12. Causes of confused ideas.
This, I think, is the confusion proper to ideas; which still carries with it a secret
reference to names. At least, if there be any other confusion of ideas, this is that which most of all disorders men's
thoughts and discourses: ideas, as ranked under names, being those that for the most part men reason of within
themselves, and always those which they commune about with others. And therefore where there are supposed
two different ideas, marked by two different names, which are not as distinguishable as the sounds that stand for
them, there never fails to be confusion; and where any ideas are distinct as the ideas of those two sounds they are
marked by, there can be between them no confusion. The way to prevent it is to collect and unite into one
complex idea, as precisely as is possible, all those ingredients whereby it is differenced from others; and to them,
so united in a determinate number and order, apply steadily the same name. But this neither accommodating men's
ease or vanity, nor serving any design but that of naked truth, which is not always the thing aimed at, such
exactness is rather to be wished than hoped for. And since the loose application of names, to undetermined,
variable, and almost no ideas, serves both to cover our own ignorance, as well as to perplex and confound others,
which goes for learning and superiority in knowledge, it is no wonder that most men should use it themselves,
whilst they complain of it in others. Though I think no small part of the confusion to be found in the notions of
men might, by care and ingenuity, be avoided, yet I am far from concluding it everywhere wilful. Some ideas are
so complex, and made up of so many parts, that the memory does not easily retain the very same precise
combination of simple ideas under one name: much less are we able constantly to divine for what precise complex
idea such a name stands in another man's use of it. From the first of these, follows confusion in a man's own
reasonings and opinions within himself; from the latter, frequent confusion in discoursing and arguing with
others. But having more at large treated of Words, their defects, and abuses, in the following Book, I shall here
say no more of it.
