Men take the words they find in use amongst their neighbors; and
that they may not seem ignorant what they stand for, use them
confidently, without much troubling their heads about a certain
fixed meaning; whereby, besides the ease of it, they obtain this
advantage, That, as in such discourses they seldom are in the right,
so they are as seldom to be convinced that they are in the wrong; it
being all one to go about to draw those men out of their mistakes
who have no settled notions, as to dispossess a vagrant of his
habitation who has no settled abode. This I guess to be so; and
every one may observe in himself and others whether it be so or not.
5. Unsteady application of them. Secondly, Another great abuse of
words is inconstancy in the use of them. It is hard to find a
discourse written on any subject, especially of controversy, wherein
one shall not observe, if he read with attention, the same words
(and those commonly the most material in the discourse, and upon which
the argument turns) used sometimes for one collection of simple ideas,
and sometimes for another; which is a perfect abuse of language. Words
being intended for signs of my ideas, to make them known to others,
not by any natural signification, but by a voluntary imposition, it is
plain cheat and abuse, when I make them stand sometimes for one
thing and sometimes for another; the wilful doing whereof can be
imputed to nothing but great folly, or greater dishonesty.
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