Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/249

Ch. 13. about which our senses have been conversant; whereof having settled ideas in our minds, we can revive, repeat, and add them one to another as often as we will, and consider the space or distance so imagined either as filled with solid parts, so that another body cannot come there without displacing and thrusting out the body that was there before, or else as void of solidity, so that a body of equal dimensions to that empty or pure space may be placed in it without the removing or expulsion of any thing that was there. But, to avoid confusion in discourses concerning this matter, it were possibly to be wished that the name extension were applied only to matter, or the distance of the extremities of particular bodies; and the term expansion to space in general, with or without solid matter possessing it, so as to say space is expanded, and body extended. But in this every one has liberty: I propose it only for the more clear and distinct way of speaking.

§ 28. 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 of 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