Chapter VIII
Of Abstract and Concrete Terms
1. Abstract terms not predictable one of another, and why. The
ordinary words of language, and our common use of them, would have
given us light into the nature of our ideas, if they had been but
considered with attention. The mind, as has been shown, has a power to
abstract its ideas, and so they become essences, general essences,
whereby the sorts of things are distinguished. Now each abstract
idea being distinct, so that of any two the one can never be the
other, the mind will, by its intuitive knowledge, perceive their
difference, and therefore in propositions no two whole ideas can
ever be affirmed one of another. This we see in the common use of
language, which permits not any two abstract words, or names of
abstract ideas, to be affirmed one of another. For how near of kin
soever they may seem to be, and how certain soever it is that man is
an animal, or rational, or white, yet every one at first hearing
perceives the falsehood of these propositions: humanity is
animality, or rationality, or whiteness: and this is as evident as any
of the most allowed maxims. All our affirmations then are only in
concrete, which is the affirming, not one abstract idea to be another,
but one abstract idea to be joined to another; which abstract ideas,
in substances, may be of any sort; in all the rest are little else but
of relations; and in substances the most frequent are of powers:
v.
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