Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/160

 several things that differ from their idea of man, and therefore cannot be comprehended under that name, have yet certain qualities wherein they agree with man, by retaining only those qualities and uniting them into one idea, they have again another and more general idea; to which having given a name, they make a term of a more comprehensive extension; which new idea is made, not by any new addition, but only as before, by leaving out the shape, and some other properties signified by the name man, and retaining only a body with life, sense, and spontaneous motion, comprehended under the name animal. That this is the way that men first formed general ideas and general names to them, I think is so evident that there needs no other proof of it, but the considering of a man's self or others, and the ordinary proceedings of their mind in knowledge; and he that thinks general natures or notions are anything else but such abstract and partial ideas of more complex ones taken at first from particular existencies, will I fear be at a loss where to find them. For let any one reflect and then tell me, wherein does his idea of man differ from that of Paul and Peter, or his idea of horse from that of Bucephalus, but in the leaving out something that is peculiar to each individual, and retaining so much of those particular complex ideas of several particular existencies, as they are found to agree in? Of the complex ideas signified by the names man and horse, leaving out those particulars wherein they differ, and retaining only those wherein they agree, and of those making a new distinct complex idea and giving the name animal to it, one has a more general term that comprehends with man several other creatures.

Leave out of the idea of animal sense and spontaneous motion, and the remaining complex idea, made up of the