CHAPTER VI. 363 scurvy -grass ; but if we count no part useful, we call it a weed, and throw it out of the garden ; and yet perhaps our next neigh- bour knows some valuable property and use of it ; he plants it in his garden, and gives it the title of an herb or aflower. You see here how small is the real distinction of these several plants, considered in their general nature as the lesser vegetables : yet what very different ideas we vulgarly form concerning them, and make different species of them, chiefly because of the different names given them. Now when things are set in this clear light, it appears how ridiculous it would be for two persons to contend, whether dandelion be an herb or a weed ; whether it be a pot -herb or a sallad ; when by the custom or fancy of different families, this one plant obtains all these names according to the several uses of it, and the value that is but upon it. Note here, that I find no manner of fault with the variety of names which are given to several plants, according to the various uses we make of them. But I would not have our judgments imposed upon hereby, to think that these mere nominal species, viz. herbs, sallad, and weeds, become three really different species of beings, on this account, that they have different names and uses,, But I proceed to other instances. It has been the custom of mankind, when they have been angry with any thing, to add a new ill name to it, that they may convey thereby a hateful idea of it, though the nature of the thing still abides the same. So the papists call the protestants, heretics: a profane 'person calls a man of piety, a precisian : and in the times of the civil war in the last century, the royalists call the parliamentarians, fanatics, roundheads, and sectaries. And they in requital call the royalists, enalignants : but the par- tizans on each side were really neither better nor worse for these names. It has also been a frequent practice, on the other hand, to Put new favourable names upon ill ideas, on purpose to take off the odium of them. But notwithstanding all these flattering names and titles, a man of profuse generosity is but a spendthrift ; a natural son is a bastard still ; a gallant is an adulterer ; and a lady of pleasure is a whore. III. Take heed of believing the nature and essence of twó or more things to be certainly the same, because they may have the same name given them. This has been an unhappy and fatal oc- casion of a thousand mistakes in the natural, in the civil, and in the religious affairs of life, both amongst the vulgar and the, learned. I shall give two or three instances, chiefly in the mat- ters of natural philosophy, having hinted several dangers of this kind relating to theology, in the foregoing discourse concerning. equivocal words. .
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