252 An Essay on the Signs of Ideas. 
minds of the hearers, the same feelings as 
those of which we ourselves are conscious. 
But, as was remarked by the wisest of man- 
kind, two hundred years ago, “ It is nota 
“* thing so easy as is conceived, to convey 
“* the conceit of one man’s mind into the 
“* mind of another, without loss or mistak- 
“‘ ing.”’* 'There is, I apprehend, only one case 
in which it can be accomplished ; in all others, 
we must in a greater or smaller degree fail in 
our object. . 
When we are employed, for instance, in 
mentioning the names of individual objects, 
which are equally known to our hearers as to 
ourselves, and which are of such a nature as 
to be liable to little or no change, we may, 
im most instances, be certain, (provided we 
take care always to apply the samemame to 
the same individual,) that all who hear us, 
have excited in them exactly the same set of 
ideas as we ourselves have. Thus, in speak- 
ing by name of any particular horse, or house, 
* Bacon: Of the Interpretation of Nature, chapter 18. 
He adds, “ especially in notions new, and differing from 
those that are received.” In his aphorisms he says; “ Ne- 
que etiam tradendi aut explicandi ea, que adducimus, facilis 
est ratio; quia, que in se nova sunt, intelligentur tamen ex 
analogia veterum.” Aphor. xxxiv. 
