in nothing but the determinate figure of sensible parts, and sometimes
motion depending thereon, which the artificer fashions in matter, such
as he finds for his turn; it is not beyond the reach of our faculties to
attain a certain idea thereof; and so settle the signification of the
names whereby the species of artificial things are distinguished, with
less doubt, obscurity, and equivocation than we can in things natural,
whose differences and operations depend upon contrivances beyond the
reach of our discoveries.


41. Artificial Things of distinct Species.

I must be excused here if I think artificial things are of distinct
species as well as natural: since I find they are as plainly and orderly
ranked into sorts, by different abstract ideas, with general names
annexed to them, as distinct one from another as those of natural
substances. For why should we not think a watch and pistol as distinct
species one from another, as a horse and a dog; they being expressed in
our minds by distinct ideas, and to others by distinct appellations?


42. Substances alone, of all our several sorts of ideas, have proper
Names.

This is further to be observed concerning substances, that they alone of
all our several sorts of ideas have particular or proper names, whereby
one only particular thing is signified. Because in simple ideas, modes,
and relations, it seldom happens that men have occasion to mention often
this or that particular when it is absent. Besides, the greatest part of
mixed modes, being actions which perish in their birth, are not capable