One thing I doubt not but will seem very strange in this doctrine, which is, that from what has been said it will follow, that each abstract idea, with a name to it, makes a distinct species.  But who can help it, if truth will have it so?  For so it must remain till somebody can show us the species of things limited and 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.

39.  How Genera and Species are related to naming.

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 watchmaker 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 physics, 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