An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. | Page 2

we remark how great a dependence our words have on
common sensible ideas; and how those which are made use of to stand
for actions and notions quite removed from sense, have their rise from
thence, and from obvious sensible ideas are transferred to more
abstruse significations, and made to stand for ideas that come not under
the cognizance of our senses; v.g. to IMAGINE, APPREHEND,
COMPREHEND, ADHERE, CONCEIVE, INSTIL, DISGUST,
DISTURBANCE, TRANQUILLITY, &c., are all words taken from the
operations of sensible things, and applied to certain modes of thinking.
SPIRIT, in its primary signification, is breath; ANGEL, a messenger:
and I doubt not but, if we could trace them to their sources, we should
find, in all languages, the names which stand for things that fall not
under our senses to have had their first rise from sensible ideas. By
which we may give some kind of guess what kind of notions they were,

and whence derived, which filled their minds who were the first
beginners of languages, and how nature, even in the naming of things,
unawares suggested to men the originals and principles of all their
knowledge: whilst, to give names that might make known to others any
operations they felt in themselves, or any other ideas that came not
under their senses, they were fain to borrow words from ordinary
known ideas of sensation, by that means to make others the more easily
to conceive those operations they experimented in themselves, which
made no outward sensible appearances; and then, when they had got
known and agreed names to signify those internal operations of their
own minds, they were sufficiently furnished to make known by words
all their other ideas; since they could consist of nothing but either of
outward sensible perceptions, or of the inward operations of their
minds about them; we having, as has been proved, no ideas at all, but
what originally come either from sensible objects without, or what we
feel within ourselves, from the inward workings of our own spirits, of
which we are conscious to ourselves within.
6. Distribution of subjects to be treated of.
But to understand better the use and force of Language, as subservient
to instruction and knowledge, it will be convenient to consider:
First, TO WHAT IT IS THAT NAMES, IN THE USE OF
LANGUAGE, ARE IMMEDIATELY APPLIED.
Secondly, Since all (except proper) names are general, and so stand not
particularly for this or that single thing, but for sorts and ranks of things,
it will be necessary to consider, in the next place, what the sorts and
kinds, or, if you rather like the Latin names, WHAT THE SPECIES
AND GENERA OF THINGS ARE, WHEREIN THEY CONSIST,
AND HOW THEY COME TO BE MADE. These being (as they ought)
well looked into, we shall the better come to find the right use of words;
the natural advantages and defects of language; and the remedies that
ought to be used, to avoid the inconveniences of obscurity or
uncertainty in the signification of words: without which it is impossible
to discourse with any clearness or order concerning knowledge: which,
being conversant about propositions, and those most commonly

universal ones, has greater connexion with words than perhaps is
suspected. These considerations, therefore, shall be the matter of the
following chapters.
CHAPTER II.
OF THE SIGNIFICATION OF WORDS.
1. Words are sensible Signs, necessary for Communication of Ideas.
Man, though he have great variety of thoughts, and such from which
others as well as himself might receive profit and delight; yet they are
all within his own breast, invisible and hidden from others, nor can of
themselves be made to appear. The comfort and advantage of society
not being to be had without communication of thoughts, it was
necessary that man should find out some external sensible signs,
whereof those invisible ideas, which his thoughts are made up of, might
be made known to others. For this purpose nothing was so fit, either for
plenty or quickness, as those articulate sounds, which with so much
ease and variety he found himself able to make. Thus we may conceive
how WORDS, which were by nature so well adapted to that purpose,
came to be made use of by men as the signs of their ideas; not by any
natural connexion that there is between particular articulate sounds and
certain ideas, for then there would be but one language amongst all men;
but by a voluntary imposition, whereby such a word is made arbitrarily
the mark of such an idea. The use, then, of words, is to be sensible
marks of ideas; and the ideas they stand for are their proper and
immediate signification.
2. Words, in their immediate Signification, are the sensible Signs of his
Ideas who uses them.
The use men