objects wherein at a distance it perceives good or evil? And would not quicknefs of fenfation be an inconvenience to an animal that muft lie ftill, where chance has once placed it; and there receive the afflux of colder or warmer, clean or foul water, as it happens to come to it?

§. 14. But yet I cannot but think there is fome small dull perception, whereby they are diftinguished from perfect infenfibility. And that this may be fo, we have plain inftances even in mankind itself. Take one, in whom decrepid old age has blotted out the memory of his past knowledge, and clearly wiped out the ideas his mind was formerly ftored with; and has, by deftroying his fight, hearing, and fmell quite, and his tafte to a great degree, stopped up almost all the paffages for new ones to enter: or, if there be fome of the inlets yet half open, the impreffions made are fcarce perceived, or not at all retained. How far fuch an one (notwithstanding all that is boafted of innate principles) is in his knowledge, and intellectual faculties, above the condition of a cockle or an oyfter, I leave to be confidered. And if a man had paffed fixty years in fuch a ftate, as it is poffible he might, as well as three days; I wonder what difference there would have been, in any intellectual perfections, between him and the loweft degree of animals.

Perception the inlet of knowledge.

§. 15. Perception then being the firft ftep and degree towards knowledge, and the inlet of all the materials of it; the fewer fenfes any man, as well as any other creature, hath, and the fewer and duller the impreffions are that are made by them, and the duller the faculties are that are employed about them; the more remote are they from that knowledge, which is to be found in fome men. But this being in great variety of degrees (as may be perceived amongst men) cannot certainly be discovered in the feveral fpecies of animals, much less in their particular individuals. It fuffices me only to have remarked. here, that perception is the first operation of all our intellectual faculties, and the inlet of all knowledge in our minds. And I am apt too to imagine, that it is. perception

perception in the lowest degree of it, which puts the boundaries between animals and the inferior ranks of creatures. But this I mention only as my conjecture by the by; it being indifferent to the matter in hand, which way the learned fhall determine of it.

S. F.

Contempla tion.

СНАР. X.

Of Retention.

THE

HE next faculty of the mind, whereby it makes a farther progrefs towards knowledge, is that which I call retention, or the keeping of thofe fimple ideas, which from fenfation or reflection it hath received. This is done two ways; firft, by keeping the idea, which is brought into it, for fome time actually in view; which is called contemplation.

Memory.

§. 2. The other way of retention, is the power to revive again in our minds thofe ideas, which after imprinting have disappeared, or have been as it were laid afide out of fight; and thus we do, when we conceive heat or light, yellow or fweet, the object being removed. This is memory, which is as it were the ftore-houfe of our ideas. For the narrow mind of man not being capable of having many ideas under view and confideration at once, it was neceffary to have a repofitory to lay up thofe ideas, which at another time it might have ufe of. But our ideas being nothing but actual perceptions in the mind, which ceafe to be any thing, when there is no perception of them, this laying up of our ideas in the repofitory of the memory, fignifies no more but this, that the mind has a power in many cafes to revive perceptions, which it has once had, with this additional perception annexed to them, that it has had them before. And in this fenfe it is, that our ideas are faid to be in our memories, when indeed they are actually no-where, but only there is an ability

ability in the mind when it will to revive them again, and as it were paint them a-new on jitfelf, though fome with more, fome with lefs difficulty; fome more lively, and others more obfcurely. And thus it is, by the affiftance of this faculty, that we are to have all those ideas in our understandings, which though we do not actually contemplate, yet we can bring in fight, and make appear again, and be the objects of our thoughts, without the help of those fenfible qualities which first imprinted them there.

Attention,

repetition, pleasure and pain, fix

ideas.

§. 3. Attention and repetition help much to the fixing any ideas in the memory: but those which naturally at first make the deepest and most lafting impreffion, are those which are accompanied with pleasure or pain. The great bufinefs of the fenfes being to make us take notice of what hurts or advantages the body, it is wifely ordered by nature (as has been shown) that pain fhould accompany the reception of feveral ideas; which fupplying the place of confideration and reasoning in children, and acting quicker than confideration in grown men, makes both the old and young avoid painful objects, with that hafte which is neceffary for their prefervation; and, in both, fettles in the memory a caution for the future.

Ideas fade in

the memory.

§. 4. Concerning the feveral degrees of lafting, wherewith ideas are imprinted on the memory, we may obferve, that fome of them have been produced in the understanding, by an object affecting the fenfes once only, and no more than once; others, that have more than once offered themfelves to the fenfes, have yet been little taken notice of: the mind either heedlefs, as in children, or otherwise employed, as in men, intent only on one thing, not fetting the stamp deep into itself. And in fome, where they are fet on with care and repeated impreffions, either through the temper of the body, or fome other fault, the memory is very weak. In all thefe cafes, ideas in the mind quickly fade, and often vanish quite out of the understanding, leaving no more footsteps or remaining VOL. I. charac

K

Book 2. characters of themselves, than fhadows do flying over fields of corn; and the mind is as void of them, as if they had never been there.

§. 5. Thus many of thofe ideas, which were produced in the minds of children, in the beginning of their senfation (fome of which perhaps, as of fome pleasures and pains, were before they were born, and others in their infancy) if in the future courfe of their lives they are not repeated again, are quite left, without the leaft glimpfe remaining of them. This may be obferved in thofe who by fome mifchance have loft their fight when they were very young, in whom the ideas of colours having been but flightly taken notice of, and ceafing to be repeated, do quite wear out: fo that fome years after there is no more notion nor memory of colours left in their minds, than in those of people born blind. The memory of fome, it is true, is very tenacious, even to a miracle but yet there feems to be a conftant decay of all our ideas, even of thofe which are ftruck deepest, and in minds the most retentive; fo that if they be not fometimes renewed by repeated exercife of the fenfes, or reflection on thofe kind of objects which at first occafioned them, the print wears out, and at last there remains nothing to be feen. Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth, often die before us: and ourminds reprefent to us thofe tombs, to which we are approaching; where though the brass and marble remain, yet the infcriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away. The pictures drawn in our minds are laid in fading colours, and, if not fometimes refreshed, vanish and difappear. How much the conftitution of our bodies and the make of our animal fpirits are concerned in this, and whether the temper of the brain makes this difference, that in fome it retains the characters drawn on it like marble, in others like free-ftone, and in others little better than fand; I fhall not here inquire though it may feem probable, that the conftitution of the body does fometimes influence the memory; fince we oftentimes find a difeafe quite frip the mind of all its ideas, and the flames of a fever in a few days cal

cine all thofe images to duft and confufion, which feemed to be as lafting as if graved in marble.

Conftantly repeatedideas

can scarce be loft.

bering, the mind is often

active.

§. 6. But concerning the ideas themselves it is easy to remark, that thofe that are ofteneft refreshed (amongst which are those that are conveyed into the mind by more ways than one) by a frequent return of the objects or actions that produce them, fix themselves best in the memory, and remain cleareft and longeft there and therefore those which are of the original qualities of bodies, viz. folidity, extenfion, figure, motion, and rest; and thofe that almost constantly affect our bodies, as heat and cold; and thofe which are the affections of all kinds of beings, as exiftence, duration and number, which almost every object that affects our fenfes, every thought which employs our minds, bring along with them: thefe, I fay, and the like ideas, are feldom quite loft, whilst the mind retains any ideas at all. §. 7. In this fecondary perception, as I may fo call it, or viewing again the ideas that are lodged in the memory, the mind is oftentimes more than barely paffive; the appearance of thofe dormant pictures depending fometimes on the will. The mind very often fets itself on work in fearch of fome hidden idea, and turns as it were the eye of the foul upon it; though fometimes too they ftart up in our minds of their own accord, and offer themselves to the understanding; and very often are roufed and tumbled out of their dark cells into open day-light, by turbulent and tempeftuous paffions: our affections bringing ideas to our memory, which had otherwife lain quiet and unregarded. This farther is to be obferved, concerning ideas lodged in the memory, and upon occafion revived by the mind, that they are not only (as the word revive imports) none of them new ones; but also that the mind takes notice of them, as of a former impreffion, and renews its acquaintance with them, as with ideas it had known before. So that though ideas formerly imprinted are not all constantly in view, yet in remembrance they are conftantly known