ideas to real existences, and regulate the signification of their names
by the things themselves, if we will have our names to be signs of them,
and stand for them. Here, it is true, we have patterns to follow; but
patterns that will make the signification of their names very uncertain:
for names must be of a very unsteady and various meaning, if the ideas
they stand for be referred to standards without us, that either cannot
be known at all, or can be known but imperfectly and uncertainly.


12. Names of Substances referred, I. To real Essences that cannot be
known.

The names of substances have, as has been shown, a double reference in
their ordinary use.

First, Sometimes they are made to stand for, and so their signification
is supposed to agree to, THE REAL CONSTITUTION OF THINGS, from which
all their properties flow, and in which they all centre. But this real
constitution, or (as it is apt to be called) essence, being utterly
unknown to us, any sound that is put to stand for it must be very
uncertain in its application; and it will be impossible to know what
things are or ought to be called a HORSE, or ANTIMONY, when those words
are put for real essences that we have no ideas of at all. And therefore
in this supposition, the names of substances being referred to standards
that cannot be known, their significations can never be adjusted and
established by those standards.


13. Secondly, To co-existing Qualities, which are known but imperfectly.