entity existing merely in the perceiving or conceiving mind, it would at first sight appear that an obscure conception or perception is as much an entity as a clear one, for it is equally an act or modification of the mind. But, in fact, our perceptions, however clear or distinct, are not themselves so properly entities, as they are the proofs or criterion of the entity of the thing perceived. We perceive a thing or a relation to be ; our perception here does not cause or constitute its being; but it necessarily implies or supposes it; and the proposition which, upon that perception, affirms the existence of that which is the object of it, is properly that which we call true. Truth, then, belongs to propositions; and the criterion of it is, that we clearly perceive the existence which it affirms, and cannot conceive it to be otherwise. To ask further what is the criterion of that clearness of perception, is in reality to ask we know not what; as much as if we required another light to enable us to see that of day. Any other or higher degree of assurance than that which is thus afforded us is actually inconceivable.

§ 15. Hence it is that Mr. Hobbes has, with his usual sagacity and precision, defined truth

to consist in the right ordering of names in our affirmations; for, as he says, "True and false

are attributes of speech, not of things; and where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood. Error there may be; as when we expect that which shall not be, or suspect what has not been; but in neither case can a man be charged with untruth." I do not know whether the philosopher of Malmesbury was the first to suggest this limitation of the term Truth; but it is equally profound and important.

§ 16. In assigning this definition of Truth, however, Mr. Hobbes should, perhaps, have more explicitly prevented the objection which it is obvious to make, that as nothing can be more arbitrary than the imposition of names, such a doctrine would seem to throw a degree of uncertainty upon the whole fabrick of human knowledge. But, in fact, however arbitrary be the imposition of names, their significancy is nothing less than so; a word that recalls no meaning is not a name at all, but a mere sound. If understood, it necessarily supposes some existence, ideal or real, of which it is the sign; although, therefore, it be the right

*Leviathan, Chap. IV. Part I.

ordering of names that constitutes truth, yet the only criterion of that rectitude of order is the mind's perception, whether of the reality of the thing, or the necessity of the relation, the existence of which is thus affirmed.

Truth, therefore, supposes reality, precisely as a sign implies something signified; and in our general reasonings the real danger, I apprehend, is not that we use words without meaning, but that we do not restrict them to the same.

§ 17. Mr. Locke's definition of truth seems substantially the same with that of Hobbes; a coincidence, we may observe, not singular in the writings of these two philosophers, and of which I do not know that Mr. Locke has any where taken notice, though it apply to some of the most valuable of his speculations. In the 5th Chapter of Book IV. of the Essay on Human Understanding, Truth is said to signify nothing but the joining or separating of signs, as the things signified by them do agree or disagree with one another. "The joining or separating of signs is what, by another name, we call proposition; so that truth properly belongs only to propositions; whereof there are two sorts; viz. mental and verbal; as there are two sorts of signs commonly made use of, viz.

ideas and words." "Mental propositions," he adds, "are those in which our ideas are joined or separated without the use of words, by the mind perceiving or judging of their agreement or disagreement; and verbal propositions are words, the signs of our ideas, put together or separated in affirmative or negative sentences; so that proposition consists in the joining or separating of signs; and truth consists in the joining or separating those signs, according as the things they stand for agree or disagree."

§ 18. This distinction of propositions into mental and verbal, seems somewhat questionable. Any verbal proposition is no otherwise intelligible than as we mentally refer to the things signified by the words of it; and with respect to mental propositions, abstracted from all use of words or conventional signs, I doubt whether they be possible, consistently with the strict meaning of the term. I can, indeed, perceive or judge of the existence of a relation between any two of my ideas, without thinking of the names that belong to them. But I cannot even to myself propound that existence as a general truth, without the employment of signs of some kind or other. Moreover, to speak of our ideas as being the signs of

things, in any ordinary sense of the word sign, has either no meaning at all, or not a true one. The use of a sign essentially supposes the previous experience or knowledge of the thing signified.

A similar objection may be made to the distinction which Mr. Locke subjoins of Truth, as either verbal or real. Truth, which is not real, is no Truth at all; and that which is real does not become true, till stated, whether tacitly or articulately, in proposition.

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Mr. Locke, in his following chapter, proceeds to explain this doctrine farther, by observing that certainty is two-fold; of truth and of knowledge. Certainty of truth," he says, "is when our verbal propositions exactly represent the agreement and disagreement of the ideas which they stand for, while certainty of knowledge is to perceive the agreement or disagreement of ideas as expressed in any proposition." But it is plain that each of these certainties involves the other; a truth is certain only as we certainly know that which it affirms to be.

These, and almost every other inconsistency in which Mr. Locke has involved himself on this subject, result immediately from the ideal hypothesis which he had so gratuitously taken up; the accuracy of which it was surprising he was never