beyond the Rofecrucians; it seeming eafier to make one's felf invifible to others, than to make another's thoughts vifible to me, which are not vifible to himself But it is but defining the foul to be "a fubftance that always thinks," and the bufinefs is done. If such de-finition be of any authority, I know not what it can. ferve for, but to make many men fufpect, that they have no fouls at all, fince they find a good part of their lives pafs away without thinking. For no definitions, that I know, no fuppofitions of any fect, are of force enough to destroy conftant experience; and perhaps it is the affectation of knowing beyond what we perceive,. that makes fo much ufelefs difpute and noife in the world. No ideas but from fenfa tion or reflection, evident, if we obferve children. §. 20. I fee no reafon therefore to believe, that the foul thinks before the fenfes have furnished it with ideas to think on; and as thofe are increased and retained, fo it comes, by exercife, to improve its faculty of thinking, in the feveral parts of it, as well as afterwards, by compounding thofe ideas, and reflecting on its own operations; it increafes its ftock, as well as facility, in remembering, imagining, reafoning, and other modes of thinking. §. 21. He that will fuffer himself to be informed by obfervation and experience, and not make his own hypothefis the rule of nature, will find few figns of a foul accustomed to much thinking in a new-born child, and much fewer of any reafoning at all. And yet it is hard to imagine, that the rational foul fhould think fo much, and not reafon at all. And he that will confider, that infants, newly come into the world, fpend the greatest part of their time in fleep, and are feldom awake, but when either hunger calls for the teat, or fome pain, (the most importunate of all fenfations) or fome other violent impreffion upon the body forces the mind to perceive, and attend to it: he, I fay, who confiders this, will, perhaps, find reafon to imagine, that a fœtus in the mother's womb differs not much from the state of a vegetable; but paffes the greatest part of its time without perception or thought, doing very little in a place where it needs not feek for food, and is furrounded with liquor, always equally foft, and near of the fame temper; where the eyes have no light, and the ears, fo fhut up, are not very fufceptible of founds; and where there is little or no variety, or change of objects to move the fenfes. §. 22. Follow a child from its birth, and obferve the alterations that time makes, and you fhall find, as the mind by the fenfes comes more and more to be furnished with ideas, it comes to be more and more awake; thinks more, the more it has matter to think on. After fome time it begins to know the objects, which, being moft familiar with it, have made lafting impreffions. Thus it comes by degrees to know the perfons it daily converfes with, and diftinguish them from ftrangers; which are inftances and effects of its coming to retain and diftinguish the ideas the fenfes convey to it. And fo we may obferve how the mind, by degrees, improves in these, and advances to the exercife of thofe other faculties of enlarging, compounding, and abftracting its ideas, and of reafoning about them, and reflecting upon all thefe; of which I fhall have occafion to speak more hereafter. §. 23. If it fhall be demanded then, when a man begins to have any ideas; I think the true anfwer is, when he first has any fenfation. For fince there appear not to be any ideas in the mind, before the fenfes have conveyed any in, I conceive that ideas in the underftanding are coeval with fenfation; which is fuch an impreflion or motion, made in fome part of the body, as produces fome perception in the understanding. It is about these impreffions made on our fenfes by outward objects, that the mind feems firft to employ itself in fuch operations as we call perception, remembering, confideration, reafoning, &c. The original of all our knowledge. §. 24. In time the mind comes to reflect on its own operations about the ideas got by fenfation, and thereby ftores itfelf with a new fet of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection. Thefe are the impreffions that are made on our fenfes by outward objects that are extrinfical to the mind, and its its own operations, proceeding from powers intrinfical and proper to itself; which when reflected on by itself, becoming alfo objects of its contemplation, are, as I have faid, the original of all knowledge. Thus the first capacity of human intellect is, that the mind is fitted to receive the impreffions made on it; either through the fenfes by outward objects; or by its own operations when it reflects on them. This is the first ftep a man makes towards the difcovery of any thing, and the ground-work whereon to build all those notions which ever he fhall have naturally in this world. All thofe fublime thoughts which tower above the clouds, and reach as high as heaven itself, take their rife and footing here: in all that good extent wherein the mind wanders, in thofe remote fpeculations, it may feem to be elevated with, it firs not one jot beyond thofe ideas which fenfe or reflection have offered for its contemplation. In the recep tion of fimple ideas the understanding is for the moft part paffive. §. 25. In this part the understanding is merely paffive; and whether or no it will have thefe beginnings, and as it were materials of knowledge, is not in its own power. For the objects of our fenfes do, many of them, obtrude their particular ideas upon our minds whether we will or no: and the operations of our minds will not let us be without, at least, fome obfcure notions of them. No man can be wholly ignorant of what he does when he thinks. These fimple ideas, when offered to the mind, the understanding can no more refufe to have, nor alter, when they are imprinted, nor blot them out, and make new ones itself, than a mirror can refuse, alter, or obliterate the images or ideas which the objects fet before it do therein produce. As the bodies that surround us do diversly affect our organs, the mind is forced to receive the impref fions, and cannot avoid the perception of thofe ideas that are annexed to them. CHAP CHA P. II. Of Simple Ideas. §. 1. THE better to understand the Uncom nature, manner, and extent of pounded áp our knowledge, one thing is carefully to pearances. be obferved concerning the ideas we have; and that is, that fome of them are fimple, and fome complex. Though the qualities that affect our fenfes are, in the things themselves, fo united and blended, that there is no feparation, no diftance between them; yet it is plain, the ideas they produce in the mind enter by the fenfes fimple and unmixed. For though the fight and touch often take in from the fame object, at the fame time, different ideas; as a man fees at once motion and colour; the hand feels foftnefs and warmth in the fame piece of wax: yet the fimple ideas, thus united in the fame fubject, are as perfectly diftinct as those that come in by different fenfes: the coldness and hardness which a man feels in a piece of ice being as diftinct ideas in the mind, as the fmell and whitenefs of a lily; or as the taste of fugar, and fmell of a rofe. And there is nothing can be plainer to a man, than the clear and diftinct perception he has of thofe fimple ideas; which, being each in itfelf uncompounded, contains in it nothing but one uniform appearance, or conception in the mind, and is not diftinguifhable into different ideas. §. 2. Thefe fimple ideas, the materials of all our knowledge, are fuggefted and furnished to the mind only by those two ways above-mentioned, viz. fenfation and reflection. (1) When the understanding is once The mind can neither make nor deftroy them. ftored with these (1) Against this, that the materials of all our knowledge are fuggefted and furnished to the mind only by fenfation and reflection, the bishop of Worcester makes ufe of the idea of fubftance in these words: "If the idea of fubftance be grounded upon plain and evident reafon, then we muft allow Book 2. these fimple ideas, it has the power to repeat, compare, and unite them, even to an almoft infinite variety; and fo can make at pleafüre new complex ideas. But it is not in the power of the moft exalted wit, or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new fimple idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways aforementioned: nor can any force of the understanding deftroy thofe that are there. The dominion of man, in this little world of his own understanding, being much-what the fame as it is in the great world of vifible things; wherein his power, however managed by art and kill, reaches no farther than to compound and divide the materials that are made allow an idea of fubftance, which comes not in by fenfation or reflection; and fo we may be certain of fomething which we have not by these ideas." To which our author anfwers: Thefe words of your lordship's contain nothing as I fee in them against me: for I never faid that the general idea of fubftance comes in by fenfation and reflection, or that it is a fimple idea of fenfation or reflection, though it be ultimately founded in them; for it is a complex idea, made up of the general idea of fomething, er being, with the relation of a fupport to accidents. For general ideas come not into the mind by fenfation or reflection, but are the creatures or inventions of the understanding, as I think I have shown t; and also how the mind makes them from ideas which it has got by fenfation and reflection; and as to the ideas of relation, how the mind forms them, and how they are derived from, and ultimately terminate in ideas of fenfation and reflection, I have likewife fhown. But that I may not be mistaken what I mean, when I fpeak of ideas of fenfation and reflection, as the materials of all our knowledge; give me leave, my lord, to fet down here a place or two, out of my book, to explain myfelf; as I thus fpeak of ideas of fenfation and reflection: That thefe, when we have taken a full furvey of them, and their ⚫ feveral modes, and the compofitions made out of them, we shall find to ⚫ contain all our whole stock of ideas, and we have nothing in our minds, ⚫ which did not come in one of these two ways ‡.' This thought, in another place, I exprefs thus. Thefe are the moft confiderable of thofe fimple ideas which the mind has, and out of which is made all its other knowledge; all which it receives by the two forementioned ways of fenfation and reflection §.* And, • Thus I have, in a fhort draught, given a view of our original ideas, ⚫ from whence all the rest are derived, and of which they are made up. + B. 3. c. 3. bishop of Worcester. |