The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 04 · Thomas Hobbes
CHAPTER V.
1. Of marks. 2. Names or appellations. 3. Names positive and privative. 4. Advantage of names maketh us capable of science. 5. Names universal and singular. 6. Universals not in _rerum natura_. 7. Equivocal names. 8. Understanding. 9. Affirmation, negation, proposition. 10. Truth, falsity. 11. Ratiocination. 12. According to reason, against reason. 13. Names causes of knowledge, so of error. 14. Translation of the discourse of the mind into the discourse of the tongue, and of the errors thence proceeding. [Sidenote: Of marks.] 1. Seeing the _succession_ of conceptions in the _mind_ are caused, as hath been said before, by the succession they _had_ one to another when they were produced by the _senses_, and that there is no conception that hath not been produced immediately before or after innumerable others, by the innumerable acts of sense; it must needs follow, that one _conception_ followeth _not_ another, according to our election, and the need we have of them, _but_ as it _chanceth_ us to hear or see such things as shall bring them to our mind. The experience we have hereof, is in such brute beasts, which, having the providence to hide the remains and superfluity of their meat, do nevertheless want the remembrance of the place where they hid it, and thereby make no benefit thereof in their hunger: but man, who in this point beginneth to rank himself somewhat above the nature of beasts, hath observed and remembered the cause of this defect, and to amend the same, hath imagined or devised to set up a visible or other sensible mark, the which, when he seeth it again, may bring to his mind the thought he had when he set it up. A _mark_ therefore is a _sensible object_ which a man erecteth voluntarily to himself, to the end to _remember_ thereby somewhat past, when the same is objected to his sense again: as men that have passed by a rock at sea, set up some mark, thereby to remember their former danger, and avoid it.
11. In what manner of two propositions, whether _both_ affirmative, or _one_ affirmative, the _other_ negative, is made a _syllogism_, I forbear to write. All this that hath been said of names or propositions, though _necessary_, is but _dry_ discourse: and this place is not for the whole art of logic, which if I enter further into, I ought to pursue: besides, it is not needful; for there be few men which have not so much natural logic, as thereby to discern well enough, whether any conclusion I shall make in this discourse hereafter, be well or ill collected: only thus much I say in this place, that _making of syllogisms_ is that we call _ratiocination_ or _reasoning_. [Sidenote: According to reason, against reason.] 12. Now when a man _reasoneth_ from _principles_ that are _found_ indubitable by experience, all deceptions of sense and equivocation of words avoided, the conclusion he maketh is said to be _according to right reason_: but when from his conclusion a man may, by good ratiocination, derive that which is _contradictory_ to any evident truth whatsoever, then he is said to have concluded _against reason_: and such a conclusion is called _absurdity_. [Sidenote: Names causes of knowledge, so of error.] 13. As the _invention_ of _names_ hath been _necessary_ for the drawing men _out of_ ignorance, by calling to their remembrance the necessary _coherence_ of one conception to another; so also hath it on the other side precipitated men into _error_: insomuch, that whereas by the benefit of _words_ and ratiocination they exceed _brute beasts_ in knowledge, and the commodities that accompany the same; so they exceed them also in _error_: for _true_ and _false_ are things not incident to beasts, because they adhere not to propositions and language; nor have they ratiocination, whereby to multiply one untruth by another, as men have.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.