IMPORT OF PROPOSITIONS. 129 



truth and error as less real, or attached one jot less of 

 importance to it, than other people. To suppose that 

 they did so would argue total unacquaintance with 

 their other speculations. But this shows how little 

 hold their doctrine possessed over their own minds. 

 No person at bottom ever imagined that there was 

 nothing more in truth than propriety of expression ; 

 than using language in conformity to a previous 

 convention. With whatever illusions even profound 

 thinkers may have satisfied themselves when engaged 

 in finding a general solution for a metaphysical pro- 

 blem ; when they came to the practical application of 

 their doctrines, they were always prepared with some 

 means of explaining the solution away. When the 

 inquiry was brought down from generals to a parti- 

 cular case, it has always been acknowledged that 

 there is a distinction between verbal and real ques- 

 tions ; that some false propositions are uttered from 

 ignorance of the meaning of words, but that in others 

 the source of the error is a misapprehension of things ; 

 that a person who has not the use of language at all 

 may form propositions mentally, and that they may 

 be untrue, that is, he may believe as matters of fact 

 what are not really so. This last admission cannot 

 be made in stronger terms than it is by Hobbes 

 himself*; though he will not allow such erroneous 



* " Men are subject to err not only in affirming and denying, 

 but also in perception, and in silent cogitation. . . Tacit errors, 

 or the errors of sense and cogitation, are made by passing from one 

 imagination to the imagination of another different thing; or by 

 feigning that to be past, or future, which never was, nor ever shall 

 be ; as when, by seeing the image of the sun in water, we imagine 

 the sun itself to be there ; or by seeing swords, that there has been, 

 or shall be, fighting, because it uses to be so for the most part ; or 

 when from promises we feign the mind of the promiser to be such 



VOL. I. K 



