First, simple ideas, which are ektupa, or copies; but yet certainly adequate. Because being intended to express nothing but the power in things to produce in the mind such a sensation, that sensation, when it is produced, cannot but be the effect of that power. So the paper I write on, having the power, in the light (I speak according to the common notion of light) to produce in men the sensa tion which I call white, it cannot but be the effect of such power, in something without the mind: since the mind has not the power to produce any such idea in itself, and being meant for nothing else but the effect of such a power, that simple idea is real and adequate; the sensation of white, in my mind, being the effect of that power, which is in the paper to produce it, is perfectly adequate to that power; or else, that power would produce a different idea.

§. 13. Ideas of substances are inadequate.

Secondly, the complex ideas of substances are ectypes, copies too; but not perfect ones, not adequate which is very evident to the mind, in that it plainly perceives that whatever collection of simple ideas it makes of any substance that exists, it cannot be sure that it exactly answers all that are in that substance: since not having tried all the operations of all other substances upon it, and found all the alterations it would receive from, or cause in, other substances, it cannot have an exact adequate collection of all its active and passive capacities; and so not have an adequate complex idea of the powers of any substance existing, and its relations, which is that sort of complex idea of substances we have. And after all, if we would have, and actually had, in our complex idea, an exact collection of all the secondary qualities or powers of any substance, we should not yet thereby have an idea of the essence of that thing. For since the powers or qualities that are observable by us, are not the real essence of that substance, but depend on it, and flow from it, any collection whatsoever of these qualities cannot be real essence of that thing. Whereby it is plain, that our ideas of substances are not adequate; are not what the mind intends them to be. Besides, a man has no idea of substance in general, nor knows what substance is in itself.

§. 14. Ideas of modes and relations are archetypes, and cannot but be adequate.

Thirdly, complex ideas of modes and relations are originals and archetypes; are not copies, nor made after the

pattern of any real existence, to which the mind intends them to be conformable, and exactly to answer. These being such collections of simple ideas, that the mind itself puts together, and such collections, that each of them contains in it precisely all that the mind intends that it should, they are archetypes, and essences of modes that may exist; and so are designed only for, and belong only to, such modes as, when they do exist, have an exact conformity with those complex ideas. The ideas therefore of modes and relations cannot but be adequate.

CHAP. XXXII.

OF TRUE AND FALSE IDEAS.

§. 1. Truth and falsehood properly belong to propositions. THO HOUGH truth and falsehood belong, in propriety of speech, only to propositions; yet ideas are oftentimes termed true or false (as what words are there, that are not used with great latitude, and with some deviation from their strict and proper significations?) Though, I think, that when ideas themselves are termed true or false, there is still some secret or tacit proposition which is the foundation of that denomination: as we shall see, if we examine the particular occasions wherein they come to be called true or false. In all which, we shall find some kind of affirmation or negation, which is the reason of that denomination. For our ideas, being nothing but bare appearances or perceptions in our minds, caunot properly and simply in themselves be said to be true or false, no more than a single name of any thing can be said to be true or false.

§. 2. Metaphysical truth contains a tacit proposition. Indeed both ideas and words may be said to be true in a metaphysical sense of the word truth, as all other things, that any way exist, are said to be true; i. e. really to be such as they exist. Though in things called true, even in that sense, there is perhaps a secret reference to our ideas, looked upon as the standards of that truth, which amounts to a mental proposition, though it be usually not taken notice of.

§. 3. No idea, as an appearance in the mind, true or false. But it is not in that metaphysical sense of truth which we inquire here, when we examine whether our ideas are

capable of being true or false; but in the more ordinary acceptation of those words: and so I say, that the ideas in our minds being only so many perceptions, or appearances there, none of them are false: the idea of a centaur having no more falsehood in it, when it appears in our minds, than the name centaur has falsehood in it, when it is pronounced by our mouths, or written on paper. For truth or falsehood lying always in some affirmation, or negation, mental or verbal, our ideas are not capable, any of them, of being false, till the mind passes some judgment on them; that is, affirms or denies something 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 false. Because the mind in such a reference makes a tacit supposition of their conformity to that thing: which supposition, as it happens to be true or false, so the ideas themselves come to be denominated. The most usual cases wherein this happens, are these following:

5. 5. Other men's ideas, real existence, and supposed real essence, are what men usually refer their ideas to.

First, when the mind supposes any idea it has conformable to that in other men's minds, called by the same common name; v. g. when the mind intends or judges its ideas of justice, temperance, religion, to be the same with what other men give those names to.

Secondly, when the mind supposes any idea it has in itself to be conformable to some real existence. Thus the two ideas, of a man and a centaur, supposed to be the idea of real substances, are the one true, and the other false; the one having a conformity 'to what has really existed, the other not.

Thirdly, when the mind refers any of its ideas to that real constitution and essence of any thing, whereon all its properties depend: and thus the greatest part, if not all our ideas of substances, are false.

§. 6. The cause of such references.

These suppositions 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

should proceed by and dwell upon only particular things, its progress would be very slow, and its work endless; therefore to shorten its way to knowledge, and make cach perception more comprehensive; 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 so into sorts, that what knowledge it gets of any of them, it may thereby with assurance extend to all of that sort; and so advance by larger steps in that, which is its great business, knowledge. This, as I have elsewhere shown, is the reason why we collect things under comprehensive ideas, with names annexed to them, into genera and species, i. e. into kinds and sorts.

§. 7.

If therefore we will warily attend to the motions of the mind, and observe what course it usually takes in its way to knowledge; we shall, I think, find that the mind having got an idea, which it thinks it may have use of, either in contemplation or discourse, the first thing it does is to abstract it, and then get a name to it; and so lay it up in its store-house, the memory, as containing the essence of a sort of things, of which that name is always to be the mark. Hence it is that we may often observe, that when any one sees a new thing of a kind that he knows not, he presently asks, what it is, meaning by that inquiry nothing but the name. As if the name carried with it the knowledge of the species, or the essence of it; whereof it is indeed used as the mark, and is generally supposed annexed

to it.

§. 8. Cause of such references.

But this abstract idea being something in the mind be tween the thing that exists, and the name that is given to it; it is in our ideas, that both the rightness of our knowledge, or the propriety or intelligibleness of our speak ing, consists. And hence it is, that men are so forward, to suppose, that the abstract ideas they have in their minds are such as agree to the things existing without them, to which they are referred; and are the same also, to which the names they give them do by the use and propriety of that language belong. For without this double conformity of their ideas, they find they should both think amiss of things of themselves, and talk of them unintelligibly

others.

§. 9. Simple ideas may be false in reference to others of the same name, but are least liable to be so.

First then, I say, that when the truth of our ideas is judged of, by the conformity they have to the ideas which other men have, and commonly signify by the same name, they may be any of them false. But yet simple ideas are least of all liable to be so mistaken; because of man by his senses, and every day's observation, may easily satisfy himself what the simple ideas are, which their several names that are in common use stand for: they being but few in number, and such as if he doubts or mistakes in, he may easily rectify by the objects they are to be found in.Therefore it is seldom, that any one mistakes in his names of simple ideas; or applies the name red to the idea green; or the name sweet to the idea bitter: much less are men apt to confound the names of ideas belonging to different senses; and call a colour by the name of a taste, &c. whereby it is evident, that the simple ideas they call by any name, are commonly the same that others have and mean when they use the same names. §. 10. Ideas of mixed modes most liable to be false in this

sense.

Complex ideas are much more liable to be false in this respect and the complex ideas of mixed modes, much more than those of substances: because in substances (especially those which the common and unborrowed names of any language are applied to) some remarkable sensible qualities, serving ordinarily to distinguish one sort from another, easily preserve those, who take any care in the use of their words, from applying them to sorts of substances, 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 justice or cruelty, liberality or prodigality. And so in referring our ideas to those of other men, called by the same names, ours may be false; and the idea in our minds, which we express by the word justice, may perhaps be that which ought to have another name.

§. 11. Or at least to be thought false.

But whether or no our ideas of mixed modes are more liable than any sort to be different from those of other men, which are marked by the same names; this at least is certain, that this sort of falsehood is much more familiarly attributed to our ideas of mixed modes, than to any