species, for the reasons abovesaid, we have no clear distinct ideas.


13. The Nominal Essence that of the Species, as conceived by us, proved
from Water and Ice.

But to return to the species of corporeal substances. If I should ask
any one whether ice and water were two distinct species of things, I
doubt not but I should be answered in the affirmative: and it cannot be
denied but he that says they are two distinct species is in the right.
But if an Englishman bred in Jamaica, who perhaps had never seen nor
heard of ice, coming into England in the winter, find the water he put
in his basin at night in a great part frozen in the morning, and, not
knowing any peculiar name it had, should call it hardened water; I ask
whether this would be a new species to him, different from water? And I
think it would be answered here, It would not be to him a new species,
no more than congealed jelly, when it is cold, is a distinct species
from the same jelly fluid and warm; or than liquid gold in the furnace
is a distinct species from hard gold in the hands of a workman. And
if this be so, it is plain that OUR DISTINCT SPECIES are NOTHING BUT
DISTINCT COMPLEX IDEAS, WITH DISTINCT NAMES ANNEXED TO THEM. It is true
every substance that exists has its peculiar constitution, whereon
depend those sensible qualities and powers we observe in it; but the
ranking of things into species (which is nothing but sorting them under
several titles) is done by us according to the ideas that WE have of
them: which, though sufficient to distinguish them by names, so that we
may be able to discourse of them when we have them not present
before us; yet if we suppose it to be done by their real internal
constitutions, and that things existing are distinguished by nature into
species, by real essences, according as we distinguish them into species