To know now upon what grounds they say there be “essences abstract,” or “substantial forms,” we are to consider what those words do properly signify. The use of words is to register to ourselves, and make manifest to others, the thoughts and conceptions of our minds. Of which words, some are the names of the things conceived; as the names of all sorts of bodies, that work upon the senses and leave an impression in the imagination. Others are the names of the imaginations themselves; that is to say, of those ideas or mental images we have of all things we see, or remember. And others again are names of names; or of different sorts of speech: as “universal,” “plural,” “singular,” are the names of names; and “definition,” “affirmation,” “negation,” “true,” “false,” “syllogism,” “interrogation,” “promise,” “covenant,” are the names of certain forms of speech. Others serve to show the consequence or repugnance of one name to another; as when one saith, “a man is a body,” he intendeth that the name of “body” is necessarily consequent to the name of “man”; as being but several names of the same thing, “man”; which consequence is signified by coupling them together with the word “is.” And as we use the verb “is,” so the Latins use their verb “est,” and the Greeks their