ld be at a stand, and not know
what to answer: a plain proof, that, though they have learned those
sounds, and have them ready at their tongues ends, yet there are no
determined ideas laid up in their minds, which are to be expressed to
others by them.

4. This occasioned by men learning Names before they have the Ideas the
names belong to.

Men having been accustomed from their cradles to learn words which are
easily got and retained, before they knew or had framed the complex
ideas to which they were annexed, or which were to be found in the
things they were thought to stand for, they usually continue to do so
all their lives; and without taking the pains necessary to settle in
their minds determined ideas, they use their words for such unsteady and
confused notions as they have, contenting themselves with the same words
other people use; as if their very sound necessarily carried with it
constantly the same meaning. This, though men make a shift with in
the ordinary occurrences of life, where they find it necessary to be
understood, and therefore they make signs till they are so; yet this
insignificancy in their words, when they come to reason concerning
either their tenets or interest, manifestly fills their discourse with
abundance of empty unintelligible noise and jargon, especially in moral
matters, where the words for the most part standing for arbitrary and
numerous collections of ideas, not regularly and permanently united in
nature, their bare sounds are often only thought on, or at least very
obscure and uncertain notions annexed to them. Men take the words
they find in use amongst their neighbours; and that they may not seem
ignorant what they stand for, use them confidently, without much
troubling their heads about a certain fixed meaning; whereby, besides
the ease of it, they obtain this advantage, That, as in such discourses
they seldom are in the right, so they are as seldom to be convinced that
they are in the wrong; it being all one to go about to draw those men
out of their mistakes who have no settled notions, as to dispossess a
vagrant of his habitation who has no settled abode. This I guess to be
so; and every one may observe in himself and others whether it be so or
not.

5. Secondly Unsteady Application of them.

SECONDLY, Another great abuse of words is INCONSTANCY in the use of
them. It is hard to find a discourse written on any subject, especially
of controversy, wherein one shall no