28. Men differ little in clear, simple ideas.
The knowing precisely what our words stand for, would, I imagine, in
this as well as a great many other cases, quickly end the dispute. For I am apt to think that men, when they come
to examine them, find their simple ideas all generally to agree, though in discourse with one another they perhaps
confound one another with different names. I imagine that men who abstract their thoughts, and do well examine
the ideas of their own minds, cannot much differ in thinking; however they may perplex themselves with words,
according to the way of speaking to the several schools or sects they have been bred up in: though amongst
unthinking men, who examine not scrupulously and carefully their own ideas, and strip them not from the marks
men use for them, but confound them with words, there must be endless dispute, wrangling, and jargon; especially
if they be learned, bookish men, devoted to some sect, and accustomed to the language of it, and have learned to
talk after others. But if it should happen that any two thinking men should really have different ideas, I do not see
how they could discourse or argue with another. Here I must not be mistaken, to think that every floating
imagination in men's brains is presently of that sort of ideas I speak of. It is not easy for the mind to put off those
confused notions and prejudices it has imbibed from custom, inadvertency, and common conversation. It requires
pains and assiduity to examine its ideas, till it resolves them into those clear and distinct simple ones, out of which
they are compounded; and to see which, amongst its simple ones, have or have not a necessary connexion and
dependence one upon another. Till a man doth this in the primary and original notions of things, he builds upon
floating and uncertain principles, and will often find himself at a loss.
