Note G — PREFACE

Théodicée, Discours de la Conformité de la Foi avec la Raison, § 56. Leibnitz, it will be observed, uses the expression pour comprendre, for which, in the preceding remarks, we have substituted to conceive. The change has been made intentionally, on account of an ambiguity in the former word. Sometimes it is used, as Leibnitz here uses it, to denote an apprehension of the manner in which certain attributes can coexist in an object. But sometimes (to say nothing of other senses) it is used to signify a complete knowledge of an object in all its properties and their consequences, such as it may be questioned whether we have of any object whatever. This ambiguity, which has been the source of much confusion and much captious criticism, is well pointed out by Norris in his Reason and Faith (written in reply to Toland), p. 118, Ed. 1697: “When we say that above reason is when we do not comprehend or perceive the truth of a thing, this must not be meant of not comprehending the truth in its whole latitude and extent, so that as many truths should be said to be above reason as we cannot thus thoroughly comprehend and pursue throughout all their consequences and relations to other truths (for then almost everything would be above reason), but only of not comprehending the union or connection of those immediate ideas of which the proposition supposed to be above reason consists.” Comprehension, as thus explained, answers exactly to the ordinary logical use of the term conception, to denote the combination of two or more attributes in an unity of representation. In the same sense, M. Peisse, in the preface to his translation of Hamilton’s Fragments, p. 98, says,—“Comprendre, c’est voir un terme en rapport avec un autre; c’est voir comme un ce qui est donné comme multiple.” This is exactly the sense in which Hamilton himself uses the word conception. (See Reid’s Works, p. 377.)