CHAPTER VI. 389 use such words as have two or three definitions of the name be- longing to them, that is, such words as have two or three senses, where there is any danger of mistake. Where your chief busi- ness is to inform the judgment, and to explain 's matter, rather than to persuade or affect, be not fond of expressing yourselves in figurative language, when there are any proper words that signify the same idea in their literal sense. It is the ambiguity of names, as we have often said, that brings almost infinite con- fusion into our conception of things. But where there is a necessity of using an ambiguous word, there let double care be used in defining that word and declaring in what sense you take it. And be sure to cutler no ambiguous word ever to come into your definitions. VII. " In communicating your notions, use every word as near as possible in the same sense in which mankind commonly use it; or which writers that have gone before you have usually affixed to it, upon condition that it is free from ambiguity. Though names are in their original merely arbitrary, yet we should always keep to the established meaning of them, unless great necessity requires the alteration ; for when any word has been used to signify an idea, that old idea will recur in the mind when the word is heard or read rather than any new idea which we may fasten to it. And this is one reason why the received definition of names should be changed as little as possible. But I add farther, that though a word entirely new, intro- duced into a language, may be affixed to what idea you please, yet an old word ought never to be fixed to an unaccustomed idea, without just and evident necessity, or without present or previous notice, lest we introduce thereby a licence for all man- ner of pernicious equivocations and falsehoods ; as for instance; when an idle boy who has not seen his book all the morning, shall tell his master that he has learned his lesson, he can never excuse himself by saying, that by the word lesson he meant his brea /fast, and by the word learn he meant eating ; surely this would be construed a downright lie, and his fancied wit would hardly procure his pardon. In using an ambiguous word, 'which has been used indif- ferent senses, we may choose what we think the most proper sense, as I have done, p. 46. in naming the poles of the Isad- stone, North or South. And when a word has been used in two or three senses, and his made a great inroad for error upon that account, it is of good service to drop one or two of those senses, and leave it only one remaining, and fix the other senses or ideas to other words. So the modern philosophers, when they treat of the human soul, they call it the mind, or mess humana, and leave the word' Vor., an. A n
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