CHAP. III. From what has been said, it is evident, that the doctrine of BOOK III. the immutability of essences proves them to be only abstract ideas; and is founded on the relation established between them and certain sounds as signs of them; and will always be true, as long as the same name can have the same signification 1. lation. 20. To conclude. This is that which in short I would Recapitusay, viz. that all the great business of genera and species, and their essences, amounts to no more but this:-That men making abstract ideas, and settling them in their minds with names annexed to them, do thereby enable themselves to consider things, and discourse of them, as it were in bundles, for the easier and readier improvement and communication of their knowledge, which would advance but slowly were their words and thoughts confined only to particulars2. CHAPTER IV. OF THE NAMES OF SIMPLE IDEAS. CHAP. IV. BOOK III. I. THOUGH all words, as I have shown, signify nothing immediately but the ideas in the mind of the speaker; yet, upon a nearer survey, we shall find the names of simple ideas, mixed modes (under which I comprise relations too), and natural substances, have each of them something peculiar and different from the other. For example: simple Ideas, Modes, and Substances, have each something peculiar. First, 2. First, the names of simple ideas and substances, with 1 the abstract ideas in the mind which they immediately Names of signify, intimate also some real existence, from which was derived their original pattern. But the names of mixed modes terminate in the idea that is in the mind, and lead not the thoughts any further; as we shall see more at large in the following chapter 2. simple Ideas, and of Sub stances intimate real Secondly, Modes signify always both real and nominal Essences. 3. Secondly, The names of simple ideas and modes signify always the real as well as nominal essence of their species. But the names of natural substances signify rarely, if ever, anything but barely the nominal essences of those species; as we shall show in the chapter that treats of the names of substances in particular. 4. Thirdly, The names of simple ideas are not capable of Names of any definition; the names of all complex ideas are. It has Thirdly, 1 That is, general ideas, or generalisations, which involve abstraction. 2 Our 'simple ideas,' or the phenomena actually presented by the things of sense, or in the operations of our own mind; and our imperfect) ideas of particular substances, are thus the only ideas that are concerned with reality, as distinguished from arbitrary combinations elaborated by the minds of men. CHAP. IV. simple are un not, that I know, been yet observed by anybody what words BOOK III. are, and what are not, capable of being defined1; the want whereof is (as I am apt to think) not seldom the occasion of great wrangling and obscurity in men's discourses, whilst Ideas some demand definitions of terms that cannot be defined; definable. and others think they ought not to rest satisfied in an explication made by a more general word, and its restriction, (or to speak in terms of art, by a genus and difference,) when, even after such definition, made according to rule, those who hear it have often no more a clear conception of the meaning of the word than they had before. This at least I think, that the showing what words are, and what are not, capable of definitions, and wherein consists a good definition, is not wholly besides our present purpose; and perhaps will afford so much light to the nature of these signs and our ideas, as to deserve a more particular consideration. names were it would 5. I will not here trouble myself to prove that all terms are If all not definable, from that progress in infinitum, which it will visibly lead us into, if we should allow that all names could definable, be defined. For, if the terms of one definition were still to be a be defined by another, where at last should we stop 2? But I in inshall, from the nature of our ideas, and the signification of finitum. our words, show why some names can, and others cannot be defined; and which they are. Process Definition 6. I think it is agreed, that a definition is nothing else but What a the showing the meaning of one word by several other not synonymous terms. The meaning of words being only the 1 The impossibility of defining all words, with a reason for this, is stated in the Port Royal Logic, especially Part i. ch. xii, which anticipates some of Locke's remarks. 'To say that simple ideas are indefinable means,' according to Green (p. 42), 'that nothing can be said of such ideas'that they are meaningless till brought into relations. Locke means that a man born blind cannot be made to picture mentally a red or white colour, merely by naming it and defining the name, nor indeed by any other way VOL. II. D than by presenting a red or a white 2 Il faut nécessairement s'arrêter 3 Verbal or nominal definition, which Locke has here in view, is merely explicative-an exhaustive exhibition of the plurality of attributes which men have chosen to include in the connotation of the term defined. By CHAP. IV. BOOK III ideas they are made to stand for by him that uses them, the meaning of any term is then showed, or the word is defined, when, by other words, the idea it is made the sign of, and annexed to, in the mind of the speaker, is as it were represented, or set before the view of another; and thus its signification ascertained. This is the only use and end of definitions; and therefore the only measure of what is, or is not a good definition. Simple definable. 7. This being premised, I say that the names of simple why un ideas, and those only, are incapable of being defined. The reason whereof is this, That the several1 terms of a definition, signifying several ideas, they can all together by no means represent an idea which has no composition at all: and therefore a definition, which is properly nothing but the showing the meaning of one word by several others not signifying each the same thing, can in the names of simple ideas have no place 2. Instances: 8. The not observing this difference in our ideas, and their definitions names, has produced that eminent trifling in the schools, of Motion. which is so easy to be observed in the definitions they give us of some few of these simple ideas. For, as to the greatest part of them, even those masters of definitions were fain to leave them untouched, merely by the impossibility they found in it. What more exquisite jargon could the wit of man invent, than this definition : The act of a being in power, as far forth as in power;' which would puzzle any rational man, spreading out those which entitle an 1 'several,' i. e. different. 2 There is nothing new in this statement, already made by Descartes and others. Simple ideas, as containing only a single attribute, of course, cannot be defined; because a definition presupposes a plurality of attributes. They may be exemplified, however, in a sensuous image. See also Port Royal Logic, Pt. I. ch. xiii, where reason is given why it is impossible to define all words.' 3 Arist. Metaph. xi. 9. This Aristotelian definition of motion had been already discarded in the Port Royal Logic. Is not our natural idea of motion a hundred times clearer than that given through this definition; and who could ever learn from it any of the properties of motion?' (Pt. II. ch. xvi.) This is the modern spirit of reaction against definitions of the schools, expressed in abstract language, and professedly related to ultimate principles, and the universal scheme of things. The Aristotelian to whom it was not already known by its famous absurdity, to BOOK III. guess what word it could ever be supposed to be the explica 6 tion of. If Tully, asking a Dutchman what beweeginge 1 CHAP. IV. was, should have received this explication in his own language, that it was actus entis in potentia quatenus in potentia;' I ask whether any one can imagine he could thereby have understood what the word beweeginge signified, or have guessed what idea a Dutchman ordinarily had in his mind, and would signify to another, when he used that sound? definitions of Motion. 9. Nor have the modern philosophers, who have endea- Modern voured to throw off the jargon of the schools, and speak intelligibly, much better succeeded in defining simple ideas, whether by explaining their causes 2, or any otherwise. The atomists 3, who define motion to be a passage from one place to another,' what do they more than put one synonymous word for another? For what is passage other than motion? And if they were asked what passage was, how would they better define it than by motion? For is it not at least as proper and significant to say, Passage is a motion from one place to another, as to say, Motion is a passage, &c.? This is to translate, and not to define, when we change two words of the same signification one for another; which, when one is better understood than the other, may serve to discover what idea the unknown stands for; but is very far from a definition, unless we will say every English word in the dictionary is the definition of the Latin word it answers, and that motion is definition turns upon the difference between the actual (èvépyew) and the potential (dúvajus) in the nature of things. Locke condemns it, as if it pretended to explicate the simple sensa. tion which motion occasions in us. This was foreign to its purpose, which was to exhibit motion as the actualisation of what before existed only potentially. 1 Beweeginge is the Dutch for movement (so German Bewegung). Locke's residence in Holland, when he was finishing the Essay, suggested this and similar local illustrations. 2 Simple ideas of sense' are not defined by stating physical occasions or conditions of their manifestations; because the occasion bears no likeness to the sensation occasioned. An explication of the physical causes of our having a sensation of colour could not convey an image of the colour to one born blind. 3 atomists'-Democritus and the Epicureans, also the Gassendists in the seventeenth century, sought in indivisible atoms and their motions for the ultimate constituents of whatever exists. |