CHAPTER VIII.
OF ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE TERMS.
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.