y give the causes from which terms called _Transcendental_, such
as _Being_, _Thing_, _Something_, have taken their origin. These terms
have arisen because the human body, inasmuch as it is limited, can form
distinctly in itself a certain number only of images at once. If this
number be exceeded, the images will become confused; and if the number
of images which the body is able to form distinctly be greatly exceeded,
they will all run one into another. Since this is so, it is clear that
in proportion to the number of images which can be formed at the same
time in the body will be the number of bodies which the human mind can
imagine at the same time. If the images in the body, therefore, are all
confused, the mind will confusedly imagine all the bodies without
distinguishing the one from the other, and will include them all, as it
were, under one attribute, that of being or thing.

The same confusion may also be caused by lack of uniform force in the
images and from other analogous causes, which there is no need to
discuss here, the consideration of one cause being sufficient for the
purpose we have in view. For it all comes to this, that these terms
signify ideas in the highest degree confused. It is in this way that
those notions have arisen which are called _Universal_, such as, _Man_,
_Horse_, _Dog_, etc.; that is to say, so many images of men, for
instance, are formed in the human body at once, that they exceed the
power of the imagination, not entirely, but to such a degree that the
mind has no power to imagine the determinate number of men and the small
differences of each, such as color and size, etc. It will therefore
distinctly imagine that only in which all of them agree in so far as
the body is affected by them, for by that the body was chiefly affected,
that is to say, by each individual, and this it will express by the name
_man_, covering thereby an infinite number of individuals; to imagine a
determinate number of individuals being out of its power.

But we must observe that these notions are not formed by all persons in
the same way, but that they vary in each case according to the thing by
which the body is more frequently affected, and which the mind more
easily imagines or recollects. For example, those who have more
frequently looked with admiration upon the stature of men, by the name
_man_ will understand an animal of erect stature, while those who have
been in the habit of fixing their thoughts