at has the real
essence of gold, is fixed, what serves this for, whilst we know not, in
this sense, WHAT IS OR IS NOT GOLD? For if we know not the real essence
of gold, it is impossible we should know what parcel of matter has that
essence, and so whether IT be true gold or no.

51. Conclusion.

To conclude: what liberty Adam had at first to make any complex ideas of
MIXED MODES by no other pattern but by his own thoughts, the same have
all men ever since had. And the same necessity of conforming his ideas
of SUBSTANCES to things without him, as to archetypes made by nature,
that Adam was under, if he would not wilfully impose upon himself, the
same are all men ever since under too. The same liberty also that Adam
had of affixing any new name to any idea, the same has any one still,
(especially the beginners of languages, if we can imagine any such;) but
only with this difference, that, in places where men in society have
already established a language amongst them, the significations of words
are very warily and sparingly to be altered. Because men being furnished
already with names for their ideas, and common use having appropriated
known names to certain ideas, an affected misapplication of them cannot
but be very ridiculous. He that hath new notions will perhaps venture
sometimes on the coining of new terms to express them: but men think it
a boldness, and it is uncertain whether common use will ever make them
pass for current. But in communication with others, it is necessary that
we conform the ideas we make the vulgar words of any language stand for
to their known proper significations, (which I have explained at large
already,) or else to make known that new signification we apply them to.

CHAPTER VII.

OF PARTICLES.

1. Particles connect Parts, or whole Sentences together.

Besides words which are names of ideas in the mind, there are a great
many others that are made use of to signify the CONNEXION that the mind
gives to ideas, or to propositions, one with another. The mind, in
communicating its thoughts to others, does not only need signs of the
ideas it has then before it, but others also, to show or intimate some
particular action of its own, at that time, relating to those ideas.
This it does several ways; as _I_S and _I_S NOT, are the general marks,
of the mind, affirming or denying. But besides affirmation or negation,
without which there is in words no truth or falsehood, the mind does,