An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 3 and 4Locke, John
Philosophy
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 3 and 4
Locke, John
Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800
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
_M_IXED _M_ODES ARE MOST LIABLE TO DOUBTFULNESS AND IMPERFECTION, FOR
THE TWO FIRST OF THESE REASONS; and the NAMES OF _S_UBSTANCES CHIEFLY
FOR THE TWO LATTER.
6. The Names of mixed Modes doubtful.
First, The names of MIXED MODES are, many of them, liable to great
uncertainty and obscurity in their signification.
I. Because the Ideas they stand for are so complex.
Because of that GREAT COMPOSITION these complex ideas are often made
up of. To make words serviceable to the end of communication, it is
necessary, as has been said, that they excite in the hearer exactly the
same idea they stand for in 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 same precise idea, without any the least variation. Hence it
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 tomorrow.
7. Secondly because they have no Standards in Nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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