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

§ 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 several 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 distinguish, compare and abstract, would hardly be able to underftand and make use 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 loft the faculty of reafoning, 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 imaginations, having taken their fancies for realities, they make right deductions from them. Thus you fhall find a distracted man fancying himself a king, with a right inference require fuitable attendance, respect, and obedience: Others, who have thought themselves made of glafs, have used the caution neceffary to preserve fuch brittle bodies. Hence it comes to pafs, that a man who is very fober, 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 strong 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 some more and fome lefs. In fhort, herein seems 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 reason 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 these faculties of the mind to that of fimple ideas,. before I come to what I have to say concerning complex ones, for these following reasons:

First, 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, progrefs, and gradual im-provements.

Secondly, Because observing the faculties of the mind, how they operate about fimple ideas, which are usually, in moft mens minds, much more clear, precife, and diftinct than complex ones, we may the better examine and learn how the mind abstracts, denominates, compares and exercifes 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 fource 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.

§ 15. These are the Beginnings of human Knowledge. AND thus I have given a short, and, I think, true hiftory of the first beginnings of human knowledge, whence the mind has its firft objects, and by what fteps it makes its progress to the laying in and storing up thofe ideas, out of which is to be framed all the knowledge it is capable of, wherein I muft appeal to experience and obfervation whether I am in the right; the best way to come to truth, being to examine things as really they are, and not to conclude they are as we fancy of ourfelves, or have been taught by others to imagine.

§ 16. Appeal to Experience.

To deal truly, this is the only way that I can discover, whereby the ideas of things are brought into the understanding. If other men have either innate ideas, or infused principles, they have reason to enjoy them; and if they are fure of it, it is impoffible for others to deny them the privilege that they have above their neighbours. I can speak but of what I find in myfelf, and is agreeable to thofe notions, which, if we will examine the whole courfe of men in their feveral ages, countries, and educations, feem to depend on thofe foundations which I have laid, and to correfpond with this method in all the parts and degrees thereof.

$ 17. Dark Room.

I PRETEND not to teach, but to inquire, and therefore cannot but confess here again, that external and internal fenfation are the only paffages that I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this dark room; for methinks the understanding is not much unlike a clofet wholly fhut.from light, with only fome little opening left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without. Would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there, and lie fo orderly as to be found upon occafion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man in reference to all objects of fight, and the ideas of them.

Thefe are my gueffes concerning the means whereby the understanding comes to have and retain fimple ideas,

Book II. and the modes of them, with fome other operations about them. I proceed now to examine fome of these fimple ideas, and their modes, a little more particularly.

CHAP. XII.

OF COMPLEX IDEAS.

§ 1. Made by the Mind out of fimple ones.

E have hitherto confidered thofe ideas, in the

WE reception whereof the mind is only paffive,

which are those simple ones received from fenfation and reflection before-mentioned, whereof the mind cannot make one to itself, nor have any idea which does not wholly confift of them. But as the mind is wholly paffive in the reception of all its fimple ideas, fo it exerts feveral acts of its own, whereby out of its fimple ideas, as the materials and foundations of the reft, the other are framed. The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over its fimple ideas, are chiefly thefe three : 1. Combining feveral fimple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The fecond is bringing two ideas, whether fimple or complex, together, and fetting them by one another, fo as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which way it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is feparating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence; this is called abstraction; and thus all its general ideas are made. This fhows man's power, and its way of operation, to be much-what the fame in the material and intellectual world; for the materials in both being fuch as he has no power over, either to make or destroy, all that man can do is either to unite them together, or to set them by one another, or wholly feparate them. I fhall here begin with the first of these in the confideration of complex ideas, and come to the other two in their due places. As fimple ideas are observed to exift in feveral combinations united together, fo the mind has a power to confider feveral of them united together

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as one idea; and that not only as they are united in external objects, but as itself has joined them. Ideas thus made up of feveral fimple ones put together, I call complex; fuch as are beauty, gratitude, a man, an army, the univerfe; which though complicated of various fimple ideas, or complex ideas made up of fimple ones, yet are, when the mind pleafes, confidered each by itself as one entire thing, and fignified by one name.

2. Made voluntarily.

In this faculty of repeating and joining together its ideas, the mind has great power in varying and multiplying the objects of its thoughts, infinitely beyond what fenfation or reflection furnished it with; but all this ftill confined to thofe fimple ideas which it received from those two sources, and which are the ultimate materials of all its compofitions; for fimple ideas are all from things themselves, and of thefe the mind can have no more, nor other than what are fuggefted to it. It can have no other ideas of fenfible qualities than what come from without by the fenfes, nor any ideas of other kind of operations of a thinking fubftance, than what it finds in itself; but when it has once got these fimple ideas, it is not confined barely to obfervation, and what offers itfelf from without; it can, by its own power, put together thofe ideas it has, and make new complex ones, which it never received fo united.

$3. Are either Modes, Subftances, or Relations. COMPLEX ideas, however compounded and decompounded, though their number be infinite, and the variety endless, wherewith they fill and entertain the thoughts of men; yet, I think, they may be all reduced under these three heads:

FIRST, Modes I call fuch complex ideas, which however compounded, contain not in them the fuppofition of subfifting by themselves, but are confidered as dependences on, or affections of fubftances; fuch are the ideas fig