they are apt to continue when they are men:  and so begin at the wrong end, learning words first and perfectly, but make the notions to which they apply those words afterwards very overtly.  By this means it comes to pass, that men speaking the language of their country, i.e. according to grammar rules of that language, do yet speak very improperly of things themselves; and, by their arguing one with another, make but small progress in the discoveries of useful truths, and the knowledge of things, as they are to be found in themselves, and not in our imaginations; and it matters not much for the improvement of our knowledge how they are called.

25.  Not easy to be made so.

It were therefore to be wished, That men versed in physical inquiries, and acquainted with the several sorts of natural bodies, would set down those simple ideas wherein they observe the individuals of each sort constantly to agree.  This would remedy a great deal of that confusion which comes from several persons applying the same name to a collection of a smaller or greater number of sensible qualities, proportionably as they have been more or less acquainted with, or accurate in examining, the qualities of any sort of things which come under one denomination.  But a dictionary of this sort, containing, as it were, a natural history, requires too many hands as well as too much time, cost, pains, and sagacity ever to be hoped for; and till that be done, we must content ourselves with such definitions of the names of substances as explain the sense men use them in.  And it would be well, where there is occasion, if they would afford us so much.  This yet is not usually done; but men talk to one another, and dispute in words, whose meaning is not agreed between them, out of a mistake that the significations of common words are certainly established, and the precise ideas they stand for perfectly known; and that it is a shame to be ignorant of them.  Both which suppositions are false, no names of complex ideas having so settled determined significations, that they are constantly used for the same precise ideas.  Nor is it a shame for a man to have a certain knowledge of anything, but by the necessary ways of attaining it; and so it is no discredit not to know what precise idea any sound stands for in another man’s mind, without he declare it to me by some other way than barely using that sound, there being no other way, without such a declaration, certainly to know it.  Indeed the necessity of communication by language brings men to an agreement in the signification of common words, within some tolerable latitude, that may serve for ordinary conversation:  and so a man cannot be supposed wholly ignorant of the ideas which are annexed to words by common use, in a language familiar to him.  But common use being but a very uncertain rule, which reduces itself at last to the ideas of particular men, proves often but a very variable standard.  But though such a Dictionary as I have above mentioned