46.  Instances of a species of Substance named ZAHAB.

Let us now also consider, after the same manner, the names of substances in their first application.  One of Adam’s children, roving in the mountains, lights on a glittering substance which pleases his eye.  Home he carries it to Adam, who, upon consideration of it, finds it to be hard, to have a bright yellow colour, and an exceeding great weight.  These perhaps, at first, are all the qualities he takes notice of in it; and abstracting this complex idea, consisting of a substance having that peculiar bright yellowness, and a weight very great in proportion to its bulk, he gives the name ZAHAB, to denominate and mark all substances that have these sensible qualities in them.  It is evident now, that, in this case, Adam acts quite differently from what he did before, in forming those ideas of mixed modes to which he gave the names KINNEAH and NIOUPH.  For there he put ideas together only by his own imagination, not taken from the existence of anything; and to them he gave names to denominate all things that should happen to agree to those his abstract ideas, without considering whether any such thing did exist or not:  the standard there was of his own making.  But in the forming his idea of this new substance, he takes the quite contrary course; here he has a standard made by nature; and therefore, being to represent that to himself, by the idea he has of it, even when it is absent, he puts in no simple idea into his complex one, but what he has the perception of from the thing itself.  He takes care that his idea be conformable to this archetype, and intends the name should stand for an idea so conformable.

47.

This piece of matter, thus denominated ZAHAB by Adam, being quite different from any he had seen before, nobody, I think, will deny to be a distinct species, and to have its peculiar essence; and that the name ZAHAB is the mark of the species, and a name belonging to all things partaking in that essence.  But here it is plain the essence Adam made the name ZAHAB stand for was nothing but a body hard, shining, yellow, and very heavy.  But the inquisitive mind of man, not content with the knowledge of these, as I may say, superficial qualities, puts Adam upon further examination of this matter.  He therefore knocks, and beats it with flints, to see what was discoverable in the inside:  he finds it yield to blows, but not easily separate into pieces:  he finds it will bend without breaking.  Is not now ductility to be added to his former idea, and made part of the essence of the species that name ZAHAB stands for?  Further trials discover fusibility and fixedness.  Are not they also, by the same reason that any of the others were, to be put into the complex idea signified by the name ZAHAB?  If not, what reason will there be shown more for the one than the other?  If these must, then all the other properties, which any further trials shall discover in this matter, ought by the same reason to make a part of the ingredients of the complex idea which the name ZAHAB stands for, and so be the essence of the species marked by that name.  Which properties, because they are endless, it is plain that the idea made after this fashion, by this archetype, will be always inadequate.