Compendium of the Study of Theology

is raised. As the whole difficulty about “real truths” depends upon terms and propositions and arguments, he will begin by dealing with terms ; and, in justification of this procedure, he enumerates the contents of the ten books of Aristotle’s Metaphysics which he knew with a view of showing that they are as much concerned with logic as with metaphysics. Many errors have arisen through misunderstandings about terms.

Chapter I. : On the nature of signification in general (de ratione significandi generali, we should possibly read in generali) Bacon proceeds to a classification of “signs” (signa), which he had excogitated himself before he discovered substantially the same thing in Augustine de Doctrina Christiana. A sign may be either natural or imposed by the mind (a natura vel datum ab anima). A natural sign may be either a sign by “natural concomitance” or a sign which naturally represents the thing signified. Of the first kind there are two varieties. The sign may be one which enables us to infer the thing signified by concomitance or by induction (illationem) and natural consequence, as we infer that an animal has given birth to offspring because it has milk, or predict that the sun will rise when we see the dawn ; or the inference may be merely probable, as a red sky in the morning is a sign of rain. Signs which are naturally representative of the object are those which are really like that which they represent, as a footprint, or an image of a man. The sign given by the mind may be of two kinds—(a) when the sign, according to Aristotle, signifies naturally (i.e. when nature compels the animal to express what is in its mind in this way), as a dog naturally expresses its mind by barking, or (b) the sign may be imposed at pleasure and by voluntary imposition (ad placitum et per impositionem voluntariam), as in the case of human language. The objection that the first of these subdivisions is really identical with the natural sign is then dealt with. The reply comes to this, that in the first case the inference is based upon a relation of cause and effect in nature ; in the second case, the sign is natural only in the sense that nature compels all animals of a certain species to express (say) anger in a par-