33. How in modes and relations.-In modes and relations generally, we are liable only to the four first of these inconveniences, viz. (1.) I may have in my memory the names of modes, as "gratitude" or "charity," and yet not have any precise ideas annexed in my thoughts to those names. (2.) I may have ideas, and not know the names that belong to them; v. g. I may have the idea of a man's drinking till his colour and humour be altered, till his tongue trips, and his eyes look red, and his feet fail him, and yet not know that it is to be called "drunkenness." (3.) I may have the ideas of virtues or vices, and names also, but apply them amiss; v. g. when I apply the name "frugality” to that idea which others call and signify by this sound, "covetousness." (4.) I may use any of those names with inconstancy. (5.) But in modes and relations, I cannot have ideas disagreeing to the existence of things: for, modes being complex ideas made by the mind at pleasure, and relation being but my way of considering or comparing two things together, and so also an idea of my own making, these ideas can scarce be found to disagree with any thing existing; since they are not in the mind as the copies of things regularly made by nature, nor as properties inseparably flowing from the internal constitution or essence of any substance; but, as it were, patterns lodged in my memory, with names annexed to them to denominate actions and relations by, as they come to exist. But the mistake is commonly in my giving a wrong name to my conceptions; and so using words in a different sense from other people, I am not understood, but am thought to have wrong ideas of them, when I give wrong names to them. Only if I put in my ideas of mixed modes or relations any inconsistent ideas together, I fill my head also with chimeras; since such ideas, if well examined, cannot so much as exist in the mind, much less any real being be ever denominated from them.

34. Seventhly. Figurative speech also an abuse of language. Since wit and fancy finds easier entertainment in the world than dry truth and real knowledge, figurative speeches and allusion in language will hardly be admitted as an imperfection or abuse of it. I confess, in discourses where we seek rather pleasure and delight than information and improvement, such ornaments as are borrowed from them can scarce pass for faults. But yet, if we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment; and so indeed are perfect cheats: and therefore, however laudable or allowable oratory may render them in harangues and popular addresses, they are certainly, in all discourses that pretend to inform or instruct, wholly to be avoided; and, where truth and knowledge are concerned, cannot but be thought a great fault either of the language or person that makes use of them. What and how various they are, will be superfluous here to take notice; the books of rhetoric which abound in the world will instruct those who want to be informed. Only I cannot

but observe how little the preservation and improvement of truth and knowledge is the care and concern of mankind; since the arts of fallacy are endowed and preferred. It is evident how much men love to deceive and be deceived, since rhetoric, that powerful instrument of error and deceit, has its established professors, is publicly taught, and has always been had in great reputation: and I doubt not but it will be thought great boldness, if not brutality, in me to have said thus much against it. Eloquence, like the fair sex, has too prevailing beauties in it to suffer itself ever to be spoken against. And it is in vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving wherein men find pleasure to be deceived.

CHAPTER XI.

OF THE REMEDIES OF THE FOREGOING IMPERFECTIONS AND

ABUSES.

1. They are worth seeking.-The natural and improved imperfections of languages we have seen above at large; and speech being the great bond that holds society together, and the common conduit whereby the improvements of knowledge are conveyed from one man and one generation to another; it would well deserve our most serious thoughts to consider what remedies are to be found for these inconveniences above-mentioned.

2. Are not easy.-I am not so vain to think that any one can pretend to attempt the perfect reforming the languages of the world, no, not so much as of his own country, without rendering himself ridiculous. To require that men should use their words constantly in the same sense, and for none but determined and uniform ideas, would be to think that all men should have the same notions, and should talk of nothing but what they have clear and distinct ideas of. Which is not to be expected by any one, who hath not vanity enough to imagine he can prevail with men to be very knowing or very silent. And he must be very little skilled in the world who thinks that a voluble tongue shall accompany only a good understanding; or that men's talking much or little shall hold proportion only to their knowledge.

3. But yet necessary to philosophy.-But though the market and exchange must be left to their own ways of talking, and gossipings not be robbed of their ancient privilege; though the Schools and men of argument would perhaps take it amiss to have any thing offered to abate the length or lessen the number of their disputes; yet, methinks, those who pretend seriously to search after or maintain truth, should think themselves obliged to study how they might deliver themselves without obscurity, doubtfulness, or equivocation, to which men's words are naturally liable, if care be not taken.

4. Misuse of words, the cause of great errors. For he that shall well consider the errors and obscurity, the mistakes and confusion, that are spread in the world by an ill use of words, will find some reason to doubt whether language, as it has been employed, has

contributed more to the improvement or hinderance of knowledge amongst mankind. How many are there, that, when they would think on things, fix their thoughts only on words, especially when they would apply their minds to moral matters? And who then can wonder, if the result of such contemplations and reasonings, about little more than sounds, whilst the ideas they annexed to them are very confused, or very unsteady, or perhaps none at all; who can wonder, I say, that such thoughts and reasonings end in nothing but obscurity and mistake, without any clear judgment or knowledge?

5. Obstinacy. This inconvenience, in an ill use of words, men suffer in their own private meditations: but much more manifest are the disorders which follow from it in conversation, discourse, and arguings with others. For, language being the great conduit whereby men convey their discoveries, reasonings, and knowledge, from one to another, he that makes an ill use of it, though he does not corrupt the fountains of knowledge which are in things themselves, yet he does, as much as in him lies, break or stop the pipes whereby it is distributed to the public use and advantage of mankind. He that uses words without any clear and steady meaning, what does he but lead himself and others into errors? And he that designedly does it, ought to be looked on as an enemy to truth and knowledge. And yet who can wonder, that all the sciences and parts of knowledge have been so over-charged with obscure and equivocal terms and insignificant and doubtful expressions, capable to make the most attentive or quick-sighted very little or not at all the more knowing or orthodox; since subtilty, in those who make profession to teach or defend truth, hath passed so much for a virtue? a virtue, indeed, which, consisting, for the most part, in nothing but the fallacious and illusory use of obscure or deceitful terms, is only fit to make men more conceited in their ignorance, and obstinate in their errors.

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6. And wrangling.-Let us look into the books of controversy any kind, there we shall see that the effect of obscure, unsteady, or equivocal terms, is nothing but noise and wrangling about sounds, without convincing or bettering a man's understanding. For, if the idea be not agreed on betwixt the speaker and hearer for which the words stand, the argument is not about things, but names. As often as such a word whose signification is not ascertained betwixt them comes in use, their understandings have no other object wherein they agree but barely the sound; the things that they think on at that time, as expressed by that word, being quite different.

7. Instance, bat and bird. Whether a bat be a bird or not, is not a question; whether a bat be another thing than indeed it is, or have other qualities than indeed it has; for that would be extremely absurd to doubt of: but the question is, (1.) Either between those that acknowledged themselves to have but imperfect ideas of one or both of those sorts of things, for which these names are supposed to stand; and then it is a real inquiry concerning the nature of a bird or a bat, to make their yet imperfect ideas of

it more complete, by examining whether all the simple ideas to which, combined together, they both give the name "bird" be all to be found in a bat: but this is a question only of inquirers, (not disputers,) who neither affirm nor deny, but examine. Or, (2.) It is a question between disputants; whereof the one affirms, and the other denies, that a bat is a bird. And then the question is barely about the signification of one or both these words; in that, they not having both the same complex ideas to which they give these two names, one holds and the other denies that these two names may be affirmed one of another. Where they agree in the signification of these two names, it were impossible they should dispute about them. For they would presently and clearly see, (were that adjusted between them,) whether all the simple ideas of the more general name "bird" were found in the complex idea of a bat or no; and so there could be no doubt, whether a bat were a bird or no. And here I desire it may be considered, and carefully examined, whether the greatest part of the disputes in the world are not merely verbal and about the signification of words; and whether if the terms they are made in were defined, and reduced in their signification (as they must be where they signify any thing) to determined collections of the simple ideas they do or should stand for, those disputes would not end of themselves, and immediately vanish. I leave it then to be considered what the learning of disputation is, and how well they are employed for the advantage of themselves or others whose business is only the vain ostentation of sounds; i. e. those who spend their lives in disputes and controversies. When I shall see any of those combatants strip all his terms of ambiguity and obscurity, (which every one may do in the words he uses himself,) I shall think him a champion for knowledge, truth, and peace, and not the slave of vain-glory, ambition, or a party.

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8. To remedy the defects of speech before-mentioned to some degree, and to prevent the inconveniences that follow from them, I imagine the observation of these following rules may be of use, till somebody better able shall judge it worth his while to think more maturely on this matter, and oblige the world with his thoughts on it. First remedy: To use no word without an idea.- First. A man should take care to use no word without a signification, no name without an idea for which he makes it stand. This rule will not seem altogether needless to any one who shall take the pains to recollect how often he has met with such words as stinct," "sympathy," and "antipathy," &c. in the discourse of others, so made use of as he might easily conclude, that those that used them had no ideas in their minds to which they applied them; but spoke them only as sounds, which usually served instead of reasons on the like occasions. Not but that these words and the like have very proper significations in which they may be used; but there being no natural connexion between any words and any ideas, these and any other may be learned by rote, and pronounced or writ by men, who have no ideas in their minds to which they have annexed them, and for which they make them stand; which is

necessary they should, if men would speak intelligibly even to themselves alone.

9. Secondly. To have distinct ideas annexed to them in modes.— Secondly. It is not enough a man uses his words as signs of some ideas: those ideas he annexes them to, if they be simple, must be clear and distinct; if complex, must be determinate; i. e. the precise collection of simple ideas settled in the mind, with that sound annexed to it as the sign of that precise determined collection, and no other. This is very necessary in names of modes, and especially moral words; which, having no settled objects in nature from whence their ideas are taken as from their original, are apt to be very confused. "Justice" is a word in every man's mouth, but most commonly with a very undetermined, loose signification: which will always be so unless a man has in his mind a distinct comprehension of the component parts that complex idea consists of; and if it be decompounded, must be able to resolve it still on till he at last comes to the simple ideas that make it up: and unless this be done, a man makes an ill use of the word, let it be "justice," for example, or any other. I do not say, a man needs stand to recollect, and make this analysis at large, every time the word "justice" comes in his way: but this, at least, is necessary, that he have so examined the signification of that name, and settled the idea of all its parts in his mind, that he can do it when he pleases. If one who makes his complex idea of justice to be such a treatment of the person or goods of another as is according to law, hath not a clear and distinct idea what law is, which makes a part of his complex idea of justice, it is plain his idea of justice itself will be confused and imperfect. This exactness will, perhaps, be judged very troublesome; and therefore most men will think they may be excused from settling the complex ideas of mixed modes so precisely in their minds. But yet I must say, till this be done it must not be wondered that they have a great deal of obscurity and confusion in their own minds, and a great deal of wrangling in their discourses with others.

10. And conformable in substances.-In the names of substances, for a right use of them something more is required than barely determined ideas. In these the names must also be conformable to things as they exist: but of this, I shall have occasion to speak more at large by and by. This exactness is absolutely necessary in inquiries after philosophical knowledge, and in controversies about truth. And though it would be well, too, if it extended itself to common conversation and the ordinary affairs of life; yet, I think, that is scarce to be expected. Vulgar notions suit vulgar discourses: and both, though confused enough, yet serve pretty well the market and the wake. Merchants and lovers, cooks and tailors, have words wherewithal to dispatch their ordinary affairs; and so, I think, might philosophers and disputants too, if they had a mind to understand, and to be clearly understood.

11. Thirdly. Propriety.-Thirdly. It is not enough that men have ideas, determined ideas, for which they make these signs stand; but they must also take care to apply their words, as near as may be,