tude, to take one thing for another. This is a way of proceeding quite contrary to metaphor and allusion, wherein hes that entertainment and pleasantry of wit which strikes so lively on the fancy, and is acceptable, because its beauty appears at first sight, and requires no labor of thought; and, indeed, it is an affront to it to go about to examine it by the rules of truth and reason; whereby it appears that it consists in something not conformable to them.

To the well distinguishing of our ideas, it chiefly contributes, that they be clear and determinate. Then there will be no mistake about them, though the senses should convey them differently from the same object. For though a man in a fever should from sugar have a bitter taste, yet the idea of bitter in his mind would be as distinct from the idea of sweet as if he had tasted only gall.

Comparing ideas one with another, in respect of extent, degrees, time, place, &c. is another operation of mind, and is that on which depends our ideas of relation. Brutes have not this faculty, I imagine, in any great degree; they compare ideas no farther than some sensible circumstances annexed to the objects themselves. The power of comparing general ideas, which is only useful for abstract reasonings, we may probably conjecture beasts have not.

Composition is an operation of the mind, whereby it combines simple ideas into complex ones. Under this may be reckoned that of enlarging, a putting together several ideas of the same kind; as, by adding units, we make the idea of a dozen.

In this also, I suppose brutes come far short of men for though they take in and retain several combinations of simple ideas, as possibly the shape, smell, and voice of his master, make up the complex idea a dog has of him, or are so many marks by which he knows him, yet I do not think they do of themselves make complex ideas. And where we think that they have complex ideas, perhaps they are directed only by

one simple idea: for a bitch will be as fond of young foxes, if they have sucked her, as of her own puppies ; and those animals which have a numerous brood at once appear not to have knowlege of their number; for if one or two be stolen in their absence, they seem not to miss them.

When children have got ideas fixed in their memories, and have skill for the framing of articulate sounds, they begin to make use of words to signify their ideas to others; which words they sometimes borrow from others, and sometimes make themselves. If every particular idea should have a distinct name, names must be endless. To prevent this, the mind makes use of abstraction, whereby it forms general ideas from such as it received from particular objects, which it does by considering them as they are in the mind, such appearances, separate from the circumstances of real existence, as time, place, &c. These become general representatives of all of the same kind, and their names applicable to whatever exists conformable to such abstract ideas. Thus the same color being observed to-day in chalk or snow, which the mind yesterday received from milk, it gives it the name of whiteness; and by that sound signifies the same idea wherever it is to be met with.

If it may be doubted whether beasts compound, it may be asserted that they do not abstract: for we observe no traces of their making use of general signs for universal ideas. It is in this that brutes are discriminated from man: for if they are not bare machines, we cannot deny them to have some reason, but it is only in particular ideas, just as they receive them from the senses; and they have not, as I think, the faculty to enlarge them by any kind of abstraction.

What seems to be the difference between madmen and idiots is, that madmen put wrong ideas together, and so make wrong propositions, but argue right from them ;-idiots make few or no propositions, and rea

son scarce at all. A madman, fancying himself a king, with a right inference, requires suitable attendance, respect, &c. acting like a man who reasons right from wrong principles.

These, I think, are the first operations of the mind; and though they are exercised about all its ideas, yet the instances I have given have been chiefly in simple ideas,-1. because these faculties being exercised at first about simple ideas, we might, by following nature, trace them in their rise, progress, and improvements; 2. because observing how they operate about simple ideas, which are more clear than complex ones, we may better learn how the mind exercises itself about those which are complex; 3. because these operations of the mind are another set of ideas, derived from that source which I call reflection, and, therefore, fit to be considered after the simple ideas of

sensation.

Thus have I given a short history of the first beginnings of human knowlege, wherein I must appeal to experience and observation whether I am in the right. This is the only way that I can discover in what manner ideas are brought into the understanding. If other men have innate ideas they have reason to enjoy them. I can speak but of what I find in myself. I pretend not to teach but to inquire; and I confess that external and internal sensation are the only passages that I can find of knowlege to understanding. These are the windows by which light is let into this dark room for methinks the understanding is not much unlike a closet shut from light, with only some little opening left to let in external visible resemblances of things without would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found on occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight and the ideas of them.

CHAPTER XII.

Of complex Ideas.

In the reception of simple ideas the mind is only passive, having no power to frame any one to itself, nor to have any idea which does not wholly consist of them. But about these simple ideas it exerts several acts of its own, whereby, out of them, as the materials and the foundations of the rest, the others are formed. The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over its simple ideas, are chiefly these :—1. it combines several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus complex ideas are made; 2. it brings two ideas, whether simple or compound, together, so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them, by which it gets its ideas of relation; 3. it separates them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence, and thus all its general ideas are made. This shows man's power to be the same in the intellectual and the material world: in both he can neither make nor destroy; all he can do is to unite, to compare, to separate.

2

As simple ideas exist in several combinations, so the mind has power to consider several of them as one idea; such ideas I call complex, as beauty, gratitude, an army, &c. which, though complicated of various ideas, yet may be considered as one idea, and signified by one name. In this faculty the mind has power to multiply the objects of its thoughts, still confined however to those simple ideas which are the materials of all its compositions. It can have no ideas of any other sensible objects than what come by the senses, nor of operations of thought but what it finds in itself; but it may put together those ideas it has, and make complex ones which it never received so united.

Complex ideas may be reduced under three heads: 1. modes; 2. substances; 3. relations.

Lacke.

E

First, modes I call such complex ideas as are considered dependent on, or affections of substances, as triangle, gratitude, murder, &c. Of modes there are two sorts: 1. those which are variations or combinations of the same simple idea, as a dozen, a score, I call simple modes; 2. others, compounded of simple ideas of several kinds, as beauty, consisting of a certain composition of color and figure, &c. I call mixed modes.

Ideas of substance are such combinations of simple ideas as represent distinct particular things subsisting by themselves, in which the idea of substance is the chief:-thus a combination of the ideas of a certain sort of figure, with powers of motion, thought, and reasoning, joined to substance, make the idea of man. Of substances there are two sorts of ideas; one of single substances, as a man; the other of several of these put together, as an army, which is as much a single idea as that of a man.

The last sort of complex idea is relation, or comparing one idea with another.

If we will attentively trace the progress of our minds, we shall find that the most abstruse ideas are only such as the understanding frames to itself by repeating and joining ideas that it has from sensation or reflection. This I shall endeavor to show in the ideas we have of space, time, and infinity, and some others that seem most remote from those originals.

CHAPTER XIII.

Of simple Modes; and first, of the simple Modes of Space.

The modifications of a simple idea are as perfectly distinct ideas in the mind as those of the greatest contrariety. The idea of two is as distinct from that of one as blueness from heat.

We get the idea of space by our sight and touch., Space considered barely in length is called distance;