no; it is easy to perceive that a clear, distinct idea does not always accompany the use of so known a word as that of life is. Some gross and confused conceptions men ordinarily have, to which they apply the common words of their language, and such a loose use of words serves them well enough in their ordinary affairs; but this is not sufficient for philosophical purposes. The multiplication and obstinacy of disputes, which has SO laid waste the intellectual world, is owing to nothing more than to this ill use of words.

Since wit and fancy find easier entertainment in the world than dry truth and real knowlege, figurative speeches and allusions 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 scarcely 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 has 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 and 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 knowlege 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 knowlege 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. Speech being the bond that holds society together, and the conduit whereby the improvements of knowlege are conveyed from one man and one generation to another, it well deserves our serious thoughts to consider what remedies are to be found for the inconveniences above mentioned.

No one can attempt the perfect reforming of language without rendering himself ridiculous. To require that men should use their words for none but determined and uniform ideas, would be to think that all men should have the same notions, and talk of nothing but what they have distinct ideas of.

But though the market and exchange must be left to their own ways of talking, though the schools would take it amiss to have the number of their disputes lessened, yet they who pretend to search after truth should study how to deliver themselves without obscurity or equivocation.

For he that shall consider the errors that are spread in the world by an ill use of words, will find reason to doubt whether language has contributed more to the improvement than the hinderance of knowlege. How many are there, that when they would think on things,

fix their thoughts only on words! This inconvenience men suffer in their own private meditations, but more manifest are the disorders that follow from it in discourse. He that uses words without any clear meaning, leads himself and others into error: he that does it designedly, ought to be looked on as an enemy to truth and knowlege. Yet, who can wonder that all the parts of knowlege have been overcharged with equivocal terms, since subtlety in those who make it a profession to teach truth hath passed so much for a virtue ?

In books of controversy we shall see that the effect of obscure or equivocal terms is nothing but noise and wrangling about sounds. That subtlety which has been so much admired, consisting mostly in the illusory use of obscure terms, is only fit to make men more conceited in their ignorance, and more obstinate in their errors. The learning of disputation consists in the vain ostentation of sounds. When I see a controversialist strip all his terms of ambiguity and obscurity, I shall think him a champion for knowlege, truth, and peace, and not the slave of vain-glory, ambition, or a party.

To remedy the defects before mentioned, the following rules may be of some use:-1. A man should take care to use no word without a signification. This rule will not seem needless to any one who shall recollect how often he has met with such words as, instinct, sympathy, antipathy, &c. so made use of, as he might conclude that those who used them had no ideas in their minds to which they applied them.

2. It is not enough that a man uses his words as signs of some ideas those ideas, if simple, must be clear; if complex, 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 especially necessary in moral words. Justice is a word in every man's mouth,

but commonly with a very loose signification; which will always be so, unless a man has a distinct comprehension of the component parts that complex idea consists of. If one who makes this complex idea of justice to be such a treatment of the person or goods of another as is according to law, hath not a distinct idea of what law is, it is plain his idea of justice will be confused and imperfect. This exactness may be judged very troublesome; but till this be done, there will be obscurity in our minds and wrangling in our discourses.

In the names of substances something more is required than determined ideas; the names must be conformable to things that exist. This is absolutely necessary in philosophical discourses, and it would be well if it extended itself to common conversation.

3. It is not enough that men have determined ideas, but they must also take care to apply their words, as near as may be, to such ideas as common use has annexed them to: for words being the common measure of communication, it is not for any one at pleasure to change the stamp they are current in; or, at least, when there is necessity to do so, he is bound to give notice of it. Propriety of speech is that which gives our thoughts entrance into other men's minds with the greatest ease and advantage, and therefore deserves some part of our care and study, especially in moral words.

4. But because common use has not so visibly annexed any signification to words, so as to make men certainly know what they stand for; and because men, in the improvement of their knowlege, come to have ideas different from the received ones, for which they must either make new words or use old ones in a new signification; it is therefore necessary for the ascertaining the signification of words to declare their meaning, where the term is liable to any mistake. And this may be done in three ways.

1. When a man uses the name of a simple idea, which may be misunderstood, he ought to declare his meaning. Now this cannot be done by definition; and therefore, when a synonymous word fails to do it, there is but one of these ways left:-1. Either naming the subject in which that simple idea is to be found; as to make a man understand what feuille morte color signifies, it may suffice to tell him it is the color of withered leaves. 2. But the only sure way is by presenting to his senses that subject that may produce it in his mind.

2. Mixed modes, especially those belonging to morality, being combinations of the mind, whereof patterns are not always to be found existing, the signification of their names cannot be made known by showing, but may be perfectly defined: for, being combinations that the mind has put together without reference to archetypes, men may exactly know the ideas that go to each composition, and so use the words in a certain signification. On this ground I think that morality is capable of demonstration as well as mathematics, since the essence of things moral words stand for may be perfectly known, and the congruity or incongruity be certainly discovered. Nor let any one object that obscurity may arise from the names of substances made use of in morality: for in moral discourses the natures of substances are not inquired into, but only supposed; v. g. when we say man is subject to law, we mean nothing by man but a corporeal rational creature; the real essence of other qualities of that creature is in no way considered. The names of substances no more disturb moral than they do mathematical discourses, where, if a mathematician speaks of a cube of gold, he has his clear settled idea which varies not, though it may by mistake be applied to a body to which it belongs not. This I have mentioned to show of what consequence it is for men in their moral discourses to