THE UNDERSTANDING. 61

are to be taken only from a due contemplation of
things; to which there is nothing more opposite than
the art of verbal distinctions, made at pleasure, in
learned and arbitrarily invented terms, to be applied
at a venture, without comprehending or conveying
any distinct notions, and so altogether fitted to arti-
ficial talk, or empty noise in dispute, without any
clearing of difliculties, or advance in knowledge.
Whatsoever subject we examine, and would get know-
ledge in, we should, I think, make as general and as
large as it will bear; nor can there be any danger of
this, if the idea of it be settled and determined; for if
that be so, we shall easfly distinguish it from any
other idea, though comprehended under the same
name. For it is to fence against the entanglements
of equivocal words, and the great art of sophistry
which lies in them, that distinctions have been multi-
plied, and their use thought so necessary. But had
every distinct abstract idea a distinct known name,
there would be little need of these multiplied sch0~
lastic distinctions, though there would be nevertheless
as much need still of the mind’s observing the diffe-
rences that are in things, and discriminating them
thereon one from another. It is not therefore the
right way to knowledge, to hunt after, and fill the
head with, abundance of artificial and scholastic dis—
tinctions, wherewith learned men's writings are often
filled; and we sometimes find what they treat of so
divided and subdivided, that the mind of the most at-
tentive reader loses the sight of it, as it is more than
probable the writer himself did; for in things crum-
bled into dust, it is in vain ‘to aflect or pretend order,
or expect clearness. To avoid confusion by too few
01‘ too many divisions, is a great skill in thinking as
well as writing, which is but the copying our thoughts;
but what are the boundaries of the mean between the
two vicious excesses on both hands, I think is hard
to set down in words: clear and distinct ideas is all
that I yet know able to regulate it. But as to verbal
distinctions received and applied to common terms,
i. e. equivocal words, they are more properly, I think,
the business of criticisms and dictionaries than of real