And those animals which have a
numerous brood of young ones at once, appear not to have any knowledge
of their number; for though they are mightily concerned for any of
their young that are taken from them whilst they are in sight or
hearing, yet if one or two of them be stolen from them in their
absence, or without noise, they appear not to miss them, or to have
any sense that their number is lessened.
8. Naming. When children have, by repeated sensations, got ideas
fixed in their memories, they begin by degrees to learn the use of
signs. And when they have got the skill to apply the organs of
speech to the framing of articulate sounds, they begin to make use
of words, to signify their ideas to others. These verbal signs they
sometimes borrow from others, and sometimes make themselves, as one
may observe among the new and unusual names children often give to
things in the first use of language.
9. Abstraction. The use of words then being to stand as outward
marks of our internal ideas, and those ideas being taken from
particular things, if every particular idea that we take in should
have a distinct name, names must be endless. To prevent this, the mind
makes the particular ideas received from particular objects to
become general; which is done by considering them as they are in the
mind such appearances,- separate from all other existences, and the
circumstances of real existence, as time, place, or any other
concomitant ideas.
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