particular quantity be marked by each letter, yet to proceed right it is not requisite that in every step each letter suggest to your thoughts that particular quantity it was appointed to stand for." The same principles have been adopted by the author of a Treatise of Human Nature, who, speaking of abstract ideas, has the following words: "I believe every one who examines the situation of his mind in reasoning, will agree with me, that we do not annex distinct and complete ideas to every term we make use of, and that in talking of government, church, negotiation, conquest, we seldom spread out in our minds all the simple ideas of which these complex ones are composed. 'Tis, however, observable that notwithstanding this imperfection, we may avoid talking nonsense on these subjects, and may perceive any repugnance among the ideas, as well as if we had a full comprehension of them. Thus if, instead of saying that in war the weaker have always recourse to negotiation, we should say, that they have always recourse to conquest; the custom which we have acquired of attributing certain relations to ideas, still follows the words, and makes us immediately perceive the absurdity of that proposition Some excellent observations to the same purpose have also been made by the elegant Inquirer into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful 3.

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Now that the notions on this subject maintained by these ingenious writers, however strange they may appear on a superficial view, are well founded, is at least presumable from this consideration: that if, agreeably to the common hypothesis, we could understand nothing that is said but by actually comparing in our minds all the ideas signified, it would be impossible that nonsense should ever escape undiscovered, at least that we should so far impose upon ourselves, as to think we understand what in reality is not to be understood. We should in that case find ourselves in the same situation, when an unmeaning sentence is introduced into a discourse, wherein we find ourselves when a sentence is quoted in a language of which we are entirely ignorant: we are never in the smallest danger of imagining that we apprehend the meaning of the quotation.

But though a very curious fact hath been taken notice of by those expert metaphysicians, and such a fact as will, perhaps, account for the deception we are now considering; yet the fact itself, in my apprehension, hath not been sufficiently accounted for. That mere sounds, which are used only as signs, and have no natural connexion with the things whereof they are signs, should convey knowledge to the mind, even when they excite no idea of the things signified, must appear at first

1 Introd. Sect. 19.

2 Vol. I. Book i. Part 2. Sect. 7.

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3 Part V.

extremely mysterious. It is, therefore, worth while to consider the matter more closely; and in order to this, it will be proper to attend a little to the three following connexions: first, that which subsisteth among things; secondly, that which subsisteth between words and things; thirdly, that which subsisteth among words, or the different terms used in the same language.

As to the first of these connexions, namely, that which subsisteth among things, it is evident that this is original and natural. There is a variety of relations to be found in things, by which they are connected. Such are, among several others, resemblance, identity, equality, contrariety, cause and effect, concomitancy, vicinity in time or place. These we become acquainted with by experience; and they prove, by means of association, the source of various combinations of ideas, and abstractions, as they are commonly denominated. Hence mixed modes, and distinctions into genera and species; of the origin of which I have had occasion to speak already 5.

As to the second connexion, or that which subsisteth between words and things, it is obvious, as it hath been hinted formerly, that this is not a natural and necessary, but an artificial and arbitrary connexion. Nevertheless, though this connexion hath not its foundation in the nature of things, but in the conventions of men, its effect upon the mind is much the same. For having often had occasion to observe particular words used as signs of particular things, we hence contract a habit of associating the sign with the thing signified, insomuch that either, being presented to the mind, frequently introduces or occasions the apprehension of the other. Custom, in this instance, operates precisely in the same manner as in the formation of experience formerly explained. Thus, certain sounds, and the ideas of things not naturally related to them, come to be as strongly linked in our conceptions, as the ideas of things naturally related to one another.

As to the third connexion, or that which subsisteth among words, I would not be understood to mean any connexion among the words considered as sounds, such as that which results from resemblance in pronunciation, equality in the number of syllables, sameness of measure or cadence; I mean solely that connexion or relation which comes gradually to subsist among the different words of a language, in the minds of those who speak it, and which is merely consequent on this,

4 It may be thought improper to mention identity as a relation by which different things are connected; but it must be observed, that I only mean so far different, as to constitute distinct objects to the mind. Thus the consideration of the same person, when a child and when a man, is the consideration of different objects, between which there subsists the relation of identity.

5 Book I. Chap. v. Sect. ii. Part 2. On the formation of experience.

that those words are employed as signs of connected or related things. It is an axiom in geometry, that things equal to the same thing are equal to one another. It may, in like manner, be admitted as an axiom in psychology, that ideas associated by the same idea will associate with one another. Hence it will happen, that if from experiencing the connexion of two things there results, as infallibly there will result, an association between the ideas or notions annexed to them, as each idea will moreover be associated by its signs, there will likewise be an association between the ideas of the signs. Hence the sounds, considered as signs, will be conceived to have a connexion analogous to that which subsisteth among the things signified; I say the sounds considered as signs: for this way of considering them constantly attends us in speaking, writing, hearing, and reading. When we purposely abstract from it, and regard them merely as sounds, we are instantly sensible that they are quite unconnected, and have no other relation than what ariseth from similitude of tone or accent. But to consider them in this manner commonly results from previous design, and requires a kind of effort which is not exerted in the ordinary use of speech. In ordinary use they are regarded solely as signs, or rather they are confounded with the things they signify; the consequence of which is, that, in the manner just now explained, we come insensibly to conceive a connexion among them, of a very different sort from that of which sounds are naturally susceptible.

Now this conception, habit, or tendency of the mind, call it which you please, is considerably strengthened both by the frequent use of language, and by the structure of it. It is strengthened by the frequent use of language. Language is the sole channel through which we communicate our knowledge and discoveries to others, and through which the knowledge and discoveries of others are communicated to us. By reiterated recourse to this medium, it necessarily happens, that when things are related to each other, the words signifying those things are more commonly brought together in discourse. Hence the words and names themselves, by customary vicinity, contract in the fancy a relation additional to that which they derive purely from being symbols of related things. Further, this tendency is strengthened by the structure of language. Alĺ languages whatever, even the most barbarous, as far as hath yet appeared, are of a regular and analogical make. The consequence is, that similar relations in things will be expressed similarly; that is, by similar inflections, derivations, compositions, arrangement of words, or juxtaposition of particles, according to the genius or grammatical form of the particular tongue. Now as by the habitual use of a language (even though it were quite irregular) the signs would insensibly be

come connected in the imagination, wherever the things signified are connected in nature; so, by the regular structure of a language, this connexion among the signs is conceived as analogous to that which subsisteth among their archetypes. From these principles we may be enabled both to understand the meaning and to perceive the justness of what is affirmed in the end of the preceding quotation: "The custom which we have acquired of attributing certain relations to ideas, still follows the words, and makes us immediately perceive the absurdity of that proposition." Immediately, that is, even before we have leisure to give that attention to the signs which is necessary in order to form a just conecption of the things signified. In confirmation of this doctrine it may be observed, that we really think by signs as well as speak by them.

I have hitherto, in conformity to what is now become a general and inveterate custom, and in order to avoid tiresome circumlocutions, used the terms sign and idea as exactly correlative. This, I am sensible, is not done with strict propriety. All words are signs, but that the signification cannot always be represented by an idea, will I apprehend, be abundantly evident from the observations following. All the truths which constitute science, which give exercise to reason, and are discovered by philosophy, are general; all our ideas, in the strictest sense of the word, are particular. All the particular truths about which we are conversant, are properly historical, and compose the furniture of memory. Nor do I include under the term historical, the truths which belong to natural history; for even these too are general. Now beyond particular truths or individual facts, first perceived and then remembered, we should never be able to proceed one single step in thinking, any more than in conversing, without the use of signs.

When it is affirmed that the whole is equal to all its parts, there cannot be an affirmation which is more perfectly intelligible, or which commands a fuller assent. If, in order to comprehend this, I recur to ideas, all that I can do, is to form a notion of some individual whole divided into a certain number of parts, of which it is constituted, suppose of the year divided into the four seasons. Now all that I can be said to discern here, is the relation of equality between this particular whole and its component parts. If I recur to another example, I only perceive another particular truth. The same holds of a third and of a fourth. But so far am I, after the perception of ten thousand particular similar instances, from the discovery of the universal truth, that if the mind had not the power of considering things as signs, or particular ideas as representing an infinity of others, resembling in one circumstance, though totally dissimilar in every other, I could not so much as conceive the meaning of a universal truth. Hence it is that some

ideas, to adopt the expression of the author above quoted, are particular in their nature, but general in their representation. There is, however, it must be acknowledged, a difficulty in explaining this power the mind hath, of considering ideas, not in their private, but, as it were, in their representative capacity; which, on that author's system who divides all the objects of thought into impressions and ideas, will be found altogether insurmountable. It was to avoid this difficulty that philosophers at first recurred, as is sometimes the case, to a still greater, or rather to a downright absurdity, the doctrine of abstract ideas. I mean only that doctrine as it hath been frequently explained; for if any one is pleased to call that faculty by which a particular idea is regarded as representing a whole order, by the name abstraction, I have no objection to the term: nay more I think it sufficiently expressive of the sense-whilst certain qualities of the individual remain unnoticed, and are therefore abstracted from, those qualities only which it hath in common with the order engross the mind's attention. But this is not what those writers seem to mean, who philosophize upon abstract ideas, as is evident from their own explications.

The patrons of this theory maintain, or at least express themselves as if they maintained, that the mind is endowed with a power of forming ideas, or images, within itself, that are possessed not only of incongruous, but of inconsistent qualities, of a triangle, for example, that is of all possible dimensions and proportions, both in sides and angles, at once right-angled, acute-angled, and obtuse-angled, equilateral, equicrural, and scalenum. One would have thought that the bare mention of this hypothesis would have been equivalent to a confutation of it, since it really confutes itself.

Yet in this manner one no less respectable in the philosophic world than Mr. Locke has, on some occasions, expressed himself. I consider the difference, however, on this article, between him and the two authors above mentioned, as more apparent than real, or (which amounts to the same thing) more in words than in sentiments. It is indeed scarcely possible that men of discernment should think differently on a subject so perfectly subjected to every one's own consciousness and experience. What has betrayed the former into such unguarded and improper expressions, is plainly an undue, and till then, unprecedented use of the word idea, which he has employed (for the sake, I suppose of simplifying his system) to signify not only, as formerly, the traces of things retained in the memory, and the images formed by the fancy, but even the perceptions of the senses on the one hand, and the conceptions of the intellect on the other, "it being that term which," in his

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Essay on Human Understanding, B. ii. C. xi. Sect. 10, 11; B. iv. C. vii. Sect 9.