little trouble demonstrate them one of another, according to those
several respects and mutual relations he has given them one to another;
wherein, however things agree or disagree in their own nature, he needs
mind nothing but his own notions, with the names he hath bestowed upon
them: but thereby no more increases his own knowledge than he does his
riches, who, taking a bag of counters, calls one in a certain place a
pound, another in another place a shilling, and a third in a third place
a penny; and so proceeding, may undoubtedly reckon right, and cast up a
great sum, according to his counters so placed, and standing for more or
less as he pleases, without being one jot the richer, or without even
knowing how much a pound, shilling, or penny is, but only that one is
contained in the other twenty times, and contains the other twelve:
which a man may also do in the signification of words, by making them,
in respect of one another, more or less, or equally comprehensive.


11. Thirdly, using Words variously is trifling with them.

Though yet concerning most words used in discourses, equally
argumentative and controversial, there is this more to be complained of,
which is the worst sort of trifling, and which sets us yet further from
the certainty of knowledge we hope to attain by them, or find in them;
viz. that most writers are so far from instructing us in the nature and
knowledge of things, that they use their words loosely and uncertainly,
and do not, by using them constantly and steadily in the same
significations make plain and clear deductions of words one from
another, and make their discourses coherent and clear, (how little
soever they were instructive); which were not difficult to do, did they
not find it convenient to shelter their ignorance or obstinacy under the
obscurity and perplexedness of their terms: to which, perhaps,