13. As the _invention_ of _names_ hath been _necessary_ for the drawing men _out of_ ignorance, by calling to their remembrance the necessary _coherence_ of one conception to another; so also hath it on the other side precipitated men into _error_: insomuch, that whereas by the benefit of _words_ and ratiocination they exceed _brute beasts_ in knowledge, and the commodities that accompany the same; so they exceed them also in _error_: for _true_ and _false_ are things not incident to beasts, because they adhere not to propositions and language; nor have they ratiocination, whereby to multiply one untruth by another, as men have. [Sidenote: Translation of the discourse of the mind into the discourse of the tongue, and of the errors thence proceeding.] 14. It is the _nature_ almost of every _corporal_ thing, being _often moved_ in one and the same manner, to receive continually a _greater_ and _greater easiness_ and aptitude to the _same_ motion, insomuch as in time the same becometh so _habitual_, that, to _beget_ it, there needs no more than to _begin_ it. The _passions_ of man, as they are the beginning of _voluntary_ motions; so are they the beginning of _speech_, which is the motion of the tongue. And men desiring to shew others the knowledge, opinions, conceptions, and passions which are in themselves, and to that end having invented _language_, have by that means transferred all that _discursion_ of their _mind_ mentioned in the former chapter, by the _motion_ of their _tongues_, into _discourse_ of _words_: and _ratio_ now is but _oratio_, for the most part, wherein custom hath so great a power, that the mind suggesteth only the first word; the rest follow _habitually_, and are not followed by the mind; as it is with beggars, when they say their _paternoster_, putting together such words, and in such manner, as in their education they have learned from their nurses, from their companies, or from their teachers, having _no images_ or _conceptions_ in their mind, answering to the words they speak: and as they have learned themselves, so they teach posterity. Now, if we consider the power of those _deceptions_ of the sense, mentioned chapter II. section 10, and also how _unconstantly_ names have been settled, and how subject they are to _equivocation_, and how _diversified_ by _passion_, (scarce two men agreeing what is to be called good, and what evil; what liberality, what prodigality; what valour, what temerity) and how subject men are to paralogism or fallacy in reasoning, I may in a manner conclude, that it is impossible to _rectify_ so many errors of any one man, as must needs proceed from those causes, without beginning _anew_ from the very first grounds of all our knowledge and sense; and instead of books, reading over orderly one’s own conceptions: in which meaning, I take _nosce te ipsum_ for a precept worthy the reputation it hath gotten. -------