11. Confusion concerns always two ideas. Confusion making it a
difficulty to separate two things that should be separated, concerns
always two ideas; and those most which most approach one another.
Whenever, therefore, we suspect any idea to be confused, we must
examine what other it is in danger to be confounded with, or which
it cannot easily be separated from; and that will always be found an
idea belonging to another name, and so should be a different thing,
from which yet it is not sufficiently distinct: being either the
same with it, or making a part of it, or at least as properly called
by that name as the other it is ranked under; and so keeps not that
difference from that other idea which the different names import.
12. Causes of confused ideas. This, I think, is the confusion proper
to ideas; which still carries with it a secret reference to names.
At least, if there be any other confusion of ideas, this is that which
most of all disorders men's thoughts and discourses: ideas, as
ranked under names, being those that for the most part men reason of
within themselves, and always those which they commune about with
others. And therefore where there are supposed two different ideas,
marked by two different names, which are not as distinguishable as the
sounds that stand for them, there never fails to be confusion; and
where any ideas are distinct as the ideas of those two sounds they are
marked by, there can be between them no confusion.
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