R.I. Aaron:
"What do we mean by a 'sort' ? Locke explains that he uses this term instead of the more pedantic 'species' and 'genus' of the schools. A sort, he thinks, is suggested by experience but not discovered in it, and the difference is important for it means that the sort must be a fabrication of ours though suggested by experience. But how does the mind fabricate it? …. Generalizing in the sense of fabricating sorts is the process of abstracting a core of qualities which we find to be common in many particulars and ignoring those which differ. Having seen many men I pick out rational behaviour, two-leggedness, ability to have sensations and so on, and frame an abstract idea of these common qualities. I omit tall, fair, wealthy, which vary from man to man. I thus 'make nothing new, but only leave out of the complex idea of Peter and James, Mary and Jane, that which is peculiar to each and retain only what is common to them all'. (Locke's Essay, III,iii,7) … The general idea of man is the idea of a substance having as qualities those which have been observed to be common to many men. Finally, we have to find a name for this general idea, either learning it from others, as is usually the case, or inventing one ourselves. The word 'man' signifies in the first place the general idea and, secondarily, all the particulars which are members of this sort. This general idea is Locke's nominal essence and it is thus that he explains the riddle of genera and species. They are nominal essences, framed by abstraction in the sense now explained."
R.I. Aaron: The Theory of Universals, Oxford, 1952, Clarendon. p.31,2.
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