First, He that hath words of any language, without distinct ideas in
his mind to which he applies them, does, so far as he uses them in
discourse, only make a noise without any sense or signification; and how
learned soever he may seem, by the use of hard words or learned terms,
is not much more advanced thereby in knowledge, than he would be in
learning, who had nothing in his study but the bare titles of books,
without possessing the contents of them. For all such words, however
put into discourse, according to the right construction of grammatical
rules, or the harmony of well-turned periods, do yet amount to nothing
but bare sounds, and nothing else.


27. Secondly, when complex ideas are without names annexed to them.

Secondly, He that has complex ideas, without particular names for them,
would be in no better case than a bookseller, who had in his warehouse
volumes that lay there unbound, and without titles, which he could
therefore make known to others only by showing the loose sheets, and
communicate them only by tale. This man is hindered in his discourse,
for want of words to communicate his complex ideas, which he is
therefore forced to make known by an enumeration of the simple ones that
compose them; and so is fain often to use twenty words, to express what
another man signifies in one.


28. Thirdly, when the same sign is not put for the same idea.

Thirdly, He that puts not constantly the same sign for the same idea,
but uses the same word sometimes in one and sometimes in another