2. They show the difference of our ideas.
This distinction of names shows us also the difference of our ideas: for
if we observe them, we shall find that our simple ideas have all abstract as well as concrete names: the one
whereof is (to speak the language of grammarians) a substantive, the other an adjective; as whiteness, white;
sweetness, sweet. The like also holds in our ideas of modes and relations; as justice, just; equality, equal: only
with this difference, that some of the concrete names of relations amongst men chiefly are substantives; as,
paternitas, pater; whereof it were easy to render a reason. But as to our ideas of substances, we have very few or
no abstract names at all. For though the Schools have introduced animalitas, humanitas, corporietas, and some
others; yet they hold no proportion with that infinite number of names of substances, to which they never were
ridiculous enough to attempt the coining of abstract ones: and those few that the schools forged, and put into the
mouths of their scholars, could never yet get admittance into common use, or obtain the license of public
approbation. Which seems to me at least to intimate the confession of all mankind, that they have no ideas of the
real essences of substances, since they have not names for such ideas: which no doubt they would have had, had
not their consciousness to themselves of their ignorance of them kept them from so idle an attempt. And therefore,
though they had ideas enough to distinguish gold from a stone, and metal from wood; yet they but timorously
ventured on such terms, as aurietas and saxietas, metallietas and lignietas, or the like names, which should pretend
to signify the real essences of those substances whereof they knew they had no ideas. And indeed it was only the
doctrine of substantial forms, and the confidence of mistaken pretenders to a knowledge that they had not, which
first coined and then introduced animalitas and humanitas, and the like; which yet went very little further than
their own Schools, and could never get to be current amongst understanding men. Indeed, humanitas was a word
in familiar use amongst the Romans; but in a far different sense, and stood not for the abstract essence of any
substance; but was the abstracted name of a mode, and its concrete humanus, not homo.
