t observation and analogy may
assist our judgment in guessing. Hence it comes to pass, that one may
often meet with very clear and coherent discourses, that amount yet to
nothing. For it is plain that names of substantial beings, as well as
others, as far as they have relative significations affixed to them,
may, with great truth, be joined negatively and affirmatively in
propositions, as their relative definitions make them fit to be so
joined; and propositions consisting of such terms, may, with the same
clearness, be deduced one from another, as those that convey the most
real truths: and all this without any knowledge of the nature or reality
of things existing without us. By this method one may make
demonstrations and undoubted propositions in words, and yet thereby
advance not one jot in the knowledge of the truth of things: v. g. he
that having learnt these following words, with their ordinary mutual
relative acceptations annexed to them; v. g. SUBSTANCE, MAN, ANIMAL,
FORM, SOUL, VEGETATIVE, SENSITIVE, RATIONAL, may make several undoubted
propositions about the soul, without knowing at all what the soul really
is: and of this sort, a man may find an infinite number of propositions,
reasonings, and conclusions, in books of metaphysics, school-divinity,
and some sort of natural philosophy; and, after all, know as little of
God, spirits, or bodies, as he did before he set out.

10. And why.

He that hath liberty to define, i.e. to determine the signification of
his names of substances (as certainly every one does in effect, who
makes them stand for his own ideas), and makes their significations at a
venture, taking them from his own or other men's fancies, and not from
an examination or inquiry into the nature of things themselves; may with
little trouble demonstrate them one of another, according to those
several respects and mutual relations he has given them one to another;
wherein, however things agree or disagree in their own nature, he needs
mind nothing but his own notions, with the names he hath bestowed upon
them: but thereby no more increases his own knowledge than he does his
riches, who, taking a bag of counters, calls one in a certain place a
pound, another in another place a shilling, and a third in a third place
a penny; and so proceeding, may undoubtedly reckon right, and cast up a
great sum, according to his counters so placed, and standing for more or
less as he pleases, without being one jot th