 Secondly, as we saw above, Locke adduces the semantic point that our general terms (and their corresponding ideas), being human constructs via the process of abstraction, constitute the (nominal) essences of things, not some immaterial substantial form: “Whereby it is evident, that the Essences of the sorts, or (if the Latin word pleases better) Species of Things, are nothing else but these abstract Ideas” (III.iii.12). Abstract ideas are formed when we take a set of objects and mentally strip away enough particular ideas to reveal what properties they all have in common. The resulting ideas are purely mental constructions; the putative substantial forms of the objects are irrelevant to this process. Therefore, essences and species are human constructs, not the products of nature, i.e., they are purely nominal.