But men, in making their general
ideas, seeking more the convenience of language, and quick dispatch by
short and comprehensive signs, than the true and precise nature of
things as they exist, have, in the framing their abstract ideas,
chiefly pursued that end; which was to be furnished with store of
general and variously comprehensive names. So that in this whole
business of genera and species, the genus, or more comprehensive, is
but a partial conception of what is in the species; and the species
but a partial idea of what is to be found in each individual. If
therefore any one will think that a man, and a horse, and an animal,
and a plant, &c., are distinguished by real essences made by nature,
he must think nature to be very liberal of these real essences, making
one for body, another for an animal, and another for a horse; and
all these essences liberally bestowed upon Bucephalus. But if we would
rightly consider what is done in all these genera and species, or
sorts, we should find that there is no new thing made; but only more
or less comprehensive signs, whereby we may be enabled to express in a
few syllables great numbers of particular things, as they agree in
more or less general conceptions, which we have framed to that
purpose. In all which we may observe, that the more general term is
always the name of a less complex idea; and that each genus is but a
partial conception of the species comprehended under it.
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