By which I think it is evident, that substances afford matter of
very little general knowledge; and the bare contemplation of their
abstract ideas will carry us but a very little way in the search of
truth and certainty. What, then, are we to do for the improvement of
our knowledge in substantial beings? Here we are to take a quite
contrary course: the want of ideas of their real essences sends us
from our own thoughts to the things themselves as they exist.
Experience here must teach me what reason cannot: and it is by
trying alone, that I can certainly know, what other qualities co-exist
with those of my complex idea, v.g. whether that yellow, heavy,
fusible body I call gold, be malleable, or no; which experience (which
way ever it prove in that particular body I examine) makes me not
certain, that it is so in all, or any other yellow, heavy, fusible
bodies, but that which I have tried. Because it is no consequence
one way or the other from my complex idea: the necessity or
inconsistence of malleability hath no visible connexion with the
combination of that colour, weight, and fusibility in any body. What I
have said here of the nominal essence of gold, supposed to consist
of a body of such a determinate colour, weight, and fusibility, will
hold true, if malleableness, fixedness, and solubility in aqua regia
be added to it.
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