18. Consequences of words, and consequences of ideas.
Though the deducing one proposition from another, or
making inferences in words, be a great part of reason, and that which it is usually employed about; yet the
principal act of ratiocination is the finding the agreement or disagreement of two ideas one with another, by the
intervention of a third. As a man, by a yard, finds two houses to be of the same length, to measure their equality
by juxta-position. Words have their consequences, as the signs of such ideas: and things agree or disagree, as
really they are; but we observe it only by our ideas.
