acquainted with their differences; can more nicely distinguish them
from their uses; and better know what they expect from each, than those
learned quick-sighted men, who look so deep into them, and talk so
confidently of something more hidden and essential.


25. The specific Essences that are common made by Men.

But supposing that the REAL essences of substances were discoverable by
those that would severely apply themselves to that inquiry, yet we could
not reasonably think that the ranking of things under general names was
regulated by those internal real constitutions, or anything else but
their OBVIOUS appearances; since languages, in all countries, have
been established long before sciences. So that they have not been
philosophers or logicians, or such who have troubled themselves about
forms and essences, that have made the general names that are in use
amongst the several nations of men: but those more or less comprehensive
terms have, for the most part, in all languages, received their birth
and signification from ignorant and illiterate people, who sorted
and denominated things by those sensible qualities they found in them;
thereby to signify them, when absent, to others, whether they had an
occasion to mention a sort or a particular thing.


26. Therefore very various and uncertain in the ideas of different men.

Since then it is evident that we sort and name substances by their
nominal and not by their real essences, the next thing to be considered
is how, and by whom these essences come to be made. As to the latter, it
is evident they are made by the mind, and not by nature: for were they