Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

distinct constitutions of real beings. But whether they answer to those constitutions, as to causes or patterns, it matters not; it suffices that they are constantly produced by them. And thus our simple ideas are all real and true, because they answer and agree to those powers of things which produce them in our minds; that being all that is requisite to make them real, and not fictions at pleasure, For in simple ideas (as has been shown) the mind is whol ly confined to the operation of things upon it, and can make to itself no simple idea, more than what it has received.

§. 3. Complex ideas are voluntary combinations.

Though the mind be wholly passive in respect of its simple ideas; yet I think, we may say, it is not so in respect of its complex ideas: for those being combinations of simple ideas put together, and united under one general name; it is plain that the mind of man uses some kind of liberty in forming those complex ideas: how else comes it to pass that one man's idea of gold, or justice, is different from another's? but because he has put in or left out of his, some simple idea, which the other has not. The question then is, which of these are real, and which barely imaginary combinations? What collections agree to the reality of things, and what not? And to this I say, That,

§. 4. Mixed modes made of consistent ideas, are real.

Secondly, mixed modes and relations having no other reality but what they have in the minds of men, there is nothing more required to this kind of ideas to make them real, but that they be so framed, that there be a possibility of existing conformable to them. These ideas themselves, being archetypes, cannot differ from their archetypes, and so cannot be chimerical, unless any one will jumble together in them inconsistent ideas. Indeed, as any of them have the names of a known language assigned to them, by which he that has them in his mind would signify them to others, so bare possibility of existing is not enough; they must have a conformity to the ordinary signification of the name that is given them, that they may not be thought fantastical; as if a man would give the name of justice to that idea, which common use calls liberality. But this fantasticalness relates more to propriety

[ocr errors]

of speech, than reality of ideas: for a man to be undisturbed in danger, sedately to consider what is fittest to be done, and to execute it steadily, is a mixed mode, or a complex idea of an action which may exist. But to be undisturbed in danger without using one's reason or industry, is what is also possible to be; and so is as real an idea. as the other. Though the first of these, having the name courage given to it, may, in respect of that name, be a right or wrong idea: but the other, whilst it has not a common received name of any known language assigned to it, is not capable of any deformity, being made with no reference to any thing but itself.

§. 5. Ideas of substances are real, when they agree with the existence of things.

Thirdly, our complex ideas of substances being made all of them in reference to things existing without us, and intended to be representations of substances, as they really are; are no farther real, than as they are such combina tions of simple ideas, as are really united, and co-exist in things without us. On the contrary, those are fantastical which are made up of such collections of simple ideas as were really never united, never were found together in any substance; v. g. a rational creature, consisting of a horse's head, joined to a body of human shape, or such as the centaurs are described: or, a body yellow, very malleable, fusible, and fixed; but lighter than common water: or an uniform, unorganized body, consisting, as to sense, all of similar parts, with perception and voluntary motion joined to it. Whether such substances as these can possibly exist or no, it is probable we do not know: but be that as it will, these ideas of substances being made conformable to no pattern existing that we know, and consisting of such collections of ideas, as no substance ever showed us united together, they ought to pass with us for barely imaginary: but much more are those complex ideas so, which contain in them any inconsistency or contradiction of their parts,

CHAP. XXXI.

of adequate aND INADEQUATE IDEAS.

§. 1. Adequate ideas are such as perfectly represent their

OF

archetypes.

F our real ideas, some are adequate, and some are inadequate. Those I call adequate, which perfectly represent those archetypes which the mind supposes them taken from; which it intends them to stand for, and to which it refers them. Inadequate ideas are such, which are but a partial or incomplete representation of those archetypes to which they are referred. Upon which account it is plain,

§. 2. Simple ideas all adequate.

First, that all our simple ideas are adequate. Because being nothing but the effects of certain powers in things, fitted and ordained by God to produce such sensations in us, they cannot but be correspondent and adequate to those powers and we are sure they agree to the reality of things. For if sugar produce in us the ideas which we call whiteness and sweetness, we are sure there is a power in sugar to produce those ideas in our minds, or else they could not have been produced by it. And so each sensation answering the power that operates on any of our senses, the idea so produced is a real idea, (and not a fiction of the mind, which has no power to produce any simple idea;) and cannot but be adequate, since it ought only to answer that power and so all simple ideas are adequate. It is true, the things producing in us these simple ideas are but few of them denominated by us, as if they were only the causes of them; but as if those ideas were real beings in them. For though fire be called painful to the touch, whereby is signified the power of producing in us the idea of pain, yet it is denominated also light and hot; as if light and heat were really something in the fire more than a power to excite these ideas in us; and therefore are called qualities in, or of the fire. But these being nothing, in truth, but powers to excite such ideas in us, I must in that sense be understood, when I speak of secondary qualities, as being in things: or of their ideas, as being the objects that excite them in us. Such ways of

speaking, though accommodated to the vulgar notions, without which one cannot be well understood, yet truly signify nothing but those powers which are in things to excite certain sensations or ideas in us: since were there no fit organs to receive the impressions fire makes on the sight and touch, nor a mind joined to those organs to receive the ideas of light and heat by those impressions from the fire or sun, there would yet be no more light or heat in the world, than there would be pain, if there were no sensible creature to feel it, though the sun should continue just as it is now, and mount Etna flame higher than ever it did. Solidity and extension, and the termination. of it, figure, with motion and rest, whereof we have the ideas, would be really in the world as they are, whether there were any sensible being to perceive them or no; and therefore we have reason to look on those as the real modifications of matter, and such are the exciting causes of all our various sensations from bodies. But this being an inquiry not belonging to this place, I shall enter no farther into it, but proceed to show what complex ideas are adequate, and what not.

§. 3. Modes are all adequate.

Secondly, our complex ideas of modes, being voluntary collections of simple ideas, which the mind puts together without reference to any real archetypes or standing patterns existing any where, are and cannot but be adequate ideas. Because they not being intended for copies of things really existing, but for archetypes made by the mind to rank and denominate things by, cannot want any thing: they having each of them that combination of ideas, and thereby that perfection which the mind intended they should: so that the mind acquiesces in them, and can find nothing wanting. Thus by having the idea of a figure, with three sides meeting at three angles, I have a complete idea, wherein I require nothing else to make it perfect. That the mind is satisfied with the perfection of this its idea, is plain in that it does not conceive, that any understanding hath, or can have a more complete or perfect idea of that thing it signifies by the word triangle, supposing it to exist, than it self has in that complex idea of three sides and three angles; in which is contained all that is, or can be essential to it, or necessary to complete it, wherever or however it exists. But in our ideas of substances it is otherwise.For there desiring to copy things as they really do exist,

and to represent to ourselves that constitution on which all their properties depend, we perceive our ideas attain not that perfection we intend: we find they still want something we should be glad were in them; and so are all inadequate. But mixed modes and relations, being archetypes without patterns, and so having nothing to represent but themselves, cannot but be adequate, every thing being so to itself. He that at first put together the idea of danger perceived, absence of disorder from fear, sedate consideration of what was justly to be done, and execut ing that without disturbance, or being deterred by the danger of it, had certainly in his mind that complex idea made up of that combination; and intending it to be nothing else, but what is, nor to have in it any other simple ideas, but what it hath, it could not also but be an adequate idea and laying this up in his memory, with the name courage annexed to it to signify to others, and denominate from thence any action he should observe to agree with it, had thereby a standard to measure and denominate actions by, as they agreed to it. This idea thus made, and laid up for a pattern, must necessarily be adequate, being referred to nothing else but itself, nor made by any other original, but the good-liking and will of him that first made this combination.

§. 4. Modes, in reference to settled names, may be inadequate.

Indeed another coming after, and in conversation learning from him the word courage, may make an idea, to which he gives the name courage, different from what the first author applied it to, and has in his mind, when he uses it. And in this case, if he designs that his idea in thinking should be conformable to the other's idea, as the name he uses in speaking is conformable in sound to his, from whom he learned it, his idea may be very wrong and inadequate because in this case, making the other man's idea the pattern of his idea in thinking, as the other man's word or sound is the pattern of his in speaking, his idea is so far defective and inadequate, as it is distant from the archetype and pattern he refers it to, and intends to express and signify by the name he uses for it; which name he would have to be a sign of the other man's idea (to which, in its proper use, it is primarily annexed) and of his own, as agreeing to it: to which, if his own does not exactly correspond, it is faulty and inadequate.

« ForrigeFortsæt »