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CHAP. XXIX.

OF CLEAR AND OBSCURE, DISTINCT AND CONFUSED

IDEAS.

1. Ideas fame clear and diftinct, others obfcure and

HA

confufed.

AVING fhown the original of our ideas, and taken a view of their feveral forts, confidered the difference between the fimple and the complex, and obferved how the complex ones are divided into thofe of modes, fubftances, and relations; all which, I think, is neceffary to be done by any one who would acquaint himself thoroughly with the progrefs of the mind in its apprehenfion and knowledge of things; it will perhaps be thought I have dwelt long enough upon the examination of ideas. I muft, nevertheless, crave leave to offer fome few other confiderations concerning them. The first is, that fome are clear and others obfcure; fome diftinct and others confused.

§2. C'ear and obfcure, explained by Sight.

THE perception of the mind being moft aptly explained by words relating to the fight, we shall beft understand what is meant by clear and obfcure in our ideas, by reflecting on what we call clear and obfcure in the objects of fight. Light being that which difcovers to us visible objects, we give the name of obfcure to that which is not placed in a light fufficient to difcover minutely to us the figure and colours which are observable in it, and which, in a better light, would be difcernible: In like manner, our fimple ideas are clear, when they are fuch as the objects themselves, from whence they were taken, did or might, in a well-ordered sensation or perception, present them. Whilst the memory retains them thus, and can produce them to the mind, whenever it has occafion to confider them, they are clear ideas; fo far as. they either want any thing of that original exactness, or have loft any of their first freshnefs, and are, as it were, faded or tarnished by time, fo far are they obfcure,

Complex ideas, as they are made up of fimple ones, so they are clar, when the ideas that go to their compofition are clear; and the number and order of those fimple ideas, that are the ingredients of any complex one, is determinate and certain.

§3. Caufes of Obscurity.

THE caufes of cbfcurity in fimple ideas, feem to be either dull organs, or very flight and tranfient impreflions made by the objects, or elfe a weakness in the memory not able to retain them as received: For to return again to vifible objects, to help us to apprehend this matter; if the organs or faculties of perception, like wax over-hardened with cold, will not receive the impreffion of the feal, from the usual impulfe wont to imprint it; or, like wax of a temper too foft, will not hold it well when well imprinted; or elfe fuppofing the wax of a temper fit, but the feal not applied with a fufficient force to make a clear impreffion; in any of thefe cafes, the print left by the feal will be olfeure: This, I fuppofe, needs no application to make it plainer.

4. Diftinet and Confufed, whet.

As a clear idea is that whereof the mind has such a full and evident perception, as it does receive from an outward object operating duly on a well-difpofed organ, fo a diftinct idea is that wherein the mind perceives a difference from all other; and a confufed idea is fuch an one, as is not fufficiently diftinguithable from another, from which it ought to be different.

$ 5. Objection.

If no idea be confufed but fuch as is not fufficiently dif tinguishable from another, from which it fhould be different, it will be hard, may any one fay, to find any where a confufed idea; for let any idea be as it will, it can be no other but fuch as the mind perceives it to be, and that very perception fufficiently diftinguifhes it from all other ideas, which cannot be other, i. e. different, without being perceived to be fo. No idea therefore can be undiftinguishable from another, from which it ought to be different, unless you would have it different from itfelf; for from all other it is evidently different

$6. Confufion of Ideas, is in reference to their Names. To remove this difficulty, and to help us to conceive aright what it is that makes the confufion ideas are at any time chargeable with, we must confider that things ranked under diftinct names, are fuppofed different enough to be diftinguished, that fo each fort by its peculiar name may be marked and difcourfed of apart upon any occafion; and there is nothing more evident, than that the greatest part of different names are fuppofed to stand for different things. Now, every idea a man has, being vifibly what it is, and distinct from all other ideas but itfelf, that which makes it confufed is, when it is fuch, that it may as well be called by another name, as that which it is expreffed by: the difference which keeps the things (to be ranked under those two different names) diftinct, and makes fome of them belong rather to the one, and fome of them to the other of thofe names, being left out; and fo the distinction, which was intended to be kept up by thofe different names, is quite loft. 87. Defaults which make Confufion. THE defaults which usually occafion this confufion, I think, are chiefly thefe following:

Firft, complex Ideas made up of tor ferv fimple ones. FIRST, When any complex idea (for it is complex ideas that are most liable to confufion) is made up of too finall a number of fimple ideas, and fuch only as are common to other things, whereby the differences that make it deferve a different name, are left out. Thus he that has an idea made up of barely the fimple ones of a beaft with spots, has but a confufed idea of a leopard; it not being thereby fufficiently diftinguished from a lynx, and feveral oother forts of beafts that are fpotted: So that such an idea, though it hath the peculiar name leopard, is not diftinguishable from thofe defigned by the names lynx or panther, and may as well come under the name lynx as leopard. How much the cuftom of defining of words by general terms, contributes to make the ideas we would exprefs by them confufed and undetermined, I leave others to confider: This is evident, that confused ideas are fuch as render the ufe of words uncertain, and

take away the benefit of distinct names; when the ideas, for which we ufe different terms, have not a difference anfwerable to their diftinct names, and fo cannot be distinguished by them, there it is that they are truly confused.

§ 8. Secondly, or its fimple ones jumbled disorderly tom gether.

SECONDLY, Another default which makes our ideas confufed, is, when though the particulars that make up any idea are in number enough, yet they are fo jumbled together, that it is not eafily difcernible, whether it more belongs to the name that is given it, than to any other. There is nothing properer to make us conceive this confufion, than a fort of pictures ufually shown as furprifing pieces of art, wherein the colours, as they are laid by the pencil on the table itself, mark out very odd and unufual figures, and have no discernible order in their pofition. This draught, thus made up of parts wherein no fymmetry nor order appears, is in itself no more a confufed thing, than the picture of a cloudy sky, wherein though there be as little order of colours or figures to be found, yet nobody thinks it a confused picture. What is it then that makes it be thought confufed, fince the want of fymmetry does not? as it is plain it does not; for another draught made, barely in imitation of this could not be called confused. I answer, That which makes it be thought confufed, is, the applying it to fome name, to which it does no more difcernibly belong, than to fome other v. g. When it is faid to be the picture of a man, or Cafar, then any one with reafon counts it confufed; because it is not difcernible, in that state, to belong more to the name man, or Cafar, than to the name baboon, or Pompey, which are fuppofed to ftand for different ideas from thofe fignified by min or Cafar: But when a cylindrical mirror placed right, hath reduced thofe irregular lines on the table. into their due order and proportion, then the confufion ceafes, and the eye prefently fees that it is a man, or Cefar, i. e. that it belongs to thofe names, and that it is fuficiently diftinguishable from a baboon, or Pompey, i. e..

from the ideas fignified by those names. Juft thus it is with our ideas, which are as it were the pictures of things. No one of these mental draughts, however the parts are put together, can be called confufed (for they are plainly difcernible as they are) till it be ranked under fome ordinary name, to which it cannot be discerned to belong, any more than it does to fome other name of an allowed different fignification.

§ 9. Thirdly, or are mutable and undetermined. THIRDLY, A third defect that frequently gives the name of confused to our ideas, is, when any one of them is uncertain and undetermined. Thus we may obferve men, who not forbearing to use the ordinary words of their language, till they have learned their precife fignification, change the idea they make this or that term stand for, almost as often as they use it: He that does this out of uncertainty of what he fhould leave out, or put into his idea of church or idolatry, every time he thinks of either, and holds not fteady to any one precife combination of ideas that makes it up, is faid to have a confufed idea of idolatry or the church; though this be ftill for the fame reason that the former, viz. because a mutable idea (if we will allow it to be one idea) cannot belong to one name rather than another, and fo lofes the distinction that diftinct names are defigned for.

§ 10. Confufion without reference to Ñames, hardly conceivable.

By what has been faid, we may obferve how much names, as fuppofed steady signs of things, and by their difference to stand for and keep things diftinct that in themselves are different, are the occafion of denominating ideas diftinct or confufed, by a fecret and unobferved reference the mind makes of its ideas to fuch names. This perhaps will be fuller understood, after what I fay of words, in the third book, has been read and confidered: But without taking notice of fuch a reference of ideas, to distinct names as the figns of diftinct things, it will be hard to fay what a confufed idea is; and therefore when a man defigns, by any name, a fort of things, or any one particular thing, diftinct from all others, the

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