10. Confusion without reference to names, hardly conceivable.
By what has been said, we may observe how much
names, as supposed steady signs of things, and by their difference to stand for, and keep things distinct that in
themselves are different, are the occasion of denominating ideas distinct or confused, by a secret and unobserved
reference the mind makes of its ideas to such names. This perhaps will be fuller understood, after what I say of
Words in the third Book has been read and considered. But without taking notice of such a reference of ideas to
distinct names, as the signs of distinct things, it will be hard to say what a confused idea is. And therefore when a
man designs, by any name, a sort of things, or any one particular thing, distinct from all others, the complex idea
he annexes to that name is the more distinct, the more particular the ideas are, and the greater and more
determinate the number and order of them is, whereof it is made up. For, the more it has of these, the more it has
still of the perceivable differences, whereby it is kept separate and distinct from all ideas belonging to other
names, even those that approach nearest to it, and thereby all confusion with them is avoided.
