22.  VI.  Sixthly, by proceeding upon the supposition that the WOrds we use have a certain and evident Signification which other men cannot but understand.

Sixthly, there remains yet another more general, though perhaps less observed, abuse of words; and that is, that men having by a long and familiar use annexed to them certain ideas, they are apt to imagine so near and necessary A connexion between the names and signification they use them in, that they forwardly suppose one cannot but understand what their meaning is; and therefore one ought to acquiesce in the words delivered, as if it were past doubt that, in the use of those common received sounds, the speaker and hearer had necessarily the same precise ideas.  Whence presuming, that when they have in discourse used any term, they have thereby, as it were, set before others the very thing they talked of.  And so likewise taking the words of others, as naturally standing for just what they themselves have been accustomed to apply them to, they never trouble themselves to explain their own, or understand clearly others’ meaning.  From whence commonly proceeds noise, and wrangling, without improvement or information; whilst men take words to be the constant regular marks of agreed notions, which in truth are no more but the voluntary and unsteady signs of their own ideas.  And yet men think it strange, if in discourse, or (where it is often absolutely necessary) in dispute, one sometimes asks the meaning of their terms:  though the arguings one may every day observe in conversation make it evident, that there are few names of complex ideas which any two men use for the same just precise collection.  It is hard to name a word which will not be a clear instance of this.  Life is a term, none more familiar.  Any one almost would take it for an affront to be asked what he meant by it.  And yet if it comes in question, whether a plant that lies ready formed in the seed have life; whether the embryo in an egg before incubation, or a man in a swoon without sense or motion, be alive or no; it is easy to perceive that a clear, distinct, settled idea does not always accompany the use of so known a word as that of life is.  Some gross and confused conceptions men indeed ordinarily have, to which they apply the common words of their language; and such a loose use of their words serves them well enough in their ordinary discourses or affairs.  But this is not sufficient for philosophical inquiries.  Knowledge and reasoning require precise determinate ideas.  And though men will not be so importunately dull as not to understand what others say, without demanding an explication of their terms; nor so troublesomely critical as to correct others in the use of the words they receive from them:  yet, where truth and knowledge are concerned in the case, I know not what fault it can be, to desire the explication of words