of human species? it is plain, the question refers only to the nominal
essence: for those of them to whom the definition of the word man, or
the complex idea signified by that name, agrees, are men, and the other
not. But if the inquiry be made concerning the supposed real essence;
and whether the internal constitution and frame of these several
creatures be specifically different, it is wholly impossible for us
to answer, no part of that going into our specific idea: only we have
reason to think, that where the faculties or outward frame so much
differs, the internal constitution is not exactly the same. But what
difference in the real internal constitution makes a specific difference
it is in vain to inquire; whilst our measures of species be, as they
are, only our abstract ideas, which we know; and not that internal
constitution, which makes no part of them. Shall the difference of hair
only on the skin be a mark of a different internal specific constitution
between a changeling and a drill, when they agree in shape, and want of
reason and speech? And shall not the want of reason and speech be a sign
to us of different real constitutions and species between a changeling
and a reasonable man? And so of the rest, if we pretend that distinction
of species or sorts is fixedly established by the real frame and secret
constitutions of things.


23. Species in Animals not distinguished by Generation.

Nor let any one say, that the power of propagation in animals by the
mixture of male and female, and in plants by seeds, keeps the supposed
real species distinct and entire, For, granting this to be true, it
would help us in the distinction of the species of things no further
than the tribes of animals and vegetables. What must we do for the rest?
But in those too it is not sufficient: for if history lie not, women