Upon which, his friend demanding
what scarlet was? The blind man answered, It was like the sound of a
trumpet. Just such an understanding of the name of any other simple
idea will he have, who hopes to get it only from a definition, or
other words made use of to explain it.
12. The contrary shown in complex ideas, by instances of a statue
and rainbow. The case is quite otherwise in complex ideas; which,
consisting of several simple ones, it is in the power of words,
standing for the several ideas that make that composition, to
imprint complex ideas in the mind which were never there before, and
so make their names be understood. In such collections of ideas,
passing under one name, definition, or the teaching the
signification of one word by several others, has place, and may make
us understand the names of things which never came within the reach of
our senses; and frame ideas suitable to those in other men's minds,
when they use those names: provided that none of the terms of the
definition stand for any such simple ideas, which he to whom the
explication is made has never yet had in his thought. Thus the word
statue may be explained to a blind man by other words, when picture
cannot; his senses having given him the idea of figure, but not of
colours, which therefore words cannot excite in him.
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