dom; but as the great use of language is to signify general conceptions by short sounds, men have only had regard to such combinations as were most useful. A moderate skill in different languages will easily satisfy us of the truth of this; it being so obvious to observe many words in one language which have none corresponding to them in another. This plainly shews that those of one country, by their customs and manner of life, have found occasion to make several complex ideas, which others have never col, lected into specific ideas.-The ideas a Roman affixed to his names of hour, foot, and pound, are very different from those of an Englishman: and much more so is this the case in more abstract ideas, such as generally make up moral discourses.-There being no connexion in nature between the parts of these complex ideas, the combination is presented by the name: for essences and species are not real established things in nature:-but though in the species of corporeal substances it be the mind that makes the nominal essence, yet since the ideas combined are supposed to have an union in nature, they are considered as distinct species, independent of any operation of the mind. When we speak of justice or gratitude, we frame to ourselves no imagination of any thing existing and hence, I think, it is, that the essences of the species of mixed modes are called notions, as appertaining peculiarily to the understanding.—Their

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being made by the mind without patterns makes the complex ideas of mixed modes more compounded than those of substances: thus, how many independent ideas of persons, habits, tapers, orders, motions, sounds, does the name procession excite? and being arbitrary too, they are always true; because the real and nominal essence are the same. For the

same reason also, their names are generally learnt before the ideas they stand for are perfectly known; though in the beginning of languages it was necessary to have the idea before one used the name. What one of a thousand ever frames the abstract ideas of glory or ambition before he has heard the names of them? What I have said of mixed modes is in general so applicable to relations, that I shall not enlarge on them.

CHAP. VI.

OF THE NAMES OF SUBSTANCES.

THE common names of substances, as well as other general terms, stand for sorts; that is, denote a common nature in several substances, capable of being comprehended in one conception. The measure and boundary of each sort or species; by which it is distinguished from others, is what we call its essence.

The only essence we know in natural substances is the abstract idea essential to each sort; and we call it the nominal essence, to distinguish it from a supposed indiscoverable constitution of the parts of bodies, (called the real essence) in which the sensible qualities inhere.

Had we such a knowledge of that constitution of man, from which his faculties of motion, sensation, reasoning, and other powers flow, and on which his so regular shape depends, as 'tis possible angels have, and 'tis certain his maker has, we should have a quite other idea of his essence than what is contained in our definition of his species.

We have no idea of any thing essential to individuals. "Tis necessary for me to be as I am; God and Nature has made me so; but there is nothing I have is essential to me:- an accident or disease may very much alter my colour or shape; a fever or fall may take away my reason or memory, or both; and an apoplexy leave neither sense nor understanding, no, nor life :-other creatures of my shape may be made with more and better, or fewer and worse faculties than I have; and others may have reason and sense in a shape and body very different from mine None of these are essential to the one or the other, or to any individual whatsoever, till the mind refers it to some sort of things; and then presently, according to the abstract idea of that sort, something is

found essential. Should there be found a parcel of matter having all the qualities of iron, except obedience to the loadstone, would any one question whether it wanted any thing essential.

Without some abstract idea, considered as the essence of a sort of things, particular beings regarded merely in themselves will be found to have all their qualities equally essential. Even the real essence supposes a species; for being that constitution on which the properties depend, it necessarily implies a sort of things; properties belonging only to sorts, and not to individuals. Indeed, as to real essences of substances, we only suppose their being, without precisely knowing what they are. The nominal essence determines the species: for that is all that the names of things can denote: since we find many of the individuals that are ranked into one sort, called by one common name, and so considered as one species, possessing qualities as far different from one another, as from others which are accounted specifically different.-This is obvious to all who have much experience in natural bodies. There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding: the familiar use of things about us cures our wonder, but not our ignorance: the internal constitution, on which their properties depend, being unknown to us. Nor does the supposition of internal substantial

forms render our ideas of the essences of things at all more intelligible than that of an imagined real

essence.

This is farther evident from our ideas of spirits and of God. We have no other notion of spirits than that of a sort of beings having all the faculties of our minds, without any thing material. Though we are told that there are different species of Angels, we can frame no distinct ideas of them: but only attribute the powers of our own minds to some in a higher, to others in a lower degree. Our notion of God consists of the same ideas without limitation. It is not impossible to conceive, nor repugnant to reason, that there may be many species of spirits as distinguished by their properties as the sensible things with which we are acquainted. That there should be more species of intelligent creatures above us than there are of sensible and material below us, seems probable to me, from this; that in all the visible corporeal world we see no chasms or gaps: the descent from us is by easy steps, and a continued series of things, that in each remove differ very little one from the other. There are fishes that have wings, and are not strangers to the airy region: some birds inhabit the water, whose blood is as cold as that of fishes, and their flesh so like in taste, that the scrupulous are allowed them on fish-days. Amphibious animals link the terrestrial and aquatic together: seals live at