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An essay concerning human understanding

  
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[title page]
  
To The Right Honourable Lord Thomas,
  
Epistle to the Reader

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Introduction An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
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Book I Neither Principles Nor Ideas Are Innate
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Book II Of Ideas
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Book III Of Words
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Chapter I Of Words or Language in General
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Chapter II Of the Signification of Words
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Chapter III Of General Terms
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Chapter IV Of the Names of Simple Ideas
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Chapter V Of the Names of Mixed Modes and Relations
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Chapter VI Of the Names of Substances
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Chapter VII Of Particles
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Chapter VIII Of Abstract and Concrete Terms
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Chapter IX Of the Imperfection of Words
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Chapter X Of the Abuse of Words
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Chapter XI Of the Remedies of the Foregoing Imperfections and Abuses of Words
  
1. Remedies are worth seeking.
  
2. Are not easy to find.
  
3. But yet necessary to those who search after truth.
  
4. Misuse of words the great cause of errors.
  
5. Has made men more conceited and obstinate.
  
6. Addicted to wrangling about sounds.
  
7. Instance, bat and bird.
  
8. Remedies.
  
First remedy: To use no word without an idea annexed to it.
  
9. Second remedy: To have distinct, determinate ideas annexed to words, especially in mixed modes.
  
10. And distinct and conformable ideas in words that stand for substances.
  
11. Third remedy: To apply words to such ideas as common use has annexed them to.
  
12. Fourth remedy: To declare the meaning in which we use them.
  
13. And that in three ways.
  
14. In simple ideas, either by synonymous terms, or by showing examples.
  
15. In mixed modes, by definition.
  
16. Morality capable of demonstration.
  
17. Definitions can make moral discourses clear.
  
18. And is the only way in which the meaning of mixed modes can be made known.
  
19. In substances, both by showing and by defining.
  
20. Ideas of the leading qualities of substances are best got by showing.
  
21. And can hardly be made known otherwise.
  
22. The Ideas of the powers of substances are best known by definition.
  
23. A reflection on the knowledge of corporeal things possessed by spirits separate from bodies.
  
24. Ideas of substances must be conformable to things.
  
25. Not easy to be made so.
  
26. Fifth remedy: To use the same word constantly in the same sense.
  
27. When not so used, the variation is to he explained.
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Book IV Of Knowledge and Probability

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1. Remedies are worth seeking.

The natural and improved imperfections of languages we have seen above at large: and speech being the great bond that holds society together, and the common conduit, whereby the improvements of knowledge are conveyed from one man and one generation to another, it would well deserve our most serious thoughts to consider, what remedies are to be found for the inconveniences above mentioned.

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