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An essay concerning human understanding

  
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[title page]
  
To The Right Honourable Lord Thomas,
  
Epistle to the Reader

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Introduction An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
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Book I Neither Principles Nor Ideas Are Innate
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Book II Of Ideas
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Book III Of Words
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Book IV Of Knowledge and Probability
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Chapter I Of Knowledge in General
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Chapter II Of the Degrees of our Knowledge
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Chapter III Of the Extent of Human Knowledge
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Chapter IV Of the Reality of Knowledge
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Chapter V Of Truth in General
  
1. What truth is.
  
2. A right joining or separating of signs, i.e., either ideas or words.
  
3. Which make mental or verbal propositions.
  
4. Mental propositions are very hard to he treated of.
  
5. Mental and verbal propositions contrasted.
  
6. When mental propositions contain real truth, and when verbal.
  
7. Objection against verbal truth, that "thus it may all be chimerical.
  
8. Answered, "Real truth is about ideas agreeing to things.
  
9. Truth and falsehood in general.
  
10. General propositions to be treated of more at large.
  
11. Moral and metaphysical truth.
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Chapter VI Of Universal Propositions: their Truth and Certainty
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Chapter VII Of Maxims
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Chapter VIII Of Trifling Propositions
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Chapter IX Of our Threefold Knowledge of Existence
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Chapter X Of our Knowledge of the Existence of a God
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Chapter XI Of our Knowledge of the Existence of Other Things
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Chapter XII Of the Improvement of our Knowledge
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Chapter XIII Some Further Considerations Concerning our Knowledge
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Chapter XIV Of Judgment
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Chapter XV Of Probability
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Chapter XVI Of the Degrees of Assent
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Chapter XVII Of Reason
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Chapter XVIII Of Faith and Reason, and their Distinct Provinces
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Chapter XIX Of Enthusiasm
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Chapter XX Of Wrong Assent, or Error
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Chapter XXI Of the Division of the Sciences

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9. Truth and falsehood in general.

Truth is the marking down in words the agreement or disagreement of ideas as it is. Falsehood is the marking down in words the agreement or disagreement of ideas otherwise than it is. And so far as these ideas, thus marked by sounds, agree to their archetypes, so far only is the truth real. The knowledge of this truth consists in knowing what ideas the words stand for, and the perception of the agreement or disagreement of those ideas, according as it is marked by those words.

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