How much,
therefore, in mixed modes, the unity necessary to any essence
depends on the mind; and how much the continuation and fixing of
that unity depends on the name in common use annexed to it, I leave to
be considered by those who look upon essences and species as real
established things in nature.
11. Suitable to this, we find that men speaking of mixed modes,
seldom imagine or take any other for species of them, but such as
are set out by name: because they, being of man's making only, in
order to naming, no such species are taken notice of, or supposed to
be, unless a name be joined to it, as the sign of man's having
combined into one idea several loose ones; and by that name giving a
lasting union to the parts which would otherwise cease to have any, as
soon as the mind laid by that abstract idea, and ceased actually to
think on it. But when a name is once annexed to it, wherein the
parts of that complex idea have a settled and permanent union, then is
the essence, as it were, established, and the species looked on as
complete. For to what purpose should the memory charge itself with
such compositions, unless it were by abstraction to make them general?
And to what purpose make them general, unless it were that they
might have general names for the convenience of discourse and
communication? Thus we see, that killing a man with a sword or a
hatchet are looked on as no distinct species of action; but if the
point of the sword first enter the body, it passes for a distinct
species, where it has a distinct name, as in England, in whose
language it is called stabbing: but in another country, where it has
not happened to be specified under a peculiar name, it passes not
for a distinct species.
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