ing no writings we have
any great concernment to be very solicitous about the meaning of, but
those that contain either truths we are required to believe, or laws
we are to obey, and draw inconveniences on us when we mistake or
transgress, we may be less anxious about the sense of other authors;
who, writing but their own opinions, we are under no greater necessity
to know them, than they to know ours. Our good or evil depending not on
their decrees, we may safely be ignorant of their notions: and therefore
in the reading of them, if they do not use their words with a due
clearness and perspicuity, we may lay them aside, and without any injury
done them, resolve thus with ourselves,

Si non vis intelligi, debes negligi.

11. Names of Substances of doubtful Signification, because the ideas
they stand for relate to the reality of things.

If the signification of the names of mixed modes be uncertain, because
there be no real standards existing in nature to which those ideas are
referred, and by which they may be adjusted, the names of SUBSTANCES are
of a doubtful signification, for a contrary reason, viz. because the
ideas they stand for are supposed conformable to the reality of things,
and are referred to as standards made by Nature. In our ideas of
substances we have not the liberty, as in mixed modes, to frame what
combinations we think fit, to be the characteristical notes to rank and
denominate things by. In these we must follow Nature, suit our complex
ideas to real existences, and regulate the signification of their names
by the things themselves, if we will have our names to be signs of them,
and stand for them. Here, it is true, we have patterns to follow; but
patterns that will make the signification of their names very uncertain:
for names must be of a very unsteady and various meaning, if the ideas
they stand for be referred to standards without us, that either cannot
be known at all, or can be known but imperfectly and uncertainly.

12. Names of Substances referred, I. To real Essences that cannot be
known.

The names of substances have, as has been shown, a double reference in
their ordinary use.

First, Sometimes they are made to stand for, and so their signification
is supposed to agree to, THE REAL CONSTITUTION OF THINGS, from which
all their properties flow, and in which they all centre. But this real
constitution, or (as it is apt to be called) essence, being utterly
unknown to us, any sound