But this
distinction of essences, belonging particularly to substances, we
shall, when we come to consider their names, have an occasion to treat
of more fully.
19. Essences ingenerable and incorruptible. That such abstract
ideas, with names to them, as we have been speaking of are essences,
may further appear by what we are told concerning essences, viz.
that they are all ingenerable and incorruptible. Which cannot be
true of the real constitutions of things, which begin and perish
with them. All things that exist, besides their Author, are all liable
to change; especially those things we are acquainted with, and have
ranked into bands under distinct names or ensigns. Thus, that which
was grass to-day is to-morrow the flesh of a sheep; and, within a
few days after, becomes part of a man: in all which and the like
changes, it is evident their real essence- i.e. that constitution
whereon the properties of these several things depended- is destroyed,
and perishes with them. But essences being taken for ideas established
in the mind, with names annexed to them, they are supposed to remain
steadily the same, whatever mutations the particular substances are
liable to. For, whatever becomes of Alexander and Bucephalus, the
ideas to which man and horse are annexed, are supposed nevertheless to
remain the same; and so the essences of those species are preserved
whole and undestroyed, whatever changes happen to any or all of the
individuals of those species.
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