8. Answered, "Real truth is about ideas agreeing to things.
Though what has been said in the foregoing chapter to
distinguish real from imaginary knowledge might suffice here, in answer to this doubt, to distinguish real truth
from chimerical, or (if you please) barely nominal, they depending both on the same foundation; yet it may not be
amiss here again to consider, that though our words signify nothing but our ideas, yet being designed by them to
signify things, the truth they contain when put into propositions will be only verbal, when they stand for ideas in
the mind that have not an agreement with the reality of things. And therefore truth as well as knowledge may well
come under the distinction of verbal and real; that being only verbal truth, wherein terms are joined according to
the agreement or disagreement of the ideas they stand for; without regarding whether our ideas are such as really
have, or are capable of having, an existence in nature. But then it is they contain real truth, when these signs are
joined, as our ideas agree; and when our ideas are such as we know are capable of having an existence in nature:
which in substances we cannot know, but by knowing that such have existed.
