ideas to another's view: 1. When men have names in their mouths without
any determinate ideas in their minds whereof they are the signs: or, 2.
When they apply the common received names of any language to ideas, to
which the common use of that language does not apply them: or 3. When
they apply them very unsteadily, making them stand now for one, and by
and by for another idea.


24. Secondly, To do it with Quickness.

Secondly, Men fail of conveying their thoughts with the quickness and
ease that may be, when they have complex ideas without having any
distinct names for them. This is sometimes the fault of the language
itself, which has not in it a sound yet applied to such a signification;
and sometimes the fault of the man, who has not yet learned the name for
that idea he would show another.


25. Thirdly, Therewith to convey the Knowledge of Things.

Thirdly, there is no knowledge of things conveyed by men's words, when
their ideas agree not to the reality of things. Though it be a defect
that has its original in our ideas, which are not so conformable to the
nature of things as attention, study and application might make them,
yet it fails not to extend itself to our words too, when we use them as
signs of real beings, which yet never had any reality or existence.


26. How Men's Words fail in all these: First, when used without any
ideas.