38. Each abstract idea, with a name to it, makes a nominal essence.
One thing I doubt not but will seem very
strange in this doctrine, which is, that from what has been said it will follow, that each abstract idea, with a name
to it, makes a distinct species. But who can help it, if truth will have it so? For so it must remain till somebody can
show us the species of things limited and distinguished by something else; and let us see that general terms signify
not our abstract ideas, but something different from them. I would fain know why a shock and a hound are not as
distinct species as a spaniel and an elephant. We have no other idea of the different essence of an elephant and a
spaniel, than we have of the different essence of a shock and a hound; all the essential difference, whereby we
know and distinguish them one from another, consisting only in the different collection of simple ideas, to which
we have given those different names.
