e richer, or without even
knowing how much a pound, shilling, or penny is, but only that one is
contained in the other twenty times, and contains the other twelve:
which a man may also do in the signification of words, by making them,
in respect of one another, more or less, or equally comprehensive.

11. Thirdly, using Words variously is trifling with them.

Though yet concerning most words used in discourses, equally
argumentative and controversial, there is this more to be complained of,
which is the worst sort of trifling, and which sets us yet further from
the certainty of knowledge we hope to attain by them, or find in them;
viz. that most writers are so far from instructing us in the nature and
knowledge of things, that they use their words loosely and uncertainly,
and do not, by using them constantly and steadily in the same
significations make plain and clear deductions of words one from
another, and make their discourses coherent and clear, (how little
soever they were instructive); which were not difficult to do, did they
not find it convenient to shelter their ignorance or obstinacy under the
obscurity and perplexedness of their terms: to which, perhaps,
inadvertency and ill custom do in many men much contribute.

12. Marks of verbal Propositions. First, Predication in Abstract.

To conclude. Barely verbal propositions may be known by these following
marks:

First, All propositions wherein two abstract terms are affirmed one of
another, are barely about the signification of sounds. For since no
abstract idea can be the same with any other but itself, when its
abstract name is affirmed of any other term, it can signify no more but
this, that it may, or ought to be called by that name; or that these two
names signify the same idea. Thus, should any one say that parsimony is
frugality, that gratitude is justice, that this or that action is or is
not temperate: however specious these and the like propositions may at
first sight seem, yet when we come to press them, and examine nicely
what they contain, we shall find that it all amounts to nothing but the
signification of those terms.

13. Secondly, A part of the Definition predicated of any Term.

Secondly, All propositions wherein a part of the complex idea which any
term stands for is predicated of that term, are only verbal: v.g. to say
that gold is a metal, or heavy. And thus all propositions wherein more
comprehensive words, called genera, are