f they will be understood WHEN
THEY SPEAK OF THINGS REALLY EXISTING, they must in some degree conform
their ideas to the things they would speak of; or else men's language
will be like that of Babel; and every man's words, being intelligible
only to himself, would no longer serve to conversation and the ordinary
affairs of life, if the ideas they stand for be not some way answering
the common appearances and agreement of substances as they really exist.

29. Our Nominal Essences of substances usually consist of a few obvious
qualities observed in things.

Secondly, Though the mind of man, in making its complex ideas of
substances, never puts any together that do not really, or are not
supposed to, co-exist; and so it truly borrows that union from nature:
yet the number it combines depends upon the various care, industry, or
fancy of him that makes it. Men generally content themselves with some
few sensible obvious qualities; and often, if not always, leave out
others as material and as firmly united as those that they take. Of
sensible substances there are two sorts: one of organized bodies, which
are propagated by seed; and in these the SHAPE is that which to us is
the leading quality, and most characteristical part, that determines
the species. And therefore in vegetables and animals, an extended solid
substance of such a certain figure usually serves the turn. For however
some men seem to prize their definition of animal rationale, yet should
there a creature be found that had language and reason, but partaked not
of the usual shape of a man, I believe it would hardly pass for a man,
how much soever it were animal rationale. And if Balaam's ass had all
his life discoursed as rationally as he did once with his master, I
doubt yet whether any one would have thought him worthy the name man, or
allowed him to be of the same species with himself. As in vegetables
and animals it is the shape, so in most other bodies, not propagated by
seed, it is the COLOUR we most fix on, and are most led by. Thus
where we find the colour of gold, we are apt to imagine all the other
qualities comprehended in our complex idea to be there also: and we
commonly take these two obvious qualities, viz. shape and colour, for so
presumptive ideas of several species, that in a good picture, we readily
say, this is a lion, and that a rose; this is a gold, and that a silver
goblet, only by the different figures and colours represented to the eye