BOOK I PART I
SECTIONV. OFRELATIONS
The wordrelationis commonly used in two
senses considerably different from each other.
Either for that quality, by which two ideas are
connected together in the imagination, and the
one naturally introduces the other, after the
manner above-explained: or for that particu-
lar circumstance, in which, even upon the ar-
bitrary union of two ideas in the fancy, we may
think proper to compare them. In common lan-
guage the former is always the sense, in which
we use the word, relation; and it is only in phi-
losophy, that we extend it to mean any partic-
ular subject of comparison, without a connect-
ing principle. Thus distance will be allowed by
philosophers to be a true relation, because we
acquire an idea of it by the comparing of ob-
jects: But in a common way we say,tht nothing