, he says,
is, when they are used without clear and distinct Ideas: The second, when we are so inconstant and unsteady in the Application of them, that we sometimes use them to signify one Idea, sometimes another.
He adds, that the Result of our Contemplations and Reasonings, while we have no precise Ideas fixed to our Words, must needs be very confused and absurd. To avoid this Inconvenience, more especially in moral Discourses, where the same Word should constantly be used in the same Sense, he earnestly recommends the use of Definitions.
A Definition
, says he,
is the only way whereby the precise Meaning of Moral Words can be known.
He therefore accuses those of great Negligence, who Discourse of Moral things with the least Obscurity in the Terms they make use of, since upon the forementioned ground he does not scruple to say, that he thinks Morality is capable of Demonstration as well as the Mathematicks.
I know no two Words that have been more abused by the different and wrong Interpretations which are put upon them, than those two,
Modesty
and