minds set upon fruitless inquiries after 'substantial forms'; wholly
unintelligible, and whereof we have scarce so much as any obscure or
confused conception in general.


11. That the Nominal Essence is that only whereby we distinguish Species
of Substances, further evident, from our ideas of finite Spirits and of
God.

That our ranking and distinguishing natural substances into species
consists in the nominal essences the mind makes, and not in the real
essences to be found in the things themselves, is further evident from
our ideas of spirits. For the mind getting, only by reflecting on its
own operations, those simple ideas which it attributes to spirits, it
hath or can have no other notion of spirit but by attributing all those
operations it finds in itself to a sort of beings; without consideration
of matter. And even the most advanced notion we have of GOD is but
attributing the same simple ideas which we have got from reflection on
what we find in ourselves, and which we conceive to have more perfection
in them than would be in their absence; attributing, I say, those simple
ideas to Him in an unlimited degree. Thus, having got from reflecting on
ourselves the idea of existence, knowledge, power and pleasure--each of
which we find it better to have than to want; and the more we have of
each the better--joining all these together, with infinity to each of
them, we have the complex idea of an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent,
infinitely wise and happy being. And though we are told that there are
different species of angels; yet we know not how to frame distinct
specific ideas of them: not out of any conceit that the existence of
more species than one of spirits is impossible; but because having no
more simple ideas (nor being able to frame more) applicable to such