7. Shown by the way we enlarge our complex ideas from infancy.
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.
