Page:Of the conduct of the understanding (IA ofconductofunder00lock).pdf/98

92, as if they did contain, or rather conceal something, is but an artifice of learned vanity to cover a defect in an hypothesis or our understandings. Words are not made to conceal, but to declare and show something; where they are by those who pretend to instruct otherwise used, they conceal indeed something; but that that they conceal is nothing but the ignorance, error, or sophistry of the talker, for there is in truth nothing else under them.

'''80. Wandering. —'''That there is a constant succession and flux of ideas in our minds I have observed in the former part of this essay, and everyone may take notice of it in himself. This, I suppose, may deserve some part of our care in the conduct of our understandings; and I think it may be of great advantage if we can by use get that power over our minds, as to be able to direct that train of ideas, that so, since there will new ones perpetually come into our thoughts by a constant succession, we may be able by choice so to direct them, that none may come in view but such as are pertinent to our present inquiry, and in such order as may be most useful to the discovery we are upon; or, at least, if some foreign and unsought ideas will offer themselves, that yet we might be able to reject them and keep them from taking off our minds from its present pursuit, and hinder them from running away with our thoughts quite from the subject in hand. This is not, I suspect, so easy to be done as perhaps may be imagined; and yet, for aught I know, this may be, if not the chief, yet one of the great differences that carry some men in their reasoning so far