to a quite different
method. We advance not here, as in the other, (where our abstract ideas
are real as well as nominal essences,) by contemplating our ideas, and
considering their relations and correspondences; that helps us very
little for the reasons, that in another place we have at large set down.
By which I think it is evident, that substances afford matter of very
little GENERAL knowledge; and the bare contemplation of their abstract
ideas will carry us but a very little way in the search of truth and
certainty. What, then, are we to do for the improvement of our knowledge
in substantial beings? Here we are to take a quite contrary course: the
want of ideas of their real essences sends us from our own thoughts to
the things themselves as they exist. EXPERIENCE HERE MUST TEACH ME WHAT
REASON CANNOT: and it is by TRYING alone, that I can CERTAINLY KNOW,
what other qualities co-exist with those of my complex idea, v.g.
whether that yellow heavy, fusible body I call gold, be malleable, or
no; which experience (which way ever it prove in that particular body I
examine) makes me not certain, that it is so in all, or any other
yellow, heavy, fusible bodies, but that which I have tried. Because it
is no consequence one way or the other from my complex idea: the
necessity or inconsistence of malleability hath no visible connexion
with the combination of that colour, weight, and fusibility in any body.
What I have said here of the nominal essence of gold, supposed to
consist of a body of such a determinate colour, weight, and fusibility,
will hold true, if malleableness, fixedness, and solubility in aqua
regia be added to it. Our reasonings from these ideas will carry us but
a little way in the certain discovery of the other properties in those
masses of matter wherein all these are to be found. Because the OTHER
properties of such bodies, depending not on these, but on that unknown
real essence on which these also depend, we cannot by them discover the
rest; we can go no further than the simple ideas of our nominal essence
will carry us, which is very little beyond themselves; and so afford us
but very sparingly any certain, universal, and useful truths. For, upon
trial, having found that particular piece (and all others of that
colour, weight, and fusibility, that I ever tried) malleable, that also
makes now, perhaps, a part of my complex idea, part of my nominal
essence of gold: whereby though I make my complex idea to w