Compendium of the Study of Theology

must be supposed to have its seat in the will. If it is suggested that it arises "from the natural motion of the will in the mother's womb, when it is united to the flesh, before deliberation," the objection is that original sin is admittedly "mortal," and we should thus be compelled to say that a natural motion of the will might be mortal sin, and so, it would follow, must be all natural motions. Bacon leaves the question unanswered, and adjourns it to his "third treatise". He then returns to the question of deliberately imposed signs, such as words and "the mute signs of monks". All words fall within this class except interjections, which are uttered without "perfect deliberation".

Chapter II. deals with "the signification of words (significata vocis) in particular as regards four points": (1) whether a word signifies anything before imposition, (2) whether anything can be imposed upon itself, and signify itself, (3) in what way it is imposed on things without the mind, (4) what it (i.e. a sound so imposed) signifies.

The first problem amounts to this: Is the signification of words arbitrary? Bacon contends that it is. The first argument against his thesis is the suggestion that the uttered word has its "species," or, as a modern might say, the "idea" of the thing (according to the Thomist doctrine about the "intermediaries of sensation") in the mind of the speaker, and this "species" is its physical cause; hence it must be a sign of the idea, and belong to the class of "natural signs" since the effect is always a natural sign of the cause. It is not very clear how Bacon means to reply to this objection. He seems to admit the point as far as it goes, but to contend that, though considered as an effect the word is a natural sign of its cause, the cause is not the meaning of the word. He goes on to meet another objection. It is suggested that the proposition buba est buba may be safely made "before imposition," i.e. without settling what the really meaningless sound buba is to signify. If buba is a significant word, the thesis that words signify "before imposition" is established; if it is not significant, then this proposition, "buba is a non-significant word,"