For when we say this is a man, that a horse; this justice, that
cruelty; this a watch, that a jack; what do we else but rank things
under different specific names, as agreeing to those abstract ideas,
of which we have made those names the signs? And what are the essences
of those species set out and marked by names, but those abstract ideas
in the mind; which are, as it were, the bonds between particular
things that exist, and the names they are to be ranked under? And when
general names have any connexion with particular beings, these
abstract ideas are the medium that unites them: so that the essences
of species, as distinguished and denominated by us, neither are nor
can be anything but those precise abstract ideas we have in our minds.
And therefore the supposed real essences of substances, if different
from our abstract ideas, cannot be the essences of the species we rank
things into. For two species may be one, as rationally as two
different essences be the essence of one species: and I demand what
are the alterations [which] may, or may not be made in a horse or
lead, without making either of them to be of another species? In
determining the species of things by our abstract ideas, this is
easy to resolve: but if any one will regulate himself herein by
supposed real essences, he will, I suppose, be at a loss: and he
will never be able to know when anything precisely ceases to be of the
species of a horse or lead.
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