BOOK III. CHAPTER I.

OF WORDS OR LANGUAGE IN GENERAL.

§. 1. Man fitted to form articulate sounds.-God having designed man for a sociable creature, made him not only with an inclination, and under a necessity, to have fellowship with those of his own kind, but furnished him also with language, which was to be the great instrument, and common tie, of society. Man, therefore, had by nature his organs so fashioned, as to be fit to frame articulate sounds, which we call words. But this was not enough to produce language: for parrots, and several other birds, will be taught to make articulate sounds distinct enough, which yet, by no means, are capable of language.

§. 2. To make them signs of ideas.-Besides articulate sounds, therefore, it was farther necessary, that he should be able to use these sounds as signs of internal conceptions; and to make them stand as marks for the ideas within his own mind, whereby they might be made known to others, and the thoughts of men's minds be conveyed from one to another.

§. 3. To make general signs.-But neither was this sufficient to make words so useful as they ought to be. It is not enough for the perfection of language, that sounds can be made signs of ideas, unless those signs can be so made use of, as to comprehend several particular things; for the multiplication of words would have perplexed their use, had every particular thing need of a distinct name to be signified by! To remedy this inconvenience, language had yet a farther improvement in the use of general terms, whereby one word was made to mark a multitude of particular existences; which advantageous use of sounds was obtained only by the difference of the ideas they were made signs of: those names becoming general, which are made to stand for general ideas; and those remaining particular, where the ideas they are used for are particular

§. 4. Besides these names which stand for ideas, there be other words which men make use of, not to signify any idea, but the want or absence of some ideas, simple or complex, or ideas together: such as are nihil in Latin, and in English, ignorance and barrenness. All which negative or privitive words, cannot be said properly to belong to, or signify no, ideas; for then they would be perfectly insignificant sounds; but they relate to positive ideas, and signify their absence.

§. 5.

Words ultimately derived from such as signify sensible

ideas. It may also lead us a little toward the original of all our notions and knowledge, if we remark, how great a dependance our words have on common sensible ideas; and how those, which are made use of to stand for actions and notions quite removed from sense, have their rise from thence, and, from obvious sensible ideas, are transferred to more abstruse significations, and made to stand for ideas that come not under the cognizance of our senses: v. g., to imagine, apprehend, comprehend, adhere, conceive, instil, disgust, disturbance, tranquillity, &c., are all words taken from the operations of sensible things, and applied to certain modes of thinking. Spirit, in its primary signification, is breath; angel, a messenger and I doubt not, but if we could trace them to their sources, we should find, in all languages, the names which stand for things that fall not under our senses, to have had their first rise from sensible ideas. By which we may give some kind of guess, what kind of notions they were, and whence derived, which filled their minds, who were the first beginners of languages; and how nature, even in the naming of things, unawares suggested to men the originals and principles of all their knowledge; whilst, to give names, that might make known to others any operations they felt in themselves, or any other ideas that come not under their senses, they were fain to borrow words from ordinary known ideas of sensation, by that means to make others the more easily to conceive those operations they experimented in themselves, which made no outward sensible appearances: and then, when they had got known and agreed names, to signify those internal operations of their own minds, they were sufficiently furnished to make known by words, all their other ideas; since they could consist of nothing, but either of outward sensible perceptions, or of the inward operations of their minds about them; we having, as has been proved, no ideas at all, but what originally came either from sensible objects without, or what we feel within ourselves, from the inward workings of our own spirits, of which we are conscious to ourselves within.

§. 6. Distribution. But to understand better the use and force of language, as subservient to instruction and knowledge, it will be convenient to consider,

First, To what it is that names, in the use of language, are immediately applied.

Secondly, Since all (except proper) names are general, and so stand not particularly for this or that single thing, but for sorts and ranks of things, it will be necessary to consider, in the next place, what the sorts and kinds, or, if you rather like the Latin

consist; and how they come to be made. These being (as they ought) well looked into, we shall the better come to find the right use of words; the natural advantages and defects of language; and the remedies that ought to be used, to avoid the inconveniences of obscurity or uncertainty in the signification of words, without which, it is impossible to discourse with any clearness, or order, concerning knowledge; which being conversant about propositions, and those most commonly universal ones, has greater connexion with words, than, perhaps, is suspected

These considerations, therefore, shall be the matter of the following chapters.

CHAPTER II.

OF THE SIGNIFICATION OF WORDS.

§. 1. Words are sensible signs, necessary for communication.— Man, though he has great variety of thoughts, and such, from which others, as well as himself, might receive profit and delight; yet they are all within his own breast invisible, and hidden from others, nor can of themselves be made appear. The comfort and advantage of society, not being to be had without communication of thoughts, it was necessary, that man should find out some external sensible signs, whereby those invisible ideas, which his thoughts are made up of, might be made known to others. For this purpose, nothing was so fit, either for plenty, or quickness, as those articulate sounds, which, with so much ease and variety, he found himself able to make. Thus we may conceive how words, which were by nature so well adapted to that purpose, come to be made use of by men, as the signs of their ideas; not by any natural connexion that there is between particular articulate sounds and certain ideas, for then there would be but one language amongst all men; but by a voluntary imposition, whereby such a word is made arbitrarily the mark of such an idea. The use then of words, is to be sensible marks of ideas; and the ideas they stand for, are their proper and immediate signification.

§. 2. Words are the sensible signs of his ideas who uses them. -The use men have of these marks, being either to record their own thoughts for the assistance of their own memory; or, as it were, to bring out their ideas, and lay them before the view of others; words in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing, but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them,

how imperfectly soever, or carelessly, those ideas are collected from the things which they are supposed to represent. When a man speaks to another, it is that he may be understood; and the end of speech is, that those sounds, as marks, may make known his ideas to the hearer. That then which words are the marks of, are the ideas of the speaker; nor can any one apply them as marks, immediately to any thing else, but the ideas that he himself hath. For this would be to make them signs of his own conceptions, and yet apply them to other ideas; which would be to make them signs, and not signs of his ideas at the same time; and so, in effect, to have no signification at all. 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 man cannot make his words the signs either of qualities in things, or of conceptions in the mind of another, whereof he has none in his own. Until he has some ideas of his own, he cannot suppose them to correspond with the conceptions of another man; nor can he use any signs for them; for thus they would be the signs of he knows not what, which is, in truth, to be the signs of nothing. But when he represents to himself other men's ideas, by some of his own, if he consent to give them the same names that other men do, it is still to his own ideas; to ideas that he has, and not to ideas that he has not.

§. 3. This is so necessary in the use of language, that in this respect, the knowing and the ignorant, the learned and unlearned, use the words they speak (with any meaning) all alike. They, in every man's mouth, stand for the ideas he has, and which he would express by them. A child having taken notice of nothing in the metal he hears called gold, but the bright shining yellow colour, be applies the word gold only to his own idea of that colour, and nothing else; and therefore calls the same colour in a peacock's tail, gold. Another that hath better observed, adds to shining yellow, great weight; and then the sound gold, when he uses it, stands for a complex idea of a shining yellow and very weighty substance. Another adds to those qualities, fusibility; and when the word gold signifies to him a body, bright, yellow, fusible, and very heavy. Another adds malleability. Each of these uses equally the word gold, when they have occasion to express the idea which they have applied it to; but it is evident, that each can apply it only to his own idea; nor can he make it stand as a sign of such a complex idea as he has

not.

8. 4. Words often secretly referred first to the ideas in other

perly and immediately signify nothing but the ideas that are in the mind of the speaker; yet they, in their thoughts, give them a secret reference to two other things.

First, They suppose their words to be marks of the ideas in the minds also of other men, with whom they communicate; for else they should talk in vain, and could not be understood, if the sounds they applied to one idea, were such as by the hearer were applied to another, which is to speak two languages. But in this, men stand not usually to examine, whether the idea they, and those they discourse with, have in their minds, be the same; but think it enough, that they use the word, as they imagine, in the common acceptation of that language; in which they suppose that the idea they make it a sign of, is precisely the same to which the understanding men of that country apply that name.

§. 5. Secondly, to the reality of things,-Secondly, Because men would not be thought to talk barely of their own imaginations, but of things as really they are; therefore they often suppose their words to stand also for the reality of things. But this relating more particularly to substances, and their names, as perhaps the former does to simple ideas and modes, we shall speak of these two different ways of applying words more at large, when we come to treat of the names of mixed modes, and substances, in particular; though give me leave here to say, that it is a perverting the use of words, and brings unavoidable obscurity and confusion into their signification, whenever we make them stand for any thing but those ideas we have in our own minds.

§. 6. Words by use readily excite ideas. Concerning words also, it is farther to be considered: First, That they being immediately the signs of men's ideas; and, by that means, the instruments whereby men communicate their conceptions, and express to one another those thoughts and imaginations they have within their own breasts; there comes, by constant use, to be such a connexion between certain sounds, and the ideas they stand for, that the names heard, almost as readily excite certain ideas, as if the objects themselves, which are apt to produce them, did actually affect the senses. Which is manifestly so in all obvious sensible qualities; and in all substances that frequently and familiarly occur to us.

§. 7. Words often used without signification.-Secondly, That though the proper and immediate signification of words, are ideas in the mind of the speaker; yet because, by familiar use from our cradles, we come to learn certain articulate sounds very perfectly, and have them readily on our tongues, and always at