6. But this is not the measure which the ♦generality of the world has thought fit to proceed by. Learning is generally placed in a sort of knowledge, widely different from this. The world does not esteem him a learned man, whose learning has cleared his understanding, who is arrived at distinctness of conception, and is a thorough master of notion and discourse. No, it will cost great pains, great labour of mind, and closeness of thinking to attain to this. This therefore must not be learning, but something else must, that is easier to be attained, though little or nothing perfective of the understanding. And in such knowledge it is generally placed. ♦ “gerality” replaced with “generality” *7. For, first, It is reckoned a notable point of learning to understand variety of languages. This alone gives a man a title to learning, without one grain of sense; and on the other side, let a man be an angel for notion and discourse, yet unless he can express the same thought in variety of words, he may go for a rational, but will by no means be esteemed a learned man. Now is it not a strange thing, that so much stress should be laid on so very a trifle? For what am I the better for being able to tell, what ’tis a-clock in twenty languages? What does this signify to the perfection of my understanding? Words are purely in order to sense: and are therefore of no farther value, than as they help either to learn or to communicate it. Therefore, to affect them for themselves, is to turn the means into the end, than which nothing is more absurd. And yet this vain piece of pedantry has prevailed all the world over, and with some to that degree, that they have confounded ideas with words, and have made all science to terminate in the latter. Thus Mr. _Hobbes_ makes reason to be nothing else, but “_Sequela Nominum_, a well-ordered train of words.” Never certainly was a plainer argument of the great degeneracy of mankind. And tho’ all the multipliers of tongues are not comprehended under this latter charge, yet it may concern them to consider, how great a folly it must be to place learning in that, which is one of the greatest curses upon earth, and which shall utterly cease in heaven.