380 LOGIC : os, THE MOIST /ISE OF REASON, to the enrichment of our understandings if we spend too much of our time and pains among infinites and unsearchables,_ and those things for the investigation whereof we are not furnished with proper faculties in the present state. It is therefore of great service to the true improvement, of the mind to distinguish well between knowables and unknowables; As far as things are knowable by us, it is of excellent use to accustom ourselves to clear and distinct ideas. Now among many other occasions òf the darkness and mistakes of our minds, there are these two things which most remarkably bring confu- sion into our ideas. 1. That from out infancy we have liad the ideas of things so far connected with the ideas of words, that we often mistake words for things, we mingle and confound one with the other. 2. From our youngest years we have been ever ready to consider things not so much in their own natures, as in their various respects to ourselves, and chiefly to our senses; and we have also joined and mingled the ideas of some things, with many other ideas, to which they were net a -kin in their own natures. In order therefore to a clear and distinct knowledge of ,things, we must unclothe them of all these relations and mix- tures, that we may contemplate them naked, and in their own natures, and distinguish the subject that we have in view from all other subjects whatsoever : now to perform this well, we must here consider the definition of words, and the defnition of things. SECT. II. =Of the Definition of Words or Names. IF we could conceive of things as angels and unbodied spi- rits do, without involving them in those clouds which words and language throw upon them, we should seldom be in danger of such 'mistakes as are perpetually committed by us in the present state ; and indeed it would be of unknown advantage to us to accustom ourselves to form ideas of things without words, that we might know them in their own proper natures. But since we must use words, both to learn and to communicate most of our notions, we should do it with just rules of caution. I have already'deelared in part,'how`often and by what means our words become the occasion of errors in our conceptions of things. To remedy such üiconveniences, we must get 'an exact definition of the words we make use of, that is, we must determine pre cisely the sense of our words; which is called the definition of the name. Now a definition of the name being only a declaration in what sense the word is Used, or what idea or object we mean by it, this may be expressed by any one or more of the properties,
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