their meaning is; and therefore one ought to acquiesce in the words
delivered, as if it were past doubt that, in the use of those common
received sounds, the speaker and hearer had necessarily the same precise
ideas. Whence presuming, that when they have in discourse used any term,
they have thereby, as it were, set before others the very thing they
talked of. And so likewise taking the words of others, as naturally
standing for just what they themselves have been accustomed to apply
them to, they never trouble themselves to explain their own, or
understand clearly others' meaning. From whence commonly proceeds noise,
and wrangling, without improvement or information; whilst men take words
to be the constant regular marks of agreed notions, which in truth are
no more but the voluntary and unsteady signs of their own ideas. And yet
men think it strange, if in discourse, or (where it is often absolutely
necessary) in dispute, one sometimes asks the meaning of their terms:
though the arguings one may every day observe in conversation make it
evident, that there are few names of complex ideas which any two men use
for the same just precise collection. It is hard to name a word which
will not be a clear instance of this. LIFE is a term, none more
familiar. Any one almost would take it for an affront to be asked what
he meant by it. And yet if it comes in question, whether a plant that
lies ready formed in the seed have life; whether the embryo in an egg
before incubation, or a man in a swoon without sense or motion, be alive
or no; it is easy to perceive that a clear, distinct, settled idea does
not always accompany the use of so known a word as that of life is. Some
gross and confused conceptions men indeed ordinarily have, to which they
apply the common words of their language; and such a loose use of their
words serves them well enough in their ordinary discourses or affairs.
But this is not sufficient for philosophical inquiries. Knowledge and
reasoning require precise determinate ideas. And though men will not
be so importunately dull as not to understand what others say, without