7. Objection against verbal truth, that "thus it may all be chimerical.
But here again will be apt to occur the same
doubt about truth, that did about knowledge: and it will be objected, that if truth be nothing but the joining and
separating of words in propositions, as the ideas they stand for agree or disagree in men's minds, the knowledge of
truth is not so valuable a thing as it is taken to be, nor worth the pains and time men employ in the search of it:
since by this account it amounts to no more than the conformity of words to the chimeras of men's brains. Who
knows not what odd notions many men's heads are filled with, and what strange ideas all men's brains are capable
of? But if we rest here, we know the truth of nothing by this rule, but of the visionary words in our own
imaginations; nor have other truth, but what as much concerns harpies and centaurs, as men and horses. For those,
and the like, may be ideas in our heads, and have their agreement or disagreement there, as well as the ideas of
real beings, and so have as true propositions made about them. And it will be altogether as true a proposition to
say all centaurs are animals, as that all men are animals; and the certainty of one as great as the other. For in both
the propositions, the words are put together according to the agreement of the ideas in our minds: and the
agreement of the idea of animal with that of centaur is as clear and visible to the mind, as the agreement of the
idea of animal with that of man; and so these two propositions are equally true, equally certain. But of what use is
all such truth to us?
