From whence commonly proceeds noise, and wrangling, without
improvement or information; whilst men take words to be the constant
regular marks of agreed notions, which in truth are no more but the
voluntary and unsteady signs of their own ideas. And yet men think
it strange, if in discourse, or (where it is often absolutely
necessary) in dispute, one sometimes asks the meaning of their
terms: though the arguings one may every day observe in conversation
make it evident, that there are few names of complex ideas which any
two men use for the same just precise collection. It is hard to name a
word which is hard to name a word which will not be a clear instance
of this. Life is a term, none more familiar. Any one almost would take
it for an affront to be asked what he meant by it. And yet if it comes
in question, whether a plant that lies ready formed in the seed have
life; whether the embryo in an egg before incubation, or a man in a
swoon without sense or motion, be alive or no; it is easy to
perceive that a clear, distinct, settled idea does not always
accompany the use of so known a word as that of life is. Some gross
and confused conceptions men indeed ordinarily have, to which they
apply the common words of their language; and such a loose use of
their words serves them well enough in their ordinary discourses or
affairs.
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