His own choice having made that combination, it had all
in it he intended it should, and so could not but be perfect, could
not but be adequate; it being referred to no other archetype which
it was supposed to represent.
45. These words, kinneah and niouph, by degrees grew into common
use, and then the case was somewhat altered. Adam's children had the
same faculties, and thereby the same power that he had, to make what
complex ideas of mixed modes they pleased in their own minds; to
abstract them, and make what sounds they pleased the signs of them:
but the use of names being to make our ideas within us known to
others, that cannot be done, but when the same sign stands for the
same idea in two who would communicate their thoughts and discourse
together. Those, therefore, of Adam's children, that found these two
words, kinneah and niouph, in familiar use, could not take them for
insignificant sounds, but must needs conclude they stood for
something; for certain ideas, abstract ideas. they being general
names; which abstract ideas were the essences of the species
distinguished by those names. If, therefore, they would use these
words as names of species already established and agreed on, they were
obliged to conform the ideas in their minds, signified by these names,
to the ideas that they stood for in other men's minds, as to their
patterns and archetypes; and then indeed their ideas of these
complex modes were liable to be inadequate, as being very apt
(especially those that consisted of combinations of many simple ideas)
not to be exactly conformable to the ideas in other men's minds, using
the same names; though for this there be usually a remedy at hand,
which is to ask the meaning of any word we understand not of him
that uses it: it being as impossible to know certainly what the
words jealousy and adultery stand for in another man's mind, with whom
I would discourse about them; as it was impossible, in the beginning
of language, to know what kinneah and niouph stood for in another
man's mind, without explication; they being voluntary signs in every
one.
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