This exception has so much appearance of justice, that I think
myself obliged to give a reason why I have followed this method. I
must confess, then, that, when I first began this Discourse of the
Understanding, and a good while after, I had not the least thought
that any consideration of words was at all necessary to it. But
when, having passed over the original and composition of our ideas,
I began to examine the extent and certainty of our knowledge, I
found it had so near a connexion with words, that, unless their
force and manner of signification were first well observed, there
could be very little said clearly and pertinently concerning
knowledge: which being conversant about truth, had constantly to do
with propositions. And though it terminated in things, yet it was
for the most part so much by the intervention of words, that they
seemed scarce separable from our general knowledge. At least they
interpose themselves so much between our understandings, and the truth
which it would contemplate and apprehend, that, like the medium
through which visible objects pass, the obscurity and disorder do
not seldom cast a mist before our eyes, and impose upon our
understandings. If we consider, in the fallacies men put upon
themselves, as well as others, and the mistakes in men's disputes
and notions, how great a part is owing to words, and their uncertain
or mistaken significations, we shall have reason to think this no
small obstacle in the way to knowledge; which I conclude we are the
more carefully to be warned of, because it has been so far from
being taken notice of as an inconvenience, that the arts of
improving it have been made the business of men's study, and
obtained the reputation of learning and subtilty, as we shall see in
the following chapter.
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