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OF UNIVERSAL PROPOSITIONS: THEIR TRUTH AND CERTAINTY.
1.

Treating of Words necessary to Knowledge.
THOUGH the examining and judging of ideas by themselves, their names being quite laid aside, be the best and surest way to clear and distinct knowledge: yet, through the prevailing custom of using sounds for ideas, I think it is very seldom practised.

Every one may observe how common it is for names to be made use of, instead of the ideas themselves, even when men think and reason within their own breasts; especially if the ideas be very complex, and made up of a great collection of simple ones.
This makes the consideration of WORDS and PROPOSITIONS so necessary a part of the Treatise of Knowledge, that it is very hard to speak intelligibly of the one, without explaining the other.
2.

General Truths hardly to be understood, but in verbal Propositions.
All the knowledge we have, being only of particular or general truths, it is evident that whatever may be done in the former of these, the latter, which is that which with reason is most sought after, can never be well made known, and is very seldom apprehended, but as conceived and expressed in words.