Page:Of the conduct of the understanding (IA ofconductofunder00lock).pdf/102

are the boundaries of the mean between the two vicious excesses on both hands, i think is hard to set down in words: clear and distinct ideas are all that I yet know able to regulate it. But as to verbal distinctions received and applied to common terms, i. e., equivocal words, they are more properly, I think, the business of criticisms and dictionaries than of real knowledge and philosophy, since they for the most part explain the meaning of words, and give us their several significations. The dexterous management of terms, and being able to fend and prove with them, I know has and does pass in the world for a great part of learning; but it is learning distinct from knowledge, for knowledge consists only in perceiving the habitudes and relations of ideas one to another, which is done without words; the intervention of a sound helps nothing to it. And hence we see that there is least use of distinctions where there is most knowledge, I mean in mathematics, where men have determined ideas without known names to them, and so there being no room for equivocations, there is no need of distinctions. In arguing, the opponent uses as comprehensive and equivocal terms as he can, to involve his adversary in the doubtfulness of his expressions: this is expected, and therefore the answerer on his side makes it his play to distinguish as much as he can, and thinks he can never do it too much; nor can he indeed in that way wherein victory may be had without truth and without knowledge. This seems to me to be the art of disputing. Use your words as captiously as you can in your arguing on one side, and apply distinctions as much as you can on the other side to every term, to nonplus your opponent, so that in this sort of scholar-