date

16 Aug 1814 '.1 Logic Language
16 Aug 1814 '.1

Logic

Language

Ch. Clearness Exposition

'.1 Exposition

1

1

Ch. 7.

Ch.

Clearness in discourse /Of Clearness in discourse/ - how to produce it where the seat of the unclearness, actual or apprehended, is considered as being in the words taken

singly: - Of exposition /and hence of exposition/.

'.1. Scale of unclearness, the words or their connexion - Of exposition what.

A sentence in the grammatical sense of the word sentence is /consists/ either of a single proposition in the logical sense of the word proposition, or a number of such propositions: if one only, it may be termed a simple sentence; if more than one a compound sentence.

A proposition is clear, in proportion as it [is] clear, that is free at the same time from ambiguity and obscurity and ambiguity imperfections the nature of which have been already explained. +

All clearness is always /on every occasion/ relative: relation being had to the person considered, in the character of hearer and reader.

There exists not nor ever will any proposition that is perfectly clear to every hearer and reader. There exist but too many that neither will be nor ever have been to any one: not so much as by those by whom they were respectively framed.

Instances however are not uncommon where ideas which in the mind of him, by whom the discourse meant for the communication of them was uttered were perfectly clear, are expressed in such a manner as not to be clear to any one else: Clear in the conception - clear in the expression clear in neither: clear in the conception alone, not in the expression: if in the conception a set of ideas were not clear, it is not natural that they should be clear in the expression: yet by accident it may happen to them to be so.

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