Thus the same colour being observed to-day in chalk or
snow, which the mind yesterday received from milk, it considers that
appearance alone, makes it a representative of all of that kind; and
having given it the name WHITENESS, it by that sound signifies the same
quality wheresoever to be imagined or met with; and thus universals,
whether ideas or terms, are made.
10. Brutes abstract not.
If it may be doubted whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas
that way to any degree; this, I think, I may be positive in,--that the
power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of
general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and
brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no
means attain to. For it is evident we observe no footsteps in them of
making use of general signs for universal ideas; from which we have
reason to imagine that they have not the faculty of abstracting, or
making general ideas, since they have no use of words, or any other
general signs.
11. Brutes abstract not, yet are nor bare machines.
Nor can it be imputed to their want of fit organs to frame articulate
sounds, that they have no use or knowledge of general words; since
many of them, we find, can fashion such sounds, and pronounce words
distinctly enough, but never with any such application.
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