- Modes, in reference to settled Names, may be inadequate.
Indeed another coming after, and in conversation learning from him the word COURAGE, may make an idea, to which he gives the name courage, different from what the first author applied it to, and has in his mind when he uses it. And in this case, if he designs that his idea in thinking should be conformable to the other’s idea, as the name he uses in speaking is conformable in sound to his from whom he learned it, his idea may be very wrong and inadequate: because in this case, making the other man’s idea the pattern of his idea in thinking, as the other man’s word or sound is the pattern of his in speaking, his idea is so far defective and inadequate, as it is distant from the archetype and pattern he refers it to, and intends to express and signify by the name he uses for it; which name he would have to be a sign of the other man’s idea, (to which, in its proper use, it is primarily annexed,) and of his own, as agreeing to it: to which if his own does not exactly correspond, it is faulty and inadequate.
- Because then means, in propriety of speech, to correspond to the ideas in some other mind.
Therefore these complex ideas of MODES, which they are referred by the mind, and intended to correspond to the ideas in the mind of some other intelligent being, expressed by the names we apply to them, they may be very deficient, wrong, and inadequate; because they agree not to that which the mind designs to be their archetype and pattern: in which respect only any idea of modes can be wrong, imperfect, or inadequate. And on this account our ideas of mixed modes are the most liable to be faulty of any other; but this refers more to proper speaking than knowing right.
- Ideas of Substances, as referred to real Essences, not adequate.
Thirdly, what IDEAS WE HAVE OF SUBSTANCES, I have above shown. Now, those ideas have in the mind a double reference: 1.