39. How genera and species are related to naming.
How much the making of species and genera is in order to
general names; and how much general names are necessary, if not to the being, yet at least to the completing of a
species, and making it pass for such, will appear, besides what has been said above concerning ice and water, in a
very familiar example. A silent and a striking watch are but one species to those who have but one name for them:
but he that has the name watch for one, and clock for the other, and distinct complex ideas to which those names
belong, to him they are different species. It will be said perhaps, that the inward contrivance and constitution is
different between these two, which the watchmaker has a clear idea of. And yet it is plain they are but one species
to him, when he has but one name for them. For what is sufficient in the inward contrivance to make a new
species? There are some watches that are made with four wheels, others with five; is this a specific difference to
the workman? Some have strings and physies, and others none; some have the balance loose, and others regulated
by a spiral spring, and others by hogs' bristles. Are any or all of these enough to make a specific difference to the
workman, that knows each of these and several other different contrivances in the internal constitutions of
watches? It is certain each of these hath a real difference from the rest; but whether it be an essential, a specific
difference or no, relates only to the complex idea to which the name watch is given: as long as they all agree in
the idea which that name stands for, and that name does not as a generical name comprehend different species
under it, they are not essentially nor specifically different. But if any one will make minuter divisions, from
differences that he knows in the internal frame of watches, and to such precise complex ideas give names that
shall prevail; they will then be new species, to them who have those ideas with names to them, and can by those
differences distinguish watches into these several sorts; and then watch will be a generical name. But yet they
would be no distinct species to men ignorant of clock-work, and the inward contrivances of watches, who had no
other idea but the outward shape and bulk, with the marking of the hours by the hand. For to them all those other
names would be but synonymous terms for the same idea, and signify no more, nor no other thing but a watch.
Just thus I think it is in natural things. Nobody will doubt that the wheels or springs (if I may so say) within, are
different in a rational man and a changeling; no more than that there is a difference in the frame between a drill
and a changeling. But whether one or both these differences be essential or specifical, is only to be known to us
by their agreement or disagreement with the complex idea that the name man stands for: for by that alone can it be
determined whether one, or both, or neither of those be a man.
