An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. | Page 8

that which
gives a right to that name; the having the essence, and the having that
conformity, must needs be the same thing: since to be of any species,
and to have a right to the name of that species, is all one. As, for
example, to be a MAN, or of the SPECIES man, and to have right to
the NAME man, is the same thing. Again, to be a man, or of the species
man, and have the ESSENCE of a man, is the same thing. Now, since
nothing can be a man, or have a right to the name man, but what has a
conformity to the abstract idea the name man stands for, nor anything
be a man, or have a right to the species man, but what has the essence
of that species; it follows, that the abstract idea for which the name
stands, and the essence of the species, is one and the same. From
whence it is easy to observe, that the essences of the sorts of things, and,
consequently, the sorting of things, is the workmanship of the
understanding that abstracts and makes those general ideas.
13. They are the Workmanship of the Understanding, but have their
Foundation in the Similitude of Things.
I would not here be thought to forget, much less to deny, that Nature, in
the production of things, makes several of them alike: there is nothing
more obvious, especially in the races of animals, and all things
propagated by seed. But yet I think we may say, THE SORTING OF
THEM UNDER NAMES IS THE WORKMANSHIP OF THE
UNDERSTANDING, TAKING OCCASION, FROM THE
SIMILITUDE IT OBSERVES AMONGST THEM, TO MAKE
ABSTRACT GENERAL IDEAS, and set them up in the mind, with
names annexed to them, as patterns or forms, (for, in that sense, the
word FORM has a very proper signification,) to which as particular
things existing are found to agree, so they come to be of that species,
have that denomination, or are put into that CLASSIS. For when we
say this is a man, that a horse; this justice, that cruelty; this a watch,
that a jack; what do we else but rank things under different specific
names, as agreeing to those abstract ideas, of which we have made
those names the signs? And what are the essences of those species set
out and marked by names, but those abstract ideas in the mind; which
are, as it were, the bonds between particular things that exist, and the

names they are to be ranked under? And when general names have any
connexion with particular beings, these abstract ideas are the medium
that unites them: so that the essences of species, as distinguished and
denominated by us, neither are nor can be anything but those precise
abstract ideas we have in our minds. And therefore the supposed real
essences of substances, if different from our abstract ideas, cannot be
the essences of the species WE rank things into. For two species may
be one, as rationally as two different essences be the essence of one
species: and I demand what are the alterations [which] may, or may not
be made in a HORSE or LEAD, without making either of them to be of
another species? In determining the species of things by OUR abstract
ideas, this is easy to resolve: but if any one will regulate himself herein
by supposed REAL essences, he will I suppose, be at a loss: and he will
never be able to know when anything precisely ceases to be of the
species of a HORSE or LEAD.
14. Each distinct abstract Idea is a distinct Essence.
Nor will any one wonder that I say these essences, or abstract ideas
(which are the measures of name, and the boundaries of species) are the
workmanship of the understanding, who considers that at least the
complex ones are often, in several men, different collections of simple
ideas; and therefore that is COVETOUSNESS to one man, which is not
so to another. Nay, even in substances, where their abstract ideas seem
to be taken from the things themselves, they are not constantly the
same; no, not in that species which is most familiar to us, and with
which we have the most intimate acquaintance: it having been more
than once doubted, whether the FOETUS born of a woman were a
MAN, even so far as that it hath been debated, whether it were or were
not to be nourished and baptized: which could not be, if the abstract
idea or essence to which the name man belonged were of nature's
making; and were not the uncertain and various collection of simple
ideas, which the understanding put together, and then, abstracting it,
affixed a name to it. So