5. Secondly, to the Reality of Things.

Secondly, Because men would not be thought to talk barely of their own
imagination, but of things as really they are; therefore they often
suppose the WORDS TO STAND ALSO FOR THE REALITY OF THINGS. But this
relating more particularly to substances and their names, as perhaps
the former does to simple ideas and modes, we shall speak of these two
different ways of applying words more at large, when we come to treat of
the names of mixed modes and substances in particular: though give me
leave here to say, that it is a perverting the use of words, and brings
unavoidable obscurity and confusion into their signification, whenever
we make them stand for anything but those ideas we have in our own
minds.


6. Words by Use readily excite Ideas of their objects.

Concerning words, also, it is further to be considered:

First, that they being immediately the signs of men's ideas, and by that
means the instruments whereby men communicate their conceptions, and
express to one another those thoughts and imaginations they have within
their own breasts; there comes, by constant use, to be such a connexion
between certain sounds and the ideas they stand for, that the names
heard, almost as readily excite certain ideas as if the objects
themselves, which are apt to produce them, did actually affect the
senses. Which is manifestly so in all obvious sensible qualities, and in
all substances that frequently and familiarly occur to us.