Compendium of the Study of Theology

is itself a significant proposition, and therefore all its parts must be significant. Consequently buba is significant before imposition. Bacon gives the obviously right reply: Such propositions as "buba is buba" are neither true nor false; indeed, they are not propositions at all, but meaningless aggregations of words (congeries vocum), until it has been settled what buba means, e.g. that it is to be used to mean the word buba.

The second problem, or questio (referred to in the text as the third), is whether a word can be imposed upon itself and so become significant. Bacon answers "yes". We can make judgements about "white" in the sense of the word "white" as well as about white in the sense of a white thing, and the opinion is supported by authorities. Thus St. Augustine tells us that we may say "Tullius is a dactyl," and Tullius does then signify something. (Bacon's reply to a subtle objection may be passed over.)

The third problem (here mistakenly described as the fourth but the subject is so treated as to answer the fourth also) relates to the signification of words when applied to things outside the mind. He maintains that the word signifies the external thing and nothing else. Here he is combating the theory which his opponents based on the Aristotelian doctrine that words were marks of passions in the soul—the theory that names represent the "species" of the thing in the soul—an opinion which recalls the view of Descartes, Locke, and a whole succession of later thinkers, that we know immediately only "ideas" which represent, but are not identical with, real things. Bacon contends (as Reid would have done) that when I talk about a house I mean the real house outside the mind, not my idea of a house—a "species" or "cognitive habit" in my mind. When, in particular cases, the word "house" is used to indicate the house in my mind, as when Aristotle says that the house in the mind is the cause of the house which the builder builds, the word "house" is used equivocally: there has been a "new imposition" of the word. The objector replies by appealing to St. Augustine's doctrine that the word "nothing" signifies an