25. Ideas, when called false.
To conclude, a man having no notion of anything without him, but by the idea he has
of it in his mind, (which idea he has a power to call by what name he pleases), he may indeed make an idea
neither answering the reason of things, nor agreeing to the idea commonly signified by other people's words; but
cannot make a wrong or false idea of a thing which is no otherwise known to him but by the idea he has of it: v.g.
when I frame an idea of the legs, arms, and body of a man, and join to this a horse's head and neck, I do not make
a false idea of anything; because it represents nothing without me. But when I call it a man or Tartar, and imagine
it to represent some real being without me, or to be the same idea that others call by the same name; in either of
these cases I may err. And upon this account it is that it comes to be termed a false idea; though indeed the
falsehood lies not in the idea, but in that tacit mental proposition, wherein a conformity and resemblance is
attributed to it which it has not. But yet, if, having framed such an idea in my mind without thinking either that
existence, or the name man or Tartar, belongs to it, I will call it man or Tartar, I may be justly thought fantastical
in the naming; but not erroneous in my judgment; nor the idea any way false.
