A few more cases will exemplify all that is material in the marking power of the conjunctions.
“We study, that, we may be learned.” The connexion here, again, is that of cause and effect. “We study:” “We may be learned,” are the two predications, between which the connexion in question is to 221 be marked. The demonstrative pronoun performs the service. “We may be learned, that we study:” we study; what? to be learned.
“John is more learned than James is eloquent.” The conjunction here is a relative term, and consists of the two words, more than. The two predications are, “John is learned,” “James is eloquent.” The connexion between them is, that they are the two parts of a comparison turning upon the point of greatness in degree. The two words more than, suffice to mark that connexion. Than is but a mode of spelling and pronouncing that, which use has appropriated to this particular case. “John is learned, more that (that being the more, the other of course is the less), James is eloquent.”[72]
[72] Than is only another form of then, and marks that the one comes after the other, and is therefore inferior.—F.
As, obsolete as a pronoun, only exists as a conjunction. It is a word of the same import with that. The following will suffice in exemplification of the marking property which it retains. “Virgil was as great a poet as Cicero an orator.” The two predications are, “Virgil was a great poet,” “Cicero was a great orator.” They also are connected as the two parts of a comparison, turning upon the point of equality in degree. As, or that, suffices to mark that connexion. “Virgil was a great poet,” that (namely great) Cicero was an orator. We shall see [afterwards], in the composition of RELATIVE TERMS, that every such term consists of two words, or the same word taken twice. The conjunction here is a relative term, and consists 222 of two words, namely, as, or that, taken twice. “Virgil was a poet great, that that, an orator was Cicero;” the first that marking great as poet; the second that, marking great as orator.[73]
[73] As is an oblique case of the demonstrative root sa, and is equivalent to “in this (degree);” and the nature of the connection is this: Virgil was a poet great in this degree; Cicero was an orator great in this degree; that is, the degree of greatness was the same in both.—F.
CHAPTER V.
CONSCIOUSNESS.
“It is not easy for the mind to put off those confused notions and prejudices it has imbibed from custom, inadvertency, and common conversation. It requires pains and assiduity to examine its ideas, till it resolves them into those clear and distinct simple ones out of which they are compounded; and to see which, amongst its simple ones, have or have not a necessary connexion and dependence one upon another. Till a man doth this in the primary and original notions of things, he builds upon floating and uncertain principles, and will often find himself at a loss.”—Locke, Hum. Und. b. ii. c. 13. s. 28.