6. Our ideas of particular sorts of substances.
Whatever therefore be the secret abstract nature of substance in
general, all the ideas we have of particular distinct sorts of substances are nothing but several combinations of
simple ideas, coexisting in such, though unknown, cause of their union, as makes the whole subsist of itself It is
by such combinations of simple ideas, and nothing else, that we represent particular sorts of substances to
ourselves; such are the ideas we have of their several species in our minds; and such only do we, by their specific
names, signify to others, v.g. man, horse, sun, water, iron: upon hearing which words, every one who understands
the language, frames in his mind a combination of those several simple ideas which he has usually observed, or
fancied to exist together under that denomination; all which he supposes to rest in and be, as it were, adherent to
that unknown common subject, which inheres not in anything else. Though, in the meantime, it be manifest, and
every one, upon inquiry into his own thoughts, will find, that he has no other idea of any substance, v.g. let it be
gold, horse, iron, man, vitriol, bread, but what he has barely of those sensible qualities, which he supposes to
inhere; with a supposition of such a substratum as gives, as it were, a support to those qualities or simple ideas,
which he has observed to exist united together. Thus, the idea of the sun,--what is it but an aggregate of those
several simple ideas, bright, hot, roundish, having a constant regular motion, at a certain distance from us, and
perhaps some other: as he who thinks and discourses of the sun has been more or less accurate in observing those
sensible qualities, ideas, or properties, which are in that thing which he calls the sun.
