36. Nature makes the similitudes of substances.
This, then, in short, is the case: Nature makes many particular
things, which do agree one with another in many sensible qualities, and probably too in their internal frame and
constitution: but it is not this real essence that distinguishes them into species; it is men who, taking occasion from
the qualities they find united in them, and wherein they observe often several individuals to agree, range them into
sorts, in order to their naming, for the convenience of comprehensive signs; under which individuals, according to
their conformity to this or that abstract idea, come to be ranked as under ensigns: so that this is of the blue, that
the red regiment; this is a man, that a drill: and in this, I think, consists the whole business of genus and species.
