‘Whether others have this wonderful faculty of abstracting their ideas, they best can tell: for myself I dare be confident I have it not. I have a faculty of imagining or representing to myself the ideas of those particular things I have perceived, and of variously compounding and dividing them. I can imagine a man with two heads or the upper part of a man joined to the body of a horse; I can consider the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself, abstracted or separated from the rest of the body. But then, whatever hand or eye, I imagine, it must have some particular shape, and colour. Likewise, the idea of man that I frame to myself must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny; a strait, or a crooked; a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea above-described: and it is equally impossible for me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving, and which is neither swift nor slow, curvilinear nor rectilinear, and the like may be said of other abstract general ideas whatsoever: to be plain, I own myself able to abstract in one sense, as when I consider some particular parts or qualities separated from others, with which, though they are united in some objects, yet it is possible they may really exist without them. But I deny that I can abstract from one another, or conceive separately those qualities, which it is impossible should exist so separated:—or that I can frame a general notion by abstracting from particulars in the manner aforesaid, which two last are the proper acceptation of abstraction; and there is ground to think most men will acknowledge themselves to be in my case. ‘The generality of men, which are simple and illiterate, never pretend to abstract notions. It is said they are difficult and not to be attained without pains and study; we may therefore reasonably conclude that, if such there be, they are confined only to the learned. I proceed to examine what can be alleged in defence of the doctrine of abstraction, and try if I can discover what it is that inclines the man of speculation to embrace an opinion so remote from common sense as that seems to be. There has been a late excellent and deservedly esteemed philosopher, who no doubt has given it very much, by seeming to think the having abstract general ideas is what puts the difference in point of understanding betwixt man and beast.’ The author here quotes a passage from Mr. Locke on the subject, which it is not necessary to give, and afterwards his opinion that words become general by being made signs of general ideas. He then proceeds:—‘To this I cannot assent, being of opinion that a word becomes general by being made the sign, not of an abstract general idea, but of several particular ideas, any one of which it indifferently suggests to the mind.’