Thus, should any one say that parsimony is frugality, that
gratitude is justice, that this or that action is or is not temperate:
however specious these and the like propositions may at first sight
seem, yet when we come to press them, and examine nicely what they
contain, we shall find that it all amounts to nothing but the
signification of those terms.
13. A part of the definition predicated of any term. Secondly, All
propositions wherein a part of the complex idea which any term
stands for is predicated of that term, are only verbal: v.g. to say
that gold is a metal, or heavy. And thus all propositions wherein more
comprehensive words, called genera, are affirmed of subordinate or
less comprehensive, called species, or individuals, are barely verbal.
When by these two rules we have examined the propositions that
make up the discourses we ordinarily meet with, both in and out of
books, we shall perhaps find that a greater part of them than is
usually suspected are purely about the signification of words, and
contain nothing in them but the use and application of these signs.
This I think I may lay down for an infallible rule, That, wherever
the distinct idea any word stands for is not known and considered, and
something not contained in the idea is not affirmed or denied of it,
there our thoughts stick wholly in sounds, and are able to attain no
real truth or falsehood.
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