contains a greater, and in others a smaller number of qualities; and so
is apparently such as the mind makes it. The yellow shining colour makes
gold to children; others add weight, malleableness, and fusibility; and
others yet other qualities, which they find joined with that yellow
colour, as constantly as its weight and fusibility. For in all these and
the like qualities, one has as good a right to be put into the complex
idea of that substance wherein they are all joined as another. And
therefore different men, leaving out or putting in several simple ideas
which others do not, according to their various examination, skill, or
observation of that subject, have different essences of gold, which must
therefore be of their own and not of nature's making.


32. The more general our Ideas of Substances are, the more incomplete
and partial they are.

If the number of simple ideas that make the nominal essence of the
lowest species, or first sorting, of individuals, depends on the mind of
man, variously collecting them, it is much more evident that they do so
in the more comprehensive classes, which, by the masters of logic, are
called genera. These are complex ideas designedly imperfect: and it is
visible at first sight, that several of those qualities that are to
be found in the things themselves are purposely left out of generical
ideas. For, as the mind, to make general ideas comprehending several
particulars, leaves out those of time and place, and such other, that
make them incommunicable to more than one individual; so to make other
yet more general ideas, that may comprehend different sorts, it leaves
out those qualities that distinguish them, and puts into its new
collection only such ideas as are common to several sorts. The same
convenience that made men express several parcels of yellow matter