own ideas limited to our ways of perception. Though yet it be not to be
doubted that spirits of a higher rank than those immersed in flesh may
have as clear ideas of the radical constitution of substances as we have
of a triangle, and so perceive how all their properties and operations
flow from thence: but the manner how they come by that knowledge exceeds
our conceptions.


24. Ideas of Substances must also be conformable to Things.

Fourthly, But, though definitions will serve to explain the names of
substances as they stand for our ideas, yet they leave them not without
great imperfection as they stand for things. For our names of substances
being not put barely for our ideas, but being made use of ultimately to
represent things, and so are put in their place, their signification
must agree with the truth of things as well as with men's ideas. And
therefore, in substances, we are not always to rest in the ordinary
complex idea commonly received as the signification of that word, but
must go a little further, and inquire into the nature and properties of
the things themselves, and thereby perfect, as much as we can, our ideas
of their distinct species; or else learn them from such as are used
to that sort of things, and are experienced in them. For, since it is
intended their names should stand for such collections of simple ideas
as do really exist in things themselves, as well as for the complex idea
in other men's minds, which in their ordinary acceptation they stand
for, therefore, to define their names right, natural history is to be
inquired into, and their properties are, with care and examination, to
be found out. For it is not enough, for the avoiding inconveniences in
discourse and arguings about natural bodies and substantial things,
to have learned, from the propriety of the language, the common, but