respect of carnal knowledge, they are both taken in under INCEST: and
that still for the same convenience of expressing under one name, and
reckoning of one species, such unclean mixtures as have a peculiar
turpitude beyond others; and this to avoid circumlocutions and tedious
descriptions.


8. Whereof the intranslatable Words of divers Languages are a Proof.

A moderate skill in different languages will easily satisfy one of the
truth of this, it being so obvious to observe great store of words in
one language which have not any that answer them in another. Which
plainly shows that those of one country, by their customs and manner of
life, have found occasion to make several complex ideas, and given names
to them, which others never collected into specific ideas. This could
not have happened if these species were the steady workmanship of
nature, and not collections made and abstracted by the mind, in order to
naming, and for the convenience of communication. The terms of our law,
which are not empty sounds, will hardly find words that answer them in
the Spanish or Italian, no scanty languages; much less, I think, could
any one translate them into the Caribbee or Westoe tongues: and the
VERSURA of the Romans, or CORBAN of the Jews, have no words in other
languages to answer them; the reason whereof is plain, from what has
been said. Nay, if we look a little more nearly into this matter, and
exactly compare different languages, we shall find that, though they
have words which in translations and dictionaries are supposed to answer
one another, yet there is scarce one often amongst the names of complex
ideas, especially of mixed modes, that stands for the same precise idea
which the word does that in dictionaries it is rendered by. There are
no ideas more common and less compounded than the measures of time,