the discourses we ordinarily meet with, both in and out of books, we
shall perhaps find that a greater part of them than is usually suspected
are purely about the signification of words, and contain nothing in them
but the use and application of these signs.

This I think I may lay down for an infallible rule, That, wherever the
distinct idea any word stands for is not known and considered, and
something not contained in the idea is not affirmed or denied of it,
there our thoughts stick wholly in sounds, and are able to attain no
real truth or falsehood. This, perhaps, if well heeded, might save us a
great deal of useless amusement and dispute; and very much shorten our
trouble and wandering in the search of real and true knowledge.




CHAPTER IX. OF OUR THREEFOLD KNOWLEDGE OF EXISTENCE.


1. General Propositions that are certain concern not Existence.

HITHERTO we have only considered the essences of things; which being
only abstract ideas, and thereby removed in our thoughts from particular
existence, (that being the proper operation of the mind, in abstraction,
to consider an idea under no other existence but what it has in the
understandings,) gives us no knowledge of real existence at all. Where,
by the way, we may take notice, that universal propositions of whose
truth or falsehood we can have certain knowledge concern not existence:
and further, that all particular affirmations or negations that would
not be certain if they were made general, are only concerning existence;