And thus much concerning the
truth and falsehood of our ideas, in reference to their names.
13. As referred to real existence, none of our ideas can be false
but those of substances. Secondly, as to the truth and falsehood of
our ideas, in reference to the real existence of things. When that
is made the standard of their truth, none of them can be termed
false but only our complex ideas of substances.
14. Simple ideas in this sense not false, and why. First, our simple
ideas, being barely such perceptions as God has fitted us to
receive, and given power to external objects to produce in us by
established laws and ways, suitable to his wisdom and goodness, though
incomprehensible to us, their truth consists in nothing else but in
such appearances as are produced in us, and must be suitable to
those powers he has placed in external objects or else they could
not be produced in us: and thus answering those powers, they are
what they should be, true ideas. Nor do they become liable to any
imputation of falsehood, if the mind (as in most men I believe it
does) judges these ideas to be in the things themselves. For God in
his wisdom having set them as marks of distinction in things,
whereby we may be able to discern one thing from another, and so
choose any of them for our uses as we have occasion; it alters not the
nature of our simple idea, whether we think that the idea of blue be
in the violet itself, or in our mind only; and only the power of
producing it by the texture of its parts, reflecting the particles
of light after a certain manner, to be in the violet itself.
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