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Rh there is nothing more opposite than the art of verbal distinctions made at pleasure in learned and arbitrarily invented terms, to be applied at a venture, without comprehending or conveying any distinct notions, and so altogether fitted to artificial talk or empty noise in dispute, without any clearing of difficulties or advance in knowledge. Whatsoever subject we examine and would get knowledge in, we should, I think, make as general and as large as it will bear; nor can there be any danger of this, if the idea of it be settled and determined: for if that be so, we shall easily distinguish it from any other idea, though comprehended under the same name. For it is to fence against the entanglements of equivocal words, and the great art of sophistry which lies in them, that distinctions have been multiplied and their use thought so necessary. But had every distinct abstract idea a distinct known name, there would be little need of these multiplied scholastic distinctions, though there would be nevertheless as much need still of the mind’s observing the differences that are in things, and discriminating them thereby one from another. It is not therefore the right way to knowledge to hunt after and fill the head with abundance of artificial and scholastic distinctions, wherewith learned men’s writings are often filled: we sometimes find what they treat of so divided and subdivided that the mind of the most attentive reader loses the sight of it, as it is more than probable the writer himself did; for in things crumbled into dust it is in vain to affect or pretend order, or expect clearness. To avoid confusion by too few or too many divisions, is a great skill in thinking as well as writing, which is but the copying our thoughts; but what