Note 10 — BOOK SECOND.

While writing this I have reflected a hundred times that in an extended work it is impossible always to use the same words in the same sense. No language is rich enough to furnish terms and expressions to keep pace with the possible modifications of our ideas. The method which defines all the terms, and substitutes the definition for the term, is fine, but impracticable; for how shall we then avoid travelling in a circle? If definitions could be given without using words, they might be useful. Nevertheless, I am convinced that, poor as our language is, we can make ourselves understood, not by always attaching the same meaning to the same words, but by so using each word that its meaning shall be sufficiently determined by the ideas nearly related to it, and so that each sentence in which a word is used shall serve to define the word. Sometimes I say that children are incapable of reasoning, and sometimes I make them reason extremely well; I think that my ideas do not contradict each other, though I cannot escape the inconvenient contradictions of my mode of expression.