I confess that, in the beginning of languages, it was necessary
to have the idea before one gave it the name: and so it is still,
where, making a new complex idea, one also, by giving it a new name,
makes a new word. But this concerns not languages made, which have
generally pretty well provided for ideas which men have frequent
occasion to have and communicate; and in such, I ask whether it be not
the ordinary method, that children learn the names of mixed modes
before they have their ideas? What one of a thousand ever frames the
abstract ideas of glory and ambition, before he has heard the names of
them? In simple ideas and substances I grant it is otherwise, which,
being such ideas as have a real existence and union in nature, the
ideas and names are got one before the other, as it happens.
16. Reason of my being so large on this subject. What has been
said here of mixed modes is, with very little difference, applicable
also to relations; which, since every man himself may observe, I may
spare myself the pains to enlarge on: especially, since what I have
here said concerning Words in this third Book, will possibly be
thought by some to be much more than what so slight a subject
required. I allow it might be brought into a narrower compass; but I
was willing to stay my reader on an argument that appears to me new
and a little out of the way, (I am sure it is one I thought not of
when I began to write,) that, by searching it to the bottom, and
turning it on every side, some part or other might meet with every
one's thoughts, and give occasion to the most averse or negligent to
reflect on a general miscarriage, which, though of great
consequence, is little taken notice of.
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