11.
Suitable to this, we find that men speaking of mixed modes, seldom imagine or take any other for species of
them, but such as are set out by name: because they, being of man's making only, in order to naming, no such
species are taken notice of, or supposed to be, unless a name be joined to it, as the sign of man's having combined
into one idea several loose ones; and by that name giving a lasting union to the parts which would otherwise cease
to have any, as soon as the mind laid by that abstract idea, and ceased actually to think on it. But when a name is
once annexed to it, wherein the parts of that complex idea have a settled and permanent union, then is the essence,
as it were, established, and the species looked on as complete. For to what purpose should the memory charge
itself with such compositions, unless it were by abstraction to make them general? And to what purpose make
them general, unless it were that they might have general names for the convenience of discourse and
communication? Thus we see, that killing a man with a sword or a hatchet are looked on as no distinct species of
action; but if the point of the sword first enter the body, it passes for a distinct species, where it has a distinct
name, as in England, in whose language it is called stabbing: but in another country, where it has not happened to
be specified under a peculiar name, it passes not for a distinct species. But in the species of corporeal substances,
though it be the mind that makes the nominal essence, yet, since those ideas which are combined in it are
supposed to have an union in nature whether the mind joins them or not, therefore those are looked on as distinct
species, without any operation of the mind, either abstracting, or giving a name to that complex idea.
