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.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, cannot 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.Metaphysical truth contains a tacit proposition.§ 2.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.No idea, as an appearance in the mind, true or false.§ 3.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.Ideas referred to any thing may be true or false.§ 4.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:Other men’s ideas, real existence, and supposed real essences, are what men usually refer their ideas to.§ 5.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 ideas 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.The cause of such references.§ 6.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 each 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.Cause of such references.§ 8.But this abstract idea being something in the mind between the thing that exists, and the name that is given to it; it is in our ideas, that both the rightness of our knowledge, and the propriety or intelligibleness of our speaking, 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 in themselves, and talk of them unintelligibly to others.Simple ideas may be false in reference to others of the same name, but are least liable to be so.§ 9.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
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