This is called ABSTRACTION, whereby ideas taken
from particular beings become general representatives of all of the
same kind; and their names general names, applicable to whatever
exists conformable to such abstract ideas. Such precise, naked
appearances in the mind, without considering how, whence, or with what
others they came there, the understanding lays up (with names commonly
annexed to them) as the standards to rank real existences into
sorts, as they agree with these patterns, and to denominate them
accordingly. Thus the same colour being observed to-day in chalk or
snow, which the mind yesterday received from milk, it considers that
appearance alone, makes it a representative of all of that kind; and
having given it the name whiteness, it by that sound signifies the
same quality wheresoever to be imagined or met with; and thus
universals, whether ideas or terms, are made.
10. Brutes abstract not. If it may be doubted whether beasts
compound and enlarge their ideas that way to any degree; this, I
think, I may be positive in,- that the power of abstracting is not
at all in them; and that the having of general ideas is that which
puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an
excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to. For
it is evident we observe no footsteps in them of making use of general
signs for universal ideas; from which we have reason to imagine that
they have not the faculty of abstracting, or making general ideas,
since they have no use of words, or any other general signs.
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