1. The common names of substances stand for sorts.
The common names of substances, as well as other general
terms, stand for sorts: which is nothing else but the being made signs of such complex ideas wherein several
particular substances do or might agree, by virtue of which they are capable of being comprehended in one
common conception, and signified by one name. I say do or might agree: for though there be but one sun existing
in the world, yet the idea of it being abstracted, so that more substances (if there were several) might each agree in
it, it is as much a sort as if there were as many suns as there are stars. They want not their reasons who think there
are, and that each fixed star would answer the idea the name sun stands for, to one who was placed in a due
distance: which, by the way, may show us how much the sorts, or, if you please, genera and species of things (for
those Latin terms signify to me no more than the English word sort) depend on such collections of ideas as men
have made, and not on the real nature of things; since it is not impossible but that, in propriety of speech, that
might be a sun to one which is a star to another.