25. The specific essences that are commonly made by men.
But supposing that the real essences of substances
were discoverable by those that would severely apply themselves to that inquiry, yet we could not reasonably
think that the ranking of things under general names was regulated by those internal real constitutions, or anything
else but their obvious appearances; since languages, in all countries, have been established long before sciences.
So that they have not been philosophers or logicians, or such who have troubled themselves about forms and
essences, that have made the general names that are in use amongst the several nations of men: but those more or
less comprehensive terms have, for the most part, in all languages, received their birth and signification from
ignorant and illiterate people, who sorted and denominated things by those sensible qualities they found in them;
thereby to signify them, when absent, to others, whether they had an occasion to mention a sort or a particular
thing.
