the workmanship of the understanding, who considers that at least the
complex ones are often, in several men, different collections of simple
ideas; and therefore that is COVETOUSNESS to one man, which is not so to
another. Nay, even in substances, where their abstract ideas seem to be
taken from the things themselves, they are not constantly the same; no,
not in that species which is most familiar to us, and with which we have
the most intimate acquaintance: it having been more than once doubted,
whether the FOETUS born of a woman were a MAN, even so far as that it
hath been debated, whether it were or were not to be nourished and
baptized: which could not be, if the abstract idea or essence to
which the name man belonged were of nature's making; and were not
the uncertain and various collection of simple ideas, which the
understanding put together, and then, abstracting it, affixed a name
to it. So that, in truth, every distinct abstract idea is a distinct
essence; and the names that stand for such distinct ideas are the
names of things essentially different. Thus a circle is as essentially
different from an oval as a sheep from a goat; and rain is as
essentially different from snow as water from earth: that abstract idea
which is the essence of one being impossible to be communicated to the
other. And thus any two abstract ideas, that in any part vary one
from another, with two distinct names annexed to them, constitute two
distinct sorts, or, if you please, SPECIES, as essentially different as
any two of the most remote or opposite in the world.


15. Several significations of the word Essence.

But since the essences of things are thought by some (and not without
reason) to be wholly unknown, it may not be amiss to consider the
several significations of the word ESSENCE.