First Remedy: To use no Word without an Idea annexed to it.

First, A man shall take care to use no word without a signification, no
name without an idea for which he makes it stand. This rule will
not seem altogether needless to any one who shall take the pains to
recollect how often he has met with such words as INSTINCT, SYMPATHY,
and ANTIPATHY, &c., in the discourse of others, so made use of as he
might easily conclude that those that used them had no ideas in their
minds to which they applied them, but spoke them only as sounds, which
usually served instead of reasons on the like occasions. Not but that
these words, and the like, have very proper significations in which they
may be used; but there being no natural connexion between any words and
any ideas, these, and any other, may be learned by rote, and pronounced
or writ by men who have no ideas in their minds to which they have
annexed them, and for which they make them stand; which is necessary
they should, if men would speak intelligibly even to themselves alone.


9. Second Remedy: To have distinct, determinate Ideas annexed to Words,
especially in mixed Modes.

Secondly, It is not enough a man uses his words as signs of some ideas:
those he annexes them to, if they be simple, must be clear and distinct;
if complex, must be determinate, i.e. the precise collection of simple
ideas settled in the mind, with that sound annexed to it, as the sign of
that precise determined collection, and no other. This is very necessary
in names of modes, and especially moral words; which, having no settled
objects in nature, from whence their ideas are taken, as from their
original, are apt to be very confused. JUSTICE is a word in every man's