Which, though in common conversation they pass well
enough for the signs of some few obvious qualities co-existing, are
yet far enough from comprehending, in a settled signification, a
precise number of simple ideas, much less all those which are united
in nature. He that shall consider, after so much stir about genus
and species, and such a deal of talk of specific differences, how
few words we have yet settled definitions of, may with reason imagine,
that those forms which there hath been so much noise made about are
only chimeras, which give us no light into the specific natures of
things. And he that shall consider how far the names of substances are
from having significations wherein all who use them do agree, will
have reason to conclude that, though the nominal essences of
substances are all supposed to be copied from nature, yet they are
all, or most of them, very imperfect. Since the composition of those
complex ideas are, in several men, very different: and therefore
that these boundaries of species are as men, and not as Nature,
makes them, if at least there are in nature any such prefixed
bounds. It is true that many particular substances are so made by
Nature, that they have agreement and likeness one with another, and so
afford a foundation of being ranked into sorts. But the sorting of
things by us, or the making of determinate species, being in order
to naming and comprehending them under general terms, I cannot see how
it can be properly said, that Nature sets the boundaries of the
species of things: or, if it be so, our boundaries of species are
not exactly conformable to those in nature.
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