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This article introduced me to the source: Point 6, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), Chapter XXXI, Of Adequate and Inadequate Ideas by John Locke.

But yet this property has no necessary connexion with that complex idea, or any part of it: and there is no more reason to think that malleableness depends on that colour, weight, and hardness, than that colour or that weight depends on its malleableness. And yet, though we know nothing of these real essences, there is nothing more ordinary than that men should attribute the sorts of things to such essences.

The bolded subordinate clause confuses me.

  1. Is that an ellipsis of 'the fact that'?

  2. What is the antecedent of sorts of things? To which sorts of things does Locke refer?

StoneyB on hiatus
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  • By the way: For physical materials, there is an inverse relationship between malleableness (also known as ductility, the opposite of brittleness) and hardness. – Jasper Sep 15 '15 at 19:27
  • Please do not use hyper-specialized and confusing tags like 1600s; if you're specifically asking about a usage you suspect to be archaic, use that tag instead, but otherwise the date is almost certainly irrelevant to proper tagging. (As here.) – Nathan Tuggy Sep 15 '15 at 20:57
  • @NathanTuggy I trust that the periodic tag besuits my post, from http://public.oed.com/aspects-of-english/english-in-time/? –  Sep 16 '15 at 20:05

2 Answers2

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  1. No, the bolded clause headed by that, is not an ellipsis. It may however be paraphrased by adding 'the fact' before that, if you understand 'the fact that' more readily.

  2. Sorts neither has nor requires an "antecedent". These sorts are the sorts the things belong to, the named categories to which they are assigned:

    the specific names [men] rank particular substances under

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StoneyB on hiatus
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Re #1:

{That it was time to take a break} was obvious to everyone.

There was nothing more obvious than {that it was time to take a break}.

The that-clause can serve as the subject of a predication. What was obvious? That it was time to take a break was obvious.

TimR
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