should not be
thought learning or knowledge to do so?
14. IV. Fourthly, by taking Words for Things.
FOURTHLY, Another great abuse of words is, the TAKING THEM FOR THINGS.
This, though it in some degree concerns all names in general, yet more
particularly affects those of substances. To this abuse those men are
most subject who most confine their thoughts to any one system, and
give themselves up into a firm belief of the perfection of any received
hypothesis: whereby they come to be persuaded that the terms of that
sect are so suited to the nature of things, that they perfectly
correspond with their real existence. Who is there that has been bred up
in the Peripatetick philosophy, who does not think the Ten Names, under
which are ranked the Ten Predicaments, to be exactly conformable to the
nature of things? Who is there of that school that is not persuaded that
SUBSTANTIAL FORMS, VEGETATIVE SOULS, ABHORRENCE OF A VACUUM, INTENTIONAL
SPECIES, &c., are something real? These words men have learned from
their very entrance upon knowledge, and have found their masters and
systems lay great stress upon them: and therefore they cannot quit
the opinion, that they are conformable to nature, and are the
representations of something that really exists. The Platonists have
their SOUL OF THE WORLD, and the Epicureans their ENDEAVOR TOWARDS
MOTION in their atoms when at rest. There is scarce any sect in
philosophy has not a distinct set of terms that others understand not.
But yet this gibberish, which, in the weakness of human understanding,
serves so well to palliate men's ignorance, and cover their errors,
comes, by familiar use amongst those of the same tribe, to seem the
most important part of language, and of all other the terms the most
significant: and should AERIAL and OETHERIAL VEHICLES come once, by the
prevalency of that doctrine, to be generally received anywhere, no doubt
those terms would make impressions on men's minds, so as to establish
them in the persuasion of the reality of such things, as much as
Peripatetick FORMS and INTENTIONAL SPECIES have heretofore done. 15.
Instance, in Matter.
How much names taken for things are apt to mislead the understanding,
the attentive reading of philosophical writers would abundantly
discover; and that perhaps in words little suspected of any such misuse.
I shall instance in one only, and that a very familiar one. How many
intricate disputes have there been about MATTER, as if there were some
such thing really in nature, distinct from BODY; as it is evident the
word matter stands for an idea distinct from the idea of body? For if
the ideas these two terms stood for were precisely the same, they might
indifferently in all places be put for one another. But we see that
though it be proper to say, There is one matter of all bodies, one
cannot say, There is one body of all matters: we familiarly say one body
is bigger than another; but it sounds harsh (and I think is never used)
to say one matter is bigger than another. Whence comes this, then? Viz.
from hence: that, though matter and body be not really distinct, but
wherever there is the one there is the other; yet matter and body stand
for two different conceptions, whereof the one is incomplete, and but
a part of the other. For body stands for a solid extended figured
substance, whereof matter is but a partial and more confused conception;
it seeming to me to be used for the substance and solidity of body,
without taking in its extension and figure: and therefore it is that,
speaking of matter, we speak of it always as one, because in truth it
expressly contains nothing but the idea of a solid substance, which is
everywhere the same, everywhere uniform. This being our idea of matter,
we no more conceive or speak of different MATTERS in the world than
we do of different solidities; though we both conceive and speak of
different bodies, because extension and figure are capable of variation.
But, since solidity cannot exist without extension and figure, the
taking matter to be the name of something really existing under that
precision, has no doubt produced those obscure and unintelligible
discourses and disputes, which have filled the heads and books of
philosophers concerning materia prima; which imperfection or abuse,
how far it may concern a great many other general terms I leave to be
considered. This, I think, I may at least say, that we should have a
great many fewer disputes in the world, if words were taken for what
they are, the signs of our ideas only; and not for things themselves.
For, when we argue about MATTER, or any the like term, we truly argue
only about the idea we express by that sound, whether that precise idea
agree to anything really existing in nature or no. And if men would tell
what ideas they make their words stand for, there could not be half that
obscurity or wrangling in the search or support of truth that there is.
16. This makes Errors lasting.
But whatever inconvenience follows from this mistake of words, this I am
sure, that, by constant and familiar use, they charm men into notions
far remote from the truth of things. It would be a hard matter to
persuade any one that the words which his father, or schoolmaster, the
parson of the parish, or such a reverend doctor used, signified nothing
that really existed in nature: which perhaps is none of the least causes
that men are so hardly drawn to quit their mistakes, even in opinions
purely philosophical, and where they have no other interest but truth.
For the words they have a long time been used to, remaining firm in
their minds, it is no wonder that the wrong notions annexed to them
should not be removed.
17. Fifthly, by setting them in the place of what they cannot signify.
V. FIFTHLY, Another abuse of words is, THE SETTING THEM IN THE PLACE OF
THINGS WHICH THEY DO OR CAN BY NO MEANS SIGNIFY. We may observe that, in
the general names of substances, whereof the NOMINAL essences are only
known to us, when we put them into propositions, and affirm or deny
anything about them, we do most commonly tacitly suppose or intend, they
should stand for the REAL essence of a certain sort of substances.
For, when a man says gold is malleable, he means and would insinuate
something more than this, That what I call gold is malleable, (though
truly it amounts to no more,) but would have this understood, viz.
That gold, i.e. what has the real essence of gold, is malleable; which
amounts to thus much, that malleableness depends on, and is inseparable
from the real essence of gold. But a man, not knowing wherein that real
essence consists, the connexion in his mind of malleableness is not
truly with an essence he knows not, but only with the sound gold he puts
for it. Thus, when we say that ANIMAL RATIONALE is, and animal imflume
bipes latis unguibus is not a good definition of a man; it is plain we
suppose the name man in this case to stand for the real essence of a
species, and would signify that 'a rational animal' better described
that real essence than 'a two-legged animal with broad nails, and
without feathers.' For else, why might not Plato as properly make the
word [word in Greek], or MAN, stand for his complex idea, made up of the
idea of a body, distinguished from others by a certain shape and other
outward appearances, as Aristotle make the complex idea to which he gave
the name [word in Greek], or MAN, of body and the faculty of reasoning
joined together; unless the name [word in Greek], or MAN, were supposed
to stand for something else than what it signifies; and to be put in the
place of some other thing than the idea a man professes he would express
by it?
18. VI. Putting them for the real Essences of Substances.
It is true the names of substances would be much more useful, and
propositions made in them much more certain, were the real essences of
substances the ideas in our minds which those words signified. And it
is for want of those real essences that our words convey so little
knowledge or certainty in our discourses about them; and therefore the
mind, to remove that imperfection as much as it can, makes them, by a
secret supposition, to stand for a thing having that real essence, as if
thereby it made some nearer approaches to it. For, though the word MAN
or GOLD signify nothing truly but a complex idea of properties united
together in one sort of substances; yet there is scarce anybody, in the
use of these words, but often supposes each of those names to stand for
a thing having the real essence on which these properties depend. Which
is so far from diminishing the imperfection of our words, that by a
plain abuse it adds to it, when we would make them stand for something,
which, not being in our complex idea, the name we use can no ways be the
sign of.
19. Hence we think Change of our Complex Ideas of Substances not to
change their Species.
This shows us the reason why in MIXED MODES any of the ideas that make
the composition of the complex one being left out or changed, it is
allowed to be another thing, i.e. to be of another species, as is plain
in CHANCE-MEDLEY, MANSLAUGHTER, MURDER, PARRICIDE, &c. The reason
whereof is, because the complex idea signified by that name is the real
as well as nominal essence; and there is no secret reference of that
name to any other essence but that. But in SUBSTANCES, it is not so. For
though in that called GOLD, one puts into his complex idea what another
leaves out, and vice versa: yet men do not usually think that therefore
the species is changed: because they secretly in their minds refer that
name, and suppose it annexed to a real immutable essence of a thing
existing, on which those properties depend. He that adds to his complex
idea of gold that of fixedness and solubility in AQUA REGIA, which he
put not in it before, is not thought to have changed the species; but
only to have a more perfect idea, by adding another simple idea, which
is always in fact joined with those other, of which his former complex
idea consisted. But this reference of the name to a thing, whereof we
have not the idea, is so far from helping at all, that it only serves
the more to involve us in difficulties. For by this tacit reference to
the real essence of that species of bodies, the word GOLD (which, by
standing for a more or less perfect collection of simple ideas, serves
to design that sort of body well enough in civil discourse) comes to
have no signification at all, being put for somewhat whereof we have no
idea at all, and so can signify nothing at all, when the body itself is
away. For however it may be thought all one, yet, if well considered, it
will be found a quite different thing, to argue about gold in name, and
about a parcel in the body itself, v.g. a piece of leaf-gold laid before
us; though in discourse we are fain to substitute the name for the
thing.
20. The Cause of this Abuse, a supposition of Nature's working always
regularly, in setting boundaries to Species.
That which I think very much disposes men to substitute their names for
the real essences of species, is the supposition before mentioned,
that nature works regularly in the production of things, and sets the
boundaries to each of those species, by giving exactly the same real
internal constitution to each individual which we rank under one general
name. Whereas any one who observes their different qualities can hardly
doubt, that many of the individuals, called by the same name, are, in
their internal constitution, as different one from another as several of
those which are ranked under different specific names. This supposition,
however, that the same precise and internal constitution goes always
with the same specific name, makes men forward to take those names for
the representatives of those real essences; though indeed they signify
nothing but the complex ideas they have in their minds when they use
them. So that, if I may so say, signifying one thing, and being supposed
for, or put in the place of another, they cannot but, in such a kind of
use, cause a great deal of uncertainty in men's discourses; especially
in those who have thoroughly imbibed the doctrine of SUBSTANTIAL
FORMS, whereby they firmly imagine the several species of things to be
determined and distinguished.
21. This Abuse contains two false Suppositions.
But however preposterous and absurd it be to make our names stand for
ideas we have not, or (which is all one) essences that we know not,
it being in effect to make our words the signs of nothing; yet it is
evident to any one who ever so little reflects on the use men make
of their words, that there is nothing more familiar. When a man asks
whether this or that thing he sees, let it be a drill, or a monstrous
foetus, be a MAN or no; it is evident the question is not, Whether that
particular thing agree to his complex idea expressed by the name man:
but whether it has in it the real essence of a species of things which
he supposes his name man to stand for. In which way of using the names
of substances, there are these false suppositions contained:--
First, that there are certain precise essences according to which nature
makes all particular things, and by which they are distinguished into
species. That everything has a real constitution, whereby it is what it
is, and on which its sensible qualities depend, is past doubt: but I
think it has been proved that this makes not the distinction of species
as WE rank them, nor the boundaries of their names.
Secondly, this tacitly also insinuates, as if we had IDEAS of these
proposed essences. For to what purpose else is it, to inquire whether
this or that thing have the real essence of the species man, if we did
not suppose that there were such a specifick essence known? Which yet
is utterly false. And therefore such application of names as would make
them stand for ideas which we have not, must needs cause great disorder
in discourses and reasonings about them, and be a great inconvenience in
our communication by words.
22. VI. Sixthly, by proceeding upon the supposition that the words we
use have a certain and evident Signification which other men cannot but
understand.
SIXTHLY, there remains yet another more general, though perhaps less
observed, abuse of words; and that is, that men having by a long and
familiar use annexed to them certain ideas, they are apt to imagine SO
NEAR AND NECESSARY A CONNEXION BETWEEN THE NAMES AND SIGNIFICATION THEY
USE THEM IN, that they forwardly suppose one cannot but understand what
their meaning is; and therefore one ought to acquiesce in the words
delivered, as if it were past doubt that, in the use of those common
received sounds, the speaker and hearer had necessarily the same precise
ideas. Whence presuming, that when they have in discourse used any term,
they have thereby, as it were, set before others the very thing they
talked of. And so likewise taking the words of others, as naturally
standing for just what they themselves have been accustomed to apply
them to, they never trouble themselves to explain their own, or
understand clearly others' meaning. From whence commonly proceeds noise,
and wrangling, without improvement or information; whilst men take words
to be the constant regular marks of agreed notions, which in truth are
no more but the voluntary and unsteady signs of their own ideas. And yet
men think it strange, if in discourse, or (where it is often absolutely
necessary) in dispute, one sometimes asks the meaning of their terms:
though the arguings one may every day observe in conversation make it
evident, that there are few names of complex ideas which any two men use
for the same just precise collection. It is hard to name a word which
will not be a clear instance of this. LIFE is a term, none more
familiar. Any one almost would take it for an affront to be asked what
he meant by it. And yet if it comes in question, whether a plant that
lies ready formed in the seed have life; whether the embryo in an egg
before incubation, or a man in a swoon without sense or motion, be alive
or no; it is easy to perceive that a clear, distinct, settled idea does
not always accompany the use of so known a word as that of life is. Some
gross and confused conceptions men indeed ordinarily have, to which they
apply the common words of their language; and such a loose use of their
words serves them well enough in their ordinary discourses or affairs.
But this is not sufficient for philosophical inquiries. Knowledge and
reasoning require precise determinate ideas. And though men will not
be so importunately dull as not to understand what others say, without
demanding an explication of their terms; nor so troublesomely critical
as to correct others in the use of the words they receive from them:
yet, where truth and knowledge are concerned in the case, I know not
what fault it can be, to desire the explication of words whose sense
seems dubious; or why a man should be ashamed to own his ignorance in
what sense another man uses his words; since he has no other way of
certainly knowing it but by being informed. This abuse of taking words
upon trust has nowhere spread so far, nor with so ill effects, as
amongst men of letters. The multiplication and obstinacy of disputes,
which have so laid waste the intellectual world, is owing to nothing
more than to this ill use of words. For though it be generally believed
that there is great diversity of opinions in the volumes and variety of
controversies the world is distracted with; yet the most I can find that
the contending learned men of different parties do, in their arguings
one with another, is, that they speak different languages. For I am apt
to imagine, that when any of them, quitting terms, think upon things,
and know what they think, they think all the same: though perhaps what
they would have be different.
23. The Ends of Language: First, To convey our Ideas.
To conclude this consideration of the imperfection and abuse of
language. The ends of language in our discourse with others being
chiefly these three: First, to make known one man's thoughts or ideas to
another; Secondly, to do so with as much ease and quickness as possible;
and, Thirdly, thereby to convey the knowledge of things: language is
either abused or deficient, when it fails of any of these three.
First, Words fail in the first of these ends, and lay not open one man's
ideas to another's view: 1. When men have names in their mouths without
any determinate ideas in their minds whereof they are the signs: or, 2.
When they apply the common received names of any language to ideas, to
which the common use of that language does not apply them: or 3. When
they apply them very unsteadily, making them stand now for one, and by
and by for another idea.
24. Secondly, To do it with Quickness.
Secondly, Men fail of conveying their thoughts with the quickness and
ease that may be, when they have complex ideas without having any
distinct names for them. This is sometimes the fault of the language
itself, which has not in it a sound yet applied to such a signification;
and sometimes the fault of the man, who has not yet learned the name for
that idea he would show another.
25. Thirdly, Therewith to convey the Knowledge of Things.
Thirdly, there is no knowledge of things conveyed by men's words, when
their ideas agree not to the reality of things. Though it be a defect
that has its original in our ideas, which are not so conformable to the
nature of things as attention, study and application might make them,
yet it fails not to extend itself to our words too, when we use them as
signs of real beings, which yet never had any reality or existence.
26. How Men's Words fail in all these: First, when used without any
ideas.
First, He that hath words of any language, without distinct ideas in
his mind to which he applies them, does, so far as he uses them in
discourse, only make a noise without any sense or signification; and how
learned soever he may seem, by the use of hard words or learned terms,
is not much more advanced thereby in knowledge, than he would be in
learning, who had nothing in his study but the bare titles of books,
without possessing the contents of them. For all such words, however
put into discourse, according to the right construction of grammatical
rules, or the harmony of well-turned periods, do yet amount to nothing
but bare sounds, and nothing else.
27. Secondly, when complex ideas are without names annexed to them.
Secondly, He that has complex ideas, without particular names for them,
would be in no better case than a bookseller, who had in his warehouse
volumes that lay there unbound, and without titles, which he could
therefore make known to others only by showing the loose sheets, and
communicate them only by tale. This man is hindered in his discourse,
for want of words to communicate his complex ideas, which he is
therefore forced to make known by an enumeration of the simple ones that
compose them; and so is fain often to use twenty words, to express what
another man signifies in one.
28. Thirdly, when the same sign is not put for the same idea.
Thirdly, He that puts not constantly the same sign for the same idea,
but uses the same word sometimes in one and sometimes in another
signification, ought to pass in the schools and conversation for as fair
a man, as he does in the market and exchange, who sells several things
under the same name.
29. Fourthly, when words are diverted from their common use.
Fourthly, He that applies the words of any language to ideas different
from those to which the common use of that country applies them, however
his own understanding may be filled with truth and light, will not by
such words be able to convey much of it to others, without defining his
terms. For however the sounds are such as are familiarly known, and
easily enter the ears of those who are accustomed to them; yet standing
for other ideas than those they usually are annexed to, and are wont to
excite in the mind of the hearers, they cannot make known the thoughts
of him who thus uses them.
30. Fifthly, when they are names of fantastical imaginations.
Fifthly, He that imagined to himself substances such as never have been,
and filled his head with ideas which have not any correspondence with
the real nature of things, to which yet he gives settled and defined
names, may fill his discourse, and perhaps another man's head, with the
fantastical imaginations of his own brain, but will be very far from
advancing thereby one jot in real and true knowledge.
31. Summary.
He that hath names without ideas, wants meaning in his words, and speaks
only empty sounds. He that hath complex ideas without names for them,
wants liberty and dispatch in his expressions, and is necessitated to
use periphrases. He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will
either be not minded or not understood. He that applies his names to
ideas different from their common use, wants propriety in his language,
and speaks gibberish. And he that hath the ideas of substances
disagreeing with the real existence of things, so far wants the
materials of true knowledge in his understanding, and hath instead
thereof chimeras.
32. How men's words fail when they stand for Substances.
In our notions concerning Substances, we are liable to all the former
inconveniences: v. g. he that uses the word TARANTULA, without having
any imagination or idea of what it stands for, pronounces a good
word; but so long means nothing at all by it. 2. He that, in a
newly-discovered country, shall see several sorts of animals and
vegetables, unknown to him before, may have as true ideas of them, as of
a horse or a stag; but can speak of them only by a description, till he
shall either take the names the natives call them by, or give them names
himself. 3. He that uses the word BODY sometimes for pure extension,
and sometimes for extension and solidity together, will talk very
fallaciously. 4. He that gives the name HORSE to that idea which common
usage calls MULE, talks improperly, and will not be understood. 5. He
that thinks the name CENTAUR stands for some real being, imposes on
himself, and mistakes words for things.
33. How when they stand for Modes and Relations.
In Modes and Relations generally, we are liable only to the four first
of these inconveniences; viz. 1. I may have in my memory the names of
modes, as GRATITUDE or CHARITY, and yet not have any precise ideas
annexed in my thoughts to those names, 2. I may have ideas, and not know
the names that belong to them: v. g. I may have the idea of a man's
drinking till his colour and humour be altered, till his tongue trips,
and his eyes look red, and his feet fail him; and yet not know that
it is to be called DRUNKENNESS. 3. I may have the ideas of virtues or
vices, and names also, but apply them amiss: v. g. when I apply the name
FRUGALITY to that idea which others call and signify by this sound,
COVETOUSNESS. 4. I may use any of those names with inconstancy. 5. But,
in modes and relations, I cannot have ideas disagreeing to the existence
of things: for modes being complex ideas, made by the mind at pleasure,
and relation being but by way of considering or comparing two things
together, and so also an idea of my own making, these ideas can scarce
be found to disagree with anything existing; since they are not in the
mind as the copies of things regularly made by nature, nor as properties
inseparably flowing from the internal constitution or essence of any
substance; but, as it were, patterns lodged in my memory, with names
annexed to them, to denominate actions and relations by, as they come
to exist. But the mistake is commonly in my giving a wrong name to my
conceptions; and so using words in a different sense from other people:
I am not understood, but am thought to have wrong ideas of them, when I
give wrong names to them. Only if I put in my ideas of mixed modes or
relations any inconsistent ideas together, I fill my head also with
chimeras; since such ideas, if well examined, cannot so much as exist in
the mind, much less any real being ever be denominated from them.
34. Seventhly, Language is often abused by Figurative Speech.
Since wit and fancy find easier entertainment in the world than dry
truth and real knowledge, figurative speeches and allusion in language
will hardly be admitted as an imperfection or abuse of it. I confess, in
discourses where we seek rather pleasure and delight than information
and improvement, such ornaments as are borrowed from them can scarce
pass for faults. But yet if we would speak of things as they are, we
must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness;
all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath
invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the
passions, and thereby mislead the judgment; and so indeed are perfect
cheats: and therefore, however laudable or allowable oratory may render
them in harangues and popular addresses, they are certainly, in all
discourses that pretend to inform or instruct, wholly to be avoided; and
where truth and knowledge are concerned, cannot but be thought a great
fault, either of the language or person that makes use of them. What and
how various they are, will be superfluous here to take notice; the books
of rhetoric which abound in the world, will instruct those who want to
be informed: only I cannot but observe how little the preservation and
improvement of truth and knowledge is the care and concern of mankind;
since the arts of fallacy are endowed and preferred. It is evident how
much men love to deceive and be deceived, since rhetoric, that powerful
instrument of error and deceit, has its established professors, is
publicly taught, and has always been had in great reputation: and I
doubt not but it will be thought great boldness, if not brutality, in me
to have said thus much against it. Eloquence, like the fair sex, has too
prevailing beauties in it to suffer itself ever to be spoken against.
And it is in vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving, wherein
men find pleasure to be deceived.
CHAPTER XI.
OF THE REMEDIES OF THE FOREGOING IMPERFECTIONS AND ABUSES OF WORDS.
1. Remedies are worth seeking.
The natural and improved imperfections of languages we have seen above
at large: and speech being the great bond that holds society together,
and the common conduit, whereby the improvements of knowledge are
conveyed from one man and one generation to another, it would well
deserve our most serious thoughts to consider, what remedies are to be
found for the inconveniences above mentioned.
2. Are not easy to find.
I am not so vain as to think that any one can pretend to attempt the
perfect reforming the languages of the world, no not so much as of his
own country, without rendering himself ridiculous. To require that men
should use their words constantly in the same sense, and for none but
determined and uniform ideas, would be to think that all men should have
the same notions, and should talk of nothing but what they have clear
and distinct ideas of: which is not to be expected by any one who hath
not vanity enough to imagine he can prevail with men to be very knowing
or very silent. And he must be very little skilled in the world, who
thinks that a voluble tongue shall accompany only a good understanding;
or that men's talking much or little should hold proportion only to
their knowledge.
3. But yet necessary to those who search after Truth.
But though the market and exchange must be left to their own ways of
talking, and gossipings not be robbed of their ancient privilege: though
the schools, and men of argument would perhaps take it amiss to have
anything offered, to abate the length or lessen the number of their
disputes; yet methinks those who pretend seriously to search after or
maintain truth, should think themselves obliged to study how they might
deliver themselves without obscurity, doubtfulness, or equivocation, to
which men's words are naturally liable, if care be not taken.
4. Misuse of Words the great Cause of Errors.
For he that shall well consider the errors and obscurity, the mistakes
and confusion, that are spread in the world by an ill use of words, will
find some reason to doubt whether language, as it has been employed, has
contributed more to the improvement or hindrance of knowledge amongst
mankind. How many are there, that, when they would think on things, fix
their thoughts only on words, especially when they would apply their
minds to moral matters? And who then can wonder if the result of such
contemplations and reasonings, about little more than sounds, whilst the
ideas they annex to them are very confused and very unsteady, or perhaps
none at all; who can wonder, I say, that such thoughts and reasonings
end in nothing but obscurity and mistake, without any clear judgment or
knowledge?
5. Has made men more conceited and obstinate.
This inconvenience, in an ill use of words, men suffer in their own
private meditations: but much more manifest are the disorders which
follow from it, in conversation, discourse, and arguings with others.
For language being the great conduit, whereby men convey their
discoveries, reasonings, and knowledge, from one to another, he that
makes an ill use of it, though he does not corrupt the fountains of
knowledge, which are in things themselves, yet he does, as much as in
him lies, break or stop the pipes whereby it is distributed to the
public use and advantage of mankind. He that uses words without any
clear and steady meaning, what does he but lead himself and others into
errors? And he that designedly does it, ought to be looked on as an
enemy to truth and knowledge. And yet who can wonder that all the
sciences and parts of knowledge have been so overcharged with obscure
and equivocal terms, and insignificant and doubtful expressions, capable
to make the most attentive or quick-sighted very little, or not at
all, the more knowing or orthodox: since subtlety, in those who make
profession to teach or defend truth, hath passed so much for a virtue: a
virtue, indeed, which, consisting for the most part in nothing but the
fallacious and illusory use of obscure or deceitful terms, is only fit
to make men more conceited in their ignorance, and more obstinate in
their errors.
6. Addicted to Wrangling about sounds.
Let us look into the books of controversy of any kind, there we shall
see that the effect of obscure, unsteady, or equivocal terms is nothing
but noise and wrangling about sounds, without convincing or bettering
a man's understanding. For if the idea be not agreed on, betwixt the
speaker and hearer, for which the words stand, the argument is not about
things, but names. As often as such a word whose signification is not
ascertained betwixt them, comes in use, their understandings have no
other object wherein they agree, but barely the sound; the things that
they think on at that time, as expressed by that word, being quite
different.
7. Instance, Bat and Bird.
Whether a BAT be a BIRD or no, is not a question, Whether a bat be
another thing than indeed it is, or have other qualities than indeed it
has; for that would be extremely absurd to doubt of. But the question
is, (i) Either between those that acknowledged themselves to have but
imperfect ideas of one or both of this sort of things, for which these
names are supposed to stand. And then it is a real inquiry concerning
the NATURE of a bird or a bat, to make their yet imperfect ideas of
it more complete; by examining whether all the simple ideas to which,
combined together, they both give name bird, be all to be found in
a bat: but this is a question only of inquirers (not disputers) who
neither affirm nor deny, but examine: Or, (2) It is a question between
disputants; whereof the one affirms, and the other denies that a bat is
a bird. And then the question is barely about the signification of one
or both these WORDS; in that they not having both the same complex ideas
to which they give these two names, one holds and the other denies, that
these two names may be affirmed one of another. Were they agreed in the
signification of these two names, it were impossible they should dispute
about them. For they would presently and clearly see (were that adjusted
between them,) whether all the simple ideas of the more general name
bird were found in the complex idea of a bat or no; and so there could
be no doubt whether a bat were a bird or no. And here I desire it may
be considered, and carefully examined, whether the greatest part of the
disputes in the world are not merely verbal, and about the signification
of words; and whether, if the terms they are made in were defined, and
reduced in their signification (as they must be where they signify
anything) to determined collections of the simple ideas they do or
should stand for, those disputes would not end of themselves, and
immediately vanish. I leave it then to be considered, what the learning
of disputation is, and how well they are employed for the advantage of
themselves or others, whose business is only the vain ostentation of
sounds; i. e. those who spend their lives in disputes and controversies.
When I shall see any of those combatants strip all his terms of
ambiguity and obscurity, (which every one may do in the words he uses
himself,) I shall think him a champion for knowledge, truth, and peace,
and not the slave of vain-glory, ambition, or a party.
8. Remedies.
To remedy the defects of speech before mentioned to some degree, and
to prevent the inconveniences that follow from them, I imagine the
observation of these following rules may be of use, till somebody better
able shall judge it worth his while to think more maturely on this
matter, and oblige the world with his thoughts on it.
First Remedy: To use no Word without an Idea annexed to it.
First, A man shall take care to use no word without a signification, no
name without an idea for which he makes it stand. This rule will
not seem altogether needless to any one who shall take the pains to
recollect how often he has met with such words as INSTINCT, SYMPATHY,
and ANTIPATHY, &c., in the discourse of others, so made use of as he
might easily conclude that those that used them had no ideas in their
minds to which they applied them, but spoke them only as sounds, which
usually served instead of reasons on the like occasions. Not but that
these words, and the like, have very proper significations in which they
may be used; but there being no natural connexion between any words and
any ideas, these, and any other, may be learned by rote, and pronounced
or writ by men who have no ideas in their minds to which they have
annexed them, and for which they make them stand; which is necessary
they should, if men would speak intelligibly even to themselves alone.
9. Second Remedy: To have distinct, determinate Ideas annexed to Words,
especially in mixed Modes.
Secondly, It is not enough a man uses his words as signs of some ideas:
those he annexes them to, if they be simple, must be clear and distinct;
if complex, must be determinate, i.e. the precise collection of simple
ideas settled in the mind, with that sound annexed to it, as the sign of
that precise determined collection, and no other. This is very necessary
in names of modes, and especially moral words; which, having no settled
objects in nature, from whence their ideas are taken, as from their
original, are apt to be very confused. JUSTICE is a word in every man's
mouth, but most commonly with a very undetermined, loose signification;
which will always be so, unless a man has in his mind a distinct
comprehension of the component parts that complex idea consists of and
if it be decompounded, must be able to resolve it still only till he at
last comes to the simple ideas that make it up: and unless this be done,
a man makes an ill use of the word, let it be justice, for example, or
any other. I do not say, a man needs stand to recollect, and make this
analysis at large, every time the word justice comes in his way: but
this at least is necessary, that he have so examined the signification
of that name, and settled the idea of all its parts in his mind, that
he can do it when he pleases. If any one who makes his complex idea of
justice to be, such a treatment of the person or goods of another as is
according to law, hath not a clear and distinct idea what LAW is, which
makes a part of his complex idea of justice, it is plain his idea of
justice itself will be confused and imperfect. This exactness will,
perhaps, be judged very troublesome; and therefore most men will think
they may be excused from settling the complex ideas of mixed modes so
precisely in their minds. But yet I must say, till this be done, it must
not be wondered, that they have a great deal of obscurity and confusion
in their own minds, and a great deal of wrangling in their discourse
with others.
10. And distinct and conformable ideas in Words that stand for
Substances.
In the names of substances, for a right use of them, something more is
required than barely DETERMINED IDEAS. In these the names must also be
CONFORMABLE TO THINGS AS THEY EXIST; but of this I shall have occasion
to speak more at large by and by. This exactness is absolutely necessary
in inquiries after philosophical knowledge, and in controversies about
truth. And though it would be well, too, if it extended itself to common
conversation and the ordinary affairs of life; yet I think that is
scarce to be expected. Vulgar notions suit vulgar discourses: and both,
though confused enough, yet serve pretty well the market and the wake.
Merchants and lovers, cooks and tailors, have words wherewithal to
dispatch their ordinary affairs: and so, I think, might philosophers
and disputants too, if they had a mind to understand, and to clearly
understood.
11. Third Remedy: To apply Words to such ideas as common use has annexed
them to.
Thirdly, it is not enough that men have ideas, determined ideas, for
which they make these signs stand; but they must also take care to apply
their words as near as may be to such ideas as common use has annexed
them to. For words, especially of languages already framed, being
no man's private possession, but the common measure of commerce and
communication, it is not for any one at pleasure to change the stamp
they are current in, nor alter the ideas they are affixed to; or at
least, when there is a necessity to do so, he is bound to give notice
of it. Men's intentions in speaking are, or at least should be, to be
understood; which cannot be without frequent explanations, demands,
and other the like incommodious interruptions, where men do not follow
common use. Propriety of speech is that which gives our thoughts
entrance into other men's minds with the greatest ease and advantage:
and therefore deserves some part of our care and study, especially in
the names of moral words. The proper signification and use of terms
is best to be learned from those who in their writings and discourses
appear to have had the clearest notions, and applied to them their terms
with the exactest choice and fitness. This way of using a man's words,
according to the propriety of the language, though it have not always
the good fortune to be understood; yet most commonly leaves the blame
of it on him who is so unskilful in the language he speaks, as not to
understand it when made use of as it ought to be.
12. Fourth Remedy: To declare the meaning in which we use them.
Fourthly, But, because common use has not so visibly annexed any
signification to words, as to make men know always certainly what they
precisely stand for: and because men, in the improvement of their
knowledge, come to have ideas different from the vulgar and ordinary
received ones, for which they must either make new words, (which men
seldom venture to do, for fear of being thought guilty of affectation or
novelty,) or else must use old ones in a new signification: therefore,
after the observation of the foregoing rules, it is sometimes necessary,
for the ascertaining the signification of words, to DECLARE THEIR
MEANING; where either common use has left it uncertain and loose, (as it
has in most names of very complex ideas;) or where the term, being very
material in the discourse, and that upon which it chiefly turns, is
liable to any doubtfulness or mistake.
13. And that in three Ways.
As the ideas men's words stand for are of different sorts, so the way of
making known the ideas they stand for, when there is occasion, is also
different. For though DEFINING be thought the proper way to make known
the proper signification of words; yet there are some words that will
not be defined, as there are others whose precise meaning cannot be made
known but by definition: and perhaps a third, which partake somewhat of
both the other, as we shall see in the names of simple ideas, modes, and
substances.
14. In Simple Ideas, either by synonymous terms, or by showing examples.
I. First, when a man makes use of the name of any simple idea, which
he perceives is not understood, or is in danger to be mistaken, he is
obliged, by the laws of ingenuity and the end of speech, to declare his
meaning, and make known what idea he makes it stand for. This, as
has been shown, cannot be done by definition: and therefore, when a
synonymous word fails to do it, there is but one of these ways left.
First, Sometimes the NAMING the subject wherein that simple idea is
to be found, will make its name to be understood by those who are
acquainted with that subject, and know it by that name. So to make a
countryman understand what FEUILLEMORTE colour signifies, it may suffice
to tell him, it is the colour of withered leaves falling in autumn.
Secondly, but the only sure way of making known the signification of the
name of any simple idea, is BY PRESENTING TO HIS SENSES THAT SUBJECT
WHICH MAY PRODUCE IT IN HIS MIND, and make him actually have the idea
that word stands for.
15. In mixed Modes, by Definition.
II. Secondly, Mixed modes, especially those belonging to morality, being
most of them such combinations of ideas as the mind puts together of its
own choice, and whereof there are not always standing patterns to be
found existing, the signification of their names cannot be made known,
as those of simple ideas, by any showing: but, in recompense thereof,
may be perfectly and exactly defined. For they being combinations of
several ideas that the mind of man has arbitrarily put together, without
reference to any archetypes, men may, if they please, exactly know the
ideas that go to each composition, and so both use these words in a
certain and undoubted signification, and perfectly declare, when there
is occasion, what they stand for. This, if well considered, would lay
great blame on those who make not their discourses about MORAL things
very clear and distinct. For since the precise signification of the
names of mixed modes, or, which is all one, the real essence of each
species is to be known, they being not of nature's, but man's making, it
is a great negligence and perverseness to discourse of moral things
with uncertainty and obscurity; which is more pardonable in treating of
natural substances, where doubtful terms are hardly to be avoided, for a
quite contrary reason, as we shall see by and by.
16. Morality capable of Demonstration.
Upon this ground it is that I am bold to think that morality is capable
of demonstration, as well as mathematics: since the precise real essence
of the things moral words stand for may be perfectly known, and so
the congruity and incongruity of the things themselves be certainly
discovered; in which consists perfect knowledge. Nor let any one object,
that the names of substances are often to be made use of in morality,
as well as those of modes, from which will arise obscurity. For, as to
substances, when concerned in moral discourses, their divers natures
are not so much inquired into as supposed: v.g. when we say that man
is subject to law, we mean nothing by man but a corporeal rational
creature: what the real essence or other qualities of that creature are
in this case is no way considered. And, therefore, whether a child or
changeling be a man, in a physical sense, may amongst the naturalists be
as disputable as it will, it concerns not at all the moral man, as I
may call him, which is this immovable, unchangeable idea, a corporeal
rational being. For, were there a monkey, or any other creature, to be
found that had the use of reason to such a degree, as to be able to
understand general signs, and to deduce consequences about general
ideas, he would no doubt be subject to law, and in that sense be a MAN,
how much soever he differed in shape from others of that name. The names
of substances, if they be used in them as they should, can no more
disturb moral than they do mathematical discourses; where, if the
mathematician speaks of a cube or globe of gold, or of any other body,
he has his clear, settled idea, which varies not, though it may by
mistake be applied to a particular body to which it belongs not.
17. Definitions can make moral Discourse clear.
This I have here mentioned, by the by, to show of what consequence it is
for men, in their names of mixed modes, and consequently in all their
moral discourses, to define their words when there is occasion: since
thereby moral knowledge may be brought to so great clearness and
certainty. And it must be great want of ingenuousness (to say no worse
of it) to refuse to do it: since a definition is the only way whereby
the precise meaning of moral words can be known; and yet a way whereby
their meaning may be known certainly, and without leaving any room for
any contest about it. And therefore the negligence or perverseness of
mankind cannot be excused, if their discourses in morality be not much
more clear than those in natural philosophy: since they are about ideas
in the mind, which are none of them false or disproportionate; they
having no external beings for the archetypes which they are referred to
and must correspond with. It is far easier for men to frame in their
minds an idea, which shall be the standard to which they will give the
name justice; with which pattern so made, all actions that agree shall
pass under that denomination, than, having seen Aristides, to frame an
idea that shall in all things be exactly like him; who is as he is, let
men make what idea they please of him. For the one, they need but know
the combination of ideas that are put together in their own minds; for
the other, they must inquire into the whole nature, and abstruse hidden
constitution, and various qualities of a thing existing without them.
18. And is the only way in which the meaning of mixed Modes can be made
known.
Another reason that makes the defining of mixed modes so necessary,
especially of moral words, is what I mentioned a little before, viz.
that it is the only way whereby the signification of the most of them
can be known with certainty. For the ideas they stand for, being for
the most part such whose component parts nowhere exist together, but
scattered and mingled with others, it is the mind alone that collects
them, and gives them the union of one idea: and it is only by words
enumerating the several simple ideas which the mind has united, that we
can make known to others what their names stand for; the assistance of
the senses in this case not helping us, by the proposal of sensible
objects, to show the ideas which our names of this kind stand for, as
it does often in the names of sensible simple ideas, and also to some
degree in those of substances.
19. In Substances, both by showing and by defining.
III. Thirdly, for the explaining the signification of the names of
substances, as they stand for the ideas we have of their distinct
species, both the forementioned ways, viz. of showing and defining, are
requisite, in many cases, to be made use of. For, there being ordinarily
in each sort some leading qualities, to which we suppose the other ideas
which make up our complex idea of that species annexed, we forwardly
give the specific name to that thing wherein that characteristic mark is
found, which we take to be the most distinguishing idea of that species.
These leading or characteristical (as I may call them) ideas, in the
sorts of animals and vegetables, are (as has been before remarked,
ch vi. Section 29 and ch. ix. Section 15) mostly figure; and in inanimate
bodies, colour; and in some, both together. Now,
20. Ideas of the leading Qualities of Substances are best got by
showing.
These leading sensible qualities are those which make the chief
ingredients of our specific ideas, and consequently the most observable
and invariable part in the definitions of our specific names, as
attributed to sorts of substances coming under our knowledge. For though
the sound MAN, in its own nature, be as apt to signify a complex idea
made up of animality and rationality, united in the same subject, as to
signify any other combination; yet, used as a mark to stand for a sort
of creatures we count of our own kind, perhaps the outward shape is as
necessary to be taken into our complex idea, signified by the word man,
as any other we find in it: and therefore, why Plato's ANIMAL IMPLUME
BIPES LATIS UNGUIBUS should not be a good definition of the name man,
standing for that sort of creatures, will not be easy to show: for it
is the shape, as the leading quality, that seems more to determine that
species, than a faculty of reasoning, which appears not at first, and in
some never. And if this be not allowed to be so, I do not know how they
can be excused from murder who kill monstrous births, (as we call them,)
because of an unordinary shape, without knowing whether they have a
rational soul or no; which can be no more discerned in a well-formed
than ill-shaped infant, as soon as born. And who is it has informed us
that a rational soul can inhabit no tenement, unless it has just such a
sort of frontispiece; or can join itself to, and inform no sort of body,
but one that is just of such an outward structure?
21. And can hardly be made known otherwise.
Now these leading qualities are best made known by showing, and can
hardly be made known otherwise. For the shape of a horse or cassowary
will be but rudely and imperfectly imprinted on the mind by words; the
sight of the animals doth it a thousand times better. And the idea of
the particular colour of gold is not to be got by any description of it,
but only by the frequent exercise of the eyes about as is evident in
those who are used to this metal, who frequently distinguish true from
counterfeit, pure from adulterate, by the sight, where others (who have
as good eyes, but yet by use have not got the precise nice idea of that
peculiar yellow) shall not perceive any difference. The like may be said
of those other simple ideas, peculiar in their kind to any substance;
for which precise ideas there are no peculiar names. The particular
ringing sound there is in gold, distinct from the sound of other bodies,
has no particular name annexed to it, no more than the particular yellow
that belongs to that metal.
22. The Ideas of the Powers of Substances are best known by Definition.
But because many of the simple ideas that make up our specific ideas of
substances are powers which lie not obvious to our senses in the things
as they ordinarily appear; therefore, in the signification of our names
of substances, some part of the signification will be better made known
by enumerating those simple ideas, than by showing the substance itself.
For, he that to the yellow shining colour of gold, got by sight, shall,
from my enumerating them, have the ideas of great ductility, fusibility,
fixedness, and solubility, in aqua regia, will have a perfecter idea of
gold than he can have by seeing a piece of gold, and thereby imprinting
in his mind only its obvious qualities. But if the formal constitution
of this shining, heavy, ductile thing, (from whence all these its
properties flow,) lay open to our senses, as the formal constitution or
essence of a triangle does, the signification of the word gold might as
easily be ascertained as that of triangle.
23. A Reflection on the Knowledge of corporeal things possessed by
Spirits separate from bodies.
Hence we may take notice, how much the foundation of all our knowledge
of corporeal things lies in our senses. For how spirits, separate from
bodies, (whose knowledge and ideas of these things are certainly much
more perfect than ours,) know them, we have no notion, no idea at all.
The whole extent of our knowledge or imagination reaches not beyond our
own ideas limited to our ways of perception. Though yet it be not to be
doubted that spirits of a higher rank than those immersed in flesh may
have as clear ideas of the radical constitution of substances as we have
of a triangle, and so perceive how all their properties and operations
flow from thence: but the manner how they come by that knowledge exceeds
our conceptions.
24. Ideas of Substances must also be conformable to Things.
Fourthly, But, though definitions will serve to explain the names of
substances as they stand for our ideas, yet they leave them not without
great imperfection as they stand for things. For our names of substances
being not put barely for our ideas, but being made use of ultimately to
represent things, and so are put in their place, their signification
must agree with the truth of things as well as with men's ideas. And
therefore, in substances, we are not always to rest in the ordinary
complex idea commonly received as the signification of that word, but
must go a little further, and inquire into the nature and properties of
the things themselves, and thereby perfect, as much as we can, our ideas
of their distinct species; or else learn them from such as are used
to that sort of things, and are experienced in them. For, since it is
intended their names should stand for such collections of simple ideas
as do really exist in things themselves, as well as for the complex idea
in other men's minds, which in their ordinary acceptation they stand
for, therefore, to define their names right, natural history is to be
inquired into, and their properties are, with care and examination, to
be found out. For it is not enough, for the avoiding inconveniences in
discourse and arguings about natural bodies and substantial things,
to have learned, from the propriety of the language, the common, but
confused, or very imperfect, idea to which each word is applied, and to
keep them to that idea in our use of them; but we must, by acquainting
ourselves with the history of that sort of things, rectify and settle
our complex idea belonging to each specific name; and in discourse with
others, (if we find them mistake us,) we ought to tell what the complex
idea is that we make such a name stand for. This is the more necessary
to be done by all those who search after knowledge and philosophical
verity, in that children, being taught words, whilst they have but
imperfect notions of things, apply them at random, and without much
thinking, and seldom frame determined ideas to be signified by them.
Which custom (it being easy, and serving well enough for the ordinary
affairs of life and conversation) they are apt to continue when they are
men: and so begin at the wrong end, learning words first and perfectly,
but make the notions to which they apply those words afterwards very
overtly. By this means it comes to pass, that men speaking the language
of their country, i.e. according to grammar rules of that language, do
yet speak very improperly of things themselves; and, by their arguing
one with another, make but small progress in the discoveries of useful
truths, and the knowledge of things, as they are to be found in
themselves, and not in our imaginations; and it matters not much for the
improvement of our knowledge how they are called.
25. Not easy to be made so.
It were therefore to be wished, That men versed in physical inquiries,
and acquainted with the several sorts of natural bodies, would set down
those simple ideas wherein they observe the individuals of each sort
constantly to agree. This would remedy a great deal of that confusion
which comes from several persons applying the same name to a collection
of a smaller or greater number of sensible qualities, proportionably as
they have been more or less acquainted with, or accurate in examining,
the qualities of any sort of things which come under one denomination.
But a dictionary of this sort, containing, as it were, a natural
history, requires too many hands as well as too much time, cost, pains,
and sagacity ever to be hoped for; and till that be done, we must
content ourselves with such definitions of the names of substances as
explain the sense men use them in. And it would be well, where there is
occasion, if they would afford us so much. This yet is not usually done;
but men talk to one another, and dispute in words, whose meaning is not
agreed between them, out of a mistake that the significations of common
words are certainly established, and the precise ideas they stand for
perfectly known; and that it is a shame to be ignorant of them. Both
which suppositions are false, no names of complex ideas having so
settled determined significations, that they are constantly used for
the same precise ideas. Nor is it a shame for a man to have a certain
knowledge of anything, but by the necessary ways of attaining it; and so
it is no discredit not to know what precise idea any sound stands for in
another man's mind, without he declare it to me by some other way than
barely using that sound, there being no other way, without such a
declaration, certainly to know it. Indeed the necessity of communication
by language brings men to an agreement in the signification of common
words, within some tolerable latitude, that may serve for ordinary
conversation: and so a man cannot be supposed wholly ignorant of the
ideas which are annexed to words by common use, in a language familiar
to him. But common use being but a very uncertain rule, which reduces
itself at last to the ideas of particular men, proves often but a
very variable standard. But though such a Dictionary as I have above
mentioned will require too much time, cost, and pains to be hoped for
in this age; yet methinks it is not unreasonable to propose, that words
standing for things which are known and distinguished by their outward
shapes should be expressed by little draughts and prints made of them. A
vocabulary made after this fashion would perhaps with more ease, and in
less time, teach the true signification of many terms, especially in
languages of remote countries or ages, and settle truer ideas in men's
minds of several things, whereof we read the names in ancient authors,
than all the large and laborious comments of learned critics.
Naturalists, that treat of plants and animals, have found the benefit of
this way: and he that has had occasion to consult them will have reason
to confess that he has a clearer idea of APIUM or IBEX, from a little
print of that herb or beast, than he could have from a long definition
of the names of either of them. And so no doubt he would have of STRIGIL
and SISTRUM, if, instead of CURRYCOMB and CYMBAL, (which are the English
names dictionaries render them by,) he could see stamped in the margin
small pictures of these instruments, as they were in use amongst the
ancients. TOGA, TUNICA, PALLIUM, are words easily translated by GOWN,
COAT, and CLOAK; but we have thereby no more true ideas of the fashion
of those habits amongst the Romans, than we have of the faces of the
tailors who made them. Such things as these, which the eye distinguishes
by their shapes, would be best let into the mind by draughts made of
them, and more determine the signification of such words, than any other
words set for them, or made use of to define them. But this is only by
the bye.
26. V. Fifth Remedy: To use the same word constantly in the same sense.
Fifthly, If men will not be at the pains to declare the meaning of their
words, and definitions of their terms are not to be had, yet this is
the least that can be expected, that, in all discourses wherein one man
pretends to instruct or convince another, he should use the same word
constantly in the same sense. If this were done, (which nobody can
refuse without great disingenuity,) many of the books extant might be
spared; many of the controversies in dispute would be at an end; several
of those great volumes, swollen with ambiguous words, now used in
one sense, and by and by in another, would shrink into a very narrow
compass; and many of the philosophers (to mention no other) as well as
poets works, might be contained in a nutshell.
27. When not so used, the Variation is to be explained.
But after all, the provision of words is so scanty in respect to that
infinite variety of thoughts, that men, wanting terms to suit their
precise notions, will, notwithstanding their utmost caution, be forced
often to use the same word in somewhat different senses. And though in
the continuation of a discourse, or the pursuit of an argument, there
can be hardly room to digress into a particular definition, as often
as a man varies the signification of any term; yet the import of the
discourse will, for the most part, if there be no designed fallacy,
sufficiently lead candid and intelligent readers into the true meaning
of it; but where there is not sufficient to guide the reader, there it
concerns the writer to explain his meaning, and show in what sense he
there uses that term.
BOOK IV
OF KNOWLEDGE AND PROBABILITY SYNOPSIS OF THE FOURTH BOOK.
Locke's review of the different sorts of ideas, or appearances of what
exists, that can be entertained in a human understanding, and of their
relations to words, leads, in the Fourth Book, to an investigation of
the extent and validity of the Knowledge that our ideas bring within our
reach; and into the nature of faith in Probability, by which assent is
extended beyond Knowledge, for the conduct of life. He finds (ch. i, ii)
that Knowledge is either an intuitive, a demonstrative, or a sensuous
perception of absolute certainty, in regard to one or other of four
sorts of agreement or disagreement on the part of ideas:--(1) of each
idea with itself, as identical, and different from every other; (2) in
their abstract relations to one another; (3) in their necessary
connexions, as qualities and powers coexisting in concrete substances;
and (4) as revelations to us of the final realities of existence. The
unconditional certainty that constitutes Knowledge is perceptible by man
only in regard to the first, second, and fourth of these four sorts: in
all general propositions only in regard to the first and second; that is
to say, in identical propositions, and in those which express abstract
relations of simple or mixed modes, in which nominal and real essences
coincide, e. g. propositions in pure mathematics and abstract morality
(chh. iii, v-viii). The fourth sort, which express certainty as to
realities of existence, refer to any of three realities. For every man
is able to perceive with absolute certainty that he himself exists, that
God must exist, and that finite beings other than himself exist;--the
first of these perceptions being awakened by all our ideas, the second
as the consequence of perception of the first, and the last in the
reception of our simple ideas of sense (chh. i. Section 7; ii. Section
14; iii. Section 21; iv, ix-xi). Agreement of the third sort, of
necessary coexistence of simple ideas as qualities and powers in
particular substances, with which all physical inquiry is concerned,
lies beyond human Knowledge; for here the nominal and real essences are
not coincident: general propositions of this sort are determined by
analogies of experience, in judgments that are more or less probable:
intellectually necessary science of nature presupposes Omniscience;
man's interpretations of nature have to turn upon presumptions of
Probability (chh. iii. Sections 9-17; iv. SectionS 11-17; vi, xiv-xvi).
In forming their stock of Certainties and Probabilities men employ the
faculty of reason, faith in divine revelation, and enthusiasm (chh.
xvii-xix); much misled by the last, as well as by other causes of 'wrong
assent' (ch. xx), when they are at work in 'the three great provinces of
the intellectual world' (ch. xxi), concerned respectively with (1)
'things as knowable' (physica); (2) 'actions as they depend on us in
order to happiness' (practica); and (3) methods for interpreting the
signs of what is, and of what ought to be, that are presented in our
ideas and words (logica).
CHAPTER I.
OF KNOWLEDGE IN GENERAL.
1. Our Knowledge conversant about our Ideas only.
Since the mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other
immediate object but its own ideas, which it alone does or can
contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge is only conversant about
them.
2. Knowledge is the Perception of the Agreement or Disagreement of two
Ideas.
KNOWLEDGE then seems to me to be nothing but THE PERCEPTION OF THE
CONNEXION OF AND AGREEMENT, OR DISAGREEMENT AND REPUGNANCY OF ANY OF OUR
IDEAS. In this alone it consists.
Where this perception is, there is knowledge, and where it is not,
there, though we may fancy, guess, or believe, yet we always come short
of knowledge. For when we know that white is not black, what do we
else but perceive, that these two ideas do not agree? When we possess
ourselves with the utmost security of the demonstration, that the three
angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones, what do we more but
perceive, that equality to two right ones does necessarily agree to, and
is inseparable from, the three angles of a triangle?
3. This Agreement or Disagreement may be any of four sorts.
But to understand a little more distinctly wherein this agreement or
disagreement consists, I think we may reduce it all to these four sorts:
I. IDENTITY, or DIVERSITY. II. RELATION. III. CO-EXISTENCE, or NECESSARY
CONNEXION. IV. REAL EXISTENCE.
4. First, Of Identity, or Diversity in ideas.
FIRST, As to the first sort of agreement or disagreement, viz. IDENTITY
or DIVERSITY. It is the first act of the mind, when it has any
sentiments or ideas at all, to perceive its ideas; and so far as it
perceives them, to know each what it is, and thereby also to perceive
their difference, and that one is not another. This is so absolutely
necessary, that without it there could be no knowledge, no reasoning, no
imagination, no distinct thoughts at all. By this the mind clearly and
infallibly perceives each idea to agree with itself, and to be what it
is; and all distinct ideas to disagree, i. e. the one not to be the
other: and this it does without pains, labour, or deduction; but at
first view, by its natural power of perception and distinction. And
though men of art have reduced this into those general rules, WHAT IS,
IS, and IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE SAME THING TO BE AND NOT TO BE, for
ready application in all cases, wherein there may be occasion to reflect
on it: yet it is certain that the first exercise of this faculty is
about particular ideas. A man infallibly knows, as soon as ever he has
them in his mind, that the ideas he calls WHITE and ROUND are the very
ideas they are; and that they are not other ideas which he calls RED or
SQUARE. Nor can any maxim or proposition in the world make him know it
clearer or surer than he did before, and without any such general
rule. This then is the first agreement or disagreement which the mind
perceives in its ideas; which it always perceives at first sight: and
if there ever happen any doubt about it, it will always be found to
be about the names, and not the ideas themselves, whose identity and
diversity will always be perceived, as soon and clearly as the ideas
themselves are; nor can it possibly be otherwise.
5. Secondly, Of abstract Relations between ideas.
SECONDLY, the next sort of agreement or disagreement the mind perceives
in any of its ideas may, I think, be called RELATIVE, and is nothing
but the perception of the RELATION between any two ideas, of what kind
soever, whether substances, modes, or any other. For, since all distinct
ideas must eternally be known not to be the same, and so be universally
and constantly denied one of another, there could be no room for any
positive knowledge at all, if we could not perceive any relation between
our ideas, and find out the agreement or disagreement they have one with
another, in several ways the mind takes of comparing them.
6. Thirdly, Of their necessary Co-existence in Substances.
THIRDLY, The third sort of agreement or disagreement to be found in
our ideas, which the perception of the mind is employed about, is
CO-EXISTENCE or NON-CO-EXISTENCE in the SAME SUBJECT; and this belongs
particularly to substances. Thus when we pronounce concerning gold, that
it is fixed, our knowledge of this truth amounts to no more but this,
that fixedness, or a power to remain in the fire unconsumed, is an idea
that always accompanies and is joined with that particular sort of
yellowness, weight, fusibility, malleableness, and solubility in AQUA
REGIA, which make our complex idea signified by the word gold.
7. Fourthly, Of real Existence agreeing to any idea.
FOURTHLY, The fourth and last sort is that of ACTUAL REAL EXISTENCE
agreeing to any idea.
Within these four sorts of agreement or disagreement is, I suppose,
contained all the knowledge we have, or are capable of. For all the
inquiries we can make concerning any of our ideas, all that we know or
can affirm concerning any of them, is, That it is, or is not, the same
with some other; that it does or does not always co-exist with some
other idea in the same subject; that it has this or that relation with
some other idea; or that it has a real existence without the mind. Thus,
'blue is not yellow,' is of identity. 'Two triangles upon equal bases
between two parallels are equal,' is of relation. 'Iron is susceptible
of magnetical impressions,' is of co-existence. 'God is,' is of real
existence. Though identity and co-existence are truly nothing but
relations, yet they are such peculiar ways of agreement or disagreement
of our ideas, that they deserve well to be considered as distinct heads,
and not under relation in general; since they are so different grounds
of affirmation and negation, as will easily appear to any one, who will
but reflect on what is said in several places of this ESSAY.
I should now proceed to examine the several degrees of our knowledge,
but that it is necessary first, to consider the different acceptations
of the word KNOWLEDGE.
8. Knowledge is either actual or habitual.
There are several ways wherein the mind is possessed of truth; each of
which is called knowledge.
I. There is ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE, which is the present view the mind has of
the agreement or disagreement of any of its ideas, or of the relation
they have one to another.
II. A man is said to know any proposition, which having been once
laid before his thoughts, he evidently perceived the agreement or
disagreement of the ideas whereof it consists; and so lodged it in his
memory, that whenever that proposition comes again to be reflected on,
he, without doubt or hesitation, embraces the right side, assents to,
and is certain of the truth of it. This, I think, one may call HABITUAL
KNOWLEDGE. And thus a man may be said to know all those truths which are
lodged in his memory, by a foregoing clear and full perception, whereof
the mind is assured past doubt as often as it has occasion to reflect
on them. For our finite understandings being able to think clearly and
distinctly but on one thing at once, if men had no knowledge of any more
than what they actually thought on, they would all be very ignorant: and
he that knew most, would know but one truth, that being all he was able
to think on at one time.
9. Habitual Knowledge is of two degrees.
Of habitual knowledge there are, also, vulgarly speaking, two degrees:
First, The one is of such truths laid up in the memory as, whenever they
occur to the mind, it ACTUALLY PERCEIVES THE RELATION is between those
ideas. And this is in all those truths whereof we have an intuitive
knowledge; where the ideas themselves, by an immediate view, discover
their agreement or disagreement one with another.
Secondly, The other is of such truths whereof the mind having been
convinced, it RETAINS THE MEMORY OF THE CONVICTION, WITHOUT THE PROOFS.
Thus, a man that remembers certainly that he once perceived the
demonstration, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two
right ones, is certain that he knows it, because he cannot doubt the
truth of it. In his adherence to a truth, where the demonstration by
which it was at first known is forgot, though a man may be thought
rather to believe his memory than really to know, and this way of
entertaining a truth seemed formerly to me like something between
opinion and knowledge; a sort of assurance which exceeds bare belief,
for that relies on the testimony of another;--yet upon a due examination
I find it comes not short of perfect certainty, and is in effect true
knowledge. That which is apt to mislead our first thoughts into a
mistake in this matter is, that the agreement or disagreement of the
ideas in this case is not perceived, as it was at first, by an actual
view of all the intermediate ideas whereby the agreement or disagreement
of those in the proposition was at first perceived; but by other
intermediate ideas, that show the agreement or disagreement of the ideas
contained in the proposition whose certainty we remember. For example:
in this proposition, that 'the three angles of a triangle are equal
to two right ones,' one who has seen and clearly perceived the
demonstration of this truth knows it to be true, when that demonstration
is gone out of his mind; so that at present it is not actually in view,
and possibly cannot be recollected: but he knows it in a different way
from what he did before. The agreement of the two ideas joined in that
proposition is perceived; but it is by the intervention of other ideas
than those which at first produced that perception. He remembers, i.e.
he knows (for remembrance is but the reviving of some past knowledge)
that he was once certain of the truth of this proposition, that the
three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones. The immutability
of the same relations between the same immutable things is now the idea
that shows him, that if the three angles of a triangle were once equal
to two right ones, they will always be equal to two right ones. And
hence he comes to be certain, that what was once true in the case, is
always true; what ideas once agreed will always agree; and consequently
what he once knew to be true, he will always know to be true; as long
as he can remember that he once knew it. Upon this ground it is, that
particular demonstrations in mathematics afford general knowledge. If
then the perception, that the same ideas will ETERNALLY have the same
habitudes and relations, be not a sufficient ground of knowledge, there
could be no knowledge of general propositions in mathematics; for no
mathematical demonstration would be any other than particular: and
when a man had demonstrated any proposition concerning one triangle or
circle, his knowledge would not reach beyond that particular diagram. If
he would extend it further, he must renew his demonstration in another
instance, before he could know it to be true in another like triangle,
and so on: by which means one could never come to the knowledge of
any general propositions. Nobody, I think, can deny, that Mr. Newton
certainly knows any proposition that he now at any time reads in his
book to be true; though he has not in actual view that admirable chain
of intermediate ideas whereby he at first discovered it to be true. Such
a memory as that, able to retain such a train of particulars, may
be well thought beyond the reach of human faculties, when the very
discovery, perception, and laying together that wonderful connexion of
ideas, is found to surpass most readers' comprehension. But yet it is
evident the author himself knows the proposition to be true, remembering
he once saw the connexion of those ideas; as certainly as he knows such
a man wounded another, remembering that he saw him run him through. But
because the memory is not always so clear as actual perception, and does
in all men more or less decay in length of time, this, amongst other
differences, is one which shows that DEMONSTRATIVE knowledge is much
more imperfect than INTUITIVE, as we shall see in the following chapter.