8. Their simple ones jumbled disorderly together.
Secondly, Another fault which makes our ideas confused is,
when, though the particulars that make up any idea are in number enough, yet they are so jumbled together, that it
is not easily discernible whether it more belongs to the name that is given it than to any other. There is nothing
properer to make us conceive this confusion than a sort of pictures, usually shown as surprising pieces of art,
wherein the colours, as they are laid by the pencil on the table itself, mark out very odd and unusual figures, and
have no discernible order in their position. This draught, thus made up of parts wherein no symmetry nor order
appears, is in itself no more a confused thing, than the picture of a cloudy sky; wherein, though there be as little
order of colours or figures to be found, yet nobody thinks it a confused picture. What is it, then, that makes it be
thought confused, since the want of symmetry does not? As it is plain it does not: for another draught made barely
in imitation of this could not be called confused. I answer, That which makes it be thought confused is, the
applying it to some name to which it does no more discernibly belong than to some other: v.g. when it is said to
be the picture of a man, or Caesar, then any one with reason counts it confused; because it is not discernible in
that state to belong more to the name man, or Caesar, than to the name baboon, or Pompey: which are supposed to
stand for different ideas from those signified by man, or Caesar. But when a cylindrical mirror, placed right, had
reduced those irregular lines on the table into their due order and proportion, then the confusion ceases, and the
eye presently sees that it is a man, or Caesar; i.e., that it belongs to those names; and that it is sufficiently
distinguishable from a baboon, or Pompey; i.e., from the ideas signified by those names. Just thus it is with our
ideas, which are as it were the pictures of things. No one of these mental draughts, however the parts are put
together, can be called confused (for they are plainly discernible as they are) till it be ranked under some ordinary
name to which it cannot be discerned to belong, any more than it does to some other name of an allowed different
signification.
