showing the meaning of one word by several others not signifying each
the same thing, can in the names of simple ideas have no place.


8. Instances: Scholastic definitions of Motion.

The not observing this difference in our ideas, and their names, has
produced that eminent trifling in the schools, which is so easy to be
observed in the definitions they give us of some few of these simple
ideas. For, as to the greatest part of them, even those masters
of definitions were fain to leave them untouched, merely by the
impossibility they found in it. What more exquisite jargon could the wit
of man invent, than this definition:--'The act of a being in power, as
far forth as in power;' which would puzzle any rational man, to whom it
was not already known by its famous absurdity, to guess what word it
could ever be supposed to be the explication of. If Tully, asking a
Dutchman what BEWEEGINGE was, should have received this explication
in his own language, that it was 'actus entis in potentia quatenus in
potentia;' I ask whether any one can imagine he could thereby have
understood what the word BEWEEGINGE signified, or have guessed what idea
a Dutchman ordinarily had in his mind, and would signify to another,
when he used that sound?


9. Modern definition of Motion.

Nor have the modern philosophers, who have endeavoured to throw off the
jargon of the schools, and speak intelligibly, much better succeeded
in defining simple ideas, whether by explaining their causes, or any
otherwise. The atomists, who define motion to be 'a passage from one