'comprehend,' conceive,' disgust,' disturbance,' 'tranquillity,' are taken from the operations of sensible things, and applied to modes of thinking. The primary signification of spirit is breath, of angel a messenger: and doubtless, in all languages, names standing for things that fall not under the notice of our senses, originated in sensible ideas. Hence we may guess what kinds of notions they were which filled the minds of the beginners of languages; and how nature, even in the naming of things, suggested to men unawares the originals and principles of all their knowlege. From sensible objects men borrowed words to express the operations of their minds; and these being the only sources of their ideas, they were furnished with all the materials of knowlege. But to understand better the use and force of language, as subservient to knowlege, we shall consider, 1. To what, in the use of language, names are immediately applied. 2. Since all, except proper names, are general, we must consider what the sorts and kinds, that is the species and genera of things, are, wherein they consist, and how they come to be made. By these means we shall better discover the right use of words, the natural advantages and defects of language, and the remedies that ought to be used for avoiding the inconveniences of obscurity or uncertainty in the signification of words; without which it is impossible to discourse with any clearness or order concerning knowlege; for knowlege being conversant about propositions, and those most commonly universal ones, has a greater connexion with words than is perhaps suspected.

CHAPTER II.

Of the Signification of Words.

Though man has a variety of thoughts, from which profit and delight might be received, yet they are all within his own heart invisible to others. The comfort

and advantage of society not being to be had without the communication of thought, it was necessary that men should have some external signs whereby those invisible ideas might be made known to others. For this purpose nothing was so fit as articulate sounds. Thus we may conceive how words came to be made use of by men as the signs of their ideas, not by any natural connexion between particular sounds and certain ideas, for then there would be but one language among men ; but by a voluntary imposition, whereby such a word is arbitrarily the mark of such an idea.

The use men have of these marks being to record their thoughts, or to lay them before others, words in their primary signification stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them; and the end of speech is to make known his ideas to the hearer, Words being voluntary signs, they cannot be voluntary signs imposed by him on things he knows not.

That

would be to make them signs of nothing, sounds without signification. A child noticing nothing in a substance called gold but the yellow color, applies the word gold only to his own idea of that color, and therefore calls the same color in a peacock's tail gold: another adds great weight to the color; and another adds fusibility and malleability to these. The word gold equally expresses the idea of each person, but in each case denotes a different idea.

But though words can properly signify nothing but the ideas in the mind of the speaker, yet men secretly refer them to two other things. 1. They suppose their words to be marks of the ideas in the minds of other men, else they could not be understood, But men

usually stand not to examine whether the idea which they, and those they discourse with, have in their minds, be the same; they think it enough that they use the word in the common acceptation of the language.

2. They often suppose their words to stand also for the reality of things; and thus bring unavoidable confusion and obscurity into their signification.

Concerning words it is also to be considered, 1. That they being the signs of ideas, there comes by constant use to be such a connexion between certain sounds and the ideas they stand for, that the names heard as readily excite certain ideas, as if the objects themselves did actually affect the senses. 2. That though the signification of words are the ideas in the mind of the speaker, yet because by familiar use we have certain articulate sounds readily on our tongues, and are not always careful to examine their signification, it often happens that men set their thoughts more on words than things. But as far as words are of use, so far there is a constant connexion between the sound and the idea, and a designation that the one stands for the other. And every man has so inviolable a liberty to make words stand for what idea he pleases, that no one hath the power to make others have the same ideas in their minds that he has, when they use the same words that he does; and therefore Augustus himself, in the possession of that power which ruled the world, acknowleged he could not make a new Latin word; which was as much as to say, that he could not arbitrarily appoint what idea any sound should be a sign of in the mouths and common language of his subjects. Common use by a tacit consent appropriates certain ideas to certain sounds in all languages, which so far limits the signification of that sound, that unless a man applies it to the same idea he does not speak properly; and unless a man's words excite the same ideas in the hearer, which he makes them stand for in speaking, he does not speak intelligibly.

CHAPTER III.

General Terms.

All things that exist being particulars, it may be thought reasonable that words should be so too. Yet the greatest part of words in all languages are general terms.

1. It is impossible that every particular thing should have a distinct peculiar name: for the signification of words depending on the connexion which the mind makes between its ideas and the signs of them, it is necessary that the mind should have distinct ideas of things and the names applied to them; but it is beyond the human capacity to retain distinct ideas of all the particular things we meet with.

2. If it were possible, it would yet be useless. Men use names only that they may be understood, which is only done when by use or consent the sound I make excites in another man's mind the idea I apply to it in mine. This cannot be done by names applied to particular things, whereof I alone having the ideas in my mind, the names could not be significant to another who was not acquainted with those particular things.

3. Yet granting this feasible, yet a distinct name for every particular thing would be of no use for the improvement of knowlege; which, founded in particulars, enlarges itself to general views, to which things, reduced into sorts under general names, are properly subservient. Use requires these names, and the mind can contain them; yet where convenience demands it, as in the human species, men having to do most with men, each particular object obtains a distinct denomiHence cities, rivers, mountains, and frequently horses, &c. have particular names.

nation.

The next thing to be considered is how general words come to be made. Words become general by being

made the signs of general ideas, and ideas become general by separating them from the circumstances of time, place, and any other ideas that may determine them to this or that particular existence. By this way of abstraction they are made capable of representing more individuals than one, each of which, having in it a conformity to that abstract idea, is, as we say, of that sort.

To deduce this a little more distinctly;—there is nothing more evident than that the ideas of the persons children converse with are like the persons themselves, only particular. The names they give them are first confined to these individuals. Afterwards, when time and acquaintance have made them observe that there are many other things, that in some agreements of shape and other qualities resemble the persons they have been used to, they frame an idea which they find those many particulars do partake in, to which they give the name of man; and thus they come to have a general name and a general idea.

By the same way that they come by the general name of man, they advance to more general names and notions for observing that several things which differ from the idea of man, have certain qualities in which they agree with man, by retaining those quali ties and uniting them into one idea, they have again another and more general idea: which new idea is made by leaving out some of the properties of man, and retaining only a body with life, sense, and spontaneous motion, comprehended under the name animal.

He that thinks general natures or notions any thing else but such abstract ideas of more complex ones, taken at first from particular existences, will be at a loss where to find them. Of the complex ideas, signified by the names man and horse, leaving out those particulars wherein they differ, and retaining those only in which they agree, and of these making a new idea, and giving the name animal to it, one has a more