and sometimes almost opposite significations. There is a particle of a single letter in the Hebrew tongue, of which there are reckoned, as I remember, seventy, I am sure above fifty significations.

But is one of the most familiar particles in our language: and he that calls it a discretive conjunction answering sed in Latin, or mais in French, thinks he has sufficiently explained it: but it seems to me to intimate several relations of propositions, or of parts of them.-1st. But to say no more: here it intimates a stop of the mind in the course it was going, before it came to the end.-2dly, I saw but two plants: here it shews that the mind limits the sense to what is expressed, with a negation of all other.-3dly, You pray: but it is not that God would bring you to the true religion, but that he would confirm you in your own: the first intimates a supposition in the mind of something otherwise than it should be; the latter shews that the mind makes a direct opposition between that and what goes before it.-5thly. All animals have sense; but a dog is an animal: here it signifies little more, than that the latter proposition is joined to the former, as the Minor of a Syllogism. Many other significations of this particle might be added, in all of which I doubt if it would deserve the title of discretive: but I intend not here a full explication of this sort of signs; some of which have the sense of a whole sentence contained in them.

CHAP. VIII.

OF ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE TERMS.

IF we had considered words with attention, they would have given us an insight into the nature of our ideas. We have shewn that the mind has a power to abstract its ideas, so as to make them general essences, to distinguish the sorts of things.

Abstract ideas are all distinct; so that not any two abstract words can be affirmed one of another: though man is a rational animal; we cannot say that humanity is animality, or rationality. We may observe that all our simple ideas have abstract as well as concrete names; whereof one is a substantive, the other an adjective; as, whiteness, white; sweetness, sweet; and the same is the case with our ideas of modes and relations; as justice, just; equality, equal. But as to our ideas of substances, we have few or none abstract names of them at all. The schools coined a few, which could never gain admittance into common use; as animalitas, corporietas, humanitas: and this seems to me to intimate the confession of all mankind, that they have no ideas of the real essences of substances, since they have not names for them. Humanitas indeed was a word familiar among the Romans, not for the abstract es

sence of any substance, but for the name of a mode; and its concrete was humanus not homo.

CHAP. IX.

OF THE IMPERFECTION OF WORDS.

FROM what has been said we may easily perceive the imperfection of language; and that from their very nature many words must be doubtful and uncertain in their signification: but to determine how far they are perfect, we must consider their use and end. We have already mentioned a double use of words, one to record our thoughts, and the other to communicate them. Any words will serve a man to record his own thoughts by, as long as he constantly uses the same sign for the same idea.

Words for communication of thoughts have a double use; a civil and a philosophical. By their civil use, I mean such a communication of ideas by words as will serve for the ordinary commerce of life by their philosophical use, I mean such as may serve to convey precise notions of things, and to express in general propositions certain undoubted truths which the mind may rest upon in its search after knowledge. Much greater exactness is required in this use of them than in the former.

Sounds having no natural connexion with our ideas,

the uncertainty of their signification has its cause in the ideas they stand for. The idea which each represents should be learnt and retained by those who would discourse intelligibly: but this is hardest to be done, -1st, where the ideas they denote are very complex: -2dly, where the ideas having no connexion in nature, can be adjusted by no fixt standard:-3dly, where the signification of the word is referred to a standard not easily known:-and 4thly, where the signification of the word and the real essence of the thing are not exactly the same.

The names of mixed modes are most liable to imperfection for the two first of these reasons, and the names of substances chiefly for the two last. The names of mixed modes are doubtful, 1st, because the ideas they denote are very complex: thus moral terms have seldom the same precise signification in two different men, since one man's complex idea seldom agrees with another's, and often differs from his own:-2dly, and because they for the most part want standards in nature: the signification of the words murder and sacrilege cannot be known from things themselves: many of the parts of those complex ideas are not visible in the actions themselves: the intention of the mind, or the relation of holy things has no necessary connexion with the outward action of him who commits either. Common use, that is, the Rule of Propriety, regulates the meaning of words

tolerably well for common conversation; but in philosophical discourses a precise signification is required for them. Common use allows such a latitude to all names of complex ideas in particular, that the measure of propriety frequently becomes a matter of dispute. What different ideas do the terms Glory and Gratitude excite in different men. The way of learning the names of mixed modes contributes to the doubtfulness of their signification: for children learn the names of simple ideas and substances, by being immediately told the name that expresses such a sensation or perception; but in mixed modes, (and especially moral terms which are most material,) thợ sound is usually learnt first, and the explication of it left to their own observation, or that of others: and so little regard is generally had to the precise meaning of terms, that most men have but a very confused and vague sense of the signification of moral words. In the controversial debates, or familiar discourse, even of intelligent and studious men, what different notions do we observe them to entertain of the terms, Honour, Faith, Grace, Religion, Church. Hence in the interpretation of Laws, divine or human, comments beget comments, and explications make new matter for explications without end.

I need not notice (for the numerous volumes of learned men sufficiently prove) the obscurity that must from this cause hang over the writings of the