ngs, if every
particular idea that we take up should have a distinct name, names
must be endless. To prevent this, the mind makes the particular ideas
received from particular objects to become general; which is done by
considering them as they are in the mind such appearances,--separate
from all other existences, and the circumstances of real existence, as
time, place, or any other concomitant ideas. This is called
ABSTRACTION, whereby ideas taken from particular beings become general
representatives of all of the same kind; and their names general names,
applicable to whatever exists conformable to such abstract ideas. Such
precise, naked appearances in the mind, without considering how, whence,
or with what others they came there, the understanding lays up (with
names commonly annexed to them) as the standards to rank real existences
into sorts, as they agree with these patterns, and to denominate them
accordingly. Thus the same colour being observed to-day in chalk or
snow, which the mind yesterday received from milk, it considers that
appearance alone, makes it a representative of all of that kind; and
having given it the name WHITENESS, it by that sound signifies the same
quality wheresoever to be imagined or met with; and thus universals,
whether ideas or terms, are made.

10. Brutes abstract not.

If it may be doubted whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas
that way to any degree; this, I think, I may be positive in,--that the
power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of
general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and
brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no
means attain to. For it is evident we observe no footsteps in them of
making use of general signs for universal ideas; from which we have
reason to imagine that they have not the faculty of abstracting, or
making general ideas, since they have no use of words, or any other
general signs.

11. Brutes abstract not, yet are nor bare machines.

Nor can it be imputed to their want of fit organs to frame articulate
sounds, that they have no use or knowledge of general words; since
many of them, we find, can fashion such sounds, and pronounce words
distinctly enough, but never with any such application. And, on the
other side, men who, through some defect in the organs, want words, yet
fail not to express their universal ideas by signs, which serve them
instead of general words