12. Fourth remedy: To declare the meaning in which we use them.
Fourthly, But, because common use has not so
visibly annexed any signification to words, as to make men know always certainly what they precisely stand for:
and because men in the improvement of their knowledge, come to have ideas different from the vulgar and
ordinary received ones, for which they must either make new words, (which men seldom venture to do, for fear of
being though guilty of affectation or novelty), or else must use old ones in a new signification: therefore, after the
observation of the foregoing rules, it is sometimes necessary, for the ascertaining the signification of words, to
declare their meaning; where either common use has left it uncertain and loose, (as it has in most names of very
complex ideas); or where the term, being very material in the discourse, and that upon which it chiefly turns, is
liable to any doubtfulness or mistake.
