We shall have occasion to see, in the course of this inquiry, how exactly Berkeley's account of the process of abstraction, in contradiction to Locke's opinion, corresponds in every particular with this passage of our author. To return to his account of truth, reason, &c.

"When two names are joined together into a consequence or affirmation, by the help of this little verb, is, as thus: a man is a living creature; if the latter name, living creature, signify all that the former name, man, signifieth, then the affirmation or consequence is true; otherwise false. For True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood. Error there may be, as when we expect that which shall not be, or suspect what has not been: but in neither case can a man be charged with untruth. Seeing, then, that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth had need to remember what every name he uses stands for, and to place it accordingly: or else he will find himself entangled in words, as a bird in lime-twigs. And therefore in Geometry (which is the only science that it has pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind) men begin at settling the significations of their words, which

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settling of significations they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning. By this it appears how necessary it is for any man that aspires to true knowledge to examine the definitions of former authors, and either to correct them when they are negligently set down, or to make them himself. For the errors of definition multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities which they at last see, but cannot avoid without reckoning anew from the beginning. From whence it happens that they which trust to books do as they that cast up many little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not, and at last finding the error visible, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to clear themselves, but spend time in fluttering over their books, as birds that entering by the chimney, and finding themselves enclosed in a chamber, flutter at the false light of a glass window, for want of wit to consider which way they came in. So that in the right definition of names, lies the first use of speech, which is the acquisition of science, and in wrong or no definitions lies the first abuse, from which proceed all false and senseless tenets; which make them that take their in

struction from the authority of books and not from their own meditations, to be as much below the condition of ignorant men, as men endued with true science are above it. For between true science and erroneous doctrines, ignorance is in the middle. Natural sense and imagination are not subject to absurdity. Nature itself cannot err; and as men abound in copiousness of language, so they become more wise or more mad than ordinary. Nor is it possible without letters for any man to become either excellently wise or (unless his memory be hurt by disease or ill constitution of organs) excellently foolish. For words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, a Thomas Aquinas, or any other doctor what

soever.

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Subject to names is whatsoever can enter into, or be considered in an account, and be added one thing to another to make a sum, or subtracted one from another and leave a remainder. The Latins called accounts of money rationes, and accounting, ratiocinatio, and that which we in bills or books of accounts call items, they call nomina, or names; and thence it seems to proceed that they extended the

word ratio to the faculty of reckoning in all other things. The Greeks have but one word, Aoyos for both speech and reason, not that λογος they thought there was no speech without reason, but no reason without speech: and the act of reasoning they call syllogism, which signifieth summing up (or putting together) the consequences of one saying to another. For reason is nothing but reckoning (that is, adding and subtracting) of the consequences of general names agreed upon for the marking and signifying of our thoughts; I say marking them, when we reckon by ourselves, and signifying them, when we demonstrate or approve our reckonings to other men.

"And as in arithmetic, unpractised men must, and professors themselves may, often err, and cast up false, so also in any other subject of reasoning, the ablest, most attentive, and most practised men may deceive themselves, and infer false conclusions: not but that reason itself is always right reason, as well as arithmetic is a certain and infallible art. But no one man's reason, nor the reason of any number of men makes the certainty: no more than an account is therefore well cast up, because a great many men have unanimously approved it. And, therefore, as when there is a con

troversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord set up for right reason the reason of some arbitrator or judge, so it is in all debates of what kind soever: and when men that think themselves wiser than all others, clamour and demand right reason for judge, yet seek no more but that things should be determined by no other men's reason but their own, it is as intolerable in the society of men as it is in play, after trump is turned, to use for trump on every occasion that suit whereof they have most in their hand. For they do nothing else that will have every of their passions, as it comes to bear sway in them, to be taken for right reason, and that in their own controversies, betraying their want of right reason by the claim they lay to it.

"When a man reckons without the use of words, which may be done in particular things (as when upon the sight of any one thing, we conjecture what was likely to have preceded, or is likely to follow upon it), if that which he thought likely to have preceded it, hath not preceded it, this is called error, to which even the most prudent men are subject. But when we reason in words of general signification, and fall upon a general inference which is false, though it be commonly called