[An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. by John Locke]@TWC D-Link book
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I.

CHAPTER XXV
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Such are the seemingly positive terms of OLD, GREAT, IMPERFECT, &c., whereof I shall have occasion to speak more at large in the following chapters.
4.

Relation different from the Things related.
This further may be observed, That the ideas of relations may be the same in men who have far different ideas of the things that are related, or that are thus compared: v.g.those who have far different ideas of a man, may yet agree in the notion of a father; which is a notion superinduced to the substance, or man, and refers only to an act of that think called man whereby he contributed to the generation of one of his own kind, let man be what it will.
5.

Change of Relation may be without any Change in the things related.
The nature therefore of relation consists in the referring or comparing two things one to another; from which comparison one of both comes to be denominated.

And if either of those things be removed, or cease to be, the relation ceases, and the denomination consequent to it, though the other receive in itself no alteration at all; v.g.Caius, whom I consider to-day as a father, ceases to be so to-morrow, only by the death of his son, without any alteration made in himself.

Nay, barely by the mind's changing the object to which it compares anything, the same thing is capable of having contrary denominations at the same time: v.g.
Caius, compared to several persons, may truly be said to be older and younger, stronger and weaker, &c.
6.


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