17 CHAP. III. several others, so that the meaning or idea it stands for may BOOK III. be certainly known; languages are not always so made according to the rules of logic, that every term can have its signification exactly and clearly expressed by two others. Experience sufficiently satisfies us to the contrary; or else those who have made this rule have done ill, that they have given us so few definitions conformable to it. But of definitions more in the next chapter. and Uni of the and 11. To return to general words: it is plain, by what has General been said, that general and universal belong not to the real versal are existence of things; but are the inventions and creatures of Creatures the understanding, made by it for its own use, and concern Underonly signs, whether words or ideas1. Words are general, as standing. has been said, when used for signs of general ideas, and so belong not are applicable indifferently to many particular things; and Existence ideas are general when they are set up as the representatives of things. of many particular things: but universality belongs not to things themselves, which are all of them particular in their existence 2, even those words and ideas which in their signification are general. When therefore we quit particulars, the 1 Locke often speaks not only of words but of ideas as 'signs,' on the supposition that our knowledge of things is measured by our ideas of them; also because' the scene of ideas which makes up one man's thoughts cannot be laid open to the immediate view of another.' Cf. Bk. IV. ch. xxi. § 4. 2 Nature, that is to say, makes individual things alike in various respects to other individual things, so that each thing may be placed in any one of many classes, according to the resembling qualities which one arbitrarily selects. In this way species are 'inventions and creatures of the understanding.' Our modes of conceiving and classifying things are influenced, in each case, by the end we have in view. In different sciences and arts different attributes are fixed on, as essentially characterising each species, according as this or that is most im- to the Real BOOK III. generals that rest are only creatures of our own making; 141 their general nature being nothing but the capacity they are CHAP. III. put into, by the understanding, of signifying or representing Abstract are the of Genera and Species. many particulars. For the signification they have is nothing but a relation that, by the mind of man, is added to them 1. 12. The next thing therefore to be considered is, What kind of signification it is that general words have. For, as it Essences is evident that they do not signify barely one particular thing; for then they would not be general terms, but proper names, so, on the other side, it is as evident they do not signify a plurality; for man and men would then signify the same; and the distinction of numbers (as the grammarians call them) would be superfluous and useless. That then which general words signify is a sort of things 2; and each of them does that, by being a sign of an abstract idea3 in the mind; to which idea, as things existing are found to agree, so they come to be ranked under that name, or, which is all one, be of that sort. Whereby it is evident that the essences of the sorts, or, if the Latin word pleases better, species of things, are nothing else but these abstract ideas. For the having the essence of any species, being that which makes anything to be of that species; and the conformity to the idea to which the name is annexed being that which gives a right to that name; the having the essence, and the having that conformity, must needs be the same thing: since to be of any species, and to have a right to the name of that species, is all one. As, for example, to be a man, or of the species man, and to To say, as Locke here does, that only particulars are real,' logically means, according to Green, that only the feeling of each moment is real; that is, that the really existent is the unmeaning, and that any judgment about it is impossible. While it is only by being judged that it acquires generality, so that all generality, according to the Essay, must be 'fictitious,' and cannot be in things. But, as we have seen, the 'particular' is, with Locke, an individual substance manifested in its simple ideas, i. e. qualified, or related in as far as qualities mean relations. Locke's minimum intelligibile is not an isolated sense-feeling, of which nothing can be predicated: it is the individual substance. 2 A'sort'-a lot, according to which things are allotted to a class. 3. An abstract idea'—unimaginable, but containing a plurality of attributes, and so capable of being defined, although it cannot be represented in a mental image, which must be individual or concrete. Again, to be BOOK III. have right to the name man, is the same thing. СНАР. 111. Workman the Under standing, their 13. I would not here be thought to forget, much less to They deny, that Nature, in the production of things, makes several are the of them alike: there is nothing more obvious, especially in ship of the races of animals, and all things propagated by seed 2. star But yet I think we may say, the sorting of them under names but have is the workmanship of the understanding, taking occasion, from Foundathe similitude it observes amongst them, to make abstract tion in the general ideas, and set them up in the mind, with names of Things. annexed to them, as patterns or forms, (for, in that sense, the word form has a very proper signification,) to which as particular things existing are found to agree3, so they come to be of that species, have that denomination, or are put into that Similitude 'That is, has the attributes which have been chosen by us to make the connotation of the name 'man.' But the fact that the choice of the classifying attributes may be more or less reasonable-more truly scientific-shows that there is an objective criterion; and this criterion at last resolves itself into what in Platonic language might be called 'Ideas,' according to which the universe changes its forms of existing, in the experience of man, and according to which also things exist in their natural kinds. 2 See Bk. III. ch. vi. ; also Third Letter to Stillingfleet, p. 357, in which Locke refers to this passage, and to 'Bk. III. ch. vi,' as evidence that he has not 3 This implies that the resemblances CHAP. III. BOOK III. classis. For when we say this is a man, that a horse; this justice, that cruelty; this a watch, that a jack; what do we else but rank things under different specific names, as agreeing to those abstract ideas, of which we have made those names the signs? And what are the essences of those species set out and marked by names, but those abstract ideas in the mind; which are, as it were, the bonds between particular things that exist, and the names they are to be ranked under? And when general names have any connexion with particular beings, these abstract ideas are the medium that unites them : so that the essences of species, as distinguished and denominated by us, neither are nor can be anything but those precise abstract ideas we have in our minds 1. And therefore the supposed real essences of substances, if different from our abstract ideas, cannot be the essences of the species we rank things into. For two species may be one, as rationally as two different essences be the essence of one species: and I demand what are the alterations [which] may, or may not be made in a horse or lead, without making either of them to be of ' another species? In determining the species of things by our abstract ideas, this is easy to resolve 2: but if any one will regulate himself herein by supposed real essences, he will, I suppose, be at a loss: and he will never be able to know when anything precisely ceases to be of the species of a horse or lead3. Each distinct abstract Idea is a distinct Essence. 14. Nor will any one wonder that I say these essences, or abstract ideas (which are the measures of name, and the boundaries of species) are the workmanship of the understanding, who considers that at least the complex ones are often, in several men, different collections of simple ideas; and therefore that is covetousness to one man, which is not so 1 That is, they are the deepest and truest modes of classifying things which men can arrive at. 2 Because we have only to see that the individual things we apply the names 'horse' or 'lead' actually possess those qualities, however superficial the qualities may be, which we have resolved to make the connotation of those names. 3 Inasmuch as the 'real essence' is determined by the Divine or ultimate scheme of thought that is immanent in the universe, according to which the universe is viewed as it were from the centre, while our empirical generalisations are all formed from side-views of things. to another1. 1441 CHAP. III. Nay, even in substances, where their abstract BOOK III. ideas seem to be taken from the things themselves, they are not constantly the same; no, not in that species which is most familiar to us, and with which we have the most intimate acquaintance: it having been more than once doubted, whether the fœtus born of a woman were a man, even so far as that it hath been debated, whether it were or were not to be nourished and baptized which could not be, if the abstract idea or essence to which the name man belonged were of nature's making; and were not the uncertain and various collection of simple ideas2, which the understanding put together, and then, abstracting it, affixed a name to it. So that, in truth, every distinct abstract idea is a distinct essence; and the names that stand for such distinct ideas are the names of things essentially different. Thus a circle is as essentially different from an oval as a sheep from a goat; and rain is as essentially different from snow as water from earth: that abstract idea which is the essence of one being impossible to be communicated to the other. And thus any two abstract ideas, that in any part vary one from another, with two distinct names annexed to them, constitute two distinct sorts, or, if you please, species, as essentially different as any two of the most remote or opposite in the world. 15. But since the essences of things are thought by some Several significa(and not without reason) to be wholly unknown, it may tions of not be amiss to consider the several significations of the word the word essence. Essence. Cf. ch. xxii. § 6. • That the human understanding has only imperfect insight into the ultimate 'natures' of things proves, Locke argues, that the Realistic theory of universals cannot be worked out and applied by human faculties. The only 'universal characters' that man can discover are those derived empirically from his insufficient observations of things, and therefore post res. Cf. First Letter to Stillingfleet, pp. 172213. The real constitutions or es sences of particular things existing do |