First, ‘But to say no more:’  here it intimates a stop of the mind in the course it was going, before it came quite to the end of it.

Secondly, ‘I saw but two plants;’ here it shows that the mind limits the sense to what is expressed, with a negation of all other.

Thirdly,’You pray; but it is not that God would bring you to the true religion.’

Fourthly, ‘But that he would confirm you in your own.’  The first of these BUTS intimates a supposition in the mind of something otherwise than it should be; the latter shows that the mind makes a direct opposition between that and what goes before it.

Fifthly, ‘All animals have sense, but a dog is an animal:’  here it signifies little more but that the latter proposition is joined to the former, as the minor of a syllogism.

6.  This Matter of the use of Particles but lightly touched here.

To these, I doubt not, might be added a great many other significations of this particle, if it were my business to examine it in its full latitude, and consider it in all the places it is to be found:  which if one should do, I doubt whether in all those manners it is made use of, it would deserve the title of discretive, which grammarians give to it.  But I intend not here a full explication of this sort of signs.  The instances I have given in this one may give occasion to reflect on their use and force in language, and lead us into the contemplation of several actions of our minds in discoursing, which it has found a way to intimate to others by these particles, some whereof constantly, and others in certain constructions, have the sense of a whole sentence contained in them.

CHAPTER VIII.

Of abstract and concrete terms.

1.  Abstract Terms predicated one on another and why.

The ordinary words of language, and our common use of them, would have given us light into the nature of our ideas, if they had been but considered with attention.  The mind, as has been shown, has a power to abstract its ideas, and so they become essences, general essences, whereby the sorts of things are distinguished.  Now each abstract idea being distinct, so that of any two the one can never be the other, the mind will, by its intuitive knowledge, perceive their difference, and therefore in propositions no two whole ideas can ever be affirmed one of another.  This we see in the common use of language, which permits not any two abstract words, or names of abstract ideas, to be affirmed one of another.  For how near of kin soever they may seem to be, and how certain soever it is that man is an animal, or rational, or white, yet every one at first hearing perceives the falsehood of these propositions:  Humanity is animality, or rationality, or whiteness:  and this is as evident as any of the most allowed maxims.