reflect on their
use and force in language, and lead us into the contemplation of several
actions of our minds in discoursing, which it has found a way to
intimate to others by these particles, some whereof constantly, and
others in certain constructions, have the sense of a whole sentence
contained in them.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE TERMS.

1. Abstract Terms predicated one on another and why.

The ordinary words of language, and our common use of them, would have
given us light into the nature of our ideas, if they had been but
considered with attention. The mind, as has been shown, has a power
to abstract its ideas, and so they become essences, general essences,
whereby the sorts of things are distinguished. Now each abstract idea
being distinct, so that of any two the one can never be the other, the
mind will, by its intuitive knowledge, perceive their difference, and
therefore in propositions no two whole ideas can ever be affirmed one of
another. This we see in the common use of language, which permits not
any two abstract words, or names of abstract ideas, to be affirmed one
of another. For how near of kin soever they may seem to be, and how
certain soever it is that man is an animal, or rational, or white,
yet every one at first hearing perceives the falsehood of these
propositions: HUMANITY IS ANIMALITY, or RATIONALITY, or WHITENESS:
and this is as evident as any of the most allowed maxims. All our
affirmations then are only in concrete, which is the affirming, not
one abstract idea to be another, but one abstract idea to be joined to
another; which abstract ideas, in substances, may be of any sort; in all
the rest are little else but of relations; and in substances the most
frequent are of powers: v.g. 'a man is white,' signifies that the thing
that has the essence of a man has also in it the essence of whiteness,
which is nothing but a power to produce the idea of whiteness in one
whose eyes can discover ordinary objects: or, 'a man is rational,'
signifies that the same thing that hath the essence of a man hath also
in it the essence of rationality, i.e. a power of reasoning.

2. They show the Difference of our Ideas.

This distinction of names shows us also the difference of our ideas:
for if we observe them, we shall find that OUR SIMPLE IDEAS HAVE ALL
ABSTRACT AS WELL AS CONCRETE NAMES: the one whereof is (to speak the
language of grammarians) a substantive, the other an a