66 AN TIE NT METAPHYSICS. Book I. 



As to the uniting, we muft perceive what is common to many things, 

 and in that way connect and join the things together, which Is cal- 

 led generalization, or, as it is expreffed by Plato, perceiving the 

 one in the many. By the firft operation of divifion, we fee what 

 is principal in any individual thing, and feparate it from the other 

 qualities of the thing ; and thus confidering it by itfelf, we form the 

 particular idea of that individual thing. Then we exercife the 

 other faculty of uniting, by which we difcover, that this parti- 

 cular idea is common to many other individuals ; And thus, by 

 feeing this one thing in the many, we form the general idea of the 

 fpecies, as of a man, for example, or a horfe*. But not (topping 

 here, we go on, and find that the one thing, which is common to the 

 man and horfe, is common to other things ; and thus we form the idea 

 of the genus Animal, where we fee the am in many more things than 

 we favv it before. From animal we afcend to animated body^ or the 

 ro ifi4"'X'"' ^s the Greeks call it, comprehending both animals and ve- 

 getables. And from thenc^ our next ftep is to body, and from body 

 to fubjlance, which is one of the Categories. And thus we go oa 

 difcovering the one in the many, but that many always increafing. 

 And while we thus unite things, which feem, at firft fight, fo re- 

 mote from one another, perceiving what they have in common, we 

 perceive alfo in vi^hat they differ; and this is what is called \.h.Q fpe- 

 cific difference, by which the feveral fpeciefes of the fame genus are 

 dirtinguifhed from one another. And while we thus go on, invefti- 

 gating the different relations and connedions of things, we difcover 

 that fome things exift by ihemfelves, while other things have no 



fuch 



* See what I have foid of particular and general ideas, in vol. III. of this work, p. 

 341. and the paflages there quoted ; -where I have Ihown the abfurdity of fuppofing 

 that there could he general ideas, if there were not particular ; or that an idea could 

 be abltraiRed from any corporeal fubflance, if it did not exift in it : And yet our 

 philofophers, at prcfeiit, fpeak of general and ahjlracied ideas, as if they were the fame. 



