leading us to truth, by possessing the characteristics of algebra.
Words are the symbols of certain groups of impressions or facts; they
are so selected and applied as to exhibit the analogies which prevail
among these facts; and these analogies are the truths of which our
knowledge consists. "Every language is an analytical method; every
analytical method is a language[229];" these were the truths "alike new
and simple," as he held, which he conceived that he had demonstrated.
"The art of speaking, the art of writing, the art of reasoning, the
art of thinking, are only, at bottom, one and the same art[230]." Each
of these operations consists in a succession of analytical operations;
and words are the marks by which we are able to fix our minds upon the
steps of this analysis.
6. The analysis of our impressions and notions does in reality lead
to truth, not only in virtue of the identity of the whole with its
parts, as Condillac held, but also in virtue of certain Ideas which
govern the synthesis of our sensations, and which contain the elements
of universal truths, as we have all along endeavoured to show. But
although Condillac overlooked or rejected this doctrine, the importance
of words, as marking the successive steps of this synthesis and
analysis, is not less than he represented it to be. Every truth, once
established by induction from facts, when it is become familiar under
a brief and precise form of expression, becomes itself a fact; and is
capable of being employed, along with other facts of a like kind, as
the materials of fresh inductions. In this successive process, the
term, like the cord of a fagot, both binds together the facts which it
includes, and makes it possible to manage the assemblage as a single
thing. On occasion of most discoveries in science, the selection of a
technical term is an essential part of the proceeding. In the _History
of Science_, we have had numerous opportunities of remarking this; and
the List of technical terms given as an Index to that work, refers us,
by almost every word, to one such occasion. And these terms, which
thus have had so large a share in the formation of science, and which
constitute its language, do also offer the means of analyzing its
truths, each into its constituent truths; and these into facts more
special, till the original foundations of our most general propositions
are clearly exhibited. The relations of general and particular truths
are most evidently represented by the Inductive Tables given in
Book II. of the _Novum Organon Renovatum_. But each step in each of
these Tables has its proper form of expression, familiar among the
cultivators of science; and the analysis which our Tables display, is
commonly performed in men's minds, when it becomes necessary, by fixing
the attention successively upon a series of words, not upon the lines
of a Table. Language offers to the mind such a scale or ladder as the
Table offers to the eye; and since such Tables present to us, as we
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account