CHAPTER IX. OF THE IMPERFECTION OF WORDS. BOOK III 1441 CHAP. IX. Words are used for recording 1. FROM what has been said in the foregoing chapters, it is easy to perceive what imperfection there is in language, and how the very nature of words makes it almost unavoidable for many of them to be doubtful and uncertain in their significations. To examine the perfection or imperfection of words, it is necessary first to consider their use and end: for as they are more or less fitted to attain that, so they are Thoughts. more or less perfect. We have, in the former part of this discourse often, upon occasion, mentioned a double use of words. and com municating our Any First, One for the recording of our own thoughts. Secondly, The other for the communicating of our thoughts to others 1. 2. As to the first of these, for the recording our own thoughts for the help of our own memories, whereby, as it were, we talk for record- to ourselves, any words will serve the turn. For since sounds will serve ing. Communi are voluntary and indifferent 2 signs of any ideas, a man may use what words he pleases to signify his own ideas to himself: and there will be no imperfection in them, if he constantly use the same sign for the same idea for then he cannot fail of having his meaning understood, wherein consists the right use and perfection of language. 3. Secondly, As to communication by words, that too has cation by a double use. Words either for civil or philosophical purposes. I. Civil. II. Philosophical. 1 Cf. ch. x. § 23. 2 'indifferent,'i. e. there being no ab stract reason for preferring one verbal sign to another to signify any idea. 1441 First, By their civil use, I mean such a communication of BOOK III. thoughts and ideas by words, as may serve for the upholding СНАР, Х. common conversation and commerce, about the ordinary affairs and conveniences of civil life, in the societies of men, one amongst another. Secondly, By the philosophical use of words, I mean such a use of them as may serve to convey the precise notions of things, and to express in general propositions certain and undoubted truths, which the mind may rest upon and be satisfied with in its search after true knowledge. These two uses are very distinct; and a great deal less exactness will serve in the one than in the other, as we shall see in what follows. fection of Words is fulness or 4. The chief end of language in communication being to The imperbe understood, words serve not well for that end, neither in civil nor philosophical discourse, when any word does not the Doubtexcite in the hearer the same idea which it stands for in the ambiguity mind of the speaker. Now, since sounds have no natural 1 of their Significaconnexion with our ideas, but have all their signification from tion, which the arbitrary imposition of men, the doubtfulness and uncertainty of their signification, which is the imperfection we sort of ideas they here are speaking of, has its cause more in the ideas they stand for. stand for than in any incapacity there is in one sound more than in another to signify any idea for in that regard they are all equally perfect. That then which makes doubtfulness and uncertainty in the signification of some more than other words, is the difference of ideas they stand for. is caused by the Causes of 5. Words having naturally no signification, the idea which Natural each stands for must be learned and retained, by those who their Imwould exchange thoughts, and hold intelligible discourse with perfection, ''natural,' i. e. in the nature of things, and apart from the convention of men, there is no reason why this word rather than some other sign should be connected with the meaning actually annexed to it. Locke's expressions exaggerate the arbitrari ness' of the imposition of signs, as if BOOK III. others, in any language. But this is the hardest to be done where, CHAP. IX. especially in those that stand for Mixed Modes, and for our ideas of Sub stances. The First, The ideas they stand for are very complex, and made up of a great number of ideas put together. Secondly, Where the ideas they stand for have no certain connexion in nature; and so no settled standard anywhere in nature existing, to rectify and adjust them by. Thirdly, When the signification of the word is referred to a standard, which standard is not easy to be known. Fourthly, Where the signification of the word and the real essence of the thing are not exactly the same. These are difficulties that attend the signification of several words that are intelligible. Those which are not intelligible at all, such as names standing for any simple ideas which another has not organs or faculties to attain ; as the names of colours to a blind man, or sounds to a deaf man, need not here be mentioned. In all these cases we shall find an imperfection in words; which I shall more at large explain, in their particular application to our several sorts of ideas: for if we examine them, we shall find that the names of Mixed Modes are most liable to doubtfulness and imperfection, for the two first of these reasons; and the names of Substances chiefly for the two latter. 6. First, The names of mixed modes are, many of them, Names of liable to great uncertainty and obscurity in their signifi mixed Modes doubtful. the Ideas cation. I. Because of that great composition these complex ideas First, Because are often made up of. To make words serviceable to the end they stand of communication, it is necessary, as has been said, that they for are so excite in the hearer exactly the same idea they stand for in complex. the mind of the speaker. Without this, men fill one another's heads with noise and sounds; but convey not thereby their thoughts, and lay not before one another their ideas, which is the end of discourse and language. But when a word stands for a very complex idea that is compounded and decompounded, it is not easy for men to form and retain that idea so exactly, as to make the name in common use stand for the CHAP. IX. same precise idea, without any the least variation. Hence it BOOK III. comes to pass that men's names of very compound ideas, such as for the most part are moral words, have seldom in two different men the same precise signification; since one man's complex idea seldom agrees with another's, and often differs from his own-from that which he had yesterday, or will have to-morrow. because ards in 7. Because the names of mixed modes for the most part Secondly, want standards in nature, whereby men may rectify and they have adjust their significations; therefore they are very various and no Standdoubtful. They are assemblages of ideas put together at the Nature. pleasure of the mind, pursuing its own ends of discourse, and suited to its own notions; whereby it designs not to copy anything really existing, but to denominate and rank things as they come to agree with those archetypes or forms it has made. He that first brought the word sham, or wheedle, or banter 1, in use, put together as he thought fit those ideas he made it stand for; and as it is with any new names of modes that are now brought into any language, so it was with the old ones when they were first made use of. Names, therefore, that stand for collections of ideas which the mind makes at pleasure must needs be of doubtful signification, when such collections are nowhere to be found constantly united in nature, nor any patterns to be shown whereby men may adjust them. What the word murder 2, or sacrilege, &c., signifies can never be known from things themselves: there be many of the parts of those complex ideas which are not visible in the action itself; the intention of the mind, or the relation of holy things, which make a part of murder or sacrilege, have no necessary connexion with the outward and visible action of him that commits either: and the pulling the trigger of the gun with which the murder is committed, and is all the action that perhaps is visible, has no natural connexion with those other ideas that make up the complex one named murder. They have their union and combination only from the understanding which unites them under one name: 1 Words only recently in use when Locke wrote. 2' murder'-'murther' in the early editions. BOOK III. but, uniting them without any rule or pattern, it cannot be but that the signification of the name that stands for such voluntary collections should be often various in the minds of different men, who have scarce any standing rule to regulate themselves and their notions by, in such arbitrary ideas. CHAP. IX. Common use, or propriety not a sufficient Remedy. The way of learning these 8. It is true, common use, that is, the rule of propriety may be supposed here to afford some aid, to settle the signification of language; and it cannot be denied but that in some measure it does. Common use regulates the meaning of words pretty well for common conversation; but nobody having an authority to establish the precise signification of words, nor determine to what ideas any one shall annex them, common use is not sufficient to adjust them to Philosophical Discourses; there being scarce any name of any very complex idea (to say nothing of others) which, in common use, has not a great latitude, and which, keeping within the bounds of propriety, may not be made the sign of far different ideas. Besides, the rule and measure of propriety itself being nowhere established, it is often matter of dispute, whether this or that way of using a word be propriety of speech or no. From all which it is evident, that the names of such kind of very complex ideas are naturally liable to this imperfection, to be of doubtful and uncertain signification; and even in men that have a mind to understand one another, do not always stand for the same idea in speaker and hearer. Though the names glory and gratitude be the same in every man's mouth through a whole country, yet the complex collective idea which every one thinks on or intends by that name, is apparently very different in men using the same language. 9. The way also wherein the names of mixed modes are ordinarily learned, does not a little contribute to the doubtfulness of their signification. For if we will observe how children butes also learn languages, we shall find that, to make them understand Names contri to their Doubtful ness. what the names of simple ideas or substances stand for, people ordinarily show them the thing whereof they would have them have the idea; and then repeat to them the name that stands for it; as white, sweet, milk, sugar, cat, dog. But as for mixed modes, especially the most material of them, moral words, the sounds are usually learned first; and then, to know |