14. Each distinct abstract idea is a distinct essence.
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 to another. Nay, even in substances, where their abstract
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 ideas, 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.
