And thus, speaking of a man, or gold,
or any other species of natural substances, as supposed constituted by
a precise and real essence which nature regularly imparts to every
individual of that kind, whereby it is made to be of that species,
we cannot be certain of the truth of any affirmation or negation
made of it. For man or gold, taken in this sense, and used for species
of things constituted by real essences, different from the complex
idea in the mind of the speaker, stand for we know not what; and the
extent of these species, with such boundaries, are so unknown and
undetermined, that it is impossible with any certainty to affirm, that
all men are rational, or that all gold is yellow. But where the
nominal essence is kept to, as the boundary of each species, and men
extend the application of any general term no further than to the
particular things in which the complex idea it stands for is to be
found, there they are in no danger to mistake the bounds of each
species, nor can be in doubt, on this account, whether any proposition
be true or not. I have chosen to explain this uncertainty of
propositions in this scholastic way, and have made use of the terms of
essences, and species, on purpose to show the absurdity and
inconvenience there is to think of them as of any other sort of
realities, than barely abstract ideas with names to them.
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