Let us look into the books of controversy of any kind, there we shall
see that the effect of obscure, unsteady, or equivocal terms is nothing
but noise and wrangling about sounds, without convincing or bettering
a man's understanding. For if the idea be not agreed on, betwixt the
speaker and hearer, for which the words stand, the argument is not about
things, but names. As often as such a word whose signification is not
ascertained betwixt them, comes in use, their understandings have no
other object wherein they agree, but barely the sound; the things that
they think on at that time, as expressed by that word, being quite
different.


7. Instance, Bat and Bird.

Whether a BAT be a BIRD or no, is not a question, Whether a bat be
another thing than indeed it is, or have other qualities than indeed it
has; for that would be extremely absurd to doubt of. But the question
is, (i) Either between those that acknowledged themselves to have but
imperfect ideas of one or both of this sort of things, for which these
names are supposed to stand. And then it is a real inquiry concerning
the NATURE of a bird or a bat, to make their yet imperfect ideas of
it more complete; by examining whether all the simple ideas to which,
combined together, they both give name bird, be all to be found in
a bat: but this is a question only of inquirers (not disputers) who
neither affirm nor deny, but examine: Or, (2) It is a question between
disputants; whereof the one affirms, and the other denies that a bat is
a bird. And then the question is barely about the signification of one
or both these WORDS; in that they not having both the same complex ideas
to which they give these two names, one holds and the other denies, that