86 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



This generalization of Ideas is an arrangement or diftribution of 

 Things, but which wc are not to imagine is artificial, and deviled 

 by Man, to facilitate his comprehenfion of them. It is the work of 

 Nature, or, rather, of the great Author of Nature, who has fo 

 contrived this wonderful frame of the univerfe, that all things in it 

 are both like and unlike : Nor, indeed, could it otherwife have been 

 a fyftem ; for there can be no fyftem, where every thing is the fame, 

 or every thing different. There muft therefore be a concordia dij- 

 cors in all fyftems, which is fo confpicuous in this fyftem of the uni- 

 verfe, that, with the grcateft uniformity it is pofFible to conceive, 

 there is fuch an amazing variety, that no two individuals of any 

 fpccies of things are perfectly alike, not two leaves of the fame 

 tree. 



If thefe genera! Ideas are perfect, the Mind only confiders the 

 common Nature, without regard to the particular Things ifl which it 

 is found ; fo that there is abftradlion as well as generalization. Such 

 is the Idea of the Philofopher, but which is hardly to be found a- 

 mong the vulgar, except in one fubjedl, that is Number, with re- 

 fped to which, even the vulgar appear to me to generalize and ab- 

 ftra£t as perfectly as the Philofopher. But, in geometry, even our 

 mathematicians do not fufficiently abftrad: ; the reafon of which I 

 take to be, that they accuftom themfelves too much to the ufc of 

 diagrams, which are fenfible reprefentations of the Ideas. As to 

 Brutes, I think no Body can believe that they fee this one com- 

 mon Nature in the ffiany, or that they have general Ideas ; though 

 a man, that has learned no better philofophy than Mr Locke's, may 

 confound their Senfations with the Ideas of particular things, which 

 has obliged me to take fo much pains to diftinguifh them. This, I 

 hope, I have done, by fhowing that they are different, both as to the 

 Subje<5l of them, that of the one being the Nature and Eflencc of the 



thing, 



