23. The ends of language: First, to convey our ideas. To conclude
this consideration of the imperfection and abuse of language. The ends
of language in our discourse with others being chiefly these three:
First, to make known one man's thoughts or ideas to another; Secondly,
to do it with as much ease and quickness as possible; and, Thirdly,
thereby to convey the knowledge of things: language is either abused
of deficient, when it fails of any of these three.
First, Words fail in the first of these ends, and lay not open one
man's ideas to another's view: 1. When men have names in their
mouths without any determinate ideas in their minds, whereof they
are the signs: or, 2. When they apply the common received names of any
language to ideas, to which the common use of that language does not
apply them: or, 3. When they apply them very unsteadily, making them
stand, now for one, and by and by for another idea.
24. To do it with quickness. Secondly, Men fail of conveying their
thoughts with all the quickness and ease that may be, when they have
complex ideas without having any distinct names for them. This is
sometimes the fault of the language itself, which has not in it a
sound yet applied to such a signification; and sometimes the fault
of the man, who has not yet learned the name for that idea he would
show another.
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