guishable from another, from which it ought to be different.

If no idea be confused but such as is not distinguishable from another, it will be hard, it may be said, to find a confused idea; for an idea can be no other but such as the mind perceives it to be, and that perception distinguishes it from other ideas, which cannot be other without being perceived to be so.

To remove this difficulty, we must consider that things ranked under distinct names are supposed different enough to be distinguished, and the greatest part of different names are supposed to stand for different things. Now that which makes an idea confused is when it is such that it may as well be called by another name.

The defaults which occasion this confusion are chiefly the following: 1. When any complex idea (for such are most usually confused) is made up of too small a number of simple ideas. Thus he that has an idea made up of the simple ones of a beast with spots has but a confused idea of a leopard, it not being sufficiently distinguished from a lynx, and several other spotted beasts: so that the idea, though it has the peculiar name, leopard, is not distinguishable from those designed by the names, lynx, or panther.

2. Another default is when the particulars, though enough in number, are so jumbled together, that it is not discernible whether it more belongs to the name given it than to any other. We may conceive of this confusion from a sort of pictures, wherein the colors have no discernible order in their position. The draught itself is no more a confused thing than the picture of a cloudy sky; but that which makes it be thought confused, is the applying to it some name to which it does no more discernibly belong than to some other; v. g. when it is said to be the picture of a man, then any one counts it to be confused, because

it is not discernible to belong more to the name man, than to the name baboon: but when a cylindrical mirror, placed right, hath reduced those irregular lines into due order, then the eye sees that it is a man, 'and the confusion ceases. Just so it is with our ideas, which are the pictures of things.

3. A third defect is when any one of our ideas is uncertain and undetermined. Thus we observe men, using words before they have learned their precise signification, change the idea almost as often as they use the word.

Thus we may observe how much names are the occasion of denominating ideas distinct or confused, by an unobserved reference the mind makes of its ideas to such names. But without such reference, it will be hard to say what a confused idea is: and therefore, when a man designs by any name any one particular thing, the complex idea he annexes to that name is more distinct, the more particular the ideas are, and the greater and more determinate the number and order of them.

Confusion concerns always two ideas. When therefore we suspect any idea to be confused, we must examine what other it is in danger of being confounded with, and that will always be found an idea belonging to another name, and so should be a different thing.

If there be any other confusion of ideas, yet this it is which most of all disorders men's thoughts and discourses. Where there are supposed two different ideas marked by two different names, which are not as distinguishable as the sounds that stand for them, there never fails to be confusion. The way to prevent it, is to collect into our complex idea all those ingredients whereby it is differenced from others, and to them so united in a determinate number and order apply steadily the same name.

Our complex ideas being made up of collections

and variety of simple ones, may be clear and distinct in one part, and obscure and confused in another. A man who speaks of a chiliaedron, or a body of a thousand sides, may have a confused idea of the figure, though a distinct one of the number: so that he, being able to discourse concerning that part of his complex idea which depends on the number of a thousand, is apt to think that he has a distinct idea of a chiliaedron, though it be plain he has no precise idea of its figure so as to distinguish it from one that has but 999 sides. In which incomplete ideas we are apt to impose on ourselves and wrangle with others: for being satisfied in that part of the idea we have clear; and the name which is familiar to us being applied to the whole containing that part which is imperfect and obscure, we are apt to draw deductions from the confused part as we do from the other.

Having frequently in our mouths the word eternity,' we are apt to think we have a positive idea of it. We may indeed have a clear idea of duration, and of a very great length of duration; we may also have the idea of the comparison of that with one still greater. But it not being possible to include in the idea of any duration the whole extent of a duration which supposes no end; that part which is still beyond the bounds of the duration represented to the thoughts, is obscure; and hence, in reasoning about infinity, we involve ourselves in absurdities.

In matter we have no clear ideas of the smallness of parts much beyond the smallest that occur to our senses; and when we talk of the infinite divisibility of matter, though we have clear ideas of division and divisibility, yet of the bulk of the body to be thus infinitely divided, after certain progressions, I think we have no clear nor distinct idea at all: for that idea which is to represent only bigness must be very obscure, which we cannot distinguish from one ten times as big, only by number: so that we have clear

ideas of ten and one, but no distinct ideas of two such extensions. Endless divisibility gives us no more a clear and distinct idea of infinite parts, than endless addibility gives us a clear and distinct idea of infinite number, they both being only a power of still increasing the numbers, be it already as great as it will.

CHAPTER XXX.

Of real and fantastical Ideas.

Besides what we have already mentioned, other considerations belong to ideas, in reference to things whence they are taken. And thus they may come under a threefold distinction, and are, 1. real or fantastical; 2. adequate or inadequate; 3. true or false.

1. Real ideas are such as have a conformity with the real existence of things: fantastical are such as have no foundation in nature. If we examine the several sorts of ideas above mentioned, we shall find that, 1. our simple ideas are all real. Not that they are the images or representations of what does exist, the contrary whereof, in all but primary qualities, hath been already shown; but because they answer and agree to those powers of things which produce them in our minds; that being all that is requisite to make them real, and not fictions at pleasure. For in simple ideas the mind is wholly confined to the operation of things on it, and can make to itself no simple idea more than what it has received.

But complex ideas, being combinations of simple ideas united under one general name, the mind of man uses a kind of liberty in forming those complex ideas. How else comes it to pass that one man's idea of gold, or justice, is different from another's, but because he has put in, or left out, some simple idea which the other has not? The question then is, What

collections agree to the reality of things, and what not? And to this I say that,

2. Mixed modes and relations, having no other reality than what they have in the minds of men, nothing more is required to make them real, but that they be so framed, that there be a possibility of existing conformable to them, and that they have a conformity to the ordinary signification of the name that is given to them.

On

3. Our complex idea of substances being made in reference to things without us, are no farther real than as they are such combinations of simple ideas, as are really united, and co-exist in things without us. the contrary, those are fantastical, which are made up of such collections of simple ideas as were never united in one substance; v. g. à rational creature, consisting of a horse's head joined to a body of human shape, or such as the centaurs are described. Whether such substances can exist we do not know; but these ideas being conformable to no existing pattern, they ought to pass with us for barely imaginary.

CHAPTER XXXI.

Of adequate and inadequate Ideas.

Those ideas I call adequate, which perfectly represent those archetypes, which the mind supposes them taken from; inadequate ideas are such as are but an incomplete representation of those archetypes to which they are referred. On which account it is plain,

1. That all our simple ideas are adequate; because being the effects of certain powers in things fitted to produce such sensations in us, they cannot but be adequate to those powers: for if sugar produce in us the idea of whiteness and sweetness, we are sure there is in sugar a power to produce those ideas: and each