22. The Ideas of the powers of substances are best known by definition.
But because many of the simple ideas that
make up our specific ideas of substances are powers which lie not obvious to our senses in the things as they
ordinarily appear; therefore, in the signification of our names of substances, some part of the signification will be
better made known by enumerating those simple ideas, than by showing the substance itself. For, he that to the
yellow shining colour of gold, got by sight, shall, from my enumerating them, have the ideas of great ductility,
fusibility, fixedness, and solubility in aqua regia, will have a perfecter idea of gold than he can have by seeing a
piece of gold, and thereby imprinting in his mind only its obvious qualities. But if the formal constitution of this
shining, heavy, ductile thing, (from whence all these its properties flow), lay open to our senses, as the formal
constitution or essence of a triangle does, the signification of the word gold might as easily be ascertained as that
of triangle.
