prejudice to be encountered, a bare and naked demonstration of the truth
will scarce suffice. We must also satisfy the scruples that men may raise
in favour of their preconceived notions, show whence the mistake arises,
how it came to spread, and carefully disclose and root out those false
persuasions that an early prejudice might have implanted in the mind.

139. FIRST, therefore, it will be demanded how visible extension and
figures come to be called by the same name with tangible extension and
figures, if they are not of the same kind with them? It must be something
more than humour or accident that could occasion a custom so constant and
universal as this, which has obtained in all ages and nations of the
world, and amongst allranks of men, the learned as well as the
illiterate.

140. To which I answer, we can no more argue a visible and tangible
square to be of the same species from their being called by the same
name, than we can that a tangible square and the monosyllable consisting
of six letters whereby it is marked are of the same species because they
are both called by the same name. It is customary to call written words
and the things they signify by the same name: for words not being
regarded in their own nature, or otherwise than as they are marks of
things, it had been superfluous, and beside the design of language, to
have given them names distinct from those of the things marked by them.
The same reason holds here also. Visible figures are the marks of
tangible figures, and from sect. 59 it is plain that in themselves they
are little regarded, or upon any other score than for their connexion
with tangible figures, which by nature they are ordained to signify. And
because this language of nature doth not vary in different ages or
nations, hence it is that in all times and places visible figures are
called by the same names as the respective tangible figures suggested by