[1.] Of marks. [2.] Names or appellations. [3.] Names positive and privative. [4.] Advantage of names maketh us capable of science. [5.] Names universal and singular. [6.] Universals not in rerum natura. [7.] Equivocal names. [8.] Understanding. [9.] Affirmation, negation, proposition. [10.] Truth, falsity. [11.] Ratiocination. [12.] According to reason, against reason. [13.] Names causes of knowledge, so of error. [14.] Translation of the discourse of the mind into the discourse of the tongue, and of the errors thence proceeding.
Of marks.
1. Seeing the succession of conceptions in the mind are caused, as hath been said before, by the succession they had one to another when they were produced by the senses, and that there is no conception that hath not been produced immediately before or after innumerable others, by the innumerable acts of sense; it must needs follow, that one conception followeth not another, according to our election, and the need we have of them, but as it chanceth us to hear or see such things as shall bring them to our mind. The experience we have hereof, is in such brute beasts, which, having the providence to hide the remains and superfluity of their meat, do nevertheless want the remembrance of the place where they hid it, and thereby make no benefit thereof in their hunger: but man, who in this point beginneth to rank himself somewhat above the nature of beasts, hath observed and remembered the cause of this defect, and to amend the same, hath imagined or devised to set up a visible or other sensible mark, the which, when he seeth it again, may bring to his mind the thought he had when he set it up. A mark therefore is a sensible object which a man erecteth voluntarily to himself, to the end to remember thereby somewhat past, when the same is objected to his sense again: as men that have passed by a rock at sea, set up some mark, thereby to remember their former danger, and avoid it.
Names or appellations.
2. In the number of these marks, are those human voices, which we call the names or appellations of things sensible by the ear, by which we recall into our mind some conceptions of the things to which we gave those names or appellations; as the appellation white bringeth to remembrance the quality of such objects as produce that colour or conception in us. A name or appellation therefore is the voice of a man arbitrary, imposed for a mark to bring into his mind some conception concerning the thing on which it is imposed.
Names positive and privative.
3. Things named, are either the objects themselves, as a man; or the conception itself that we have of man, as shape and motion: or some privation, which is when we conceive that there is something which we conceive, not in him; as when we conceive he is not just, not finite, we give him the name of unjust, of infinite, which signify privation or defect; and to the privations themselves we give the names of injustice and infiniteness: so that here be two sorts of names; one of things, in which we conceive something; or of the conceptions themselves, which are called positive: the other of things wherein we conceive privation or defect, and those names are called privative.
Advantage of names maketh us capable of science.
4. By the advantage of names it is that we are capable of science, which beasts, for want of them are not; nor man, without the use of them: for as a beast misseth not one or two out of many her young ones, for want of those names of order, one, two, and three, and which we call number; so neither would a man, without repeating orally or mentally the words of number, know how many pieces of money or other things lie before him.
Names universal and singular.