ADEQUATE

ADEQUATE, Adequate, something equal to, or coextensive with, another; and filling the whole measure and capacity thereof. See EQUALITY.

In this sense, the word stands opposed to Inadequate.See INADEQUATE.

Adequate Ideas or Notions are such images or conceptions of an object, as perfectly represent it, or answer to all the parts and properties of it. See IDEA.



M. Leibniz defines an Adequate Notion to be that of whose several characters we have distinct ideas. Thus, a Circle being defined as a figure bounded by a curve line that returns into itself, and whose points are all equally distant from a certain intermediate point therein: Our Notion of a Circle is adequate if we have distinct ideas of all these circumstances, viz. a curve returning upon itself, a middle point, and equality of distance, etc. See NOTION, DEFINITION, etc.

All Simple Ideas are adequate and perfect; and the faculty, be it what it may, that excites them, represents them entire. See SIMPLE IDEA.

The Ideas of Modes are likewise adequate, or perfect;except for those Modes which occasionally become Substances:for when we speak of Modes separately existing, we only consider them separate from the Substance by way of Abstraction. See MODE, ACCIDENT, etc.

All Abstract Ideas are also adequate and perfect, since they represent all that part of the reality which we then consider. Thus, the Idea of Roundness is perfect, or adequate, because it offers to the mind all that is in Roundness, in general. See ABSTRACT.

Of the same kind are all Ideas, of which we know no original or external object really existing outside of them; by occasion of which they were excited in us, and of which we think them the images. Thus, when a dog is before us, it is the external object outside of us which raises the idea in our mind; but the idea of an animal in general has no external object to excite it: it is created by the mind itself, and must necessarily be adequate or perfect. See ABSTRACTION.

On the contrary, the Ideas of all Substances are inadequate and imperfect, which are not formed at the pleasure of the mind, but gathered from certain properties which experience discovers in them. See SUBSTANCE.

This is evident, as our knowledge of substances is very defective, and we are only acquainted with some of their properties: Thus, we know that silver is white, that it is malleable, that it melts, etc. but we do not know what further properties it may have, and are wholly ignorant of the inward texture of the particles of which it consists.Our idea of silver, therefore, not representing all the properties of silver, is inadequate and imperfect.

ADEQUATE