of a lasting duration, as substances which are the actors; and wherein
the simple ideas that make up the complex ideas designed by the name
have a lasting union.


43. Difficult to lead another by words into the thoughts of things
stripped of those abstract ideas we give them.

I must beg pardon of my reader for having dwelt so long upon this
subject, and perhaps with some obscurity. But I desire it may be
considered, how difficult it is to lead another by words into the
thoughts of things, stripped of those specifical differences we give
them: which things, if I name not, I say nothing; and if I do name them,
I thereby rank them into some sort or other, and suggest to the mind the
usual abstract idea of that species; and so cross my purpose. For,
to talk of a man, and to lay by, at the same time, the ordinary
signification of the name man, which is our complex idea usually annexed
to it; and bid the reader consider man, as he is in himself, and as he
is really distinguished from others in his internal constitution, or
real essence, that is, by something he knows not what, looks like
trifling: and yet thus one must do who would speak of the supposed real
essences and species of things, as thought to be made by nature, if it
be but only to make it understood, that there is no such thing signified
by the general names which substances are called by. But because it is
difficult by known familiar names to do this, give me leave to endeavour
by an example to make the different consideration the mind has of
specific names and ideas a little more clear; and to show how the
complex ideas of modes are referred sometimes to archetypes in the minds
of other intelligent beings, or, which is the same, to the signification
annexed by others to their received names; and sometimes to no