were adequate or not? And it is plain it was; for it being a combination
of simple ideas, which he, without any regard to any archetype, without
respect to anything as a pattern, voluntarily put together, abstracted,
and gave the name KINNEAH to, to express in short to others, by that one
sound, all the simple ideas contained and united in that complex one;
it must necessarily follow that it was an adequate idea. His own choice
having made that combination, it had all in it he intended it should,
and so could not but be perfect, could not but be adequate; it being
referred to no other archetype which it was supposed to represent.


45. These words, KINNEAH and NIOUPH, by degrees grew into common use,
and then the case was somewhat altered. Adam's children had the same
faculties, and thereby the same power that he had, to make what complex
ideas of mixed modes they pleased in their own minds; to abstract them,
and make what sounds they pleased the signs of them: but the use of
names being to make our ideas within us known to others, that cannot be
done, but when the same sign stands for the same idea in two who would
communicate their thoughts and discourse together. Those, therefore,
of Adam's children, that found these two words, KINNEAH and NIOUPH, in
familiar use, could not take them for insignificant sounds, but must
needs conclude they stood for something; for certain ideas, abstract
ideas, they being general names; which abstract ideas were the essences
of the species distinguished by those names. If therefore, they would
use these words as names of species already established and agreed on,
they were obliged to conform the ideas in their minds, signified by
these names, to the ideas that they stood for in other men's minds, as
to their patterns and archetypes; and then indeed their ideas of
these complex modes were liable to be inadequate, as being very apt
(especially those that consisted of combinations of many simple ideas)