from Guinea and Peru under one name, sets them also
upon making of one name that may comprehend both gold
and silver, and some other bodies of different sorts.
This is done by leaving out those qualities, which
are peculiar to each sort, and retaining a complex
idea made up of those that are common to them all.
To which the name metal being annexed, there
is a genus constituted; the essence whereof being that
abstract idea, containing only malleableness and fusibility,
with certain degrees of weight and fixedness, wherein
some bodies of several kinds agree, leaves out the
colour and other qualities peculiar to gold and silver,
and the other sorts comprehended under the name metal.
Whereby it is plain that men follow not exactly the
patterns set them by nature, when they make their
general ideas of substances; since there is no body
to be found which has barely malleableness and fusibility
in it, without other qualities as inseparable as those.
But men, in making their general ideas, seeking more
the convenience of language, and quick dispatch by
short and comprehensive signs, than the true and precise
nature of things as they exist, have, in the framing
their abstract ideas, chiefly pursued that end; which
was to be furnished with store of general and variously
comprehensive names. So that in this whole business
of genera and species, the genus, or more comprehensive,
is but a partial conception of what is in the species;
and the species but a partial idea of what is to be
found in each individual. If therefore any one
will think that a man, and a horse, and an animal,
and a plant, &c., are distinguished by real essences
made by nature, he must think nature to be very liberal
of these real essences, making one for body, another
for an animal, and another for a horse; and all these
essences liberally bestowed upon Bucephalus.
But if we would rightly consider what is done in all
these genera and species, or sorts, we should find
that there is no new thing made; but only more or
less comprehensive signs, whereby we may be enabled
to express in a few syllables great numbers of particular
things, as they agree in more or less general conceptions,
which we have framed to that purpose. In all
which we may observe, that the more general term is
always the name of a less complex idea; and that each
genus is but a partial conception of; the species comprehended
under it. So that if these abstract general ideas
be thought to be complete, it can only be in respect
of a certain established relation between them and
certain names which are made use of to signify them;
and not in respect of anything existing, as made by
nature.
33. This all accommodated to the end of the Speech.