And if either of these should make use of the measures that
those of the other language designed by their names, he would be quite
out in his account. These are too sensible proofs to be doubted; and
we shall find this much more so in the names of more abstract and
compounded ideas, such as are the greatest part of those which make up
moral discourses: whose names, when men come curiously to compare with
those they are translated into, in other languages, they will find
very few of them exactly to correspond in the whole extent of their
significations.
9. This shows species to be made for communication. The reason why I
take so particular notice of this is, that we may not be mistaken
about genera and species, and their essences, as if they were things
regularly and constantly made by nature, and had a real existence in
things; when they appear, upon a more wary survey, to be nothing
else but an artifice of the understanding, for the easier signifying
such collections of ideas as it should often have occasion to
communicate by one general term; under which divers particulars, as
far forth as they agreed to that abstract idea, might be comprehended.
And if the doubtful signification of the word species may make it
sound harsh to some, that I say the species of mixed modes are "made
by the understanding"; yet, I think, it can by nobody be denied that
it is the mind makes those abstract complex ideas to which specific
names are given.
Pages:
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640