“Do not suppose that the natures or essences of things always differ from one another as much as their names do. There are various purposes in human life for which we put very different names on the same thing, or on things whose natures are near akin; and thereby oftentimes, by making a new nominal species, we are ready to deceive ourselves with the idea of another real species of beings, and those whose understandings are led away by the mere sound of words fancy the nature of those things to be very different whose names are so, and judge of them accordingly. I may borrow a remarkable instance for my purpose out of every garden which contains a variety of plants in it. Most of all plants agree in this, that they have a root, a stalk, leaves, buds, blossoms, and seeds: but the gardener ranges them under very different names, as though they were really different kinds of beings, merely because of the different use and service to which they are applied by men, as for instance those plants whose roots are eaten shall appropriate the name of roots to themselves, such as carrots, turnips, radishes, etc. If the leaves are of chief use to us then we call them herbs, as sage, mint, thyme; if the leaves are eaten raw they are termed salad, as lettuce, purslane; if boiled they become pot-herbs, as spinage, coleworts; and some of those same plants which are pot-herbs in one family are salads in another. If the buds are made our food they are called heads or tops; so cabbage heads, heads of asparagus, and artichokes. If the blossom be of most importance we call it a flower, such as daisies, tulips, and carnations, which are the mere blossoms of those plants. If the husks or seeds are eaten they are called the fruits of the ground, as peas, beans, strawberries, etc. If any part of the plant be of known or common use to us in medicine we call it a physical herb, as cardamus, scurvy-grass; but if we count no part useful we call it a weed, and throw it out of the garden; and yet perhaps our next neighbour knows some valuable property and use of it, he plants it in his garden and gives it a title of an herb or a flower. You see here how small is the real distinction of these several plants considered in their general nature as the lesser vegetables, yet what very different ideas we vulgarly form concerning them, and make different species of them, chiefly because of the different names given to them.” Exactly the same characteristics meet us in his Ontology, but here there is yet more of this kind of amusement; its pages are crowded with illustrations. It was perhaps in the nature of the subject that he scarcely mentions a particular for which he does not furnish one or twenty illustrative examples: take his curious discrimination of causes into the deficient, the permissive, and the conditional: