ise ideas there are no peculiar names. The particular
ringing sound there is in gold, distinct from the sound of other bodies,
has no particular name annexed to it, no more than the particular yellow
that belongs to that metal.

22. The Ideas of the Powers of Substances are best known by Definition.

But because many of the simple ideas that make up our specific ideas of
substances are powers which lie not obvious to our senses in the things
as they ordinarily appear; therefore, in the signification of our names
of substances, some part of the signification will be better made known
by enumerating those simple ideas, than by showing the substance itself.
For, he that to the yellow shining colour of gold, got by sight, shall,
from my enumerating them, have the ideas of great ductility, fusibility,
fixedness, and solubility, in aqua regia, will have a perfecter idea of
gold than he can have by seeing a piece of gold, and thereby imprinting
in his mind only its obvious qualities. But if the formal constitution
of this shining, heavy, ductile thing, (from whence all these its
properties flow,) lay open to our senses, as the formal constitution or
essence of a triangle does, the signification of the word gold might as
easily be ascertained as that of triangle.

23. A Reflection on the Knowledge of corporeal things possessed by
Spirits separate from bodies.

Hence we may take notice, how much the foundation of all our knowledge
of corporeal things lies in our senses. For how spirits, separate from
bodies, (whose knowledge and ideas of these things are certainly much
more perfect than ours,) know them, we have no notion, no idea at all.
The whole extent of our knowledge or imagination reaches not beyond our
own ideas limited to our ways of perception. Though yet it be not to be
doubted that spirits of a higher rank than those immersed in flesh may
have as clear ideas of the radical constitution of substances as we have
of a triangle, and so perceive how all their properties and operations
flow from thence: but the manner how they come by that knowledge exceeds
our conceptions.

24. Ideas of Substances must also be conformable to Things.

Fourthly, But, though definitions will serve to explain the names of
substances as they stand for our ideas, yet they leave them not without
great imperfection as they stand for things. For our names of substances
being not put barely for our ideas, but being made use of ultimately