Page:Essays on the Principles of Human Action (1835).djvu/161

 remaining simple ones of body, life, and nourishment, becomes a more general one under the more comprehensive word vivens. And not to dwell upon these particular so evident in itself, by the same way the mind proceeds to body, substance, and at last to being, thing, and such universal terms, which stand for any of our ideas whatsoever. To conclude: this whole mystery of genera and species, which make such a noise in the schools, and are with justice so little regarded out of them, is nothing else but abstract ideas, more or less comprehensive, with names annexed to them. In all which this is constant and invariable, that every more general term stands for such an idea as is but a part of any of those contained under it.

The author adds, "It is plain by what has been said, that general and universal belong not only to the real existence of things, but are the inventions and creatures of the understanding, made by it, for its own use, and concern only signs, whether words or ideas. Words are general, when used for signs of general ideas, and so are applicable indifferently to many particular things; and ideas are general when they are set up as the representatives of many particular things, but universality belongs not to things themselves, which are all of them particular in their existence, even those words and ideas which in their significations are general. When, therefore, we quit particulars, the generals that rest are only creatures of our own making, their general nature being nothing but the capacity they are put in to of signifying many particulars. For the signification they have is nothing but a relation, that by the mind of man is added to them," See p. 15, vol. 2.

Mr. Locke at first here evidently supposes that we have ideas answering to general terms, i.e. certain ideas of such particulars as a number of things are found to agree in,