43.  Difficult to lead another by words into the thoughts of things stripped of those abstract ideas we give them.

I must beg pardon of my reader for having dwelt so long upon this subject, and perhaps with some obscurity.  But I desire it may be considered, how difficult it is to lead another by words into the thoughts of things, stripped of those specifical differences we give them:  which things, if I name not, I say nothing; and if I do name them, I thereby rank them into some sort or other, and suggest to the mind the usual abstract idea of that species; and so cross my purpose.  For, to talk of a man, and to lay by, at the same time, the ordinary signification of the name man, which is our complex idea usually annexed to it; and bid the reader consider man, as he is in himself, and as he is really distinguished from others in his internal constitution, or real essence, that is, by something he knows not what, looks like trifling:  and yet thus one must do who would speak of the supposed real essences and species of things, as thought to be made by nature, if it be but only to make it understood, that there is no such thing signified by the general names which substances are called by.  But because it is difficult by known familiar names to do this, give me leave to endeavour by an example to make the different consideration the mind has of specific names and ideas a little more clear; and to show how the complex ideas of modes are referred sometimes to archetypes in the minds of other intelligent beings, or, which is the same, to the signification annexed by others to their received names; and sometimes to no archetypes at all.  Give me leave also to show how the mind always refers its ideas of substances, either to the substances themselves, or to the signification of their names, as to the archetypes; and also to make plain the nature of species or sorting of things, as apprehended and made use of by us; and of the essences belonging to those species:  which is perhaps of more moment to discover the extent and certainty of our knowledge than we at first imagine.

44.  Instances of mixed Modes names KINNEAH and NIOUPH.

Let us suppose Adam, in the state of a grown man, with a good understanding, but in a strange country, with all things new and unknown about him; and no other faculties to attain the knowledge of them but what one of this age has now.  He observes Lamech more melancholy than usual, and imagines it to be from a suspicion he has of his wife Adah, (whom he most ardently loved) that she had too much kindness for another man.  Adam discourses these his thoughts to Eve, and desires her to take care that Adah commit not folly:  and in these discourses with Eve he makes use of these two new words KINNEAH and NIOUPH.  In time, Adam’s mistake appears, for he finds Lamech’s trouble proceeded from having killed a man:  but yet the two names KINNEAH and NIOUPH, (the one standing for suspicion in a husband of his