soul, to expresse such actions as are most remote from sense, we make use
of such Images as are corporeall in their first originall, although for the
most part they have lost their proper significance to assume another that
is purely figurative.

'Tis by their Principles I reduce to naturall reason all imaginable ways by
which words alter their primitive signification to imbrace another, either
more inlarg'd or reserv'd, or never so little diversifi'd either in
Proportion or Alliance; for tis no easie matter for words to travell from
one Country to another without meeting with the same casualties, that use
to befall forreign Plants which, are seldome remov'd into a new soile, but
degenerate and either lose some of their Native virtue, or acquire some
new. But most people having met wich this generally proposall, to expresse
at first appearance, what they think with as little trouble as is possible,
it thence falls out that to ingrosse a great deal of sense in a few words,
they scarce allow enough precisely to marke out the simple ideas of their
minds, fitted out to all their severall resemblances, they that are most
simple in themselves, are commonly compounds in their significations,
neither is there any one of the least considerable, but what is diversify'd
in each Language by a thousand different modifications.

From thence proceed all the methods of inflexion, derivation, and
composition that give being to the most subtle kind of Sophistry; all the
species and forms of Nouns, Verbs, and particles that make up the oeconomy
of a Language, together withall diversity of Numbers, Genders, Cases,
tenses, Modes, and Persons which have more of Art than at first sight is
imagin'd, for the Custome of Nations hath not only authoriz'd these
inventions to vary the Cadence of words, but with an admirable facility to
expresse all the deflexions, by which an Idea of the same object may be
represented to our conceptions according as it admitts of a mixture of