Upon the whole matter, it is evident that it is their own collections of sensible qualities that men make the essences of their several sorts of substances; and that their real internal structures are not considered by the greatest part of men in the sorting them.  Much less were any substantial forms ever thought on by any but those who have in this one part of the world learned the language of the schools:  and yet those ignorant men, who pretend not any insight into the real essences, nor trouble themselves about substantial forms, but are content with knowing things one from another by their sensible qualities, are often better acquainted with their differences; can more nicely distinguish them from their uses; and better know what they expect from each, than those learned quick-sighted men, who look so deep into them, and talk so confidently of something more hidden and essential.

25.  The specific Essences that are common made by Men.

But supposing that the real essences of substances were discoverable by those that would severely apply themselves to that inquiry, yet we could not reasonably think that the ranking of things under general names was regulated by those internal real constitutions, or anything else but their obvious appearances; since languages, in all countries, have been established long before sciences.  So that they have not been philosophers or logicians, or such who have troubled themselves about forms and essences, that have made the general names that are in use amongst the several nations of men:  but those more or less comprehensive terms have, for the most part, in all languages, received their birth and signification from ignorant and illiterate people, who sorted and denominated things by those sensible qualities they found in them; thereby to signify them, when absent, to others, whether they had an occasion to mention a sort or a particular thing.

26.  Therefore very various and uncertain in the ideas of different men.

Since then it is evident that we sort and name substances by their nominal and not by their real essences, the next thing to be considered is how, and by whom these essences come to be made.  As to the latter, it is evident they are made by the mind, and not by nature:  for were they Nature’s workmanship, they could not be so various and different in several men as experience tells us they are.  For if we will examine it, we shall not find the nominal essence of any one species of substances in all men the same:  no, not of that which of all others we are the most intimately acquainted with.  It could not possibly be that the abstract idea to which the name man is given should be different in several men, if it were of Nature’s making; and that to one it should be animal rationale, and to another, animal implume bipes latis unguibus.  He that annexes the name man to a complex idea, made up of sense and spontaneous