For a mental proposition being
nothing but a bare consideration of the ideas, as they are in our
minds, stripped of names, they lose the nature of purely mental
propositions as soon as they are put into words.
4. Mental propositions are very hard to he treated of. And that
which makes it yet harder to treat of mental and verbal propositions
separately is, that most men, if not all, in their thinking and
reasonings within themselves, make use of words instead of ideas; at
least when the subject of their meditation contains in it complex
ideas. Which is a great evidence of the imperfection and uncertainty
of our ideas of that kind, and may, if attentively made use of,
serve for a mark to show us what are those things we have clear and
perfect established ideas of, and what not. For if we will curiously
observe the way our mind takes in thinking and reasoning, we shall
find, I suppose, that when we make any propositions within our own
thoughts about white or black, sweet or bitter, a triangle or a
circle, we can and often do frame in our minds the ideas themselves,
without reflecting on the names. But when we would consider, or make
propositions about the more complex ideas, as of a man, vitriol,
fortitude, glory, we usually put the name for the idea: because the
ideas these names stand for, being for the most part imperfect,
confused, and undetermined, we reflect on the names themselves,
because they are more clear, certain, and distinct, and readier
occur to our thoughts than the pure ideas: and so we make use of these
words instead of the ideas themselves, even when we would meditate and
reason within ourselves, and make tacit mental propositions.
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