tting together and separating. But this action of the mind,
which is so familiar to every thinking and reasoning man, is easier to
be conceived by reflecting on what passes in us when we affirm or deny,
than to be explained by words. When a man has in his head the idea of
two lines, viz. the side and diagonal of a square, whereof the diagonal
is an inch long, he may have the idea also of the division of that line
into a certain number of equal parts; v.g. into five, ten, a hundred, a
thousand, or any other number, and may have the idea of that inch line
being divisible, or not divisible, into such equal parts, as a certain
number of them will be equal to the sideline. Now, whenever he
perceives, believes, or supposes such a kind of divisibility to agree or
disagree to his idea of that line, he, as it were, joins or separates
those two ideas, viz. the idea of that line, and the idea of that kind
of divisibility; and so makes a mental proposition, which is true or
false, according as such a kind of divisibility, a divisibility into
such ALIQUOT parts, does really agree to that line or no. When ideas are
so put together, or separated in the mind, as they or the things they
stand for do agree or not, that is, as I may call it, MENTAL TRUTH. But
TRUTH OF WORDS is something more; and that is the affirming or denying
of words one of another, as the ideas they stand for agree or disagree:
and this again is two-fold; either purely verbal and trifling, which I
shall speak of, (chap. viii.,) or real and instructive; which is the
object of that real knowledge which we have spoken of already.

7. Objection against verbal Truth, that thus it may all be chimerical.

But here again will be apt to occur the same doubt about truth, that did
about knowledge: and it will be objected, that if truth be nothing but
the joining and separating of words in propositions, as the ideas they
stand for agree or disagree in men's minds, the knowledge of truth is
not so valuable a thing as it is taken to be, nor worth the pains and
time men employ in the search of it: since by this account it amounts to
no more than the conformity of words to the chimeras of men's brains.
Who knows not what odd notions many men's heads are filled with, and
what strange ideas all men's brains are capable of? But if we rest here,
we know the truth of nothing by this rule, but of the visionary words in
our own imaginations; nor have other truth, but what as much concerns