signified. Upon which, his friend demanding what scarlet was? The
blind man answered, It was like the sound of a trumpet. Just such an
understanding of the name of any other simple idea will he have, who
hopes to get it only from a definition, or other words made use of to
explain it.


12. The contrary shown in complex ideas, by instances of a Statue and
Rainbow.

The case is quite otherwise in COMPLEX IDEAS; which, consisting of
several simple ones, it is in the power of words, standing for the
several ideas that make that composition, to imprint complex ideas in
the mind which were never there before, and so make their names be
understood. In such collections of ideas, passing under one name,
definition, or the teaching the signification of one word by several
others, has place, and may make us understand the names of things which
never came within the reach of our senses; and frame ideas suitable to
those in other men's minds, when they use those names: provided that
none of the terms of the definition stand for any such simple ideas,
which he to whom the explication is made has never yet had in his
thought. Thus the word STATUE may be explained to a blind man by other
words, when PICTURE cannot; his senses having given him the idea of
figure, but not of colours, which therefore words cannot excite in him.
This gained the prize to the painter against the statuary: each of which
contending for the excellency of his art, and the statuary bragging that
his was to be preferred, because it reached further, and even those who
had lost their eyes could yet perceive the excellency of it. The painter
agreed to refer himself to the judgment of a blind man; who being
brought where there was a statue made by the one, and a picture drawn by