They have their union and combination
only from the understanding which unites them under one name: but,
uniting them without any rule or pattern, it cannot be but that the
signification of the name that stands for such voluntary collections
should be often various in the minds of different men, who have scarce
any standing rule to regulate themselves and their notions by, in such
arbitrary ideas.
8. Common use, or propriety not a sufficient remedy. It is true,
common use, that is, the rule of propriety may be supposed here to
afford some aid, to settle the signification of language; and it
cannot be denied but that in some measure it does. Common use
regulates the meaning of words pretty well for common conversation;
but nobody having an authority to establish the precise
signification of words, nor determine to what ideas any one shall
annex them, common use is not sufficient to adjust them to
Philosophical Discourses; there being scarce any name of any very
complex idea (to say nothing of others) which, in common use, has
not a great latitude, and which, keeping within the bounds of
propriety, may not be made the sign of far different ideas. Besides,
the rule and measure of propriety itself being nowhere established, it
is often matter of dispute, whether this or that way of using a word
be propriety of speech or no.
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