Showing posts with label Locke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Locke. Show all posts

January 19, 2010

The articles of religion are some of them practical and some speculative. Now, though both sorts consist in the knowledge of truth, yet these terminate simply in the understanding, those influence the will and manners.



Did that confuse you? Of course it did, because in English, we no longer distinguish between 'these' and 'those' in terms of literary priority, but rather only in terms of physical proximity (or in some unsubtle abstract terms--those opinions are his, these opinions are mine, although I'm trying to sound objective.) In French, they still use 'ceux-ci' and 'ceux-là' as Locke does above. French is very useful for understanding any older English.