Page:Of the conduct of the understanding (IA ofconductofunder00lock).pdf/103

Rh, there being no bounds set to distinguishing, some men have thought all acuteness to have lain in it, and therefore in all they have read or thought on, their great business has been to amuse themselves with distinctions, and multiply to themselves divisions; at least, more than the nature of the thing required. There seems to me, as I said, to be no other rule for this but a due and right consideration of things as they are in themselves. He that has settled in his mind determined ideas, with names affixed to them, will be able both to discern their differences one from another, which is really distinguishing; and where the penury of words affords not terms answering every distinct idea, will be able to apply proper distinguishing terms to the comprehensive and equivocal names he is forced to make use of. This is all the need I know of distinguishing terms, and in such verbal distinctions each term of the distinction, joined to that whole signification it distinguishes, is but a distinct name for a distinct idea. Where they are so, and men have clear and distinct conceptions that answer their verbal distinctions, they are right, and are pertinent as far as they serve to clear anything in the subject under consideration. And this is that which seems to me the proper and only measure of distinctions and divisions, which he that will conduct his understanding right must not look for in the acuteness of invention nor the authority of writers, but will find only in the consideration of things themselves, whether he is led into it by his own meditations or the information of books.

An aptness to jumble things together wherein can