n it, when it is pronounced by our mouths or written on paper: For truth or falfehood lying always in fome affirmation, or negation, mental or verbal, our ideas are not capable, any of them, of being falfe, till the mind paffes fome judgment on them; that is, affirms or denies fomething of them.

§ 4. Ideas referred to any thing, may be true or false. WHENEVER the mind refers any of its ideas to any thing extraneous to them, they are then capable to be called true or falfe; becaufe the mind in fuch a reference makes a tacit fuppofition of their conformity to that thing; which fuppofition, as it happens to be true or falfe, fo the ideas themselves come to be denominated. The moft ufual cafes wherein this happens, are thefe following:

§ 5. Oiber Mens Ideas, real Existence, and suppojed real Effences, are what men ufually refer their Ideas to. First, When the mind fuppofes any idea it has conformable to that in other mens minds, called by the fame common name; v. g. when the mind intends or judges its ideas of juflice, temperance, religion, to be the fame with what other men give thofe names to.

Secondly, When the mind fuppofes any idea it has in itself, to be conformable to fome real exilence. Thus the two ideas of a man and a centaur, fuppofed to be the ideas of real fubftances, are the one true, and the other falfe; the one having a conformity to what has really exifted, the other not.

Thirdly, When the mind refers any of its ideas to that real conftitution and effence of any thing, whereonall its properties depend; and thus the greatest part, if not all our ideas of fubftances, are falfe.

§6. The Caufe of fuch References.

THESE fuppofitions the mind is very apt tacitly to make concerning its own ideas: But yet if we will examine it, we shall find it is chiefly, if not only, concerning its abstract complex ideas: For the natural tendency of the mind being towards knowledge, and finding that, if it fhould proceed by and dwell upon only particular things, its progrefs would be very flow, and its work endless;. therefore, to fhorten its way to knowledge, and make

each perception more comprehenfive, the first thing it does, as the foundation of the easier enlarging its knowledge, either by contemplation of the things themselves that it would know, or conference with others about them, is to bind them into bundles, and rank them fo into forts, that what knowledge it gets of any of them, it may thereby with affurance extend to all of that fort; and fo advance by larger steps in that, which is its great bufinefs, knowledge. This, as I have elsewhere fhowed, is the reafon why we collect things under comprehenfive ideas, with names annexed to them, into genera and fpecies, i. e. into kinds and forts.

§ 7.

If therefore we will warily attend to the motions of the mind, and obferve what courfe it ufually takes in its way to knowledge, we fhall, I think, find that the mind. having got any idea, which it thinks it may have use of, either in contemplation or difcourfe, the first thing it does, is to abstract it, and then get a name to it, and fo lay it up in its ftorehoufe, the memory, as containing the effence of a fort of things, of which that name is always to be the mark. Hence it is, that we may often obferve, that when any one fees a new thing of a kind. that he knows not, he prefently afks what it is, meaning by that inquiry nothing but the name; as if the name carried with it the knowledge of the fpecies, or the effence of it; whereof it is indeed ufed as the mark,. and is generally fuppofed annexed to it.

$ 8.

BUT this abstract idea being fomething in the mind between the thing that exifts, and the name that is given it, it is in our ideas, that both the rightness of our knowledge, and the propriety or intelligibleness of our fpeaking confifts. And hence it is, that men are fo forward to fuppose, that the abstract ideas they have in their minds, are fuch as agree to the things exifting without them, to which they are referred, and are the fame alfo, to which the names they give them do, by the ufe and propriety of that language, belong: For without this double conformity of their ideas, they find

they should both think amifs of things in themselves, and talk of them unintelligibly to others.

9. Simple Ideas may be falfe, in reference to others of the fame Name, but are leaft liable to be fo.

FIRST, then, I fay, That when the truth of cur ideas is judged of, by the conformity they have to the ideas which other men have, and commonly fignify by the fame name, they may be any of them falfe: But yet fimple ideas are leaft of all liable to be fo mistaken; because a man by his fenfes, and every day's obfervation, may easily satisfy himself what the fimple ideas are, which their several names that are in common ufe ftand for, they being but few in number, and fuch as, if he doubts or mistakes in, he may easily rectify by the objects they are to be found in. Therefore it is feldom that any one mistakes in his names of fimple ideas, or applies the name red to the idea green, or the name fweet to the idea bitter; much less are men apt to confound the names of ideas belonging to different fenfes, and call a colour by the name of a tafte, &c. whereby it is evident, that the fimple ideas they call by any name, are commonly the fame that others have and mean when they use the fame names. § 10. Ideas of mixed Modes myft liable to be false in this

Senfe.

COMPLEX ideas are much more liable to be falfe in this reSpect; and the complex ideas of mixed modes, much more than thofe of fubftances; because in substances (especially those which the common and unborrowed names of any language are applied to) fome remarkable fenfible qualities, ferving ordinarily to distinguish one fort from another, easily preferve thofe, who take any care in the ufe of their words, from applying them to forts of fubftances, to which they do not at all belong: But in mixed modes we are much more uncertain; it being not so easy to determine of several actions, whether they are to be called juftice or cruelty, liberality or prodigality. And fo in referring our ideas to thofe of other men, called by the fame names, ours may be falfe; and the idea in our minds, which we exprefs by the word justice, may perhaps be that which ought to have another name.

§ 11. Or at least to be thought falfe.

BUT whether or no our ideas of mixed modes are more liable than any fort to be different from thofe of other men, which are marked by the fame names; this at least is certain, That this fort of falsehood is much more familiarly attributed to our ideas of mixed modes, than to any other. When a man is thought to have a falfe idea of juftice, or gratitude, or glory, it is for no other reason, but that his agrees not with the ideas which each of those names are the figns of in other men.

$12. And why.

THE reafon whereof feems to me to be this; That the abftract ideas of mixed modes, being mens voluntary combinations of fuch a precife collection of fimple ideas; and fo the effence of each species being made by men alone, whereof we have no other fenfible standard exifting any where, but the name itself, or the definition of that name; we have nothing else to refer these our ideas of mixed modes to, as a standard to which we would conform them, but the ideas of thofe who are thought to use those names in their most proper fignifi cations; and fo as our ideas conform or differ from them, they pafs for true or falfe. And thus much concerning the truth and falfehood of our ideas, in reference to their names.

§ 13. As referred to real Exiftences, none of our Ideas can be falfe, but thofe of Subftances.

SECONDLY, As to the truth and falfehood of our ideas, in reference to the real exiflence of things, when that is made the standard of their truth, none of them can be termed falfe, but only our complex ideas of fubftances.

14. Firf, Simple Ideas in this fenfe not false, and why. FIRST, Our fimple ideas being barely fuch perceptions as God has fitted us to receive, and given power to external objects to produce in us by established laws and ways, fuitable to his wifdom and goodness, though incomprehenfible to us, their truth confifts in nothing else but in fuch appearances as are produced in us, and must be fuitable to thofe powers he has placed in external objects, or else they could not be produced in us; and

thus answering those powers, they are what they should be, true ideas: Nor do they become liable to any imputation of falsehood, if the mind (as in moft men I believe it does) judges thefe ideas to be in the things themselves; for God, in his wifdom, having fet them as marks of diftinction in things, whereby we may be able to difcern one thing from another, and so choose any of them for our ufes, as we have occafion, it alters not the na-. ture of our fimple idea, whether we think that the idea of blue be in the violet itself, or in our mind only, and only the power of producing it by the texture of its parts, reflecting the particles of light, after a certain manner, to be in the violet itself; for that texture in the object, by a regular and conftant operation, producing the fame idea of blue in us, it ferves us to diftinguish, by our eyes, that from any other thing, whether that diftinguifhing mark, as it is really in the violet, be only a peculiar texture of parts, elfe that very colour, the idea whereof (which is in us) is the exact refemblance And it is equally from that appearance to be denominated blue, whether it be that real colour, or only a peculiar texture in it, that caufes in us that idea; fince the name blue notes properly nothing, but that mark of diftinction that is in a violet, difcernible only by our eyes, whatever it confifts in, that being beyond our capacities diftinctly to know, and perhaps would be of lefs ufe to us, if we had faculties to difcern.

§ 15. Though one Man's Idea of blue should be different from another's..

NEITHER Would it carry any imputation of falsehood to our fimple ideas, if by the different ftructure of our organs it were fo ordered, that the fame object should produce in feveral mens minds different ideas at the fame time; v. g. if the idea that a violet produced in one man's mind by his eyes were the fame that a marigold produced in another man's, and vice verfa: For fince this could never be known, becaufe one man's mind could not pass into another man's body, to perceive what appearances were produced by thofe organs; neither the ideas hereby, nor the names, would be at all confounded,