ifie. The use of Words, is to register to our selves, and make
manifest to others the Thoughts and Conceptions of our Minds. Of which
Words, some are the names of the Things conceived; as the names of all
sorts of Bodies, that work upon the Senses, and leave an Impression in
the Imagination: Others are the names of the Imaginations themselves;
that is to say, of those Ideas, or mentall Images we have of all things
wee see, or remember: And others againe are names of Names; or of
different sorts of Speech: As Universall, Plurall, Singular, Negation,
True, False, Syllogisme, Interrogation, Promise, Covenant, are the names
of certain Forms of Speech. Others serve to shew the Consequence, or
Repugnance of one name to another; as when one saith, "A Man is a Body,"
hee intendeth that the name of Body is necessarily consequent to the
name of Man; as being but severall names of the same thing, Man; which
Consequence is signified by coupling them together with the word Is.
And as wee use the Verbe Is; so the Latines use their Verbe Est, and
the Greeks their Esti through all its Declinations. Whether all other
Nations of the world have in their severall languages a word that
answereth to it, or not, I cannot tell; but I am sure they have not need
of it: For the placing of two names in order may serve to signifie their
Consequence, if it were the custome, (for Custome is it, that give words
their force,) as well as the words Is, or Bee, or Are, and the like.

And if it were so, that there were a Language without any Verb
answerable to Est, or Is, or Bee; yet the men that used it would bee
not a jot the lesse capable of Inferring, Concluding, and of all kind of
Reasoning, than were the Greeks, and Latines. But what then would become
of these Terms, of Entity, Essence, Essentiall, Essentially, that are
derived from it, and of many more that depend on these, applyed as most
commonly they are? They are therefore no Names of Things; but Signes, by
which wee make known, that wee conceive the Consequence of one name or
Attribute to another: as when we say, "a Man, is, a living Body," wee
mean not that the Man is one thing, the Living Body another, and the Is,
or Beeing a third: but that the Man, and the Living Body, is the same
thing: because the Consequence, "If hee bee a Man, hee is a living
Body," is a true Consequence, signified by that word Is. Therefore, to
bee a Body, to Walke, to bee Speaking, to Live, to See, and the like
Infinit