no variety, or change of objects, to move the fenfes..

$22.

FOLLOW a child from its birth, and obferve 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 most familiar with it, have made lafting impreffions. Thus it comes by degrees to know the perfons it daily converfes with, and diftinguifh them from strangers; 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 these, and advances to the exercise of thofe other faculties of enlarging, compounding, and abftracting its ideas, and of reasoning about them, and reflecting upon all these ; of which I fhall have occafion to speak more hereafter.

$23.

If it shall be demanded then, When a man begins to have any ideas ; I think the true anfwer is, When he firft Kas 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 understanding are coevalwith 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 itfelf in fuch operations. as we call perception, remembering, confideration, reafon ing, &c.

§ 24. The Original of all our Knowledge. 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. These are the impreffions that are made on our fenfes by outward objects that are extrinfical to the mind; and its own operations, proceeding from powers. intrinsical and proper to itself, which when reflected on by itself, becoming alfo objects of its contemplation, are,,

as I have faid, the original of all knowledge. Thus the firft capacity of human intellect is, that the mind is fitted to receive the impreffions made on it; either through the fenfes by outward objects; or by its own operations when it reflects on them. This is the firft ftep a man makes towards the difcovery of any thing, and the groundwork whereon to build all thofe notions, which ever he fhall have naturally in this world. All thofe fublime thoughts, which tower above the clouds, and reach as high as heaven itself, take their rife and footing here: in all that great extent wherein the mind wanders, in those remote fpeculations, it may feem to be elevated with, it stirs not one jot beyond those ideas which fenfe or reflection have offered for its contemplation. § 25. In the Reception of simple Ideas, the Understanding is for the most part passive.

In this part, the understanding is merely paffive; and whether or no it will have thefe beginnings, and as it were materials of knowledge, is not in its own power. For the objects of our fenfes do, many of them obftrude their particular ideas upon our minds whether we will or no, and the operations of our minds will not let us be without, at least, fome obfcure notions of them. No man can be wholly ignorant of what he does when he thinks. Thefe fimple ideas, when offered to the mind, the understanding can no more refuse to have nor alter, when they are imprinted, nor blot them out, and make new ones itself, than a mirror can refuse, alter, or obliterate the images or ideas which the objects fet before it do therein produce. As the bodies that furround us do diverfly affect our organs, the mind is for ced to receive the impreffions, and cannot avoid the perception of those ideas that are annexed to them. CHAP. II.

OF SIMPLE IDEAS.

§ 1. Uncompounded Appearances.

THE better to understand the nature, manner, and ex tent of our knowledge, one thing is carefully to be ob ferved concerning the ideas we have; and that is, that Jome of them are fimple, and fome complex.

Though the qualities that affect our fenfes are, in the things themselves, fo-united and blended, that there is no feparation, no distance between them; yet it is plain, the ideas they produce in the mind enter by the fenfes fimple and unmixed. For though the fight and touch often take in from the fame object, at the fame time, different ideas: as a man fees at once motion and colour; the hand feels softness and warmth in the fame piece of wax yet the fimple ideas, thus united in the fame fubject, are as perfectlydiftinct as thofethat come in by dif ferent fenfes: the coldnefs and hardness which a man feels in a piece of ice, being as diftinct ideas in the mind, as the smell and whiteness of a lilly; or as the tafte of fu gar, and smell of a rofe. And there is nothing can be plainer to a man, than the clear and distinct perceptions he has of those fimple ideas; which, being each in itself uncompounded, contains in it nothing but one uniform appearance, or conception in the mind, and is not diftinguifhable into different ideas.

§ 2. The Mind can neither make nor deftroy them. THESE fimple ideas, the materials of all our knowledge, are fuggefted and furnished to the mind only by thofe two ways above mentioned, viz. fenfation and reflection.. (1) When the understanding is once ftored with these

(1) Against this, that the materials of all our knowl edge are fuggefted and furnished to the mind only by fenfation and reflection, the bishop of Worcester makes ufe of the idea of substance in these words: "If the idea. of fubftance be grounded upon plain and evident reason, then we must allow an idea of fubftance, which comes not in by fenfation or reflection; and fo we may be certain of fomething which we have not by these ideas."

To which our author* anfwers: Thefe words of your lordship's contain nothing as I fee in them againft me: for I never faid that the general idea of fubftance comes in by fenfation and reflection, or that it is a fimple idea of fenfation or reflection, though it be ultimately founded in them; for it is a complex idea, made up of the gen eral idea of fomething or being, with the relation of a

* In his first letter to the bishop of Worcester.

fimple ideas, it has the power to repeat, compare, and unite them even to an almost infinite variety; and so can make at pleasure new complex ideas. But it is not in fupport to accidents. For general ideas come not into the mind by fenfation or reflection, but are the creatures or inventions of the understanding, as I think I have shown ;* and alfo how the mind makes them from ideas which it has got by fenfation and reflection; and as to the ideas of relation, how the mind forms them, and how they are derived from, and ultimately terminate in ideas of fenfation and reflection, I have likewife shown.

But that I may not be mistaken what I mean, when I fpeak of ideas of fenfation and reflection, as the materials of all our knowledge; give me leave, my lord, to fet down here a place or two, out of my book, to explain myfelf; as I thus fpeak of ideas of fenfation and reflection:

"That thefe, when we have taken a full furvey of "them, and their feveral modes, and the compofitions "made out of them, we fhall find to contain all our "whole ftock of ideas, and we have nothing in our "minds, which did not come in one of these two ways."t This thought, in another place, I express thus.

"Thefe are the more confiderable of thofe fimple "ideas which the mind has, and out of which is made "all its other knowledge; all which it receives by the "two forementioned ways of fenfation and reflection."+

And, "Thus I have, in a fhort draught, given a "view of our original ideas, from whence all the rest "are derived, and of which they are made up."§

This, and the like, faid in other places, is what I have thought concerning ideas of fenfation and reflection, as the foundation and materials of all our ideas, and confequently of all our knowledge; I have fet down thefe particulars out of my book, that the reader having a full view of my opinion herein, may the better fee what in it is liable to your lordship's reprehenfion. For that your lordship is not very well satisfied with it, appears 28. § 18. B. 2. c. 21. § 73

*B. 3. c. 3. B. 2. c. 25. & c.

+ B. 2. c. 1. §. 5. B. 2. c. 7. §10.

the power of the most exalted wit, or enlarged underftanding, by any quickness or variety of thought, to in vent or frame one new fimple idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways aforementioned: nor can any force of not only by the words under confideration, but by thefe also : "But we are ftill told, that our understanding can have no other ideas, but either from fenfation or reflection."

Your lordship's argument, in the paffage we are upon, ftands thus : If the general idea of fubftance be grounded upon plain and evident reason, then we must allow an idea of fubftance, which comes not in by fenfation or reflection. This is a confequence which, with fubmif fion, I think will not hold, viz. That reafon and ideas are inconfiftent; for if that fuppofition be not true, then the general idea of fubftance may be grounded on plain and evident reason; and yet it will not follow from thence, that it is not ultimately grounded on and derived from ideas which come in by fenfation or reflection, and fo cannot be faid to come in by fenfation or reflection.

a

To explain myfelf, and clear my meaning in this matter. All the ideas of all the fenfible qualities of a cherry come into my mind by fenfation; The ideas of perceiving, thinking, reafoning, knowing, &c. come into my mind by reflection. The ideas of thefe qualities and actions, or powers, are perceived by the mind, to be by themselves inconfiftent with exiftence; or, as your fordship well expreffes it, we find that we can have no true conception of any modes or accidents, but we muft conceive à fubftratum, or subject, wherein they are, i. e. That they cannot exift or fubfift of themselves. Hence the mind perceives their neceflary connexion with inherence or being fupported; which being a relative idea fuperadded to the red colour in a cherry, or to thinking in a man, the mind frames the correlative idea of a fupport. For I never denied, that the mind could frame to itfelf ideas of relation, but have fhowed the quite contrary in my chapters about relation. But because a relation cannot be founded in nothing, or be the relation of nothing, and the thing here related as a fup