6. Words by use readily excite ideas of their objects.
Concerning words, also, it is further to be considered:
First, that they being immediately the signs of men's ideas, and by that means the instruments whereby men
communicate their conceptions, and express to one another those thoughts and imaginations they have within their
own their own breasts; there comes, by constant use, to be such a connexion between certain sounds and the ideas
they stand for, that the names heard, almost as readily excite certain ideas as if the objects themselves, which are
apt to produce them, did actually affect the senses. Which is manifestly so in all obvious sensible qualities, and in
all substances that frequently and familiarly occur to us.