2263. Human Philosophy consists only of terminology
I spoke with spirits about the Philosophy of the world, which is regarded as wisdom, saying that it is only vocabulary. It discusses qualities, accidents, forces, substances, and the like, also spirits and other like concepts; but they have no other concern but to know what those words mean, such as what are accidents, substances, and many more, debating the meaning of the words, as if there were something real in them, when yet they are only words. Likewise, when they find a meaning, they debate whether the words mean something that can be comprehended by one word, thus a single mental image. While they who do this have numerous truths, because they had been able to see a thing from experience in themselves and the world, because they dispute about them, to them everything becomes confused, becomes trivia to which they cling, consequently material and bodily things, so nothing