ames of substances. However,
they were pleased to comply with my motion; and upon examination found
that the signification of that word was not so settled or certain
as they had all imagined; but that each of them made it a sign of a
different complex idea. This made them perceive that the main of their
dispute was about the signification of that term; and that they differed
very little in their opinions concerning SOME fluid and subtle matter,
passing through the conduits of the nerves; though it was not so easy
to agree whether it was to be called LIQUOR or no, a thing, which, when
considered, they thought it not worth the contending about.

17. Instance, Gold.

How much this is the case in the greatest part of disputes that men are
engaged so hotly in, I shall perhaps have an occasion in another place
to take notice. Let us only here consider a little more exactly the
fore-mentioned instance of the word GOLD, and we shall see how hard it
is precisely to determine its signification. I think all agree to make
it stand for a body of a certain yellow shining colour; which being the
idea to which children have annexed that name, the shining yellow part
of a peacock's tail is properly to them gold. Others finding fusibility
joined with that yellow colour in certain parcels of matter, make of
that combination a complex idea to which they give the name gold, to
denote a sort of substances; and so exclude from being gold all such
yellow shining bodies as by fire will be reduced to ashes; and admit to
be of that species, or to be comprehended under that name gold, only
such substances as having that shining yellow colour, will by fire be
reduced to fusion, and not to ashes. Another, by the same reason, adds
the weight, which, being a quality as straightly joined with that colour
as its fusibility, he thinks has the same reason to be joined in its
idea, and to be signified by its name: and therefore the other made up
of body, of such a colour and fusibility, to be imperfect; and so on
of all the rest: wherein no one can show a reason why some of the
inseparable qualities, that are always united in nature, should be put
into the nominal essence, and others left out, or why the word gold,
signifying that sort of body the ring on his finger is made of, should
determine that sort rather by its colour, weight, and fusibility,
than by its colour, weight, and solubility in aqua regia: since the
dissolving it by that liquor is as in