Note 24 — Chapter VI · OF PROPOSITIONS MERELY VERBAL.

The always acute and often profound author of An Outline of Sematology (Mr. B. H. Smart) justly says, "Locke will be much more intelligible if, in the majority of places, we substitute 'the knowledge of' for what he calls 'the Idea of'" (p. 10). Among the many criticisms on Locke's use of the word Idea, this is the one which, as it appears to me, most nearly hits the mark; and I quote it for the additional reason that it precisely expresses the point of difference respecting the import of Propositions, between my view and what I have spoken of as the Conceptualist view of them. Where a Conceptualist says that a name or a proposition expresses our Idea of a thing, I should generally say (instead of our Idea) our Knowledge, or Belief, concerning the thing itself.