This could not have happened if these species were the steady
workmanship of nature, and not collections made and abstracted by
the mind, in order to naming, and for the convenience of
communication. The terms of our law, which are not empty sounds,
will hardly find words that answer them in the Spanish or Italian,
no scanty languages; much less, I think, could any one translate
them into the Caribbee or Westoe tongues: and the versura of the
Romans, or corban of the Jews, have no words in other languages to
answer them; the reason whereof is plain, from what has been said.
Nay, if we look a little more nearly into this matter, and exactly
compare different languages, we shall find that, though they have
words which in translations and dictionaries are supposed to answer
one another, yet there is scarce one of ten amongst the names of
complex ideas, especially of mixed modes, that stands for the same
precise idea which the word does that in dictionaries it is rendered
by. There are no ideas more common and less compounded than the
measures of time, extension and weight; and the Latin names, hora,
pes, libra, are without difficulty rendered by the English names,
hour, foot, and pound: but yet there is nothing more evident than that
the ideas a Roman annexed to these Latin names, were very far
different from those which an Englishman expresses by those English
ones.
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