even under one and the same name, but men that make two different abstract ideas, consisting not exactly of the same collection of qualities?  Nor is it a mere supposition to imagine that a body may exist wherein the other obvious qualities of gold may be without malleableness; since it is certain that gold itself will be sometimes so eager, (as artists call it,) that it will as little endure the hammer as glass itself.  What we have said of the putting in, or leaving out of malleableness, in the complex idea the name gold is by any one annexed to, may be said of its peculiar weight, fixedness, and several other the like qualities:  for whatever is left out, or put in, it is still the complex idea to which that name is annexed that makes the species:  and as any particular parcel of matter answers that idea, so the name of the sort belongs truly to it; and it is of that species.  And thus anything is true gold, perfect metal.  All which determination of the species, it is plain, depends on the understanding of man, making this or that complex idea.

36.  Nature makes the Similitudes of Substances.

This, then, in short, is the case:  Nature makes many particular things, which do agree one with another in many sensible qualities, and probably too in their internal frame and constitution:  but it is not this real essence that distinguishes them into species; it is men who, taking occasion from the qualities they find united in them, and wherein they observe often several individuals to agree, range them into sorts, in order to their naming, for the convenience of comprehensive signs; under which individuals, according to their conformity to this or that abstract idea, come to be ranked as under ensigns:  so that this is of the blue, that the red regiment; this is a man, that a drill:  and in this, I think, consists the whole business of genus and species.

37.  The manner of sorting particular beings the work of fallible men, though nature makes things alike.

I do not deny but nature, in the constant production of particular beings, makes them not always new and various, but very much alike and of kin one to another:  but I think it nevertheless true, that the boundaries of the species, whereby men sort them, are made by men; since the essences of the species, distinguished by different names, are, as has been proved, of man’s making, and seldom adequate to the internal nature of the things they are taken from.  So that we may truly say, such a manner of sorting of things is the workmanship of men.

38.  Each abstract Idea, with a name to it, makes a nominal Essence.