8. Instance in gold.
"All gold is fixed," is a proposition whose truth we cannot be certain of, how universally
soever it be believed. For if, according to the useless imagination of the Schools, any one supposes the term gold
to stand for a species of things set out by nature, by a real essence belonging to it, it is evident he knows not what
particular substances are of that species; and so cannot with certainty affirm anything universally of gold. But if
he makes gold stand for a species determined by its nominal essence, let the nominal essence, for example, be the
complex idea of a body of a certain yellow colour, malleable, fusible, and heavier than any other known;--in this
proper use of the word gold, there is no difficulty to know what is or is not gold. But yet no other quality can with
certainty be universally affirmed or denied of gold, but what hath a discoverable connexion or inconsistency with
that nominal essence. Fixedness, for example, having no necessary connexion that we can discover, with the
colour, weight, or any other simple idea of our complex one, or with the whole combination together; it is
impossible that we should certainly know the truth of this proposition, that all gold is fixed.
