For the man who first framed the idea of hypocrisy,
might have either taken it at first from the observation of one who
made show of good qualities which he had not; or else have framed that
idea in his mind without having any such pattern to fashion it by. For
it is evident that, in the beginning of languages and societies of
men, several of those complex ideas, which were consequent to the
constitutions established amongst them, must needs have been in the
minds of men, before they existed anywhere else; and that many names
that stood for such complex ideas were in use, and so those ideas
framed, before the combinations they stood for ever existed.
3. Sometimes got by the explication of their names. Indeed, now that
languages are made, and abound with words standing for such
combinations, an usual way of getting these complex ideas is, by the
explication of those terms that stand for them. For, consisting of a
company of simple ideas combined, they may, by words standing for
those simple ideas, be represented to the mind of one who
understands those words, though that complex combination of simple
ideas were never offered to his mind by the real existence of
things. Thus a man may come to have the idea of sacrilege or murder,
by enumerating to him the simple ideas which these words stand for;
without ever seeing either of them committed.
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