harpies and centaurs, as men and horses. For those, and the like, may be
ideas in our heads, and have their agreement or disagreement there, as
well as the ideas of real beings, and so have as true propositions made
about them. And it will be altogether as true a proposition to say ALL
CENTAURS ARE ANIMALS, as that ALL MEN ARE ANIMALS; and the certainty of
one as great as the other. For in both the propositions, the words are
put together according to the agreement of the ideas in our minds: and
the agreement of the idea of animal with that of centaur is as clear and
visable to the mind, as the agreement of the idea of animal with that of
man; and so these two propositions are equally true, equally certain.
But of what use is all such truth to us?

8. Answered, Real Truth is about Ideas agreeing to things.

Though what has been said in the foregoing chapter to distinguish real
from imaginary knowledge might suffice here, in answer to this doubt,
to distinguish real truth from chimerical, or (if you please) barely
nominal, they depending both on the same foundation; yet it may not be
amiss here again to consider, that though our words signify things, the
truth they contain when put into propositions will be only verbal, when
they stand for ideas in the mind that have not an agreement with the
reality of things. And therefore truth as well as knowledge may well
come under the distinction of verbal and real; that being only
verbal truth, wherein terms are joined according to the agreement or
disagreement of the ideas they stand for; without regarding whether our
ideas are such as really have, or are capable of having, an existence
in nature. But then it is they contain REAL TRUTH, when these signs are
joined, as our ideas agree; and when our ideas are such as we know are
capable of having an existence in nature: which in substances we cannot
know, but by knowing that such have existed.

9. Truth and Falsehood in general.

Truth is the marking down in words the agreement or disagreement of
ideas as it is. Falsehood is the marking down in words the agreement or
disagreement of ideas otherwise than it is. And so far as these ideas,
thus marked by sounds, agree to their archetypes, so far only is the
truth real. The knowledge of this truth consists in knowing what ideas
the words stand for, and the perception of the agreement or disagreement
of those ideas, according as it is marked by those words.

10. General Pro