insignificancy in their words, when they come to reason concerning
either their tenets or interest, manifestly fills their discourse with
abundance of empty unintelligible noise and jargon, especially in moral
matters, where the words for the most part standing for arbitrary and
numerous collections of ideas, not regularly and permanently united in
nature, their bare sounds are often only thought on, or at least very
obscure and uncertain notions annexed to them. Men take the words
they find in use amongst their neighbours; and that they may not seem
ignorant what they stand for, use them confidently, without much
troubling their heads about a certain fixed meaning; whereby, besides
the ease of it, they obtain this advantage, That, as in such discourses
they seldom are in the right, so they are as seldom to be convinced that
they are in the wrong; it being all one to go about to draw those men
out of their mistakes who have no settled notions, as to dispossess a
vagrant of his habitation who has no settled abode. This I guess to be
so; and every one may observe in himself and others whether it be so or
not.


5. Secondly Unsteady Application of them.

SECONDLY, Another great abuse of words is INCONSTANCY in the use of
them. It is hard to find a discourse written on any subject, especially
of controversy, wherein one shall not observe, if he read with
attention, the same words (and those commonly the most material in the
discourse, and upon which the argument turns) used sometimes for one
collection of simple ideas, and sometimes for another; which is a
perfect abuse of language. Words being intended for signs of my ideas,
to make them known to others, not by any natural signification, but by
a voluntary imposition, it is plain cheat and abuse, when I make them