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Book II. enough, yet it fecms to me to be the prerogative of human understanding, when it has sufficiently diftinguished any ideas, fo as to perceive them to be perfectly different, and fo confequently two, to caft about and confider in what circumstances they are capable to be compared; and therefore, I think beafts compare not their ideas farther than fome fenfible circumstances annexed to the objects themselves. The other power of comparing, which may be observed in men, belonging to general ideas, and ufeful only to abstract reasonings, we may probably conjecture beafts have not.

§ 6. Compounding.

THE next operation we may obferve in the mind about its ideas, is COMPOSITION; whereby it puts together feveral of thofe fimple ones it has received from fenfation and reflection, and combines them into complex ones. Under this of composition may be reckoned alfo that of ENLARGING; wherein though the compofition does not fo much appear as in more complex ones, yet it is neverthelefs a putting feveral ideas together, though of the fame kind. Thus, by adding feveral units together, we make the idea of a dozen; and putting together the repeated ideas of several perches, we frame that of a furlong.

$7. Brutes compound but little.

In this alfo, I fuppofe, brutes come far fhort of men ; for though they take in, and retain together feveral combinations of fimple ideas; as, poffibly the shape, fmell, and voice of his mafter, make up the complex idea a dog has of him, or rather are fo many diftin&t marks whereby he knows him; yet I do not think they do of themselves ever compound them, and make complex ideas; and, perhaps, even where we think they have complex ideas, it is only one fimple one that directs them in the knowledge of feveral things, which poffibly they diftinguifh lefs by their fight than we imagine; for I have been credibly informed, that a bitch will nurse, play with, and be fond of young foxes, as much as, and in place of her puppies, if you can but get them once to fuck her fo long, that her milk may

go through them. And thofe animals, which have a numerous brood of young ones at once, appear not to have any knowledge of their number; for though they are mightily concerned for any of their young that are taken from them whilst they are in fight or hearing; yet if one or two of them be stolen from them in their abfence, or without noife, they appear not to mifs them, or to have any sense that their number is leffened.

§ 8. Naming.

WHEN children have, by repeated fenfations, got ideas fixed in their memories, they begin, by degrees, to learn the use of figns. And when they have got the skill to apply the organs of speech to the framing of articulate founds, they begin to make ufe of words, to fignify their ideas to others. Thefe verbal figns they, fometimes borrow from others, and fometimes make themfelves, as one may observe among the new and unusual. names children often give to things in their first use of language.

§.9. Abstracting

THE ufe of words then being to ftand as outward marks: of our internal ideas, and those ideas being taken from particular things, if every particular idea that we take in fhould have a diftinct name, names must be endless.. To prevent this, the mind makes the particular ideas, received from particular objects, to become general, which is done by confidering them as they are in the mind fuch appearances, feparate from all other exiftences, and the circumftances of real existence, as time,. place, or any other concomitant ideas. This is called ABSTRACTION, whereby ideas, taken from particu-lar beings, become general reprefentatives of all of the fame kind, and their names general names, applicable to whatever exifts conformable to fuch abstract ideas.. Such precise naked appearances in the mind, without confidering how, whence, or with what others they came there, the understanding lays up (with names commonly annexed to them), as the ftandards to rank real existences into forts, as they agree with these par-terns, and to denominate them accordingly. Thus the

fame colour being obferved to-day in chalk or fnow, which the mind yesterday received from milk, it confiders that appearance alone makes it a representative of all of that kind; and having given it the name whitenefs, it by that found fignifies the fame quality, wherefoever to be imagined or met with; and thus univerfals, whether ideas or terms, are made.

§ 10. Brutes abftra& not.

If it may be doubted, whether beafts compound and enlarge their ideas that way to any degree; this I think I may be pofitive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of general ideas, is that which puts a perfect diftinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculty of brutes do by no means attain to: For it is evident we obferve no footsteps in them, of making ufe of general figns for univerfal ideas; from which we have reafon to imagine that they have not the faculty of abstracting, or making general ideas, fince they have no ufe of words, or any other general figns.

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NOR can it be imputed to their want of fit organs to frame articulate founds, that they have no use or knowledge of general words, fince many of them, we find, can fashion such founds, and pronounce words distinctly enough, but never with any fuch application; and on the other fide, men who through fome defect in the organs want words, yet fail not to exprefs their univerfal ideas by figns, which ferve them inftead of general words; a faculty which we fee beafts come fhort in; and therefore I think we may fuppofe, that it is in this that the fpecies of brutes are difcriminated from man; and it is that proper difference wherein they are wholly feparated, and which at laft widens to fo vaft a diftance; for if they have any ideas at all, and are not bare machines (as fome would have them), we cannot deny them to have fome reafon. It seems as evident to me, that they do fome of them in certain inftances reafon, as that they have fenfe; but it is only in particular ideas, juft as they received them from their fenfes.

They are the best of them tied up within thofe narrow bounds, and have not (as I think) the faculty to enlarge them by any kind of abstraction.

12. Idiots and Madmen.

How far idiots are concerned in the want or weakness of any, or all of the foregoing faculties, an exact obfervation of their feveral ways of faltering would no doubt discover; for those who either perceive but dully, or retain the ideas that come into their minds but ill, who cannot readily excite or compound them, will have little matter to think on. Thofe who cannot diftinguish, compare and abftract, would hardly be able to underftand and make ufe of language, or judge or reafon to any tolerable degree, but only a little and imperfectly about things prefent, and very familiar to their fenfes. And, indeed, any of the forementioned faculties, if wanting, or out of order, produce fuitable defects in mens understandings and knowledge.

$13.

IN fine, the defects in naturals feem to proceed from want of quickness, activity, and motion in the intellectual faculties, whereby they are deprived of reason; whereas, madmen, on the other fide, feem to fuffer by the other extreme; for they do not appear to me to have lost the faculty of reasoning, but having joined together fome ideas very wrongly, they mistake them for truths, and they err as men do that argue right from wrong principles; for by the violence of their imagi nations, having taken their fancies for realities, they make right deductions from them. Thus you fhall find a diftracted man fancying himfelf a king, with a right inference require fuitable attendance, respect, and obedience: Others, who have thought themselves made of glass, have ufed the caution neceffary to preferve fuch brittle bodies. Hence it comes to pafs, that a man who is very sober, and of a right understanding in all other things, may in one particular be as frantic as any in bedlam; if either by any fudden very ftrong impreffion, or long fixing his fancy upon one fort of thoughts, incoherent ideas have been cemented together

Book II: fo powerfully, as to remain united. But there are degrees of madness, as of folly; the diforderly jumbling ideas together, is in fome more and fome lefs. In short, herein feems to lie the difference between idiots and madmen, that madmen put wrong ideas together, and fo make wrong propofitions, but argue and reafon right from them; but idiots make very few or no propofitions, and reafon scarce at all.

§ 14. Method.

THESE, I think, are the first faculties and operations of the mind, which it makes use of in understanding; and though they are exercised about all its ideas in general, yet the inftances I have hitherto given have been chiefly in fimple ideas; and I have fubjoined the explication of thefe faculties of the mind to that of fimple ideas, before I come to what I have to fay concerning complex ones, for thefe following reasons:

Firft, Because feveral of these faculties being exercifed at first principally about fimple ideas, we might, by following nature in its ordinary method, trace and discover them in their rife, progress, and gradual improvements.

Secondly, Because obferving the faculties of the mind, how they operate about fimple ideas, which are usually, in most mens minds, much more clear, precife, and distinct than complex ones, we may the better examine and learn how the mind abftracts, denominates, compares and exercises its other operations about those which are complex, wherein we are much more liable to mistake.

Thirdly, Because these very operations of the mind about ideas, received from fenfation, are themselves, when reflected on, another fet of ideas, derived from that other source of our knowledge which I call reflection, and therefore fit to be confidered in this place after the fimple ideas of fenfation. Of compounding,. comparing, abstracting, &c. I have but just spoken, having occafion to treat of them more at large in other places.

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