apply them to our ufes, and feveral ways to accommodate the exigencies of this life. We have infight enough into their admirable contrivances and wonderful effects, to admire and magnify the wifdom, power, and goodness of their author. Such a knowledge as this, which is fuited to our prefent condition, we want not faculties to attain. But it appears not, that God intended we should have a perfect, clear, and adequate knowledge of them: that perhaps is not in the comprehenfion of any finite being. We are furnished with faculties (dull and weak as they are) to discover enough in the creatures, to lead us to the knowledge of the Creator, and the knowledge of our duty; and we are fitted well enough with abilities to provide for the conveniencies of living: thefe are our business in this world. But were our fenfes altered, and made much quicker and acuter, the appearance and outward fcheme of things would have quite another face to us; and, I am apt to think, would be inconfiftent with our being, or at least well-being, in this part of the universe which we inhabit. He that confiders how little, our conftitution is able to bear a remove into parts of this air, not much higher than that we commonly breathe in, will have reafon to be fatisfied, that in this globe of earth allotted for our manfion, the all-wife Architect has fuited our organs, and the bodies that are to affect them, one to another. If our fenfe of hearing were but one thousand times quicker than it is, how would a perpetual noife diftract us? And we fhould in the quieteft retirement be lefs able to fleep or meditate, than in the middle of a fea-fight. Nay, if that most inftructive of our fenfes, feeing, were in any man a thousand or a hundred thoufand times more acute than it is by the beft microscope, things feveral millions of times lefs than the fmallest object of his fight now, would then be visible to his naked eyes, and fo he would come nearer to the difcovery of the texture and motion of the minute parts of corporcal things; and in many of them, probably get ideas of their internal conftitutions. But then he would be in a quite different world from other people: nothing would appear

the

the fame to him, and others; the vifible ideas of every thing would be different. So that I doubt, whether he and the rest of men could difcourfe concerning the ob jects of fight, or have any communication about coours, their appearances being fo wholly different. And perhaps fuch a quickness and tenderness of fight could not endure bright fun-fhine, or so much as open day-light; nor take in but a very fmall part of any object at once, and that too only at a very near dif tance. And if by the help of fuch microscopical eyes (if I may fo call them) a man could penetrate farther than ordinary into the fecret compofition and radical texture of bodies, he would not make any great advantage by the change, if fuch an acute fight would not ferve to conduct him to the market and exchange; if he could not fee things he was to avoid, at a conve nient diftance; nor diftinguish things he had to do with, by thofe fenfible qualities others do. He that was fharp-fighted enough to fee the configuration of the minute particles of the fpring of a clock, and obferve upon what peculiar ftructure and impulfe its elastic motion depends, would no doubt discover fomething very admirable: but if eyes fo framed could not view at once the hand, and the characters of the hourplate, and thereby at a distance fee what o'clock it was, their owner could not be much benefitted by that acute nefs; which, whilft it discovered the secret contrivance of the parts of the machine, made him lofe its ufe.

§. 13. And here give me leave to proConjecture about fpirits. pose an extravagant conjecture of mine, viz, that fince we have fome reason (if there be any credit to be given to the report of things, that our philofophy cannot account for) to imagine, that fpirits can affume to themselves bodies of different bulk, figure, and conformation of parts; whether one great advantage fome of them have over us, may not lie in this, that they can fo frame and fhape to themfelves organs of fenfation or perception, as to fuit them to their prefent defign, and the circumftances of the object they would confider. For how much would that man exceed all others in knowledge, who had but the faculty

faculty fo to alier the ftructure of his eyes, that one fenfe, as to make it capable of all the several degrees of vifion, which the affiftance of glaffes (cafually at first lighted on) has taught us to conceive? What wonders would he difcover, who could fo fit his eyes to all forts of objects, as to fee, when he pleafed, the figure and motion of the minute particles in the blood, and other juices of animals, as diftinctly as he does, at other times, the shape and motion of the animals themfelves? But to us, in our present state, unalterable organs fo contrived, as to difcover the figure and motion of the minute parts of bodies, whereon depend thofe fenfible qualities we now observe in them, would perhaps be of no advantage. God has, no doubt, made them fo, as is beft for us in our prefent condition. He hath fitted us for the neighbourhood of the bodies that furround us, and we have to do with: and though we cannot, by the faculties we have, attain to a perfect knowledge of things, yet they will ferve us well enough for thofe ends above-mentioned, which are our great concernment. I beg my reader's pardon for laying before him fo wild a fancy, concerning the ways of perception in beings above us; but how extravagant foever it be, I doubt whether we can imagine any thing about the knowledge of angels, but after this manner, fome way or other in proportion to what we find and obferve in ourselves. And though we cannot but allow that the infinite power and wifdom of God may frame creatures with a thoufand other faculties and ways of perceiving things without them, than what we have: yet our thoughts can go no farther than our own: fa impoffible it is for us to enlarge our very gueffes beyond the ideas received from our own fenfation and reflection. The fuppofition at least, that angels do fometimes affume bodies, needs not ftartle us; fince fome of the most antient and moft learned fathers of the church feemed to believe, that they had bodies: and this is certain, that their state and way of existence is unknown to us.

S. 14. But to return to the matter in hand, the ideas we have of fubftances, and the ways we come by them; I fay, our spe

Complex ideas of fub stances.

cifick ideas of fubftances are nothing else but a collec tion of a certain number of fimple ideas, confidered as united in one thing. These ideas of substances, though they are commonly fimple apprehenfions, and the names of them fimple terms; yet in effect are complex, and compounded. Thus the idea which an Englishman fig nifies by the name Swan, is white colour, long neck, red beak, black legs, and whole feet, and all thefe of a certain fize, with a power of fwimming in the water, and making a certain kind of noife: and perhaps, to a man who has long obferved this kind of birds, fome other properties which all terminate in fenfible fimple ideas, all united in one common fubject.

Idea of fpiritual fubftances as clear as of bodily fubtances..

§. 15. Befides the complex ideas we have of material fenfible fubftances, of which I have last spoken, by the fimple ideas we have taken from thofe operations of our own minds, which we experiment daily in ourfelves, a thinking, understanding, willing, knowing, and power of beginning motion, &c. co-existing in fome fubftance: we are able to frame the complex idea of an immaterial fpirit, And thus, by putting together the ideas of thinking, perceiving, liberty, and power of moving themselves and other things, we have as clear a perception and notion of immaterial fubftances, as we have of material. For putting together the ideas of thinking and willing, or the power of moving or quieting corporeal motion, joined to fubftance, of which we have no diftinct idea, we have the idea of an immaterial fpirit; and by putting together the ideas of coherent folid parts, and a power of being moved, joined with fubftance, of which likewife we have no pofitive idea, we have the idea of matter. The one is as clear and diftinct an idea as the other the idea of thinking, and moving a body, being as clear and diftinct ideas, as the ideas of extenfion, folidity, and being moved. For our idea of fubftance is equally obfcure, or none at all in both: it is but a fuppofed I know not what, to fupport thofe ideas we call accidents. It is for want of reflection that we are apt to think, that our fenfes fhow us nothing but

material

material things. Every act of fenfation, when duly confidered, gives us an equal view of both parts of nature, the corporeal and fpiritual. For whilft I know, by feeing or hearing, &c. that there is fome corporeal being without me, the object of that fenfation; I do more certainly know, that there is fome fpiritual being within me that fees and hears. This, I must be convinced, cannot be the action of bare infenfible matter; nor ever could be, without an immaterial thinking being. $. 16. By the complex idea of extended, No idea of figured, coloured, and all other fenfible abftract subqualities, which is all that we know of it, we are as far from the idea of the substance of body, as if we knew nothing at all: nor after all the acquaintance and familiarity, which we imagine we have with matter, and the many qualities men- affure themfelves they perceive and know in bodies, will it perhaps upon examination be found, that they have any more, or clearer, primary ideas belonging to body, than they have belonging to immaterial fpirit.

ftance.

The cohesion of folid parts and impulse the primary ideas of body.

§. 17. The primary ideas we have peculiar to body, as contradiftinguifhed to fpirit, are the cohesion of folid, and confequently feparable, parts, and a power of communicating motion by impulfe. Thefe, I think, are the original ideas proper and peculiar to body; for figure is but the confequence of finite extenfion.

Thinking

and motivity the primary

ideas of fpi

rit.

§. 18. The ideas we have belonging, and peculiar to fpirit, are thinking and will, or a power of putting body into motion by thought, and which is confequent to it, liberty. For as body cannot but communicate its motion by impulfe to another body, which it meets with at reft; fo the mind can put bodies into motion, or forbear to do fo, as it pleafes. The ideas of existence, duration, and mobility, are common to them both.

§. 19. There is no reason why it fhould be thought ftrange, that I make mobility belong to fpirit: for having no other

Spirits capa ble of mo

tion.

idea