24.  Fourthly, When judged to represent the real Essence.

(4) The mistake is yet greater, when I judge that this complex idea contains in it the real essence of any body existing; when at least it contains but some few of those properties which flow from its real essence and constitution.  I say only some few of those properties; for those properties consisting mostly in the active and passive powers it has in reference to other things, all that are vulgarly known of any one body, of which the complex idea of that kind of things is usually made, are but a very few, in comparison of what a man that has several ways tried and examined it knows of that one sort of things; and all that the most expert man knows are but a few, in comparison of what are really in that body, and depend on its internal or essential constitution.  The essence of a triangle lies in a very little compass, consists in a very few ideas:  three lines including a space make up that essence:  but the properties that flow from this essence are more than can be easily known or enumerated.  So I imagine it is in substances; their real essences lie in a little compass, though the properties flowing from that internal constitution are endless.

25.  Ideas, when called false.

To conclude, a man having no notion of anything without him, but by the idea he has of it in his mind, (which idea he has a power to call by what name he pleases,) he may indeed make an idea neither answering the reason of things, nor agreeing to the idea commonly signified by other people’s words; but cannot make a wrong or false idea of a thing which is no otherwise known to him but by the idea he has of it:  v.g. when I frame an idea of the legs, arms, and body of a man, and join to this a horse’s head and neck, I do not make a false idea of anything; because it represents nothing without me.  But when I call it a man or Tartar, and imagine it to represent some real being without me, or to be the same idea that others call by the same name; in either of these cases I may err.  And upon this account it is that it comes to be termed a false idea; though indeed the falsehood lies not in the idea, but in that tacit mental proposition, wherein a conformity and resemblance is attributed to it which it has not.  But yet, if, having framed such an idea in my mind, without thinking either that existence, or the name man or Tartar, belongs to it, I will call it man or Tartar, I may be justly thought fantastical in the naming; but not erroneous in my judgment; nor the idea any way false.

26.  More properly to be called right or wrong.