application of it in our reasoning be the same, as if it were universal.

This application of ideas beyond their nature proceeds from our
collecting all their possible degrees of quantity and quality in such an
imperfect manner as may serve the purposes of life, which is the second
proposition I proposed to explain. When we have found a resemblance
[Footnote 2.] among several objects, that often occur to us, we apply the
same name to all of them, whatever differences we may observe in the
degrees of their quantity and quality, and whatever other differences may
appear among them. After we have acquired a custom of this kind, the
hearing of that name revives the idea of one of these objects, and makes
the imagination conceive it with all its particular circumstances and
proportions. But as the same word is supposed to have been frequently
applied to other individuals, that are different in many respects from
that idea, which is immediately present to the mind; the word not being
able to revive the idea of all these individuals, but only touches the
soul, if I may be allowed so to speak, and revives that custom, which we
have acquired by surveying them. They are not really and in fact present
to the mind, but only in power; nor do we draw them all out distinctly in
the imagination, but keep ourselves in a readiness to survey any of them,
as we may be prompted by a present design or necessity. The word raises up
an individual idea, along with a certain custom; and that custom produces
any other individual one, for which we may have occasion. But as the
production of all the ideas, to which the name may be applied, is in most
eases impossible, we abridge that work by a more partial consideration,
and find but few inconveniences to arise in our reasoning from that
abridgment.

[Footnote 2. It is evident, that even different simple ideas may have a
similarity or resemblance to each other; nor is it necessary, that the