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. In substances, as has been already noticed, this is occasioned by the imperfections of our ideas: we
making the name stand for the real essence, of which we have no idea at all. In modes, it is occasioned by the
great number of simple ideas that go to the making them up. For many of them being compounded, the name
occurs much easier than the complex idea itself, which requires time and attention to be recollected, and exactly
represented to the mind, even in those men who have formerly been at the pains to do it; and is utterly impossible
to be done by those who, though they have ready in their memory the greatest part of the common words of that
language, yet perhaps never troubled themselves in all their lives to consider what precise ideas the most of them
stood for. Some confused or obscure notions have served their turns; and many who talk very much of religion
and conscience, of church and faith, of power and right, of obstructions and humours, melancholy and choler,
would perhaps have little left in their thoughts and meditations if one should desire them to think only of the
things themselves and lay by those words with which they so often confound others, and not seldom themselves
also.
