5. This is the first and most general division of the objects of our understanding.
This seems to me the first and
most general, as well as natural division of the objects of our understanding. For a man can employ his thoughts
about nothing, but either, the contemplation of things themselves, for the discovery of truth; or about the things in
his own power, which are his own actions, for the attainment of his own ends; or the signs the mind makes use of
both in the one and the other, and the right ordering of them, for its clearer information. All which three, viz.,
things, as they are in themselves knowable; actions as they depend on us, in order to happiness; and the right use
of signs in order to knowledge, being toto coelo different, they seemed to me to be the three great provinces of the
intellectual world, wholly separate and distinct one from another.
