upon the subjects of Liberty and Necessity. But this common observation is both a common and a learned error. For whoever employs his thoughts either about God, or the Trinity in Unity, or any other profound subject, ought to have some ideas,[1] to be the objects of his thoughts, in the same manner as he has in thinking on the most common subjects; for where ideas fail us in any matter, our thoughts must also fail us. And it is plain, whenever we have ideas, we are able to communicate them to others by words[2]; for words being arbitrary marks of our ideas, we can never want them to signify our ideas, as long as we have so many in use among us, and a power to make as many more as we have occasion for. Since then we can think of nothing farther than we have ideas, and can signify all the ideas we have by words to one another; why should we not be able to put one idea into a proposition as well as another? Why not to compare ideas together about one subject as well as another? And why not to range one sort of propositions into order and method as well as another? When we use the term God, the idea signified thereby ought to be as distinct and determinate in us, as the idea of a triangle or a square, when we discourse of either of them; otherwise, the term God is an empty sound. What hinders us then from putting the idea signified by the term God into a proposition, any more than the idea of a triangle or a square? And why cannot we compare that idea with another idea, as well as two other ideas together; since comparison of ideas consists in observing wherein ideas differ, and wherein they agree; to which nothing is requisite in any ideas, but their being distinct and determinate in our minds? And since we ought to
- ↑ Collins uses the term idea in the sense attached to it by Locke—“the immediate object of percetion, thought, or understanding.”— G.W.F.
- ↑ I do not mean unknown simple ideas. These can at first only be made known by application of the object to the faculty; but when they have been once perceived and a common name agreed upon to signify them, they can be communicated by words.
