rrors,
comes, by familiar use amongst those of the same tribe, to seem the
most important part of language, and of all other the terms the most
significant: and should AERIAL and OETHERIAL VEHICLES come once, by the
prevalency of that doctrine, to be generally received anywhere, no doubt
those terms would make impressions on men's minds, so as to establish
them in the persuasion of the reality of such things, as much as
Peripatetick FORMS and INTENTIONAL SPECIES have heretofore done. 15.
Instance, in Matter.

How much names taken for things are apt to mislead the understanding,
the attentive reading of philosophical writers would abundantly
discover; and that perhaps in words little suspected of any such misuse.
I shall instance in one only, and that a very familiar one. How many
intricate disputes have there been about MATTER, as if there were some
such thing really in nature, distinct from BODY; as it is evident the
word matter stands for an idea distinct from the idea of body? For if
the ideas these two terms stood for were precisely the same, they might
indifferently in all places be put for one another. But we see that
though it be proper to say, There is one matter of all bodies, one
cannot say, There is one body of all matters: we familiarly say one body
is bigger than another; but it sounds harsh (and I think is never used)
to say one matter is bigger than another. Whence comes this, then? Viz.
from hence: that, though matter and body be not really distinct, but
wherever there is the one there is the other; yet matter and body stand
for two different conceptions, whereof the one is incomplete, and but
a part of the other. For body stands for a solid extended figured
substance, whereof matter is but a partial and more confused conception;
it seeming to me to be used for the substance and solidity of body,
without taking in its extension and figure: and therefore it is that,
speaking of matter, we speak of it always as one, because in truth it
expressly contains nothing but the idea of a solid substance, which is
everywhere the same, everywhere uniform. This being our idea of matter,
we no more conceive or speak of different MATTERS in the world than
we do of different solidities; though we both conceive and speak of
different bodies, because extension and figure are capable of variation.
But, since solidity cannot exist without extension and figure, the
taking matter to be the name of something really existing un