any good to itself or others, or being any way useful to any other part of the creation. If we will examine it, we fhall not find, I fuppofe, the motion of dull and fenfelefs matter, any where in the univerfe, made fo little ufe of, and fo wholly thrown away.

On this hypothefis the foul muft have ideas

not derived from fenfation or reflec

tion, of which there is no

§. 16. It is true, we have fometimes inftances of perception, whilft we are afleep; and retain the memory of those thoughts: but how extravagant and incoherent for the moft part they are; how little conformable to the perfection and order of a rational being, those who are acquainted with dreams need not be told. This I would willingly appearance. be fatisfied in, whether the foul, when it thinks thus apart, and as it were feparate from the body, acts less rationally than when conjointly with it, or no. If its feparate thoughts be lefs rational, then thefe men must fay, that the foul owes the perfection of rational thinking to the body: if it does not, it is wonder that our dreams fhould be, for the moft part, fo frivolous and irrational; and that the foul fhould retain none of its more rational foliloquies and meditations.

If I think

when I know

it not, nobody elfe can

know it.

The dreams

§. 17. Those who fo confidently tell us, that "the foul always actually thinks," I would they would alfo tell us what thofe ideas are that are in the foul of a child, before, or juft at the union with the body, before it hath received any by fenfation. of fleeping men are, as I take it, all made up of the waking man's ideas, though for the moft part oddly put together. It is ftrange if the foul has ideas of its own, that it derived not from fenfation or reflection (as it must have, if it thought before it received any impreffions from the body) that it should never, in its private thinking (fo private, that the man himself perceives it not), retain any of them, the very moment it wakes out of them, and then make the man glad with new difcoveries. Who can find it reasonable that the foul fhould, in its retirement, during fleep, have fo many hours thoughts, and yet never light on any of thofe ideas it borrowed not from fenfation or reflection;

or at least preserve the memory of none but fuch, which being occafioned from the body, muft needs be less natural to a spirit? It is ftrange the foul fhould never once in a man's whole life recall over any of its pure native thoughts, and those ideas it had before it borrowed any thing from the body; never bring into the waking man's view any other ideas but what have a tang of the cafk, and manifeftly derive their original from that union. If it always thinks, and fo had ideas before it was united, or before it received any from the body, it is not to be fuppofed but that during fleep it recollects its native ideas; and during that retirement from communicating with the body, whilft it thinks. by itself, the ideas it is buficd about fhould be, fometimes at leaft, thofe more natural and congenial ones which it had in itself, underived from the body, or its own operations about them: which, fince the waking man never remembers, we must from this hypothefis conclude, either that the foul remembers fomething that the man does not; or elfe that memory belongs only to fuch ideas as are derived from the body, or the mind's operations about them.

How knows any one that the foul al

§. 18. I would be glad alfo to learn from thefe men, who fo confidently pronounce, that the human foul, or which is all one, ways thinks? that a man always thinks, how they come For if it be not a felf-evi- to know it; nay, how they come to know dent propofi- that they themfelves think, when they tion, it needs themfelves do not perceive it. This, I proof. am afraid, is to be fure without proofs; and to know, without perceiving: It is, I fufpect, a confused notion taken up to ferve an hypothesis; and none of those clear truths, that either their own evidence forces us to admit, or common experience makes it impudence to deny. For the most that can be faid of it, is, that it is impoffible the foul may always think, but not always retain it in memory: and I fay, it is as poffible that the foul may not always think; and much more probable that it fhould fometimes not think, than that it fhould often think, and that a long while together, and not be confcious to itfelf the next moment after, that it had thought.

5. 19. To

That a man

fhould be bufy in thinking, and yet not retain it the next mo

ment, very improbable.

§. 19. To fuppofe the foul to think, and the man not to perceive it, is, as has been faid, to make two perfons in one man: and if one confiders well these men's way of speaking, one should be led into a fufpicion that they do fo. For they who tell us that the foul always thinks, do never, that I remember, fay that a man always thinks. Can the foul think, and not the man? or a man think, and not be confcious of it? This perhaps would be fufpected of jargon in others. If they fay, the man thinks always, but is not always confcious of it; they may as well fay,. his body is extended without having parts. For it is altogether as intelligible to fay, that a body is extended without parts, as that any thing thinks without being conscious of it, or perceiving that it does fo. They who talk thus may, with as much reafon, if it be neceffary to their hypothefis, fay, that a man is always hungry, but that he does not always feel it: whereas hunger confifts in that very fenfation, as thinking confifts in being confcious that one thinks. If they fay, that a man is always confcious to himself of thinking, I ask, how they know it. Confcioufnefs is the perception of what paffes in a man's own mind. Can another man perceive that I am confcious of any thing, when I perceive it not myfelf? No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience. Wake a man out of a found fleep, and ask him, what he was that moment thinking of. If he himself be confcious of nothing he then thought on, he must be a notable diviner of thoughts that can affure him that he was thinking: may he not with more reafon affure him he was not afleep? This is fomething beyond philofophy; and it cannot be lefs than revelation, that difcovers to another thoughts in, my mind, when I can find none there myself: and they muft needs have a penetrating fight, who can certainly fee that I think, when I cannot perceive it myself, and when I declare that I do not; and yet can fee that dogs or elephants do not think, when they give all the demonftration of it imaginable, except only telling us that they do fo. This fome may fufpect to be a step beyond

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 fuch definition 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,

S. 20. I fee no reafon therefore to believe, that the foul thinks before the fenfes have furnished it with ideas to think on; if we obferve and as thofe are increafed and retained, fo children. 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 incrcafes its ftock, as well as facility, in remembering, imagining, reafoning, and other modes of thinking.

§. 21. He that will fuffer himfelf 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, spend the greatest part of their time in fleep, and are seldom 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 cars, 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.

6. 22. Follow a child from its birth, and observe 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 converses 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 thefe, and advances to the exercife of those 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 fpeak

more hereafter.

§. 23. If it fhall be demanded then, when a man begins to have any ideas; I think the true answer 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 impreffion or motion, made in fome part of the body, as produces fome perception in the understanding. It is about thefe impreffions made on our fenfes by outward objects, that the mind feems first to employ itself in fuch operations as we call perception, remembering, confideration, reasoning, &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 itself 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