strain, it is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in
clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that
lies in the way to knowledge;--which certainly had been very much more
advanced in the world, if the endeavours of ingenious and industrious
men had not been much cumbered with the learned but frivolous use
of uncouth, affected, or unintelligible terms, introduced into the
sciences, and there made an art of, to that degree that Philosophy,
which is nothing but the true knowledge of things, was thought unfit or
incapable to be brought into well-bred company and polite conversation.
Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so
long passed for mysteries of science; and hard and misapplied words,
with little or no meaning, have, by prescription, such a right to be
mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not
be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that
they are but the covers of ignorance, and hindrance of true knowledge.
To break in upon the sanctuary of vanity and ignorance will be, I
suppose, some service to human understanding; though so few are apt to
think they deceive or are deceived in the use of words; or that the
language of the sect they are of has any faults in it which ought to be
examined or corrected, that I hope I shall be pardoned if I have in the
Third Book dwelt long on this subject, and endeavoured to make it
so plain, that neither the inveterateness of the mischief, nor the
prevalency of the fashion, shall be any excuse for those who will not
take care about the meaning of their own words, and will not suffer the
significancy of their expressions to be inquired into.

I have been told that a short Epitome of this Treatise, which was
printed in 1688, was by some condemned without reading, because INNATE
IDEAS were denied in it; they too hastily concluding, that if innate
ideas were not supposed, there would be little left either of the notion