not to be exactly conformable to the ideas in other men's minds, using
the same names; though for this there be usually a remedy at hand, which
is to ask the meaning of any word we understand not of him that uses it:
it being as impossible to know certainly what the words jealousy and
adultery (which I think answer [Hebrew] and [Hebrew]) stand for in
another man's mind, with whom I would discourse about them; as it was
impossible, in the beginning of language, to know what KINNEAH and
NIOUPH stood for in another man's mind, without explication; they being
voluntary signs in every one.


46. Instances of a species of Substance named ZAHAB.

Let us now also consider, after the same manner, the names of substances
in their first application. One of Adam's children, roving in the
mountains, lights on a glittering substance which pleases his eye. Home
he carries it to Adam, who, upon consideration of it, finds it to be
hard, to have a bright yellow colour, and an exceeding great weight.
These perhaps, at first, are all the qualities he takes notice of in it;
and abstracting this complex idea, consisting of a substance having that
peculiar bright yellowness, and a weight very great in proportion to its
bulk, he gives the name ZAHAB, to denominate and mark all substances
that have these sensible qualities in them. It is evident now, that,
in this case, Adam acts quite differently from what he did before, in
forming those ideas of mixed modes to which he gave the names KINNEAH
and NIOUPH. For there he put ideas together only by his own imagination,
not taken from the existence of anything; and to them he gave names to
denominate all things that should happen to agree to those his abstract
ideas, without considering whether any such thing did exist or not: the
standard there was of his own making. But in the forming his idea of