So that if
these abstract general ideas be thought to be complete, it can only be
in respect of a certain established relation between them and
certain names which are made use of to signify them; and not in
respect of anything existing, as made by nature.
33. This all accommodated to the end of speech. This is adjusted
to the true end of speech, which is to be the easiest and shortest way
of communicating our notions. For thus he that would discourse of
things, as they agreed in the complex idea of extension and
solidity, needed but use the word body to denote all such. He that
to these would join others, signified by the words life, sense, and
spontaneous motion, needed but use the word animal to signify all
which partaked of those ideas, and he that had made a complex idea
of a body, with life, sense, and motion, with the faculty of
reasoning, and a certain shape joined to it, needed but use the
short monosyllable man, to express all particulars that correspond
to that complex idea. This is the proper business of genus and
species: and this men do without any consideration of real essences,
or substantial forms; which come not within the reach of our knowledge
when we think of those things, nor within the signification of our
words when we discourse with others.
34. Instance in Cassowaries.
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