of the other language
designed by their names, he would be quite out in his account. These are
too sensible proofs to be doubted; and we shall find this much more so
in the names of more abstract and compounded ideas, such as are the
greatest part of those which make up moral discourses: whose names, when
men come curiously to compare with those they are translated into, in
other languages, they will find very few of them exactly to correspond
in the whole extent of their significations.

9. This shows Species to be made for Communication.

The reason why I take so particular notice of this is, that we may not
be mistaken about GENERA and SPECIES, and their ESSENCES, as if they
were things regularly and constantly made by nature, and had a real
existence in things; when they appear, upon a more wary survey, to
be nothing else but an artifice of the understanding, for the easier
signifying such collections of ideas as it should often have occasion to
communicate by one general term; under which divers particulars, as far
forth as they agreed to that abstract idea, might be comprehended. And
if the doubtful signification of the word SPECIES may make it sound
harsh to some, that I say the species of mixed modes are 'made by the
understanding'; yet, I think, it can by nobody be denied that it is the
mind makes those abstract complex ideas to which specific names are
given. And if it be true, as it is, that the mind makes the patterns for
sorting and naming of things, I leave it to be considered who makes the
boundaries of the sort or species; since with me SPECIES and SORT have
no other difference than that of a Latin and English idiom.

10. In mixed Modes it is the Name that ties the Combination of simple
ideas together, and makes it a Species.

The near relation that there is between SPECIES, ESSENCES, and their
GENERAL NAME, at least in mixed modes, will further appear when we
consider, that it is the name that seems to preserve those essences, and
give them their lasting duration. For, the connexion between the loose
parts of those complex ideas being made by the mind, this union, which
has no particular foundation in nature, would cease again, were there
not something that did, as it were, hold it together, and keep the parts
from scattering. Though therefore it be the mind that makes the
collection, it is the name which is as it were the knot that ties them
fast together. What a vast variety of different ideas