whose sense seems dubious; or why a man should be ashamed to own his ignorance in what sense another man uses his words; since he has no other way of certainly knowing it but by being informed.  This abuse of taking words upon trust has nowhere spread so far, nor with so ill effects, as amongst men of letters.  The multiplication and obstinacy of disputes, which have so laid waste the intellectual world, is owing to nothing more than to this ill use of words.  For though it be generally believed that there is great diversity of opinions in the volumes and variety of controversies the world is distracted with; yet the most I can find that the contending learned men of different parties do, in their arguings one with another, is, that they speak different languages.  For I am apt to imagine, that when any of them, quitting terms, think upon things, and know what they think, they think all the same:  though perhaps what they would have be different.

23.  The Ends of Language:  First, To convey our Ideas.

To conclude this consideration of the imperfection and abuse of language.  The ends of language in our discourse with others being chiefly these three:  First, to make known one man’s thoughts or ideas to another; Secondly, to do so with as much ease and quickness as possible; and, Thirdly, thereby to convey the knowledge of things:  language is either abused or deficient, when it fails of any of these three.

First, Words fail in the first of these ends, and lay not open one man’s ideas to another’s view:  1.  When men have names in their mouths without any determinate ideas in their minds whereof they are the signs:  or, 2.  When they apply the common received names of any language to ideas, to which the common use of that language does not apply them:  or 3.  When they apply them very unsteadily, making them stand now for one, and by and by for another idea.

24.  Secondly, To do it with Quickness.

Secondly, Men fail of conveying their thoughts with the quickness and ease that may be, when they have complex ideas without having any distinct names for them.  This is sometimes the fault of the language itself, which has not in it a sound yet applied to such a signification; and sometimes the fault of the man, who has not yet learned the name for that idea he would show another.

25.  Thirdly, Therewith to convey the Knowledge of Things.

Thirdly, there is no knowledge of things conveyed by men’s words, when their ideas agree not to the reality of things.  Though it be a defect that has its original in our ideas, which are not so conformable to the nature of things as attention, study and application might make them, yet it fails not to extend itself to our words too, when we use them as signs of real beings, which yet never had any reality or existence.

26.  How Men’s Words fail in all these:  First, when used without any ideas.