whereby men may adjust them. What the word MURDER, or SACRILEGE, &c.,
signifies can never be known from things themselves: there be many of
the parts of those complex ideas which are not visible in the action
itself; the intention of the mind, or the relation of holy things, which
make a part of murder or sacrilege, have no necessary connexion with the
outward and visible action of him that commits either: and the pulling
the trigger of the gun with which the murder is committed, and is all
the action that perhaps is visible, has no natural connexion with those
other ideas that make up the complex one named murder. They have their
union and combination only from the understanding which unites them
under one name: but, uniting them without any rule or pattern, it cannot
be but that the signification of the name that stands for such voluntary
collections should be often various in the minds of different men, who
have scarce any standing rule to regulate themselves and their notions
by, in such arbitrary ideas.


8. Common use, or propriety not a sufficient Remedy.

It is true, common use, that is, the rule of propriety may be supposed
here to afford some aid, to settle the signification of language; and it
cannot be denied but that in some measure it does. Common use regulates
the meaning of words pretty well for common conversation; but nobody
having an authority to establish the precise signification of words,
nor determine to what ideas any one shall annex them, common use is
not sufficient to adjust them to Philosophical Discourses; there being
scarce any name of any very complex idea (to say nothing of others)
which, in common use, has not a great latitude, and which, keeping
within the bounds of propriety, may not be made the sign of far
different ideas. Besides, the rule and measure of propriety itself being