30. Thirdly, A third cause, want of tracing our ideas.
Thirdly, Where we have adequate ideas, and where there is a certain
and discoverable connexion between them, yet we are often ignorant, for want of tracing those ideas which we
have or may have; and for want of finding out those intermediate ideas, which may show us what habitude of
agreement or disagreement they have one with another. And thus many are ignorant of mathematical truths, not
out of any imperfection of their faculties, or uncertainty in the things themselves, but for want of application in
acquiring, examining, and by due ways comparing those ideas. That which has most contributed to hinder the due
tracing of our ideas, and finding out their relations, and agreements or disagreements, one with another, has been,
I suppose, the ill use of words. It is impossible that men should ever truly seek or certainly discover the agreement
or disagreement of ideas themselves, whilst their thoughts flutter about, or stick only in sounds of doubtful and
uncertain significations. Mathematicians abstracting their thoughts from names, and accustoming themselves to
set before their minds the ideas themselves that they would consider, and not sounds instead of them, have
avoided thereby a great part of that perplexity, puddering, and confusion, which has so much hindered men's
progress in other parts of knowledge. For whilst they stick in words of undetermined and uncertain signification,
they are unable to distinguish true from false, certain from probable, consistent from inconsistent, in their own
opinions. This having been the fate or misfortune of a great part of men of letters, the increase brought into the
stock of real knowledge has been very little, in proportion to the schools, disputes, and writings, the world has
been filled with; whilst students, being lost in the great wood of words, knew not whereabouts they were, how far
their discoveries were advanced, or what was wanting in their own, or the general stock of knowledge. Had men,
in the discoveries of the material, done as they have in those of the intellectual world, involved all in the obscurity
of uncertain and doubtful ways of talking, volumes writ of navigation and voyages, theories and stories of zones
and tides, multiplied and disputed; nay, ships built, and fleets sent out, would never have taught us the way
beyond the line; and the Antipodes would be still as much unknown, as when it was declared heresy to hold there
were any. But having spoken sufficiently of words, and the ill or careless use that is commonly made of them, I
shall not say anything more of it here.
