ftand for general ideas, and those remaining particular, where the ideas they are used for are particular.

4. To make general Signs.

BESIDES these names which ftand for ideas, there be other words which men make ufe of, not to fignify any idea, but the want or abfence of fome ideas Simple or complex, or all ideas together; fuch as are nihil in Latin, and in English, ignorance and barrenness; all which negative or privative words, cannot be faid properly to belong to, or fignify no ideas, for then they would be perfectly infignificant founds; but they relate to pofitive ideas, and fignify their abfence.

§ 5. Words ultimately derived from such as signify senJible Ideas.

It may also lead us a little towards the original of all our notions and knowledge, if we remark how great a dependence our words have on common fenfible ideas, and how thofe, which are made ufe of to stand for actions and notions quite removed from fenfe, have their rife from thence, and from obvious fenfible ideas are tranf ferred to more abftrufe fignifications, and made to ftand for ideas that come not under the cognizance of our senses; v. g. to imagine, apprehend, comprehend, adbere, conceive, inftil, difguft, disturbance, tranquillity, &c. are all words taken from the operations of fenfible things, and applied to certain modes of thinking. Spirit, in its primary fignification, is breath; angel, a messenger; and I doubt not, but if we could trace them to their fources, we fhould find, in all languages, the names which ftand for things that fall not under our fenfes, to have had their firft rife from fenfible ideas, by which we may give fome kind of guefs, 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 fuggefted to men the originals and principles of all their knowledge; whilft to give names that might make known to others any operations they felt in themfelves, or any other ideas that came not under their fenfes, they were fain to borrow words from ordinary known ideas of fenfation, by that

means to make others the more eafily to conceive those operations they experimented in themfelves, which made no outward fenfible appearances; and then when they had got known and agreed names, to fignify those internal operations of their own minds, they were fushciently furnished to make known by words all their other ideas, fince they could confift of nothing, but either of outward fenfible perceptions, or of the inward operations of their minds about them; we having, as has been proved, no ideas at all, but what originally come either from fenfible objects without, or what we feel within ourselves, from the inward workings of our own fpirits, of which we are confcious to ourfelves within.

§ 6. Diftribution.

BUT to understand better the ufe and force of language, as fubfervient to inftruction and knowledge, it will be convenient to confider,

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

Secondly, Since all (except proper) names are general, and fo ftand not particularly for this or that fingle thing, but for forts and ranks of things, it will be neceffary to confider, in the next place, what the forts and kinds, or, if you rather like the Latin names, what the species and genera of things are, wherein they confift, and how they come to be made. These being (as they ought) well looked into, we fhall the better come to find the right ufe of words, the natural advantages and defects of language, and the remedies that ought to be used, to avoid the inconveniencies of obfcurity or uncertainty in the fignification of words, without which it is impoffible to difcourfe with any clearnefs or order concerning knowledge; which being converfant about propofitions, and thofe moft commonly univerfal ones, has greater connection with words than perhaps is fufpected.

Thefe confiderations, therefore, fhall be the matter of the following chapters.

CHAP. II.

OF THE SIGNIFICATION OF WORDS.

§ 1. Words are fenfible Signs necessary for Communication.

M variety of

and fuch from which others, as well as himfelf, might receive profit and delight, yet they are all within his own breaft, invisible, and hidden from others, nor can of themselves be made appear. The comfort and advantage of fociety not being to be had without communication of thoughts, it was neceffary that man fhould find out fome external fenfible figns, whereby thofe invifible ideas, which his thoughts are made up of, might be made known to others; for this purpofe nothing was fo fit, either for plenty or quicknefs, as those articulate founds, which, with fo much ease and variety, he found himself able to make. Thus we may conceive how words, which were by nature fo well adapted to that purpose, came to be made use of by men, as the Jigns of their ideas, not by any natural connection that there is between particular articulate founds, and certain ideas, for then there would be but one language amongst all men; but by a voluntary impofition, whereby fuch a word is made arbitrarily the mark of fuch an idea. The ufe then of words is to be fenfible marks of ideas, and the ideas they ftand for are their proper and immediate fignification.

§ 2. Words are the fenfible Signs of his Ideas who uses them. THE use men have of thefe marks, being either to record their own thoughts for the affiftance 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 fignification ftand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of bim that ufes them, how imperfectly foever or carelessly thofe ideas are collected from the things which they are fuppofed to reprefent. When a man fpeaks to another, it is that he may be understood; and the end of fpeech is, that thofe founds, as marks, may make known his ideas to the hearer: That then which

words are the marks of, are the ideas of the fpeaker; nor can any one apply them, as marks, immediately to any thing elfe, but the ideas that he himself hath; for this would be to make them figns of his own conceptions, and yet apply them to other ideas; which would be to make them figns and not figns of his ideas at the fame time, and fo in effect to have no fignification at all. Words being voluntary figns, they cannot be voluntary figns imposed by him on things he knows not; that would be to make them figns of nothing, founds without gnification, A man cannot make his words the figns either of qualities in things, or of conceptions in the mind of another, whereof he has none in his own. Till he has fome ideas of his own, he cannot suppose them to correfpond with the conceptions of another man, nor can he ufe any figns for them; for thus they would be the signs of he knows not what, which is in truth to be the figns of nothing: But when he reprefents to himself other mens ideas by fome of his own, if he confent to give them the fame names that other men do, it is ftill to, his own ideas; to ideas that he has, and not to ideas that he has not.

§ 3. Words are the fenfible Signs of his Ideas who uses

them.

THIS is fo neceffary in the use of language, that in this refpect 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 ftand for the Ideas he has, and which he would exprefs by them. A child having taken notice of nothing in the metal he hears called gold, but the bright fhining yellow colour, he applies the word gold only to his own idea of that colour, and nothing else; and therefore calls the fame colour in a peacock's tail, gold. Another that hath better obferved, adds to fhining yellow, great weight; and then the found gold, when he ufes it, ftands for a complex idea of a fhining yellow and very weighty fubftance. Another adds to thofe qualities fufibility; and then the word gold to him fignifies a body, bright, yellow, fufible, and very heavy. Another adds malleability. Each of

thefe ufes equally the word gold, when they have occafion to exprefs 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 ftand as a fign of fuch a complex idea as he has not.

$4. Words often fecretly referred, Firft, to the Ideas in other mens minds.

BUT though words, as they are ufed by men, can properly and immediately fignify nothing but the ideas that are in the mind of the fpeaker, yet they in their thoughts give them a fecret reference to two other things.

First, They fuppofe their words to be marks of the ideas in the minds alfo of other men with whom they communicate; for elfe they fhould talk in vain, and could not be understood, if the founds they applied to one idea were fuch as by the hearer were applied to another, which is to fpeak two languages. But in this men ftand not ufually to examine whether the idea they and thofe they difcourfe with have in their minds, be the fame, but think it enough that they ufe the word, as they imagine, in the common acceptation of that language, in which they fuppofe, that the idea they make it a fign of, is precifely the fame 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 fuppofe their words to ftand alfo for the reality of things. But this relating more particularly to fubitances, and their names, as perhaps the former does to fimple ideas and modes, we fhall speak of these two different ways of applying words more at large, when we come to treat of the names of mixed modes, and fubftances in particular; though, give me leave here to say, that it is a perverting the ufe of words, and brings unavoidable obfcurity and confufion into their fignification, whenever we make them ftand for any thing but thofe ideas we have in our own minds. § 6. Words by ufe readily excite Ideas. CONCERNING Words alfo, it is farther to be confidered,