same idea they stand for in the mind of the speaker. Without this, men
fill one another's heads with noise and sounds; but convey not thereby
their thoughts, and lay not before one another their ideas, which is the
end of discourse and language. But when a word stands for a very complex
idea that is compounded and decompounded, it is not easy for men to form
and retain that idea so exactly, as to make the name in common use stand
for the same precise idea, without any the least variation. Hence it
comes to pass that men's names of very compound ideas, such as for the
most part are moral words, have seldom in two different men the same
precise signification; since one man's complex idea seldom agrees with
another's, and often differs from his own--from that which he had
yesterday, or will have tomorrow.


7. Secondly because they have no Standards in Nature.

Because the names of mixed modes for the most part WANT STANDARDS
IN NATURE, whereby men may rectify and adjust their significations;
therefore they are very various and doubtful. They are assemblages of
ideas put together at the pleasure of the mind, pursuing its own ends of
discourse, and suited to its own notions; whereby it designs not to copy
anything really existing, but to denominate and rank things as they
come to agree with those archetypes or forms it has made. He that first
brought the word SHAM, or WHEEDLE, or BANTER, in use, put together as he
thought fit those ideas he made it stand for; and as it is with any new
names of modes that are now brought into any language, so it was with
the old ones when they were first made use of. Names, therefore, that
stand for collections of ideas which the mind makes at pleasure must
needs be of doubtful signification, when such collections are nowhere
to be found constantly united in nature, nor any patterns to be shown