9. Abstraction.
The use of words then being to stand as outward marks of our internal ideas, and those ideas being
taken from particular things, if every particular idea that we take in should have a distinct name, names must be
endless. To prevent this, the mind makes the particular ideas received from particular objects to become general;
which is done by considering them as they are in the mind such appearances,--separate from all other existences,
and the circumstances of real existence, as time, place, or any other concomitant ideas. This is called Abstraction,
whereby ideas taken from particular beings become general representatives of all of the same kind; and their
names general names, applicable to whatever exists conformable to such abstract ideas. Such precise, naked
appearances in the mind, without considering how, whence, or with what others they came there, the
understanding lays up (with names commonly annexed to them) as the standards to rank real existences into sorts,
as they agree with these patterns, and to denominate them accordingly. Thus the same colour being observed
to-day in chalk or snow, which the mind yesterday received from milk, it considers that appearance alone, makes
it a representative of all of that kind; and having given it the name whiteness, it by that sound signifies the same
quality wheresoever to be imagined or met with; and thus universals, whether ideas or terms, are made.
