CHAP. I. BOOK III. other ideas; since they could consist of nothing but either of outward1 sensible perceptions, or of the inward' operations of their minds about them; we having, as has been proved, no ideas at all, but what originally come either from sensible objects without, or what we feel within ourselves, from the inward workings of our own spirits, of which we are conscious to ourselves within. Distribution of 6. But to understand better the use and force of Language 2, as subservient to instruction and knowledge, it will be conbe treated venient to consider: subjects to of. First, To what it is that names, in the use of language, are immediately applied. Secondly, Since all (except proper) names are general, and so stand not particularly for this or that single thing, but for sorts and ranks of things, it will be necessary to consider, in the next place, what the sorts and kinds, or, if you rather like the Latin names, what the Species and Genera of things are, wherein they consist, and how they come to be made3. These being (as they ought) well looked into, we shall the better come to find the right use of words; the natural advantages and defects of language; and the remedies that ought to be used, to avoid the inconveniences of obscurity or uncertainty in the signification of words: without which it is impossible to discourse with any clearness or order concerning knowledge which, being conversant about propositions, and the wheels went, and thither was their Spirit to go; for the Spirit of the living creature was in the wheels also.' (Aids to Reflection. Preface.) Abstract (general) ideas,' and their relation to words, form the chief subject of the third Book. Mental 'propositions,' or judgments, are the units of 'knowledge,' as distinguished from mere 'ideas,' which must enter into them, with which the second Book was concerned, in preparation for the theory of knowledge in the fourth Book. those most commonly universal ones1, has greater connexion BOOK III. with words than perhaps is suspected. These considerations, therefore, shall be the matter of the following chapters 2. The attainment of new and true universal propositions, affirmative and negative, is the chief end of all purely intellectual activity; but, as the condition of its attainment, capacity for being universalised is presupposed, on the part of the things about which men reason. 2 Some parts of that third Book, concerning Words, though the thoughts were easy and clear enough, yet cost me more pains to express than all the rest of my Essay. And therefore I shall not much wonder, if there be in some places of it obscurity and doubtfulness.' (Locke to Molyneux, Jan. 20, 1693.) 144 CHAP. I. CHAPTER II. OF THE SIGNIFICATION OF WORDS. CHAP. II. BOOK III. 1. MAN, though he have great variety of thoughts, and such from which others as well as himself might receive profit and delight; yet they are all within his own breast, invisible Words are sensible and hidden from others, nor can of themselves be made to Signs, appear. The comfort and advantage of society not being to for Com- be had without communication of thoughts, it was necessary munication that man should find out some external sensible signs, whereof necessary of Ideas. those invisible ideas, which his thoughts are made up of, might be made known to others1. For this purpose nothing was so fit, either for plenty or quickness, as those articulate sounds, which with so much ease and variety he found himself able to make. Thus we may conceive how words, which were by nature so well adapted to that purpose, came to be made use of by men as the signs of their ideas; not by any natural connexion that there is between particular articulate sounds and certain ideas, for then there would be but one language amongst all men; but by a voluntary imposition, whereby such a word is made arbitrarily 2 the mark of such an idea. 1 Leibniz (Nouveaux Essais) dwells on the illustration the peculiar genius of a people receives from the qualities which they select, as the basis of their classifications of things. Topographical nomenclatures are largely determined by this consideration. See Prof. Veitch's Border History and Poetry, pp. 16-18. 'Locke's tendency to see in language the issue of arbitrary contract (ex instituto) rather than of spon taneous evolution, determined under natural laws, does not necessarily imply that the connexion of an idea with a particular sign is other than arbitrary. This is proved by the fact of a plurality of languages. Locke's emphatic recognition of arbitrariness' in this connexion probably suggested Berkeley's metaphor of a divine visual language, and his favourite conception of the arbitrariness' of all natural laws. The use, then, of words, is to be sensible marks of ideas; and BOOK III. the ideas they stand for are their proper and immediate signification. 1 CHAP. II. in their tion, are who uses them. 2. The use men have of these marks being either to record Words, their own thoughts, for the assistance of their own memory; immediate or, as it were, to bring out their ideas 2, and lay them before Significathe view of others: words, in their primary or immediate the signification, stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of Signs of him that uses them, how imperfectly soever or carelessly those his Ideas ideas are collected from the things which they are supposed to represent 3. When a man speaks to another, it is that he may be understood: and the end of speech is, that those sounds, as marks, may make known his ideas to the hearer. That then which words are the marks of are the ideas of the speaker: nor can any one apply them as marks, immediately, to anything else but the ideas that he himself hath: for this would be to make them signs of his own conceptions, and yet apply them to other ideas; which would be to make them signs and not signs of his ideas at the same time; and so in effect to have no signification at all. Words being voluntary signs, they cannot be voluntary signs imposed by him on things he knows not. That would be to make them signs of nothing, sounds without signification. A man cannot make 1 Not only, nor chiefly, 'memory,' -indispensable to the activity of discursive reason. 'The concept formed by an abstraction of the resembling from the non-resembling qualities of objects, would again fall back into the confusion and infinitude from which it has been called out, were it not rendered permanent for consciousness by being fixed and ratified in a verbal sign.' (Hamilton.) But Locke is apt to disparage generalisation as no more than a means for relieving memory; and to suspect' generalities,' as a hindrance to observation of the properties and powers of individual things. communication of ideas to others, 3 In representing words as, 'in their primary or immediate signification,' signs of his ideas who uses them,' Locke does not exclude the beliefs and knowledge of him who uses them-belief and knowledge presupposing ideas. Each man's words represent things, as they are regarded by his individual mind. Cf. Hobbes, Computation or Logic, ch. ii. § 5; also Mill's Logic, Bk. I. ch. ii. § 1. When Locke speaks of words as signs of ideas, it must be remembered that his 'ideas' include perceived phenomena ('simple ideas') presented by substances, in external and internal sense. CHAP. II. BOOK III. his words the signs either of qualities in things, or of conceptions in the mind of another, whereof he has none in his own. Till he has some ideas of his own, he cannot suppose them to correspond with the conceptions of another man; nor can he use any signs for them: for thus they would be the signs of he knows not what, which is in truth to be the signs of nothing. But when he represents to himself other men's ideas by some of his own, if he consent to give them the same names that other men do, it is still to his own ideas; to ideas that he has, and not to ideas that he has not. Examples of this. often 3. This is so necessary in the use of language, that in this respect the knowing and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned, use the words they speak (with any meaning) all alike. They, in every man's mouth, stand for the ideas he has, and which he would express by them. A child having taken notice of nothing in the metal he hears called gold, but the bright shining yellow colour, he applies the word gold only to his own idea of that colour, and nothing else; and therefore calls the same colour in a peacock's tail gold. Another that hath better observed, adds to shining yellow great weight and then the sound gold, when he uses it, stands for a complex idea of a shining yellow and a very weighty substance. Another adds to those qualities fusibility: and then the word gold signifies to him a body, bright, yellow, fusible, and very heavy. Another adds malleability. Each of these uses equally the word gold, when they have occasion to express the idea which they have applied it to: but it is evident that each can apply it only to his own idea; nor can he make it stand as a sign of such a complex idea as he has not. Words are 4. But though words, as they are used by men, can secretly properly and immediately signify nothing but the ideas that referred, are in the mind of the speaker; yet they in their thoughts give them a secret reference to two other things. First to the Ideas supposed to be in other men's minds. First, They suppose their words to be marks of the ideas in the minds also of other men, with whom they communicate for else they should talk in vain, and could not be understood, if the sounds they applied to one idea were such as by the hearer were applied to another, which is to speak |