21. This abuse contains two false suppositions.
But however preposterous and absurd it be to make our names
stand for ideas we have not, or (which is all one) essences that we know not, it being in effect to make our words
the signs of nothing; yet it is evident to any one who ever so little reflects on the use men make of their words,
that there is nothing more familiar. When a man asks whether this or that thing he sees, let it be a drill, or a
monstrous foetus, be a man or no; it is evident the question is not, Whether that particular thing agree to his
complex idea expressed by the name man: but whether it has in it the real essence of a species of things which he
supposes his name man to stand for. In which way of using the names of substances, there are these false
suppositions contained:--
First, that there are certain precise essences according to which nature makes all particular things, and by which
they are distinguished into species. That everything has a real constitution, whereby it is what it is, and on which
its sensible qualities depend, is past doubt: but I think it has been proved that this makes not the distinction of
species as we rank them, nor the boundaries of their names.
Secondly, this tacitly also insinuates, as if we had ideas of these proposed essences. For to what purpose else is it,
to inquire whether this or that thing have the real essence of the species man, if we did not suppose that there were
such a specific essence known? Which yet is utterly false. And therefore such application of names as would
make them stand for ideas which we have not, must needs cause great disorder in discourses and reasonings about
them, and be a great inconvenience in our communication by words.
