shape, and all below swine, had it been murder to destroy it? Or must
the bishop have been consulted, whether it were man enough to be
admitted to the font or no? As I have been told it happened in France
some years since, in somewhat a like case. So uncertain are the
boundaries of species of animals to us, who have no other measures
than the complex ideas of our own collecting: and so far are we from
certainly knowing what a MAN is; though perhaps it will be judged great
ignorance to make any doubt about it. And yet I think I may say, that
the certain boundaries of that species are so far from being determined,
and the precise number of simple ideas which make the nominal essence so
far from being settles and perfectly known, that very material doubts
may still arise about it. And I imagine none of the definitions of the
word MAN which we yet have, nor descriptios of that sort of animal, are
so perfect and exact as to satisfy a considerate inquisitive person;
much less to obtain a general consent, and to be that which men would
everywhere stick by, in the decision of cases, and determining of life
and death, baptism or no baptism, in productions that mights happen.

28. But not so arbitrary as Mixed Modes.

But though these nominal essences of substances are made by the mind,
they are not yet made so arbitrarily as those of mixed modes. To the
making of any nominal essence, it is necessary, First, that the ideas
whereof it consists have such a union as to make but one idea, how
compounded soever. Secondly, that the particular ideas so united be
exactly the same, neither more nor less. For if two abstract complex
ideas differ either in number or sorts of their component parts, they
make two different, and not one and the same essence. In the first of
these, the mind, in making its complex ideas of substances, only follows
nature; and puts none together which are not supposed to have a union in
nature. Nobody joins the voice of a sheep with the shape of a horse;
nor the colour of lead with the weight and fixedness of gold, to be the
complex ideas of any real substances; unless he has a mind to fill his
head with chimeras, and his discourse with unintelligible words. Men
observing certain qualities always joined and existing together, therein
copied nature; and of ideas so united made their complex ones of
substances. For, though men may make what complex ideas they please, and
give what names to them they will; yet, i