In
some, this complex idea contains a greater, and in others a smaller
number of qualities; and so is apparently such as the mind makes it.
The yellow shining colour makes gold to children; others add weight,
malleableness, and fusibility; and others yet other qualities, which
they find joined with that yellow colour, as constantly as its
weight and fusibility. For in all these and the like qualities, one
has as good a right to be put into the complex idea of that
substance wherein they are all joined as another. And therefore
different men, leaving out or putting in several simple ideas which
others do not, according to their various examination, skill, or
observation of that subject, have different essences of gold, which
must therefore be of their own and not of nature's making.
32. The more general our ideas of substances are, the more
incomplete and partial they are. If the number of simple ideas that
make the nominal essence of the lowest species, or first sorting, of
individuals, depends on the mind of man, variously collecting them, it
is much more evident that they do so in the more comprehensive
classes, which, by the masters of logic, are called genera. These
are complex ideas designedly imperfect: and it is visible at first
sight, that several of those qualities that are to be found in the
things themselves are purposely left out of generical ideas.
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