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Locke, John

"An Essay Concerning Human Understanding"

So likewise, when I say Caius is a white man, I have nothing
but the bare consideration of a man who hath that white colour. But
when I give Caius the name husband, I intimate some other person;
and when I give him the name whiter, I intimate some other thing: in
both cases my thought is led to something beyond Caius, and there
are two things brought into consideration. And since any idea, whether
simple or complex, may be the occasion why the mind thus brings two
things together, and as it were takes a view of them at once, though
still considered as distinct: therefore any of our ideas may be the
foundation of relation. As in the above-mentioned instance, the
contract and ceremony of marriage with Sempronia is the occasion of
the denomination and relation of husband; and the colour white the
occasion why he is said to be whiter than free-stone.
2. Ideas of relations without correlative terms, not easily
apprehended. These and the like relations, expressed by relative terms
that have others answering them, with a reciprocal intimation, as
father and son, bigger and less, cause and effect, are very obvious to
every one, and everybody at first sight perceives the relation. For
father and son, husband and wife, and such other correlative terms,
seem so nearly to belong one to another, and, through custom, do so
readily chime and answer one another in people's memories, that,
upon the naming of either of them, the thoughts are presently
carried beyond the thing so named; and nobody overlooks or doubts of a
relation, where it is so plainly intimated.


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