But, to deduce this a little more distinctly, it will not perhaps be amiss to trace our notions and names from their beginning, and observe by what degrees we proceed, and by what steps we enlarge our ideas from our first infancy.  There is nothing more evident, than that the ideas of the persons children converse with (to instance in them alone) are, like the persons themselves, only particular.  The ideas of the nurse and the mother are well framed in their minds; and, like pictures of them there, represent only those individuals.  The names they first gave to them are confined to these individuals; and the names of nurse and mamma, the child uses, determine themselves to those persons.  Afterwards, when time and a larger acquaintance have made them observe that there are a great many other things in the world, that in some common agreements of shape, and several other qualities, resemble their father and mother, and those persons they have been used to, they frame an idea, which they find those many particulars do partake in; and to that they give, with others, the name man, for example.  And thus they come to have a general name, and a general idea.  Wherein they make nothing new; but only leave out of the complex idea they had of Peter and James, Mary and Jane, that which is peculiar to each, and retain only what is common to them all.

8.  And further enlarge our complex ideas, by still leaving out properties contained in them.

By the same way that they come by the general name and idea of man, they easily advance to more general names and notions.  For, observing that several things that differ from their idea of man, and cannot therefore be comprehended out under that name, have yet certain qualities wherein they agree with man, by retaining only those qualities, and uniting them into one idea, they have again another and more general idea; to which having given a name they make a term of a more comprehensive extension:  which new idea is made, not by any new addition, but only as before, by leaving out the shape, and some other properties signified by the name man, and retaining only a body, with life, sense, and spontaneous motion, comprehended under the name animal.

9.  General natures are nothing but abstract and partial ideas of more complex ones.

That this is the way whereby men first formed general ideas, and general names to them, I think is so evident, that there needs no other proof of it but the considering of a man’s self, or others, and the ordinary proceedings of their minds in knowledge.  And he that thinks general natures or notions are anything else but such abstract and partial ideas of more complex ones, taken at first from particular existences, will, I fear, be at a loss where to find them.  For let any one effect, and then tell me, wherein does his idea of man differ from that of Peter and Paul, or his idea of horse