An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. | Page 3

have of these marks being either to record their own
thoughts, for the assistance of their own memory; or, as it were, to
bring out their ideas, and lay them before the view of others: words, in
their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing but THE
IDEAS IN THE MIND OF HIM THAT USES THEM, how
imperfectly soever or carelessly those ideas are collected from the

things which they are supposed to represent. When a man speaks to
another, it is that he may be understood: and the end of speech is, that
those sounds, as marks, may make known his ideas to the hearer. That
then which words are the marks of are the ideas of the speaker: nor can
any one apply them as marks, immediately, to anything else but the
ideas that he himself hath: for this would be to make them signs of his
own conceptions, and yet apply them to other ideas; which would be to
make them signs and not signs of his ideas at the same time; and so in
effect to have no signification at all. Words being voluntary signs, they
cannot be voluntary signs imposed by him on things he knows not.
That would be to make them signs of nothing, sounds without
signification. A man cannot make his words the signs either of qualities
in things, or of conceptions in the mind of another, whereof he has
none in his own. Till he has some ideas of his own, he cannot suppose
them to correspond with the conceptions of another man; nor can he
use any signs for them: for thus they would be the signs of he knows
not what, which is in truth to be the signs of nothing. But when he
represents to himself other men's ideas by some of his own, if he
consent to give them the same names that other men do, it is still to his
own ideas; to ideas that he has, and not to ideas that he has not.
3. Examples of this.
This is so necessary in the use of language, that in this respect the
knowing and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned, use the words
they speak (with any meaning) all alike. They, in every man's mouth,
stand for the ideas he has, and which he would express by them. A
child having taken notice of nothing in the metal he hears called GOLD,
but the bright shining yellow colour, he applies the word gold only to
his own idea of that colour, and nothing else; and therefore calls the
same colour in a peacock's tail gold. Another that hath better observed,
adds to shining yellow great weight: and then the sound gold, when he
uses it, stands for a complex idea of a shining yellow and a very
weighty substance. Another adds to those qualities fusibility: and then
the word gold signifies to him a body, bright, yellow, fusible, and very
heavy. Another adds malleability. Each of these uses equally the word
gold, when they have occasion to express the idea which they have

applied it to: but it is evident that each can apply it only to his own idea;
nor can he make it stand as a sign of such a complex idea as he has not.
4. Words are often secretly referred, First to the Ideas supposed to be in
other men's minds.
But though words, as they are used by men, can properly and
immediately signify nothing but the ideas that are in the mind of the
speaker; yet they in their thoughts give them a secret reference to two
other things.
First, THEY SUPPOSE THEIR WORDS TO BE MARKS OF THE
IDEAS IN THE MINDS ALSO OF OTHER MEN, WITH WHOM
THEY COMMUNICATE; for else they should talk in vain, and could
not be understood, if the sounds they applied to one idea were such as
by the hearer were applied to another, which is to speak two languages.
But in this men stand not usually to examine, whether the idea they,
and those they discourse with have in their minds be the same: but
think it enough that they use the word, as they imagine, in the common
acceptation of that language; in which they suppose that the idea they
make it a sign of is precisely the same to which the understanding men
of that country apply that name.
5. Secondly, to the Reality of Things.
Secondly, Because men would not be thought to talk barely of their
own imagination, but of things as really they are; therefore they often
suppose the WORDS TO STAND ALSO FOR THE REALITY OF
THINGS. But this relating more particularly to substances and their
names, as perhaps the former does to simple ideas and