86 -1 OF SUBSTANCE, BODY AND SPIRIT. substance, or. support to uphold them, as all other qualities re= quire. And this mistake may partly arise, ashhinted before, from the sound of the terminations ley in solidity, and siol in exten- sion, which are the usual terminations of 'the names of qualities, which names are called abstracts and this persuades us that there are some concretes', belonging tq then), i..e. some different subjects or substances upholding and supporting these abstract names of qnalities : 'Thus by.grammatical names and termina- tioas, and by logical methods of ranging them, weare led insen- sibly to suppose' solid extension. and a percer of cogitation to. be mere qualities, and that there is,, or must he some unknown sort of thingcalled substance to uphold them : And thus perhaps men, frame to themselves new and imaginary beings, which have no existence in nature; and at the same time confess they are un- known' and unknowable, and tliat they have no ideas of them and know not what they are; and I think I have shewn that. naturehas no needof them, and therefore fancy need not give them an existence: To conclude ; L have reason here again to repeat the judi- cious remark of Mr. Locke, That " we ought to put things to- gether as well as we can ; but after all, there are.several things which will not be bundled up together under our .ways of speak- ing." We have usually ranged solidity and. extension, and a poser of thinking, under the general, head of qualities or pro- perties ; and because we have not so many words as we have ideas, nor particular words for things in the various relations in which we survey them, we seem to have occasion sometimes to speak of these things as properties or qualities, and sometimes as Substances. Wespeak of them as qualitiesor properties; when we call matter and spirit two substances, which are distinguished by their primary qualities or properties' of solid extension and of cogitation : But this should not forbidqs to range them in ano- ther view under the general head of substance also, since they are two general substrata or subjects of all other imaginable qualities that can belong to body or mind. And if we will but allow these two to be real substances, we are furnished with sub- strata or subjects sufficient for all our modal or qualitative ideas to inhere in, and we need no further debate about this strange thing substance. * The name: of abstract is given to a word that signifies a quality, as whiteness, without iaetuda c the substance, or the thine that is striate ; whereas the word white is a concrete, because it denotes the thing or substancetone.. titer with' the quality. And by these distinctions of words we are too often drawn into matches, and imagine all abstiacl words, and all concrete words, to confine their ideas, to the same limite and regulations. Rub we ought to remember that Things are made by God and nature; war are made by cma, and' sometimes applied in a way not exactly agreeable to what things and ideas require.
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