child, he may never be able to separate them so long as he lives. A man receives an injury from another, and associates so strongly the ideas of the man and the pain he suffered from him, that he scarcely distinguishes them, but has as much an aversion for the one as the other: thus slight occasions often beget hatreds and continue quarrels.—A man suffers pain in a certain place, and though these ideas have in nature no connexion, yet the idea of the place brings with it that of the pain, and he can as little bear the one as the other.

Reason cannot relieve us from the effects of this combination; and Time cures certain affections which Reason cannot prevail over. When the death of a child has destroyed the comfort of its mother, the consolations of reason are vain, till Time has separated the idea of the enjoyment and its loss from the idea of the child returning to her memory: and therefore some, in whom the union of these ideas is never dissolved, carry an incurable sorrow to their graves.

A Gentleman, who had been cured of madness by a very severe operation, owned the cure to be the greatest obligation he could have received, but could never bear the sight of the operator. Many children so associate the pain of correction with a book at school, that that book ever after is their aversion.

Many other instances of the power of the accidental association of Ideas to render things disgusting might be enumerated.

Intellectual habits thus contracted are not less frequent and powerful, though less observed: let custom, from the very childhood, have joined figure and shape to the idea of God, and what absurdities will that mind be liable to about the deity!—Let the idea of Infallibility be inseparably joined to any person, and the existence of one body in two places at the same time shall be believed whenever he dictates it. Some such wrong and unnatural combinations of ideas will be found to establish the irreconcilable opposition between different sects of philosophy and religion for we must allow some of them at least to pursue truth sincerely: some independent ideas then of no alliance to one another must be so coupled in their minds by education, custom, and the constant din of their party, that they always appear together, and operate like one idea. This gives sense to jargon, demonstration to absurdities, and consistency to nonsense; and is the foundation of the greatest, (I had almost said of all the) errors in the world: It is at least the most dangerous one, since it hinders men from seeing and examining.

Having thus given an account of our Ideas, I intended to shew immediately the use made of them

by the Understanding, but I now find that there is so close a connexion between ideas and words, that it is impossible to speak clearly of our knowledge (which all consists in propositions) without first considering the nature, use, and signification of Language.

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BOOK III.

CHAP. I.

OF WORDS, OR LANGUAGE IN GENERAL.

GOD designing man for a sociable creature, both by inclination and necessity, gave him language as the great instrument and common tie of society. Man therefore had by nature organs fit to frame articulate sounds, or words: but as these are not suffi cient for language, he is enabled to use these sounds as signs of internal conceptions; so that the ideas of men's minds may be mutually communicated. Yet did not this render words sufficiently useful: sounds must not only be the signs of ideas, but must comprehend several particular ideas; for to denote every particular thing by a distinct name would multiply words so as to perplex their use: wherefore general terms were invented to make one word denote a multitude of particular existencies. This advantageous use of signs was obtained only by the differ

ence of the ideas they were made signs of. Some words, instead of denoting any ideas, denote the absence of many or all ideas; as in Latin nihil; -in English, ignorance, barrenness: We cannot properly say that these negative or privative words signify no ideas, for then they would be insignificant sounds; but relating to positive ideas, they denote their absence.-It may lead us a little towards the original of all our knowledge to remark the great dependance of our words on common sensible ideas ;-how words derived from obvious sensible ideas are transferred to more abstruse significations, and denote actions and notions quite removed from sense: thus the words, imagine, apprehend, comprehend, conceive, disgust, disturbance, tranquillity, are taken from the operations of sensible things, and applied to modes of thinking. The primary signification of spirit is breath, of angel a messenger: and doubtless, in all languages, names standing for things that fall not under the notice of our senses originated in sensible ideas.-Hence we may guess what kind of notions they were which filled the minds of the beginners of languages; and how nature, even in the naming of things, suggested to men unawares the originals and principles of all their knowledge.-From sensible objects men borrowed words to express the operations of their minds; and these being the only sources of their ideas, they were furnished with all the materials of