CHAPTER III.
OF GENERAL TERMS.
1.

The greatest Part of Words are general terms.
All things that exist being particulars, it may perhaps be thought reasonable that words, which ought to be conformed to things, should be so too,--I mean in their signification: but yet we find quite the contrary.

The far greatest part of words that make all languages are general terms: which has not been the effect of neglect or chance, but of reason and necessity.
2.

That every particular Thing should have a Name for itself is impossible.
First, It is impossible that every particular thing should have a distinct peculiar name.

For, the signification and use of words depending on that connexion which the mind makes between its ideas and the sounds it uses as signs of them, it is necessary, in the application of names to things, that the mind should have distinct ideas of the things, and retain also the particular name that belongs to every one, with its peculiar appropriation to that idea.