Idea is the object of

thinking.

his mind is applied about, whilft thinking, being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt, that men have in their minds feveral ideas, fuch as are those expreffed by the words, Whitenefs, Hardness, Sweetnefs, Thinking, Motion, Man, Elephant, Army, Drunkenness, and others. It is in the first place then to be inquired, how he comes by them. I know it is a received doctrine, that men have native ideas, and original characters, ftamped upon their minds, in their very first being. This opinion I have, at large, examined already; and, I fuppofe, what I have faid, in the foregoing book, will be much more eafily admitted, when I have fhown, whence the understanding may get all the ideas it has, and by what ways and degrees they may come into the mind; for which I fhall appeal to every one's own obfervation and experience. §. 2. Let us then fuppofe the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vaft store which the bufy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reafon and knowledge? To this I anfwer, in one word, from experi ence; in all that our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our obfervation employed either about external fenfible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which fupplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking.

6

All ideas

come from fenfation or reflection,

Thefe

The objects of fenfation

ideas.

These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do fpring. §. 3. First, Our fenfes, converfant about particular fenfible objects, do convey into one fource of the mind feveral diftinct perceptions of things, according to thofe various ways wherein thofe objects do affect them: and thus we come by thofe ideas we have, of Yellow, White, Heat, Cold, Soft, Hard, Bitter, Sweet, and all those which we call fenfible qualities; which when I fay the fenfes convey into the mind, I mean, they from external objects convey into the mind what produces there thofe perceptions. This great fource of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our fenfes, and derived by them to the understanding, I call SENSATION.

The operations of our minds the

other fource

of them.

§. 4. Secondly, The other fountain, from which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got; which operations when the foul comes to reflect on and confider, do furnish the understanding with another fet of ideas, which could not be had from things without; and fuch are Perception, Thinking, Doubting, Believing, Reasoning, Knowing, Willing, and all the different actings of our own minds; which we being confcious of and obferving in ourselves, do from thefe receive into our understandings as diftinct ideas, as we do from bodies affecting our fenfes. This fource of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not fenfe, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal fenfe. But as I call the other fenfation, fo I call this REFLECTION, the ideas it affords being fuch only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itfelf. By reflection then, in the following part of this difcourfe, I would be underftood to mean that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of thein; by reafon whereof there come to be ideas of thefe operations in the understanding. Thefe two, I fay, viz. external material

material things, as the objects of fenfation; and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of reflection; are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings. The term operations, here I use in a large fenfe, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about its ideas, but fome fort of paffions arifing fometimes from them, fuch as is the fatisfaction or uneafinefs arifing from any thought,

All our ideas

are of the one or the other of thefe.

6.5. The understanding feems to me not to have the leaft glimmering of any ideas, which it doth not receive from one of thefe two... External objects furnifh the mind with the ideas of fenfible qualities, which are all thofe different perceptions they produce in us: and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations.

Thefe, when we have taken a full furvey of them and their feveral modes, combinations, and relations, we fhall find to contain all our whole ftock of ideas; and that we have nothing in our minds which did not come in one of thefe two ways. Let any one examine his own thoughts, and thoroughly fearch into his understanding; and then let him tell me, whether all the original ideas he has there, are any other than of the objects of his fenfes, or of the operations of his mind, confidered as objects of his reflection: and how great a mafs of knowledge foever he imagines to be lodged there, he will, upon taking a strict view, fee that he has not any idea in his mind, but what one of these two have imprinted; though perhaps, with infinite variety compounded and enlarged by the understanding, as we fhall fee hereafter.

§. 6. He that attentively confiders' the Obfervable ftate of a child, at his firft coming into in children. the world, will have little reafon to think him stored with plenty of ideas, that are to be the matter of his future knowledge: It is, by degrees he comes to be furnished with them. And though the ideas of obvious and familiar qualities imprint themselves before the

3

memory

memory begins to keep a register of time or order, yet it is often fo late before fome unufual qualities come in the way, that there are few men that cannot recollect the beginning of their acquaintance with them: and if it were worth while, no doubt a child might be fo ordered as to have but a very few even of the ordinary ideas, till he were grown up to a man. But all that are born into the world being furrounded with bodies that perpetually and diverfly affect them; variety of ideas, whether care be taken of it or no, are imprinted on the minds of children. Light and colours are bufy at hand every-where, when the eye is but open; founds and fome tangible qualities fail not to folicit their proper fenfes, and force an entrance to the mind but yet, I think, it will be granted eafily, that if a child were kept in a place where he never faw any other but black and white till he were a man, he would have no more ideas of fcarlet or green, than he that from his childhood never tafted an oyfter or a pineapple has of those particular relishes.

Men are dif

ferently fur

nished with thefe, according to the different

objects they

converfe with.

§. 7. Men then come to be furnished with fewer or more fimple ideas from without, according as the objects they converse with afford greater or lefs variety; and from the operations of their minds within, according as they more or lefs reflect on them. For though he that contemplates the operations of his mind cannot but have plain and clear ideas of them; yet unless he turns his thoughts that way, and confiders them attentively, he will no more have clear and diftinct ideas of all the operations of his mind, and all that may be observed therein, than he will have all the particular ideas of any landscape, or of the parts and motions of a clock, who will not turn his eyes to it, and with attention heed all the parts of it. The picture or clock may be fo placed, that they may come in his way every day ; but yet he will have but a confused idea of all the parts they are made up of, till he applies himself with attention to confider them each in particular.

Ideas of reflection later, because they

need atten

e

tion.

§. 8. And hence we fee the reafon, why it is pretty late before moft children get ideas of the operations of their own minds; and fome have not any very clear or perfect ideas of the greatest part of them all their lives: becaufe though they pafs there continually, yet, like floating visions, they make not deep impreffions enough to leave in their mind clear, diftinct, lafting ideas, till the understanding turns inward upon itself, reflects on its own operations and makes them the objects of its own contemplation. Children when they come first into it, are furrounded with a world of new things, which, by a conftant folicitation of their fenfes, draw the mind conftantly to them, forward to take notice of new, and apt to be delighted with the variety of changing objects. Thus the first years are ufually employed and diverted in looking abroad. Men's bufinefs in them is to acquaint themfelves with what is to be found without: and fo growing up in a conftant attention to outward fenfations, feldom make any confiderable reflection on what paffes within them till they come to be of riper years; and fome fcarce ever at all. §. 9. To afk at what time a man has first any ideas, is to afk when he begins to perceive; having ideas, and perception, being the fame thing. I know it is an opinion, that the foul always thinks, and that it has the actual perception of ideas in itfelf conftantly as long as it exifts; and that actual thinking is as infeparable from the foul, as actual extenfion is from the body which if true, to inquire after the beginning of a man's ideas is the fame as to inquire after the beginning of his foul. For by this account foul and its ideas, as body and its extenfion, will begin to exift both at the fame time.

6. 10. But whether the foul be fuppofed to exift antecedent to, or coeval with, or fome time after the first rudiments of organization, or the beginnings of life in the body; I leave to be difputed by those who VOL. I.

G

The foul be

gins to have ideas, when it begins to perceive.

The foul

thinks not always; for this wants proofs.

have