distinguished by something else, and let us see, that general terms signify not our abstract ideas, but something different from them. I would fain know why a shock and a hound are not as distinct species as a spaniel and an elephant. We have no other idea of the different essence of an elephant and a spaniel than we have of the different essence of a shock and a hound; all the essential difference, whereby we know and distinguish them one from another, consisting only in the different collection of simple ideas, to which we have given those different names.

Genera and species are in order to naming.

§ 39. How much the making of species and genera is in order to general names, and how much general names are necessary, if not to the being, yet at least to the completing of a species, and making it pass for such, will appear, besides what has been said above concerning ice and water, in a very familiar example. A silent and a striking watch are but one species to those who have but one name for them: but he that has the name watch for one, and clock for the other, and distinct complex ideas, to which those names belong, to him they are different species. It will be said perhaps that the inward contrivance and constitution is different between these two, which the watch-maker has a clear idea of. And yet it is plain, they are but one species to him, when he has but one name for them. For what is sufficient in the inward contrivance to make a new species? There are some watches that are made with four wheels, others with five is this a specific difference to the workman? Some have strings and physies, and others none; some have the balance loose, and others regulated by a spiral spring, and others by hogs' bristles are any or all of these enough to make a specific difference to the workman, that knows each of these, and several other different contrivances, in the internal constitutions of watches? It is certain each of these hath a real difference from the rest: but whether it be an essential, a specific difference

or no, relates only to the complex idea to which the name watch is given as long as they all agree in the idea which that name stands for, and that name does not as a generical name comprehend different species under it, they are not essentially nor specifically different. But if any one will make minuter divisions from differences that he knows in the internal frame of watches, and to such precise complex ideas give names that shall prevail; they will then be new species to them who have those ideas with names to them, and can, by those differences, distinguish watches into these several sorts, and then watch will be a generical name. But yet they would be no distinct species to men ignorant of clock-work, and the inward contrivances of watches, who had no other idea but the outward shape and bulk, with the marking of the hours by the hand: for to them all those other names would be but synonymous terms for the same idea, and signify no more, nor no other thing, but a watch. Just thus, I think, it is in natural things. Nobody will doubt that the wheels or springs (if I may so say) within are different in a rational man and a changeling, no more than that there is a difference in the frame between a drill and a changeling. But whether one, or both the differences be essential or specifical, is only to be known to us by their agreement or disagreement with the complex idea that the name man stands for: for by that alone can it be determined, whether one or both, or neither of those, be a man or no.

artificial Species of things less

confused than na

tural.

§ 40. From what has been before said, we may see the reason why, in the species of artificial things, there is generally less confusion and uncertainty than in natural: because an artificial thing being a production of man, which the artificer designed, and therefore well knows the idea of, the name of it is supposed to stand for no other idea, nor to import any other essence, than what is certainly to be known, and easy enough to be apprehended.

For the idea or essence of the several sorts of artificial things consisting, for the most part, in nothing but the determinate figure of sensible parts; and sometimes motion depending thereon, which the artificer fashions in matter such as he finds for his turn; it is not beyond the reach of our faculties to attain a certain idea thereof, and to settle the signification of the names, whereby the species of artificial things are distinguished with less doubt, obscurity, and equivocation, than we can in things natural, whose differences and operations depend upon contrivances beyond the reach of our discoveries.

Artificial things of distinct species.

§ 41. I must be excused here if I think artificial things are of distinct species as well as natural: since I find they are as

plainly and orderly ranked into sorts, by different abstract ideas, with general names annexed to them, as distinct one from another as those of natural substances. For why should we not think a watch and pistol as distinct species one from another as a horse and a dog, they being expressed in our minds by distinct ideas, and to others by distinct appellations? Substances alone have proper

names.

§ 42. This is farther to be observed concerning substances, that they alone, of all our several sorts of ideas, have particular or proper names, whereby one only particular thing is signified: because in simple ideas, modes, and relations, it seldom happens that men have occasion to mention often this or that particular when it is absent. Besides, the greatest part of mixed modes, being actions which perish in their birth, are not capable of a lasting duration as substances, which are the actors, and wherein the simple ideas, that make up the complex ideas designed by the name, have a lasting union.

Difficulty to treat of words.

§ 43. I must beg pardon of my reader, for having dwelt so long upon this subject, and perhaps with some obscurity. But I desire it may be considered how difficult it

is to lead another by words into the thoughts of things, stripped of those specifical differences we give them which things, if I name not, I say nothing; and if I do name them, I thereby rank them into some sort or other, and suggest to the mind the usual abstract idea of that species; and so cross my purpose. For to talk of a man, and to lay by, at the same time, the ordinary signification of the name man, which is our complex idea usually annexed to it; and bid the reader consider man as he is in himself, and as he is really distinguished from others in his internal constitution, or real essence; that is, by something he knows not what; looks like trifling: and yet thus one must do who would speak of the supposed real essences and species of things, as thought to be made by nature, if it be but only to make it understood that there is no such thing signified by the general names, which substances are called by. But because it is difficult by known familiar names to do this, give me leave to endeavour by an example to make the different considerations the mind has of specific names and ideas a little more clear; and to show how the complex ideas of modes are referred sometimes to archetypes in the minds of other intelligent beings; or, which is the same, to the signification annexed by others to their received names; and sometimes to no archetypes at all. Give me leave also to show how the mind always refers its ideas of substances, either to the substances themselves, or to the signification of their names as to the archetypes; and also to make plain the nature of species, or sorting of things, as apprehended and made use of by us; and of the essences belonging to those species, which is perhaps of more moment, to discover the extent and certainty of our knowledge, than we at first imagine.

§ 44. Let us suppose Adam in the state of a grown man, with a good understanding, but in a strange country, with all things new and unknown about him, and no

Instances of

mixed modes in kinneah

and niouph.

:

other faculties, to attain the knowledge of them, but what one of this age has now. He observes Lamech more melancholy than usual, and imagines it to be from a suspicion he has of his wife Adah (whom he most ardently loved) that she had too much kindness for another man. Adam discourses these his thoughts to Eve, and desires her to take care that Adah commit not folly and in these discourses with Eve he makes use of these two new words, kinneah and niouph. In time Adam's mistake appears, for he finds Lamech's trouble proceeded from having killed a man: but yet the two names kinneah and niouph (the one standing for suspicion, in a husband, of his wife's disloyalty to him, and the other for the act of committing disloyalty) lost not their distinct significations. It is plain then that here were two distinct complex ideas of mixed modes with names to them, two distinct species of actions essentially different; I ask wherein consisted the essences of these two distinct species of actions? And it is plain it consisted in a precise combination of simple ideas, different in one from the other. I ask, Whether the complex idea in Adam's mind, which he called kinneah, were adequate or no? And it is plain it was; for it being a combination of simple ideas, which he, without any regard to any archetype, without respect to any thing as a pattern, voluntarily put together, abstracted and gave the name kinneah to, to express in short to others, by that one sound, all the simple ideas contained and united in that complex one; it must necessarily follow that it was an adequate idea. His own choice having made that combination, it had all in it he intended it should, and so could not but be perfect, could not but be adequate, it being referred to no other archetype which it was supposed to represent.

§ 45. These words, kinneah and niouph, by degrees, grew into common use; and then the case was somewhat altered. Adam's children had the same faculties, and thereby the same power that he had to