45
These words, kinneah and niouph, by degrees grew into common use, and then the case was somewhat
altered. Adam's children had the same faculties, and thereby the same power that he had, to make what complex
ideas of mixed modes they pleased in their own minds; to abstract them, and make what sounds they pleased the
signs of them: but the use of names being to make our ideas within us known to others, that cannot be done, but
when the same sign stands for the same idea in two who would communicate their thoughts and discourse
together. Those, therefore, of Adam's children, that found these two words, kinneah and niouph, in familiar use,
could not take them for insignificant sounds, but must needs conclude they stood for something; for certain ideas,
abstract ideas. they being general names; which abstract ideas were the essences of the species distinguished by
those names. If, therefore, they would use these words as names of species already established and agreed on, they
were obliged to conform the ideas in their minds, signified by these names, to the ideas that they stood for in other
men's minds, as to their patterns and archetypes; and then indeed their ideas of these complex modes were liable
to be inadequate, as being very apt (especially those that consisted of combinations of many simple ideas) not to
be exactly conformable to the ideas in other men's minds, using the same names; though for this there be usually a
remedy at hand, which is to ask the meaning of any word we understand not of him that uses it: it being as
impossible to know certainly what the words jealousy and adultery stand for in another man's mind, with whom I
would discourse about them; as it was impossible, in the beginning of language, to know what kinneah and niouph
stood for in another man's mind, without explication; they being voluntary signs in every one.
