First, "But to say no more": here it intimates a stop of the mind in
the course it was going, before it came quite to the end of it.
Secondly, "I saw but two plants"; here it shows that the mind limits
the sense to what is expressed, with a negation of all other.
Thirdly, "You pray; but it is not that God would bring you to the
true religion."
Fourthly, "But that he would confirm you in your own." The first
of these buts intimates a supposition in the mind of something
otherwise than it should be: the latter shows that the mind makes a
direct opposition between that and what goes before it.
Fifthly, "All animals have sense, but a dog is an animal": here it
signifies little more but that the latter proposition is joined to the
former, as the minor of a syllogism.
6. This matter of the use of particles but lightly touched here.
To these, I doubt not, might be added a great many other
significations of this particle, if it were my business to examine
it in its full latitude, and consider it in all the places it is to be
found: which if one should do, I doubt whether in all those manners it
is made use of, it would deserve the title of discretive, which
grammarians give to it. But I intend not here a full explication of
this sort of signs. The instances I have given in this one may give
occasion to reflect on their use and force in language, and lead us
into the contemplation of several actions of our minds in discoursing,
which it has found a way to intimate to others by these particles,
some whereof constantly, and others in certain constructions, have the
sense of a whole sentence contained in them.
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