Because these simple ideas that co-exist,
and are united in the same subject, being very numerous, and having
all an equal right to go into the complex specific idea which the
specific name is to stand for, men, though they propose to
themselves the very same subject to consider, yet frame very different
ideas about it; and so the name they use for it unavoidably comes to
have, in several men, very different significations. The simple
qualities which make up the complex ideas, being most of them
powers, in relation to changes which they are apt to make in, or
receive from other bodies, are almost infinite. He that shall but
observe what a great variety of alterations any one of the baser
metals is apt to receive, from the different application only of fire;
and how much a greater number of changes any of them will receive in
the hands of a chymist, by the application of other bodies, will not
think it strange that I count the properties of any sort of bodies not
easy to be collected, and completely known, by the ways of inquiry
which our faculties are capable of. They being therefore at least so
many, that no man can know the precise and definite number, they are
differently discovered by different men, according to their various
skill, attention, and ways of handling; who therefore cannot choose
but have different ideas of the same substance, and therefore make the
signification of its common name very various and uncertain.
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