12. Fourth remedy: To declare the meaning in which we use them.
Fourthly, But, because common use has not so visibly annexed any
signification to words, as to make men know always certainly what they
precisely stand for: and because men in the improvement of their
knowledge, come to have ideas different from the vulgar and ordinary
received ones, for which they must either make new words, (which men
seldom venture to do, for fear of being though guilty of affectation
or novelty), or else must use old ones in a new signification:
therefore, after the observation of the foregoing rules, it is
sometimes necessary, for the ascertaining the signification of
words, to declare their meaning; where either common use has left it
uncertain and loose, (as it has in most names of very complex
ideas); or where the term, being very material in the discourse, and
that upon which it chiefly turns, is liable to any doubtfulness or
mistake.
13. And that in three ways. As the ideas men's words stand for are
of different sorts, so the way of making known the ideas they stand
for, when there is occasion, is also different. For though defining be
thought the proper way to make known the proper signification of
words; yet there are some words that will not be defined, as there are
others whose precise meaning cannot be made known but by definition:
and perhaps a third, which partake somewhat of both the other, as we
shall see in the names of simple ideas, modes, and substances.
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