ntioned will require too much time, cost, and pains to be hoped for
in this age; yet methinks it is not unreasonable to propose, that words
standing for things which are known and distinguished by their outward
shapes should be expressed by little draughts and prints made of them. A
vocabulary made after this fashion would perhaps with more ease, and in
less time, teach the true signification of many terms, especially in
languages of remote countries or ages, and settle truer ideas in men's
minds of several things, whereof we read the names in ancient authors,
than all the large and laborious comments of learned critics.
Naturalists, that treat of plants and animals, have found the benefit of
this way: and he that has had occasion to consult them will have reason
to confess that he has a clearer idea of APIUM or IBEX, from a little
print of that herb or beast, than he could have from a long definition
of the names of either of them. And so no doubt he would have of STRIGIL
and SISTRUM, if, instead of CURRYCOMB and CYMBAL, (which are the English
names dictionaries render them by,) he could see stamped in the margin
small pictures of these instruments, as they were in use amongst the
ancients. TOGA, TUNICA, PALLIUM, are words easily translated by GOWN,
COAT, and CLOAK; but we have thereby no more true ideas of the fashion
of those habits amongst the Romans, than we have of the faces of the
tailors who made them. Such things as these, which the eye distinguishes
by their shapes, would be best let into the mind by draughts made of
them, and more determine the signification of such words, than any other
words set for them, or made use of to define them. But this is only by
the bye.

26. V. Fifth Remedy: To use the same word constantly in the same sense.

Fifthly, If men will not be at the pains to declare the meaning of their
words, and definitions of their terms are not to be had, yet this is
the least that can be expected, that, in all discourses wherein one man
pretends to instruct or convince another, he should use the same word
constantly in the same sense. If this were done, (which nobody can
refuse without great disingenuity,) many of the books extant might be
spared; many of the controversies in dispute would be at an end; several
of those great volumes, swollen with ambiguous words, now used in
one sense, and by and by in another, would shrink into a very narrow
compass; and many of the philosophers (to mention no