h is manifestly so in all obvious sensible qualities, and in
all substances that frequently and familiarly occur to us.

7. Words are often used without Signification, and Why.

Secondly, That though the proper and immediate signification of words
are ideas in the mind of the speaker, yet, because by familiar use from
our cradles, we come to learn certain articulate sounds very perfectly,
and have them readily on our tongues, and always at hand in our
memories, but yet are not always careful to examine or settle their
significations perfectly; it often happens that men, even when they
would apply themselves to an attentive consideration, do set their
thoughts more on words than things. Nay, because words are many of them
learned before the ideas are known for which they stand: therefore some,
not only children but men, speak several words no otherwise than parrots
do, only because they have learned them, and have been accustomed to
those sounds. But so far as words are of use and signification, so far
is there a constant connexion between the sound and the idea, and a
designation that the one stands for the other; without which application
of them, they are nothing but so much insignificant noise.

8. Their Signification perfectly arbitrary, not the consequence of a
natural connexion.

Words, by long and familiar use, as has been said, come to excite in men
certain ideas so constantly and readily, that they are apt to suppose
a natural connexion between them. But that they signify only men's
peculiar ideas, and that BY A PERFECT ARBITRARY IMPOSITION, is evident,
in that they often fail to excite in others (even that use the same
language) the same ideas we take them to be signs of: and every man has
so inviolable a liberty to make words stand for what ideas he pleases,
that no one hath the power to make others have the same ideas in their
minds that he has, when they use the same words that he does. And
therefore the great Augustus himself, in the possession of that power
which ruled the world, acknowledged he could not make a new Latin word:
which was as much as to say, that he could not arbitrarily appoint what
idea any sound should be a sign of, in the mouths and common language of
his subjects. It is true, common use, by a tacit consent, appropriates
certain sounds to certain ideas in all languages, which so far limits
the signification of that sound, that unless a man applies it to the
same idea, he does not