For what else, I pray, is their monster in the case, (if the word monster signifies anything at all,) but something neither man nor beast, but partaking somewhat of either?
And just so is the CHANGELING before mentioned.

So necessary is it to quit the common notion of species and essences, if we will truly look into the nature of things, and examine them by what our faculties can discover in them as they exist, and not by groundless fancies that have been taken up about them.
17.

Words and Species.
I have mentioned this here, because I think we cannot be too cautious that words and species, in the ordinary notions which we have been used to of them, impose not on us.

For I am apt to think therein lies one great obstacle to our clear and distinct knowledge, especially in reference to substances: and from thence has rose a great part of the difficulties about truth and certainty.

Would we accustom ourselves to separate our contemplations and reasonings from words, we might in a great measure remedy this inconvenience within our own thoughts: but yet it would still disturb us in our discourse with others, as long as we retained the opinion, that SPECIES and their ESSENCES were anything else but our abstract ideas (such as they are) with names annexed to them, to be the signs of them.
18.