For, let a man make
to himself the idea of a figure with three angles, whereof one is a
right one, and call it, if he please, equilaterum or trapezium, or
anything else; the properties of, and demonstrations about that idea
will be the same as if he called it a rectangular triangle. I
confess the change of the name, by the impropriety of speech, will
at first disturb him who knows not what idea it stands for: but as
soon as the figure is drawn, the consequences and demonstrations are
plain and clear. Just the same is it in moral knowledge: let a man
have the idea of taking from others, without their consent, what their
honest industry has possessed them of, and call this justice if he
please. He that takes the name here without the idea put to it will be
mistaken, by joining another idea of his own to that name: but strip
the idea of that name, or take it such as it is in the speaker's mind,
and the same things will agree to it, as if you called it injustice.
Indeed, wrong names in moral discourses breed usually more disorder,
because they are not so easily rectified as in mathematics, where
the figure, once drawn and seen, makes the name useless and of no
force. For what need of a sign, when the thing signified is present
and in view? But in moral names, that cannot be so easily and
shortly done, because of the many decompositions that go to the making
up the complex ideas of those modes.
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