33S LOGIC : OR, THE RIGHT USE OP REASON. but a few. Who can tell what are the shapes and positions of those particles, which cause all the variety of colours that appear on the surface of things ? Who knows what are the figures of the little corpuscles that compose and distinguish different bodies ? The ideas of brass, iron, gold, wood, stone, hyssop, and rose- mary, have an infinite variety of hidden mysteries contained in the shape, size, motion, and position, of the little particles, of which they are composed ; and perhaps also, infinite unknown properties and powers, that may be derived from them. And if we arise to the animal world, or the world of spirits, our know- ledge of them must be amazingly imperfect : when there is not the least grain of sand or empty space, but has too many ques- tions and difficulties belonging to it, for the wisest philosopher upon earth to answer and resolve. IV. Our ideas are either true or false ; for an idea being the representation of a thing in the mind, it must be either a true or a false representation of it. If the idea be conformable to the object or archetype of it, it is a true idea ; if not, it is a false one. Sometimes our ideas are referred tothings really existing without us as their archetypes. If I see bodies in their proper colours I lave a true idea ; but when a man under the jaundice sees all bodies yellow, he has a false idea of them. So if we see the sun or moon rising or setting, our idea represents them bigger than when they are on the meridian ; and in this sense it is a false idea, because those heavenly bodies are all day and all night of the same bigness. Or when I see a straight staff appear crooked while it is half under the water, I say, the water gives me a false idea of it. Sometimes our ideas refer to the ideas of other men, denoted by such a particular word, as their archetypes : so when I hear a protestant use the words church and sacraments, if I understand by these words, a congregation of faithful men who profess christianity, and the two ordinances, baptism and the Lord's - supper, I have a true idea of those words in the common sense of protestatds : but if the man who speaks of them be a papist, he means the church of Rome and the seven sacraments, and then I have a mistaken idea of those words, as spoken by him, for he has a different sense and meaning : and in general, whensoever I mistake the sense of any speaker or writer, I may be said to have a false idea of it. Some think that truth or Falsehood properly belongs only to propositions, which shall be the subject of discourse in the second part of Logic ; for if we consider ideas as mere impressions upon the mind, made by outward objects, those impressions will ever be conformable to the laws of nature in such a case : the water will make -a stick appear crooked, and the horizontal air will make the sun and moon appear bigger. And generally where there is falsehood in ideas, there seems to be some secret or latent
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