memory begins to keep a regifter 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 so 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

nifhed 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 converfe 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 obferved 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

tion.

§. 8. And hence we fee the reason, 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 because 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 business 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 ask 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 itself constantly 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.

§. 10. But whether the foul be fuppofcd 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.

bave

have better thought of that matter. I confefs myself to have one of thofe dull fouls, that doth not perceive itself always to contemplate ideas; nor can conceive it any more neceffary for the foul always to think, than for the body always to move: the perception of ideas being (as I conceive) to the foul, what motion is to 'the body; not its effence, but one of its operations. And therefore, though thinking be fuppofed ever fo much the proper action of the foul, yet it is not neceffary to fuppofe that it fhould be always thinking, always in action. That perhaps is the privilege of the infinite author and preferver of things, who never flum'bers nor fleeps; but it is not competent to any finite being, at least not to the foul of man. We know certainly by experience that we fometimes think, and thence draw this infallible confequence, that there is 'fomething in us that has a power to think: but whether that fubftance perpetually thinks or no, we can be no farther affured than experience informs us. For to fay that actual thinking is effential to the foul, and infeparable from it, is to beg what is in queftion, and not to prove it by reafon; which is neceffary to be done, if it be not a felf-evident propofition. But whether this, "that the foul always thinks," be a felf-evident propofition, that every body affents to at first hearing, I appeal to mankind. It is doubted whether I thought at all last night or no; the queftion being about a matter of fact, it is begging it to bring, as a proof for it, an hypothefis, which is the very thing in difpute: by which way one may prove any thing: and it is but fuppofing that all watches, whilft the balance beats, think; and it is fufficiently proved, and past doubt, that my watch thought all laft night. But he that would not deceive himself, ought to build his hypothefis on matter of fact, and make it out by fenfible experience, and not prefume on matter of fact, becaufe of his hypothefis; that is, because he fuppofes it to be fo: which way of proving amounts to this, that I muft neceffarily think all last night, because another fuppofes I always think, though I myself cannot perceive that I always do fo.

But

of fact.

But men in love with their opinions may not only suppose what is in question, but allege wrong matter How else could any one make it an inference of mine, that a thing is not, because we are not fenfible of it in our fleep? I do not fay there is no foul in a man, because he is not fenfible of it in his fleep: but I do fay, he cannot think at any time waking or fleeping, without being fenfible of it. Our being fenfible of it is not neceffary to any thing, but to our thoughts; and to them it is, and to them it will always be neceffary, till we can think without being confcious of it.

ous of it.

§. 11. I grant that the foul in a waking It is not alman is never without thought, because it is ways confcithe condition of being awake: but whether fleeping without dreaming be not an affection of the whole man, mind as well as body, may be worth a waking man's confideration; it being hard to conceive, that any thing fhould think, and not be confcious of it. If the foul doth think in a fleeping man without being confcious of it, I afk, whether during fuch thinking it has any pleasure or pain, or be capable of happiness or mifery? I am fure the man is not, any more than the bed or earth he lies on. For to be happy or miserable without being confcious of it, feems to me utterly inconfiftent and impoffible. Or if it be poffible that the foul can, whilft the body is fleeping, have its thinking, enjoyments and concerns, its pleasure or pain, apart, which the man is not confcious of nor partakes in; it is certain that Socrates afleep and Socrates awake is not the fame perfon: but his foul when he fleeps, and Socrates the man, confifting of body and foul when he is waking, are two perfons; fince waking Socrates has no knowledge of, or concernment for that happiness or mifery of his foul which it enjoys alone by itself whilft he fleeps, without perceiving any thing of it; any more than he has for the happiness or mifery of a man in the Indies, whom he knows not. For if we take wholly away all consciousness of our actions and fenfations, efpecially of pleasure and pain, and the concernment that accompanies it, it will be hard to know wherein to place perfonal identity.

G 2

§. 12.

If a fleeping man thinks without knowing it, the fleeping and waking

man are two

perfons.

6. 12. "The foul, during found fleep, thinks," say these men. Whilft it thinks and perceives, it is capable certainly of thofe of delight or trouble, as well as any other perceptions; and it must neceffarily be confcious of its own perceptions. But

it has all this apart; the fleeping man, it is plain, is confcious of nothing of all this. Let us fuppofe then the foul of Caftor, while he is fleeping, retired from his body; which is no impoffible fuppofition for the men I have here to do with, who fo liberally allow life, without a thinking foul, to all other animals. Thefe men cannot then judge it impoffible, or a contradiction, that the body fhould live without the foul; nor that the foul fhould fubfift and think, or have perception, even perception of happinefs or mifery, without the body. Let us then, as I fay, fuppose the foul of Caftor feparated, during his fleep, from his body, to think apart. Let us fuppofe too, that it chooses for its scene of thinking the body of another man, v. g. Pollux, who is fleeping without a foul: for if Caftor's foul can think, whilft Caftor is afleep, what Caftor is never confcious of, it is no matter what place it chooses to think in. We have here then the bodies. of two men with only one foul between them, which we will fuppofe to fleep and wake by turns; and the foul ftill thinking in the waking man, whereof the fleeping man is never confcious, has never the leaft perception. I afk then, whether Caftor and Pollux, thus, with only one foul between them, which thinks and perceives in one what the other is never conscious of, nor is concerned for, are not two as diftinct perfons as Caftor and Hercules, or as Socrates and Plato were? And whether one of them might not be very happy, and` the other very miferable? Juft by the fame reason they make the foul and the man two perfons, who make the foul think apart what the man is not confcious of. For I fuppofe no-body will make identity of perfons to confift in the foul's being united to the very fame numerical particles of matter; for if that be neceffary to identity, it will be impoffible, in that conftant flux of