An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding Vol II Chapter VIII. - Of Abstract and Concrete Terms
by John Locke
1. Abstract Terms predicated one on another and why.
The ordinary words of language, and our common use of them, would have
given us light into the nature of our ideas, if they had been but
considered with attention. The mind, as has been shown, has a power
to abstract its ideas, and so they become essences, general essences,
whereby the sorts of things are distinguished. Now each abstract idea
being distinct, so that of any two the one can never be the other, the
mind will, by its intuitive knowledge, perceive their difference, and
therefore in propositions no two whole ideas can ever be affirmed one of
another. This we see in the common use of language, which permits not
any two abstract words, or names of abstract ideas, to be affirmed one
of another. For how near of kin soever they may seem to be, and how
certain soever it is that man is an animal, or rational, or white,
yet every one at first hearing perceives the falsehood of these
propositions: HUMANITY IS ANIMALITY, or RATIONALITY, or WHITENESS:
and this is as evident as any of the most allowed maxims. All our
affirmations then are only in concrete, which is the affirming, not
one abstract idea to be another, but one abstract idea to be joined to
another; which abstract ideas, in substances, may be of any sort; in all
the rest are little else but of relations; and in substances the most
frequent are of powers: v.g. 'a man is white,' signifies that the thing
that has the essence of a man has also in it the essence of whiteness,
which is nothing but a power to produce the idea of whiteness in one
whose eyes can discover ordinary objects: or, 'a man is rational,'
signifies that the same thing that hath the essence of a man hath also
in it the essence of rationality, i.e. a power of reasoning.
2. They show the Difference of our Ideas.
This distinction of names shows us also the difference of our ideas:
for if we observe them, we shall find that OUR SIMPLE IDEAS HAVE ALL
ABSTRACT AS WELL AS CONCRETE NAMES: the one whereof is (to speak the
language of grammarians) a substantive, the other an adjective; as
whiteness, white; sweetness, sweet. The like also holds in our ideas of
modes and relations; as justice, just; equality, equal: only with this
difference, that some of the concrete names of relations amongst men
chiefly are substantives; as, paternitas, pater; whereof it were easy to
render a reason. But as to our ideas of substances, we have very few
or no abstract names at all. For though the Schools have introduced
animalitas, humanitas, corporietas, and some others; yet they hold no
proportion with that infinite number of names of substances, to which
they never were ridiculous enough to attempt the coining of abstract
ones: and those few that the Schools forged, and put into the mouths
of their scholars, could never yet get admittance into common use, or
obtain the license of public approbation. Which seems to me at least to
intimate the confession of all mankind, that they have no ideas of the
real essences of substances, since they have not names for such ideas:
which no doubt they would have had, had not their consciousness to
themselves of their ignorance of them kept them from so idle an attempt.
And therefore, though they had ideas enough to distinguish gold from a
stone, and metal from wood; yet they but timorously ventured on such
terms, as aurietas and saxietas, metallietas and lignietas, or the
like names, which should pretend to signify the real essences of those
substances whereof they knew they had no ideas. And indeed it was only
the doctrine of SUBSTANTIAL FORMS, and the confidence of mistaken
pretenders to a knowledge that they had not, which first coined and then
introduced animalitas and humanitas, and the like; which yet went very
little further than their own Schools, and could never get to be current
amongst understanding men. Indeed, humanitas was a word in familiar use
amongst the Romans; but in a far different sense, and stood not for the
abstract essence of any substance; but was the abstracted name of a
mode, and its concrete humanus, not homo.