Substances alone, of all our several sorts of ideas, have proper
names. This is further to be observed concerning substances, that they
alone of all our several sorts of ideas have particular or proper
names, whereby one only particular thing is signified. Because in
simple ideas, modes, and relations, it seldom happens that men have
occasion to mention often this or that particular when it is absent.
Besides, the greatest part of mixed modes, being actions which
perish in their birth, are not capable of a lasting duration, as
substances which are the actors; and wherein the simple ideas that
make up the complex ideas designed by the name have a lasting union.
43. Difficult to lead another by words into the thoughts of things
stripped of those abstract ideas we give them. I must beg pardon of my
reader for having dwelt so long upon this subject, and perhaps with
some obscurity. But I desire it may be considered, how difficult it is
to lead another by words into the thoughts of things, stripped of
those specifical differences we give them: which things, if I name
not, I say nothing; and if I do name them, I thereby rank them into
some sort or other, and suggest to the mind the usual abstract idea of
that species; and so cross my purpose. For, to talk of a man, and to
lay by, at the same time, the ordinary signification of the name
man, which is our complex idea usually annexed to it; and bid the
reader consider man, as he is in himself, and as he is really
distinguished from others in his internal constitution, or real
essence, that is, by something he knows not what, looks like trifling:
and yet thus one must do who would speak of the supposed real essences
and species of things, as thought to be made by nature, if it be but
only to make it understood, that there is no such thing signified by
the general names which substances are called by.
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