DUKE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
t 
 

 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/essayconcerningh01lock_0 
 
* 
 
LOCKE’S ESSAYS 
 
 AN ESSAY 
 
 CONCERNING 
 
 HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 AND 
 
 A TREATISE 
 
 ON 
 
 THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 A, 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN LOCKE, GENT. 
 
 COMPLETE. IN ONE VOLUME: WITH THE AUTHOR'S LAST ADDITIONS AN* 
 CORRECTIONS. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 HAYES & ZELL, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 193 MARKET STREET. 
 
LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 JOHN LOCKE, one of the most eminent philosophers, and valuable 
 writers of his age and country, was born at Wrington, in Somersetshire 
 i>n the 29th August 1632. His father, who had been bred to the law, acted 
 in the capacity of steward, or court-keeper to colonel Alexander Popharn, 
 by whose interest, on the breaking out of the civil law, he became a cap- 
 tain in the service of parliament. The subject of this article was sent, at a 
 proper age, to Westminster school, whence he was elected in 1651 to 
 Christ-church college, Oxford. Here he much distinguished himself for 
 his application and proficiency ; and having taken the degree of BA. in 
 1655, and of MA. in 1658, he applied himself to the study of physic. In 
 the year 1664, he accepted of an offer to go abroad, in the capacity of secre- 
 tary to sir William Swan, appointed envoy from Charles II. to the elector 
 of Brandenburg, and other German princes ; but he returned in the course 
 of a year, and resumed his studies with renewed ardour. In 1666 he was 
 introduced to Lord Ashley, afterwards the celebrated political earl of 
 Shaftesbury, to whom he became essentially serviceable in his medical ca- 
 pacity, and who was led to form so high an opinion of his general powers, 
 that he prevailed upon him to take up his residence in his house, and urged 
 him to apply his studies to politics and philosophy. By his acquaintance 
 with this nobleman, Mr Locke was introduced to the duke of Buckingham, 
 the earl of Halifax, and others of the most eminent persons of their day. 
 In 1668, at the request of the earl and countess of Northumberland, he ac- 
 companied them in a tour to France ; and on his return was employed by 
 lord Ashley, then chancellor of the exchequer, in drawing up the funda- 
 mental constitutions of the American state of Carolina. He also inspected 
 the education of that nobleman’s son, and was much consulted on the mar- 
 riage of the latter, the eldest son, by which was the celebrated author of the 
 Characteristics. In 1670 he began to form the plan of his Essay on the 
 Human Understanding ; and about the same time was made a fellow of the 
 royal society. In 1672 lord Ashley, having been created earl of Shaftes- 
 bury, and raised to the dignity of chancellor, he appointed Mr Locke to the 
 office of secretary of presentations, which, however, he lost the following 
 year, when the earl was obliged to resign the seals. Being still president 
 of the board of trade, that nobleman then made Mr Locke secretary to the 
 same ; but the commission being dissolved in 1674, he lost that appointment 
 also. In the following year he graduated as a bachelor of physic, and being 
 apprehensive of a consumption, travelled into France, and resided some 
 time at Montpelier. In 1679 he returned to England, at the request of the 
 earl of Shaftesbury, then again restored to power; and in 1682, when that 
 nobleman was obliged to retire to Holland, he accompanied him in his 
 exile. On the death of his patron in that country, aware how much he was 
 disliked by the predominant arbitrary faction at home, he chose to remain 
 abroad ; and was in consequence accused of being the author of certain 
 
 3 
 
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 LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 tracts against the English government ; and although these were afterwards 
 discovered to be the work of another person, he was arbitrarily ejected from 
 his studentship of Christ church, by the king’s command. Thus assailed, 
 he continued abroad, nobly refusing to accept a pardon, which the cele- 
 brated William Penn undertook to procure for him, expressing himself like 
 the chancellor L’Hospital, in similar circumstances, ignorant of the crimes 
 of which he had been declared guilty. In 1685, when Monmouth undertook 
 his ill-concerted enterprize, the English envoy at the Hague demanded the 
 person of Mr Locke, and several others, which demand obliged him to con- 
 ceal himself for nearly a year; but in 1686 he again appeared in public, and 
 formed a literary society at Amsterdam, in conjunction with Limborch, 
 Le Clerc and others. During the time of his concealment, he also wrote 
 his first “ Letter concerning Toleration,” which was printed at Gouda, in 
 1689, under the title of “ Epistola de Tolerantia,” and was rapidly trans- 
 lated into Dutch, French, and English. At the Revolution, this eminent, 
 person returned to England in the fleet which conveyed the princess of 
 Orange, and being deemed a sufferer for the principles on which it was 
 established, he was made a commissioner of appeals, and was soon after 
 gratified by the establishment of toleration by law.* In 1690 he published 
 his celebrated “ Essay concerning Human Understanding,” which was in- 
 stantly attacked by various writers among the oracles of learning, most of 
 who=e names are now forgotten. Tt was even proposed, at a meeting of 
 the heads of houses of the university of Oxford, to formally censure and 
 discourage it ; but nothing was finally resolved upon, but that each master 
 should endeavour to prevent its being read in his college. Neither this, 
 however, nor any other opposition availed; the reputation, both of the work 
 and of the author, increased throughout Europe ; and besides being trans- 
 lated into French and Latin, it had reached a fourth English edition, in 
 1700. In 1690 Mr Locke published his second “ Letter on Toleration and 
 in the same year appeared his two “ Treatises on Government,” in oppo- 
 sition to the principles of sir Robert Filmer, and of the whole passive obe- 
 dient school. He next wrote a pamphlet, entitled, “ Some Considerations 
 of the Consequences of lowering the Interest and Value of Money,” 1691, 
 8vo, which was followed by other smaller pieces on the same subject. In 
 1692 he published a third “ Letter on Toleration and the following year 
 his “ Thoughts concerning Education.” In 1695 he was made a commis- 
 sioner of trade and plantations, and in the same year published his “ Rea- 
 sonableness of Christianity, as delivered in the Scriptures ;” which being 
 warmly attacked by Dr Edwards, in his “ Socinianism Unmasked,” Mr 
 Locke followed with a first and second “ Vindication,” in which he de- 
 fended himself with great mastery. The use made by Toland, and other 
 latitudinarian writers, of the premises laid down in the “ Essay on the 
 Human Understanding,” at length produced an opponent in the celebrated 
 bishop Stillingfleet, who, in his “ Defence of the Doctrine of the Trinity,” 
 censured some passages in Mr Locke’s essay, and a controversy arose, in 
 which the great reading and proficiency in ecclesiastical antiquities of the 
 prelate, necessarily yielded in an argumentative contest to the reasoning 
 powers of the philosopher. With his publications in this controversy, 
 which were distinguished by peculiar mildness and urbanity, Mr Locke re- 
 tired from the press, and his asthmatic complaint increasing, with the rec- 
 titude which distinguished the whole of his conduct, he resigned his post 
 of commissioner of trade and plantations, although king William was very 
 unwilling to receive it, observing, that he could not in conscience hold a 
 situation to which a considerable salary was attached, without performing 
 the duties of it. From this time he lived wholly in retirement, where he 
 applied himself to the study of scripture ; while the sufferings incidental to 
 his disorders were materially alleviated by the kind attentions and agree- 
 able conversation of lady Masham, who was the daughter of the learned 
 
LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 5 
 
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 Dr Cudworth, and for many years his intimate friend. Mr Locke existed 
 nearly two years in a very declining state, and at length expired in a man- 
 ner correspondent with his great piety, equanimity, and rectitude, on the 
 28tn of October, 1704. He was buried at Oates, where there is a neat 
 monument erected to his memory, with a modest Latin inscription indited 
 by himself. The moral, social, and political character of this eminent and 
 valuable man, is sufficiently illustrated by the foregoing brief account of 
 his life and labours ; and the effect of his writings upon the opinions, and 
 even fortunes of mankind, will form the most forcible eulogium on his 
 mental superiority. Of his “ Essay on the Human Understanding” it may 
 be said, that no book of the metaphysical class has ever been more gene- 
 rally read; or, looking to its overthrow of the doctrine of innate ideas, none 
 has produced greater consequences. In the opinion of Dr Reed he gave 
 the first example in the English language of writing on abstract subjects 
 with simplicity and perspicuity. No author has more successfully pointed 
 out the danger of ambiguous words, and of having distinct notions on sub- 
 jects of judgment and reasoning; while his observations on the various 
 powers of the human understanding, on the use and abuse of words, and on 
 the extent and limits of human knowledge, are drawn from an attentive 
 reflection on the operations of his own mind, the only source of genuine 
 knowledge on those subjects. Several topics, no doubt, are introduced into 
 this celebrated production, which do not strictly belong to it, and some of 
 its opinions have been justly controverted. In some instances, too, its 
 author is verbose, and wanting in his characteristic perspicuity; but with 
 all these exceptions, and even amidst the improvements in metaphysical 
 studies, to which this work itself has mainly conduced, it will ever prove 
 a valuable guide in the acquirement of the science of the human mind. 
 His next great work, his “ Two Treatises on Government,” although neces- 
 sarily opposed by the theorists of divine right and passive obedience, and 
 by writers of jacobitical tendencies, essentially espouses the principles 
 which, by plaeing the house of Brunswick on the throne of Great Britain, 
 may be deemed the constitutional doctrine of the countrv, and as such it has 
 been ably and unanswerably defended. Besides the works already men- 
 tioned, Mr Locke left several MSS. behind him, from which his executors, 
 sir Peter King and Mr. Anthony Collins, published in 170(5, his paraphrase 
 and notes upon St Paul’s Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, Romans, 
 and Ephesians, with an essay prefixed for the understanding of St Paul’s 
 Epistles, by a reference to St Paul himself. In 1706 the same parties pub- 
 lished, “ Posthumous Works of Mr Locke,” 8vo, comprising a treatise 
 “On the Conduct of the Understanding;” “An Examination of Male- 
 branche’s Opinion of seeing all Things in God,” &c. 
 
At 
 
 AN ESSAY 
 
 CONCERNING 
 
 HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN LOCKE, GENT. 
 

 
 
 
 
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TO 
 
 THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THOMAS, 
 
 EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY; 
 
 BARON HERBERT OF CARDIFF, LORD ROSS OF KENDAL, PAR, FITZHUGHj 
 MARMION, ST QUINTIN, AND SHURLAND ; LORD PRESIDENT OF 
 HIS MAJESTY’S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL. 
 
 AND LORD LIEUTENANT OF THE COUNTY 
 OF WILTS, AND SOUTH WALES. 
 
 MY LORD, 
 
 This Treatise, which is grown up under your lordship’s eye, and 
 has ventured into the world by your order, does now, by a natural kind of 
 right, come to your lordship for that protection, which you several years 
 since promised it. It is not that I think any name, how great soever, set 
 at the beginning of a book, will be able to cover the faults that are to be 
 found in it. Things in print must stand and fall by their own worth, or the 
 reader’s fancy. But there being nothing more to be desired for truth than 
 a fair, unprejudiced hearing, nobody is more like to procure me that than 
 your lordship, who is allowed to have got so intimate an acquaintance 
 with her, in her more retired recesses. Your lordship is known to have 
 so far advanced your speculations in the most abstract and general know- 
 ledge of things beyond the ordinary reach, or common methods, that your 
 allowance and approbation of the design of this treatise will at least pre- 
 serve it from being condemned without reading; and will prevail to have 
 those parts a little weighed, which might otherwise, perhaps, be thought to 
 deserve no consideration, for being somewhat out of the common road. 
 The imputation of novelty is a terrible charge among those who judge of 
 men’s heads, as they do of their perukes, by the fashion ; and can allow 
 none to be right, but the received doctrines. Truth scarce ever yet carried 
 it by vote any where at its first appearance : new opinions are always sus- 
 pected, and usually opposed without any other reason, but because they are 
 not already common. But truth, like gold, is not the less so for being 
 newly brought out of the mine. It is trial and examination must give it 
 price, and not any antique fashion : and though it be not yet current by the 
 public stamp ; yet it may, for all that, be as old as nature, and is certainly 
 not the less genuine. Your lordship can give great and convincing in- 
 stances of this, whenever you please to oblige the public with some of those 
 large and comprehensive discoveries you have made of truths hitherto un- 
 known, unless to some few, from whom your lordship has been pleased not 
 wholly to conceal them. This alone were a sufficient reason, were there 
 no other, why I should dedicate this Essay to your lordship ; and its having 
 some little correspondence with some parts of that nobler and vast system 
 of the sciences your lordship has made so new, exact, and instructive a 
 draught of, I think it glory enough, if your lordship permit me to boast, 
 B 9 
 
10 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 that here and there I have fallen into some thoughts not wholly different 
 from yours. If your lordship think fit, that, by your encouragement, this 
 should appear in the world, I hope it may be a reason some time or other, 
 to lead your lordship farther; and you will allow me to say, that you here 
 give the world an earnest of something, that, if they can bear with this, 
 will be truly worthy their expectation. This, my lord, shows what a pre- 
 sent I here make to your lordship ; just such as the poor man does to his 
 rich and great neighbour, by whom the basket of flowers or fruit is not ill 
 taken, though he has more plenty of his own growth, and in much greater 
 perfection. Worthless things receive a value, when they are made the 
 offerings of respect, esteem, and gratitude: these you have given me so 
 mighty and peculiar reasons to have, in the highest degree, for your lord- 
 ship, that if they can add a price to what they go along with, proportion- 
 able to their own greatness, I can with confidence brag, I here make your 
 lordship the richest present you ever received. This I am sure, I am under 
 the greatest obligations to seek all occasions to acknowledge a long train 
 of favours I have received from your lordship: favours, though great and 
 important in themselves, yet made much more so by the forwardness, con- 
 cern, and kindness, and other obliging circumstances, that never failed to 
 accompany them. To all this, you are pleased to add that which gives yet 
 more weight and relish to all the rest: you vouchsafe to continue me in 
 some degrees of your esteem, and allow me a place in your good thoughts; 
 1 had almost said friendship. This, my lord, your words and actions so 
 constantly show on all occasions, even to others when I am absent, that it 
 is not vanity in me to mention what every body knows : but it would be 
 want of good manners, not to acknowledge what so many are witnesses of, 
 and every day tell me I am indebted to your lordship for. I wish they 
 could as easily assist my gratitude, as they convince me of the great and 
 growing engagements it has to your lordship. This, I am sure, 1 should 
 write of the understanding without having any, if I were not extremely 
 sensible of them, and did not lay hold on this opportunity to testify to the 
 world, how much I am obliged to be, and how much I am, My Lord, 
 
 Your Lordship’s most humble 
 
 And most obedient servant, 
 
 JOHN LOCKE. 
 
 Dorset- Court, 
 
 24 May, 1689. 
 
EPISTLE TO THE READER. 
 
 Reader, 
 
 I here put into thy hands, what has been the diversion of some of 
 my idle and heavy hours : if it has the good luck to prove so of any of thine, 
 and thou hast but half so much pleasure in reading, as I had in writing it, 
 thou wilt as little think thy money, as I do my pains, ill bestowed. Mis- 
 take not this for a commendation of my work ; nor conclude, because I was 
 pleased with the doing of it, that therefore I am fondly taken with it now 
 it is done. He that hawks at larks and sparrows, has no less sport, though 
 a much less considerable quarry, than he that flies at nobler game: and he 
 is little acquainted with the subject of this treatise, the understanding, 
 who does not know, that as it is the most elevated faculty of the soul, so 
 it is employed with a greater and more constant delight than any of the 
 other. Its searches after truth are a sort of hawking and hunting, wherein 
 the very pursuit makes a great part of the pleasure. Eveiy step the mind 
 takes in its progress towards knowledge, makes some discovery, which is 
 not only new, but the best too, for the time at least. 
 
 For the understanding, like the eye, judging of objects only by its own 
 sight, cannot but be pleased with what it discovers, having less regret for 
 what has escaped it, because it is unknown. Thus he who has raised him- 
 self above the alms-basket, and, not content to live lazily on scraps of 
 begged opinions, sets his own thoughts on work, to find and follow truth, 
 will (whatever he lights on) not miss the hunter’s satisfaction ; every mo- 
 ment of his pursuit will reward his pains with some delight, and he will 
 have reason to think his time not ill spent, even w T hen he cannot much 
 boast of any great acquisition. 
 
 This, reader, is the entertainment of those who let loose their own 
 thoughts, and follow them in writing ; which thou oughtest not to envy 
 them, since they afford thee an opportunity of the like diversion, if thou 
 wilt make use of thy own thoughts in reading. It is to them, if they are 
 thy own, that I refer myself: but if they are taken upon trust from others, 
 it is no great matter what they are, they not following truth, but some 
 meaner consideration: and it is not worth while to be concerned, what he 
 says or thinks, who says or thinks only as he is directed by another. If 
 thou judgest for thyself, I know thou wilt judge candidly ; and then I shall 
 not be harmed or offended, whatever be thy censure. For though it be cer- 
 tain, that there is nothing in this treatise, of the truth whereof I am not 
 fully persuaded ; yet I consider myself as liable to mistakes, as I can think 
 thee, and know that this book must stand or fall with thee, not by any 
 opinion I have of it, but thy own. If thou findest little in it new or in- 
 structive to thee, thou art not to blame me for it. It was not meant for 
 those that had already mastered this subject, and made a thorough ac- 
 quaintance with their own understandings ; but for my own information, 
 and the satisfaction of a few friends, who acknowledged themselves not to 
 
 11 
 
12 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 have sufficiently considered it. Were it fit to trouble thee with the history 
 of this Essay, I should tell thee, that five or six friends meeting' at my 
 chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found them- 
 selves quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that rose on every side. After 
 we had a while puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution 
 of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts, that we took 
 a wrong course : and that before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that 
 nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects 
 our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with. This I proposed 
 to the company, who all readily assented ; and thereupon it was agreed, 
 that this should be our first inquiry. Some hasty and undigested thoughts 
 on a subject I had never before considered, which I set down against our 
 next meeting, gave the first entrance into this discourse ; which having 
 been thus begun by chance, was continued by entreaty ; written by inco- 
 herent parcels ; and after long intervals of neglect, resumed again, as my 
 humour or occasions permitted ; and at last, in a retirement, where an 
 attendance on my health gave me leisure, it was brought into that order 
 thou now seest it. 
 
 This discontinued way of writing may have occasioned, besides others, 
 two contrary faults, viz. that too little and too much maybe said in it. If 
 thou findest any thing wanting, I shall be glad, that what I have writ gives 
 thee any desire that I should have gone farther : if it seems too much to 
 thee, thou must blame the subject; for when I put pen to paper, I thought 
 all I should have to say on this matter would have been contained in one 
 sheet of paper ; but the farther I went, the larger prospect I had ; new dis- 
 coveries led me still on, and so it grew insensibly to the bulk it now appears 
 in. I will not deny, but possibly it might be reduced to a narrower com- 
 pass than it is ; and that some parts of it might be contracted ; the way it 
 has been writ in, by catches, and many long intervals of interruption, being 
 apt to cause some repetitions. But to confess the truth, I am now too lazy, 
 or too busy to make it shorter. 
 
 I am not ignorant how little I herein consult my own reputation, when 
 I knowingly let it go with a fault, so apt to disgust the most judicious, who 
 are .always the nicest readers. But they who know sloth is apt to content 
 itself with any excuse, will pardon me, if mine has prevailed on me, where, 
 T think, I have a very good one. I will not therefore allege in my defence, 
 tliat the same notion, having different respects, may be convenient or ne- 
 cessary to prove or illustrate several parts of the same discourse ; and that 
 so it has happened in many parts of this : but waiving that, I shall frankly 
 avow, that I have sometimes dwelt long upon the same argument, and ex- 
 pressed it different ways, with a quite different design. 1 pretend not to 
 publish this Essay for the information of men of large thoughts, and quick 
 apprehensions ; to such masters of knowledge I profess myself a scholar - , 
 and therefore warn them beforehand not to expect any thing here, but what, 
 being spun out of my own coarse thoughts, is fitted to men of my own 
 size ; to whom, perhaps, it will not be unacceptable, that I have taken some 
 pains to make plain and familiar to their thoughts some truths, which esta- 
 blished prejudice, or the abstractedness of the ideas themselves, might 
 render difficult. Some objects had need be turned on every side ; and 
 when the notion is new, as I confess some of these are to me, or out of the 
 ordinary road, as I suspect they will appear to others ; it is not one simple 
 view of it, that will gain it admittance into every understanding, or fix it 
 there with a clear and lasting impression. There are few, I believe, who 
 have not observed in themselves or others, that what in one way of pro- 
 posing was very obscure, another way of expressing it has made very clear 
 and intelligible : though afterward the mind found little difference in the 
 phrases, and wondered why one failed to be understood more than the other. 
 But every thing does not hit alike upon every man’s imagination. We 
 
EPISTLE TO THE READER. 
 
 13 
 
 have our understandings no less different than our palates ; and he that 
 thinks the same truth shall be equally relished by every one in the same 
 dress, may as well hope to feast every one with the same sort of cookery : 
 the meat may be the same, and the nourishment good, yet every one not 
 be ab.e to receive it with that seasoning ; and it must be dressed another 
 way, if you will have it go down with some even of strong constitutions. 
 The truth is, those who advised me to publish it, advised me, for fhis reason, 
 to publish it as it is : and since I have been brought to let it go abroad, I 
 desire it should be understood by whoever gives himself the pains to read 
 it ; I have so little affection to be in print, that if I were not flattered this 
 Essay might be of some use to others, as I think it has been to me, I 
 should have confined it to the view of some friends, who gave the first oc- 
 casion to it. My appearing therefore in print, being on purpose to be as 
 useful as I may, I think it necessary to make what I have to say as easy 
 and intelligible to all sorts of readers as I can. And I had much rather the 
 speculative and quick-sighted should complain of my being in some parts 
 tedious, than that any one, not accustomed to abstract speculations, or pre- 
 possessed with different notions, should mistake, or not comprehend my 
 meaning. 
 
 It will possibly be censured as a great piece of vanity or insolence in me, 
 to pretend to instruct this our knowing age ; it amounting to little less, 
 when I own, that I publish this Essay with hopes it may be useful to others. 
 But if it may be permitted to speak freely of those, who with a feigned 
 modesty condemn as useless, what they themselves write, methinks it 
 savours much more of vanity or insolence, to publish a book for any other 
 end ; and he fails very much of that respect he owes the public, who prints, 
 and consequently expects men should read that, wherein he intends not 
 that they should meet with any thing of use to themselves or others : and 
 should nothing else be found allowable in this treatise, yet my design will 
 not cease to be so ; ‘and the goodness of my intention ought to be some 
 excuse for the worthlessness of my present. It is that chiefly which se- 
 cures me from the fear of censure, which I expect not to escape more than 
 better writers. Men’s principles, notions, and relishes are so different, that 
 it is hard to find a book which pleases or displeases all men. I acknow- 
 ledge the age we live in is not the least knowing, and therefore not the 
 most easy to be satisfied. If I have not the good luck to please, yet nobody 
 ought to be offended with me. I plainly tell all my readers, except half a 
 dozen, this treatise was not at first intended for them ; and therefore they 
 need not be at the trouble to be of that number. But yet if any one thinks 
 fit to be angry, and rail at it, he may do it securely : for I shall find some 
 better way of spending my time than in such kind of conversation. I shall 
 always have the satisfaction to have aimed sincerely at truth and useful- 
 ness, though in one of the meanest ways. The commonwealth of learning 
 is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs in ad- 
 vancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the admiration of 
 posterity : but every one must not hope to be a Boyle, or a Sydenham : and 
 in an age that produces such masters, as the great Huygenius, and the in- 
 comparable Mr Newton, with some others of that strain, it is ambition 
 enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little 
 and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge ; which 
 certainly had been very much more advanced in the world, if the endea- 
 vours of ingenious and industrious men had not been much cumbered with 
 the learned but frivolous use of uncouth, affected, or unintelligible terms, 
 introduced into the sciences, and there made an art of, to that degree, that 
 philosophy, which is nothing but the true knowledge of things, was thought 
 unfit, or incapable to be brought into well-bred company, and polite con- 
 versation. Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language, 
 have no long passed for mysteries’ of science ; and hard and misapplied 
 
14 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 words, with little or no meaning, have, by prescription, such a right to be 
 mistaken for deep learning, and height of speculation, that it will not be 
 eas« to persuade either those who speak, or those who hear them, that 
 they are but the covers of ignorance, and hinderance of true knowledge. 
 To break in upon the sanctuary of vanity and ignorance, will be, I suppose, 
 some service to human understanding; though so few are apt to think they 
 deceive or are deceived in the use of words, or that the language of the 
 sect they are of has any faults in it, which ought to be examined or cor- 
 rected ; that I hope I shall be pardoned, if I have in the third book dwelt 
 long on this subject, and endeavoured to make it so plain, that neither the 
 inveterateness of the mischief, nor the prevalence of the fashion, shall be 
 any excuse for those \?ho will not take care about the meaning of their own 
 words, and will not sutler the significancy of their expressions to be in- 
 quired into. 
 
 I have been told that a short epitome of this treatise, which was printed 
 1688, was by some condemned without reading, because innate ideas were 
 denied in it; they too hastily concluding, that if innate ideas were not sup- 
 posed, there would be little left eithei of the notion or proof of spirits. If 
 any one take the like offence at the entrance of this treatise, I shall desire 
 him to read it through ; and then I hope he will be convinced, that the 
 taking away false foundations, is not to the prejudice, but advantage of 
 truth; which is never injured or endangered so much, as when mixed with, 
 or built on, falsehood. In the second edition, I added as followeth: 
 
 The bookseller will not forgive me, if I say nothing of this second edi- 
 tion, which he has promised, by the correctness of it, shall make amends 
 for the many faults committed in the former. He desires too, that it should 
 be known, that it has one whole new chapter concerning identity, and 
 many additions and amendments in other places. These, I must inform 
 my reader, are not all new matter, but most of them, either farther con- 
 firmations of what I had said, or explications, to prevent others being mis- 
 taken in the sense of what was formerly printed, and not any variation in 
 , me from it ; I must only except the alterations I have made in Book II, 
 Chap. 21. 
 
 What I had there writ concerning liberty and the will, I thought deserved 
 as accurate a view as I was capable of : those subjects having in all ages 
 exercised the learned part of the world with questions and difficulties that 
 have not a little perplexed morality and divinity, those parts of knowledge 
 that men are most concerned to be clear in. Upon a closer inspection into 
 the working of men’s minds, and a stricter examination of those motives 
 and views they are turned by, I have found reason somewhat to alter the 
 thoughts I formerly had concerning that., which gives the last determination 
 to the will in all voluntary actions. This I cannot forbear to acknowledge 
 to the world with as much freedom and readiness, as I at first published 
 what then seemed to me to be right; thinking myself more concerned to 
 quit and renounce any opinion of my own, than oppose that of another, 
 wlten truth appears against it. For it is truth alone I seek, and that will 
 always be welcome to me, when or from whence soever it comes. 
 
 But what forwardness soever I have to resign any opinion I have, or to 
 recede from any thing I have writ upon the first evidence of any error in it ; 
 yet this I must own, that I have not had the good luck to receive any light 
 from those exceptions I have met with in print against any part of my 
 book ; nor have, from any thing that has been urged against it, found rea- 
 son to alter my sense in any of the points that have been questioned. 
 Whether the subject I have in hand requires often more thought and atten- 
 tion than cursory readers, at least such as are prepossessed, are willing to 
 allow ; or whether any obscurity in my expression casts a cloud over it, and 
 these notions are made difficult to others’ apprehensions in my way oi 
 treating them-; so it is, that my meaning, I find, is often mistaken, and I 
 
EPISTLE TO THE READER. 
 
 15 
 
 have not the good luck to be every where rightly understood. There are 
 so many instances of this, that I think it justice to my reader and myself 
 to conclude, that either my book is plainly enough written to be rightly 
 understood by those who peruse it with that attention and indifferency, 
 which every one who will give himself the pains to read, ought to employ 
 in reading ; or else, that I have writ mine so obscurely, that it is in vain to 
 go about to mend it. Whichever of these be the truth, it is myself only 
 am affected thereby, and therefore I shall be far from troubling my reader 
 with what I think might be said, in answer to those several objections I 
 have met with to passages here and there of my book ; since I persuade 
 myself, that he who thinks them of moment enough to be concerned whe- 
 ther they are true or false, will be able to see, that what is said is either 
 not well founded, or else not contrary to my doctrine, when I and my 
 opposer came both to be well understood. 
 
 If any, careful that none of their good thoughts should be lost, have pub- 
 lished their censures of my Essay, with this honour done to it, that they 
 will not suffer it to be an Essay ; I leave it to the public to value the obli- 
 gation they have to their critical pens, and shah not waste my reader’s 
 time in so idle or ill-natured an employment of mine, as to lessen the satis- 
 faction any one has in himself, or gives to others in so hasty a confutation 
 of what I have written. 
 
 The booksellers preparing for the fourth edition of my Essay, gave me 
 notice of it, that I might, if I had leisure, make any additions or alterations 
 I should think fit. Whereupon I thought it convenient to advertise the 
 reader, that besides several corrections I had made here and there, there 
 was one alteration which it was necessary to mention, because it ran 
 through the whole book, and is of consequence to be rightly understood. 
 What I thereupon said was this : 
 
 Clear and distinct ideas are terms, which, though familiar and frequent 
 m men’s mouths, I have reason to think every one, who uses, does not 
 perfectly understand. And possibly it is but here and there one, who gives 
 himself the trouble to consider them so far as to know what he himself or 
 others precisely mean' by them: I have therefore in most places chose to 
 put determinate or determined, instead of clear and distinct, as more likely 
 to direct men’s thoughts to my meaning in this matter. By those denomi- 
 nations, I mean some object in the mind, and consequently determined, i. e. 
 such as it is there seen and perceived to be. This, I think, may fitly be 
 called a determinate or determined idea, when such as it is at any time 
 objectively in the mind, and so determined there, it is annexed, and without 
 variation determined to a name or articulate sound, which is to be steadily 
 the sign of that very same object of the mind or determinate idea. 
 
 To explain this a little more particularly. By determinate, when applied 
 to a simple idea, I mean that simple appearance which the mind has in it3 
 Hew, or perceives in itself, when that idea is said to be in it : by determi- 
 nate, when applied to a complex idea, I mean such an one as consists of a 
 determinate number of certain simple or less complex ideas, joined in such 
 a proportion and situation, as the mind has before its view, and sees in itself, 
 when that idea is present in it, or should be present in it, when a man gives 
 a name to it : I say should be, because it is not every one, not perhaps any 
 one, who is so careful of his language, as to use no word, till he views in his 
 mind the precise determined idea, which he resolves to make it the sign of. 
 The want of this is the cause of no small obscurity and confusion in men’s 
 thoughts and discourses. 
 
 I know there are not words enough in any language to answer all the 
 variety of ideas that enter into men’s discourses and reasonings. But this 
 hinders not, but that when any one uses any term, he may have in his mind 
 a determined idea, which he makes it the sign of, and to which he should 
 keep it steadily annexed, during that present discourse. Where he does 
 
16 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 not, or cannot do this, he in vain pretends to clear or distinct ideas : it is 
 plain his are not so ; and therefore there can be expected nothing but ob- 
 scurity and confusion, where such terms are made use. of, which have not 
 such a precise determination. 
 
 Upon this ground I have thought determined ideas a way of speaking 
 less liable to mistakes, than clear and distinct; and where men have got 
 such determined ideas of all that they reason, inquire, or argue about, they 
 will find a great part of their doubts and disputes at an end. The greatest 
 part of the questions and controversies that perplex mankind, depending on 
 the doubtful and uncertain use of words, or (which is the same) indeter- 
 mined ideas, which they are made to stand for ; I have made choice of these 
 terms to signify, 1. Some immediate object of the mind, which it perceives 
 and has before it, distinct from the sound it uses as a sign of it. 2. That 
 this idea, thus determined, i. e. which the mind has in itself, and knows 
 and sees there, be determined without any change to that name, and that 
 name determined to that precise idea. If men had such determined ideas 
 in their inquiries and discourses, they would both discern how far their own 
 inquiries and discourses went, and avoid the greatest part of the disputes 
 and wranglings they have with others. 
 
 Besides this, the bookseller will think it necessary I should advertise the 
 reader, that there is an addition of two chapters wholly new ; the one of the 
 association of ideas, the other of enthusiasm. These, with some other 
 larger additions never before printed, he has engaged to print by themselves, 
 after the same manner, and for the same purpose as was done when this 
 Essay had the second impression. 
 
 In the sixth edition, there is very little added or altered ; the greatest part 
 of what is new is contained in the 21st chapter of the second book, which 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 OF INNATE NOTIONS. 
 
 V / CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Introduction. 
 
 Sect. 1. An inquiry into the under- 
 standing, pleasant and useful. 
 
 2. Design. 
 
 3. Method. 
 
 4. Useful to know the extent of our 
 comprehension. 
 
 5. Our capacity proportioned to our 
 state and concerns, to discover 
 things useful to us. 
 
 6. Knowing the extent of our capa- 
 cities will hinder us from useless 
 curiosity, scepticism, and idle- 
 ness. 
 
 7. Occasion of this essay. 
 
 8. What idea stands for. 
 
 V CHAPTER II. 
 
 JVo innate speculative principles. 
 
 1. The way shown how we come by 
 any knowledge, sufficient to prove 
 it not innate. 
 
 2. General assent, the great argu- 
 ment. 
 
 3. Universal consent proves nothing 
 innate. 
 
 4. What is, is; and it is impossible 
 for the same thing to be, and not 
 to be; not universally assented to. 
 
 5. Not on the mind naturally im- 
 printed, because not known to 
 children, idiots, &c. 
 
 6. 7. That men know them when 
 
 they come to the use of reason, 
 answered. 
 
 8. If reason discovered them, that 
 would not prove them innate. 
 
 9 — 11. It is false that reason discovers 
 them. 
 
 12. The coming to the use of reason, 
 not the time we come to know 
 these maxims. 
 
 c 
 
 13. By this they are not distinguished 
 from other knowable truths. 
 
 14. If coming to the use of reason 
 were the time of their discovery, 
 it would not prove them innate. 
 
 15. 16. The steps by which the mind 
 
 attains several truths. 
 
 17. Assenting as soon as proposed and 
 understood, proves them not in- 
 nate. 
 
 18. If such an assent be a mark of in- 
 
 nate, then that one and two are 
 equal to three; that sweetness is 
 not bitterness; and a thousand the 
 like, must be innate. 
 
 19. Such less general propositions 
 known before these universal 
 maxims. 
 
 20. One and one equal to two, &c. 
 not general nor useful, answered. 
 
 21. These maxims not being known 
 
 sometimes until proposed, proves 
 them not innate. 
 
 22. Implicitly known before proposing, 
 signifies that the mind is capable 
 of understanding them or else 
 signifies nothing. 
 
 23. The argument of assenting on first 
 hearing is upon a false supposi- 
 tion of no precedent teaching. 
 
 24. Not innate, because not univer- 
 sally assented to. 
 
 25. These maxims not the first known. 
 
 26. And so not innate. 
 
 27. Not innate, because they appear 
 least, where what is innate shows 
 itself clearest. 
 
 28. Recapitulation. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 JVo innate practical principles. 
 
 1. No moral principles so clear and 
 
18 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 so generally received as the fore- 
 mentioned speculative maxims. 
 
 S. Faith and justice not owned as 
 principles by all men. 
 
 3. Obj. Though men deny them in 
 their practice, yet they admit 
 them in their thoughts, answered. 
 
 4. Moral rules need a proof, ergo, 
 not innate. 
 
 5. Instance in keeping compacts. 
 
 6. Virtue generally approved, not 
 because innate, but because pro- 
 fitable. 
 
 7. Men’s actions convince us that 
 the rule of virtue is not their in- 
 ternal principle. 
 
 8. Conscience no proof of any innate 
 moral rule. 
 
 9. Instances of enormities practised 
 without remorse. 
 
 10. Men have contrary practical prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 11 — 13. Whole nations reject several 
 moral rules. 
 
 14. Those who maintain innate prac- 
 tical principles, tell us not what 
 they' are. 
 
 15 — 19. Lord Herbert’s innate princi- 
 ples examined. 
 
 20. Obj. Innate principles may he cor- 
 rupted, answered. 
 
 21. Contrary principles in the world. 
 
 22 — 26. How mer commonly come by 
 
 their principles. 
 
 27. Principles must be examined. 
 
 ' CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Other considerations about innate prm - 
 ciples, both speculative and prac- 
 tical. 
 
 1. Principles not innate, unless their 
 ideas be innate. 
 
 2, 3. Ideas, especially those belong- 
 
 ing to principles, not born with 
 children. 
 
 4, 5. Identity, an idea not innate. 
 
 C. Whole and part, not innate ideas. 
 
 7. Idea of worship not innate. 
 
 8 — 11. Idea of God, not innate. 
 
 12. Suitable to God’s goodness, that 
 all men should have an idea of 
 him, therefore naturally imprint- 
 ed by him, answered. 
 
 13-16. Ideas of God various in differ- 
 ent men. 
 
 17. If the idea of God he not innate, 
 no other can be supposed innate. 
 
 IS. Idea of substance not innate. 
 
 19. No propositions can be innate, 
 since no ideas are innate. 
 
 20. No ideas are remembered, till af- 
 ter they have been introduced. 
 
 21. Principles not innate, because of 
 little use, or little certainty. 
 
 22. Difference of men’s discoveries 
 depends upon the different appli- 
 cations of their faculties. 
 
 23. Men must think and know for 
 themselves. 
 
 24. Whence the opinion of innate 
 principles. 
 
 25. Conclusion. 
 
 BOOK II. 
 OF IDEAS 
 
 » CHAPTER I. 
 
 Of ideas in general, and their original. 
 
 Sect- 1. Idea is the object of thinking. 
 
 2. All ideas come from sensation or 
 reHeclion. 
 
 3. The objects of sensation one 
 source of i ileas. 
 
 4. The operations of our minds the 
 other source of them. 
 
 5. All our ideas are of the one or 
 the other of these. 
 
 6. Observable in children. 
 
 7. Men are differently furnished with 
 these, according to the different 
 objects they converse with. 
 
 8. Ideas of reflection later, because 
 they need attention. 
 
 9. The soul begins to have ideas 
 when it begins to perceive. 
 
 10. The soul thinks not always; for 
 this wants proofs. 
 
 11. It is not always conscious of it. 
 
 12. If a sleeping man thinks without 
 knowing it, the sleeping and wa- 
 king man are two persons. 
 
 13. Impossible to convince those that 
 sleep without dreaming, that they 
 think. 
 
 14. That men dream without remem- 
 bering it, in vain urged. 
 
 15. Upon this hypothesis, the thoughts 
 of a sleeping man ought to be 
 most rational. 
 
 16. On this hypothesis the soul must 
 have ideas not derived from sen- 
 sation or refleetiou, of which there 
 is no appearance. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 19 
 
 17. If I think when I know it not, no- 
 body else can know it. 
 
 IS. How knows any one the soul always 
 thinks? For if it he not a self-evi- 
 dent proposition, it needs proof. 
 
 19. That a man should he busy in 
 thinking, and yet not retain it the 
 next moment, very improbable. 
 
 20 — 23. No ideas but from sensation 
 or reflection, evident, if we ob- 
 serve children. 
 
 24. The original of all our knowledge. 
 
 25. In the reception of simple ideas the 
 understanding is most of all passive. 
 
 / CHAPTER II. 
 
 Of simple ideas. 
 
 1 Uncompounded appearances. 
 
 2, 3. The mind can neither make nor 
 destroy them. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Of ideas o f one sense. 
 
 1. As colours, of seeing; sounds, of 
 hearing. 
 
 2. Few simple ideas have names 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Of solidity. 
 
 1. We receive this idea from touch. 
 
 2. Solidity fills space. 
 
 3. Distinct from space. 
 
 4. From hardness. 
 
 5. On solidity depend impulse, re- 
 sistance, and protrusion. 
 
 6. What it is. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Of simple ideas by more than one sense. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Of simple ideas of refection. 
 
 1. Simple ideas are the operations of 
 the mind about its other ideas. 
 
 2. The idea of perception, and idea 
 of willing, we have from reflection. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Of simple ideas, both of sensation and 
 refection. 
 
 1 — G. Pleasure and pain. 
 
 7. Existence and unity. 
 
 8. Power. 
 
 9. Succession. 
 
 [0. Simple ideas, the materials of all 
 our knowledge. 
 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Other considerations concerning' simple 
 ideas. 
 
 I-G. Positive ideas from privative causes. 
 
 7, 8. Ideas in the mind, qualities in bo- 
 dies. 
 
 9, 10. Primary and secondary quali- 
 ties. 
 
 11, 12. How primary qualities produce 
 their ideas. 
 
 13. 14. How secondary. 
 
 15 — 23. Ideas of primary qualities, are 
 resemblances; of secondary, not. 
 
 24, 25. Reason of our mistake in this. 
 
 26. Secondary qualities two-fold; first, 
 immediately perceivable; secondly, 
 mediately perceivable. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Of perception. 
 
 1. It is the first simple idea of reflec- 
 tion. 
 
 2 — 4. Perception is only when the 
 mind receives the impression. 
 
 5, 6. Children, though they have ideas 
 in the womb, have none innate. 
 
 7. Which ideas first, is not evident. 
 
 8 — 10. Ideas of sensation often changed 
 by the judgment. 
 
 11 — 14. Perception puts the difference 
 between animals and inferior be- 
 ings. 
 
 15. Perception the inlet of knowledge. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Of retention. 
 
 1. Contemplation. 
 
 2. Memory. 
 
 3. Attention, repetition, pleasure, and 
 pain, fix ideas. 
 
 4. 5. Ideas fade in the memory. 
 
 6. Constantly repeated ideas can 
 scarce be lost. 
 
 7. In remembering, the mind is often 
 active. 
 
 8, 9. Two defects in the memory, obli- 
 vion and slowness. 
 
 10. Brutes have memory. 
 
 CHAPTER XT. 
 
 Of discerning, Uc. 
 
 1. No knowledge without it. 
 
 2. Difference of wit and judgment. 
 
 3. Clearness alone hinders confusion. 
 
 4. Comparing. 
 
 5. Brutes compare but imperfectly. 
 
 6. Compounding. 
 
 7. Brutes compound but little. 
 
 8. Naming. 
 
 9. Abstraction. 
 
 10, 11. Brutes abstract not. 
 
 12, 13. Ideots and madmen. 
 
 14. Method. 
 
 15. These are the beginnings of human 
 knowledge. 
 
20 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 16. Appeal to experience. 
 
 IT. Darkroom. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Of complex ideas. 
 
 1. Made by the mind out of simple 
 ones. 
 
 2. Made voluntarily. 
 
 3. Are either modes, substances, or 
 relations. 
 
 4. Modes. 
 
 5. Simple and mixed modes. 
 
 6. Substances single or collective. 
 
 7. Relation. 
 
 8. The abstrusest ideas from the two 
 sources. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Of space and its simple modes. 
 
 1. Simple modes. 
 
 2. Idea of space. 
 
 3. Space and extension. 
 
 4. Immensity. 
 
 5. 6. Figure. 
 
 7—10. Place. 
 
 1 1 — 14. Extension and body not the 
 same. 
 
 15. The definition of extension, or ot 
 space, does not explain it. 
 
 1 6. Division of beings into bodies and 
 
 spirits proves not body and space 
 the same. • 
 
 17. 18. Substance, which we know not, 
 no proof against space without 
 body. 
 
 19, 20. Substance and accidents of little 
 use in philosophy. 
 
 21. A vacuum beyond the utmost 
 bounds of body. 
 
 22. The power of annihilation proves 
 a vacuum. 
 
 23. Motion proves a vacuum. 
 
 24. The ideas of space and body dis- 
 tinct. 
 
 25. 20. Extension, being inseparable 
 from body, proves it not the same. 
 
 27. Ideas of space and solidity dis- 
 tinct. 
 
 28, Men differ little in clear simple 
 ideas. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Of duration and its simple modes. 
 
 1. Duration is fleeting extension. 
 
 8 — 4. Its idea from reflection on the 
 train of our ideas. 
 
 5. The idea of duration applicable to 
 things while we sleep. 
 
 '-8. The idea of succession not from 
 motion. 
 
 9 — 11. The train of ideas has a cer- 
 tain degree of quickness. 
 
 12. This train, the measure of other 
 successions. 
 
 13 — 15. The mind cannot fix long on 
 one invariable idea. 
 
 16. Ideas, however made, include no 
 sense of motion. 
 
 17. Time is duration set out by men 
 sures. 
 
 18. A good measure of time must di 
 vide its whole duration iu«o equal 
 periods. 
 
 19. The revolutions of the sun and 
 moon the properest measures of 
 time. 
 
 20. But not by their motion, but pe- 
 riodical appearances. 
 
 21. No two parts of duration can be 
 certainly known to be equal. 
 
 22. Time not the measure of motion. 
 
 23. Minutes, hours, and years not ne- 
 cessary measures of duration. 
 
 24 — 26. Our measure of time appli- 
 cable to duration before time. 
 
 27—30. Eternity. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Of duration and expansion considered 
 together. 
 
 1. Both capable of greater and less. 
 
 2. Expansion not bounded by matter. 
 
 3. Nor duration by motion. 
 
 4. Why men more easily admit infi- 
 nite duration than infinite expan- 
 sion. 
 
 5. Time to duration is as place to ex- 
 pansion. 
 
 6. Time and place are taken for so 
 much of either as are set out by 
 the existence and motion of bodies. 
 
 7. Sometimes for so much of either 
 as we design by measure taken 
 from the bulk or motion of bodies. 
 
 8. They belong to all beings. 
 
 9. All the parts of extension are ex- 
 tension; and all the parts of dura- 
 tion are duration. 
 
 10. Their parts inseparable. 
 
 11. Duration is as a line, expansion as 
 a solid. 
 
 12. Duration has never two parts to- 
 gether, expansion all together. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Of number. 
 
 1. Number, the simplest and mos* 
 universal idea. 
 
 2. Its modes made by addition. 
 
 3. Each mode distinct. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 21 
 
 4 . Therefore demonstrations in num- 
 bers the most precise. 
 
 5, 6. Names necessary to numbers. 
 
 7. Why children number not earlier. 
 
 8. Number measures all measurables. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Of Infinity. 
 
 1. Infinity, in its original intentions, 
 attributed to space, duration, and 
 number. 
 
 2. The idea of finite easily got. 
 
 3. How we come by the ideaof infinity. 
 
 4. Our idea of space boundless. 
 
 5. And so of duration. 
 
 6. Why other ideas are not capable of 
 infinity. 
 
 7. Difference between infinity of space 
 and space infinite. 
 
 8. We have no idea of infinite space. 
 
 9. Number affords us the clearest idea 
 of infinity. 
 
 10, 11. Our different conception of the 
 infinity of number, duration and 
 expansion. 
 
 12. Infinite divisibility. 
 
 13, 14. No positive idea of infinity. 
 
 15, 16. What is positive, what nega- 
 tive, in our idea of infinite. 
 
 16, 17. We have no positive idea of 
 infinite duration. 
 
 18. No positive idea of infinite space. 
 
 20. Some think they have a positive 
 idea of eternity, and not of infi- 
 nite space. 
 
 21. Supposed positive idea of infinity, 
 cause of mistakes. 
 
 22. All these ideas from sensation and 
 reflection. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Of other simple modes. 
 
 1, 2. Modes of motion. 
 
 3. Modes of sounds. 
 
 4. Modes of colours. 
 
 5. Modes of tastes and smells. 
 
 6. Some simple modes have no names. 
 
 7. Why some modes have, and others 
 have not names. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Of the modes of thinking. 
 
 1, 2. Sensation remembrance, contem- 
 plation, kc. 
 
 3. The various attention of the mind 
 in thinking. 
 
 4. Hence it is probable that thinking is 
 the action, not essence of the soul. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Of modes of pleasure and pain. 
 
 1. Pleasure and pain simple ideas. 
 
 2. Good and evil, what. 
 
 3. Our passions moved by good and 
 evil. 
 
 4. Love. 
 
 5. Hatred. 
 
 6. Desire. 
 
 7. Joy. 
 
 8. Sorrow. 
 
 9. Hope. — 
 
 10. Fear. _ 
 
 11. Despair. 
 
 12. Anger. 
 
 13. Envy. 
 
 14. What passions all men have. 
 
 15. 16. Pleasure and pain, what. 
 
 17. Shame. 
 
 18. These instances do show how our 
 ideas of the passions are got from 
 sensation and reflection. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Of poiver. 
 
 1. This idea how got. 
 
 2. Power active and passive. 
 
 3. Power includes relation. 
 
 4. The clearest idea of active power 
 had from spirit. 
 
 5. Will and understanding two pow- 
 ers. 
 
 6. Faculties. 
 
 7. Whence the ideas of liberty and 
 necessity. 
 
 8. Liberty, what. 
 
 9. Supposes understanding and will. 
 
 10. Belongs not to volition. 
 
 11. Voluntary opposed to involuntary, 
 not to necessary. 
 
 12. Liberty, what. 
 
 13. Necess’*'’, what. 
 
 14-20. Liberty belongs not to the will. 
 21. But to the agent or man. 
 
 22-24. In respect of willing, a man is 
 not free. 
 
 25-27. The will determined by some- 
 thing without it. 
 
 28. Volition, what. 
 
 29. What determines the will. 
 
 30. Will and desire must not be con 
 founded. 
 
 31. Uneasiness determines the will. 
 
 32. Desire is uneasiness. . — 
 
 S3. The uneasiness of desire deter- 
 mines the will. 
 
 34. This the spring of action. 
 
 35. The greatest positive good deter- 
 mines not the will, but uneasiness. 
 
 36. Because the removal of uneasiness 
 is the first step to happiness. 
 
 37. Because uneasiness alone is pre- 
 sent 
 
22 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 K 
 
 \ 
 
 J 
 
 38. Because all, who allow the joys of 
 heaven possible, pursue them not. 
 But a great uneasiness is never ne- 
 glected. 
 
 39. Desire accompanies all uneasiness. 
 
 40. The most pressing uneasiness na- 
 turally determines the will. 
 
 41. All desire happiness. 
 
 42. Happiness, what. 
 
 4.3. What good is desired, what not. 
 
 44. Why the greatest good is not al- 
 ways desired. 
 
 45. Why, not being desired, it moves 
 not the will. 
 
 46 Due consideration raises desire. 
 
 47. The power to suspend the prose- 
 cution of any desire, makes way for 
 consideration. 
 
 48. To be determined by our own 
 judgment is no restraint to liberty. 
 
 49. The freest agents are so determined. 
 
 50. A constant determination to a pur- 
 suit of happiness no abridgment of 
 liberty. 
 
 51. The necessity of pursuing true hap- 
 piness the foundation of all liberty. 
 
 2. The reason of it. 
 
 3. Government of our passions the 
 right improvement of liberty. 
 
 54, 55. How men come to pursue dif- 
 ferent courses. 
 
 56. How men come to choose ill. 
 
 57. First, from bodily pains. Second- 
 ly, from wrong desires arising from 
 wrong judgment. 
 
 58. 59. Our judgment of present good 
 or evil always right. 
 
 CO. From a wrong judgment of what 
 makes a necessary nart of their 
 happiness. 
 
 61, 62. A more particular account of 
 wrong judgments. 
 
 G3. In comparing present and future. 
 
 G4, G5. Causes of this. 
 
 66. In considering consequences of ac- 
 tions. 
 
 67. Causes of this. 
 
 68. Wrong judgment of what is neces- 
 sary to our happiness. 
 
 69. We can change the agreeableness 
 or disagreeableness in things. 
 
 70. Preference of vice to virtue, a 
 manifest wrong judgment. 
 
 71-73. Recapitulation. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Of mixed modes. 
 
 1. Mixed modes, what. 
 
 2. Made by the mind. 
 
 S. Sometimes got by the explication 
 of their names. 
 
 4. The name ties the parts of the mix- 
 ed modes into one idea. 
 
 5. The cause of making mixed modes 
 
 6. Why words in one language have 
 none answering in another. 
 
 7. And languages change. 
 
 8. Mixed modes, where they exist. 
 
 9. How we get the ideas of mixed 
 modes. 
 
 10. Motion, thinking, and power hava 
 been most modified. 
 
 11. Several words seeming to signify 
 action, signify but the effect. 
 
 12. Mixed modes made also of other 
 ideas. 
 
 \/ CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Of the complex ideas of substances. 
 
 1. Ideas of substances, how made. 
 
 2. Our ideas of substances in general 
 
 3. 6. Of the sorts of substances. 
 
 4. No clear idea of substance in gene 
 ral. 
 
 5. As clear an idea of spirit as body 
 
 7. Powers a great part of our com 
 plex idea of substances. 
 
 8. And why. 
 
 9. Three sorts of ideas make our com- 
 plex ones of substances. 
 
 10. Powers make a great part of out 
 complex ideas of substances. 
 
 11. The now secondary qualities of 
 bodies would disappear, if we could 
 discover the primary ones of their 
 minute parts. 
 
 12. Our faculties of discovery suited to 
 our state. 
 
 13. Conjecture about spirits. 
 
 14. Complex ideas of substances. 
 
 15. Idea of spiritual substances as clear 
 as of bodily substances- 
 
 16. No idea of abstract substance. 
 
 17. The cohesion of solid parts, and 
 impulse, the primary ideas ofbody. 
 
 18. Thinking and molivity the primary 
 ideas of spirit. 
 
 19-21. Spirits capable of motion. 
 
 22. Idea of soul and body compared. 
 
 23-27. Cohesion of solid parts in body, 
 as hard to be conceived as thinking 
 in a soul. 
 
 28, 29. Communication of motion by 
 impulse, or by thought, equally in- 
 telligible. 
 
 30. Ideas of body and spirit compared. 
 
 31. The notion of spirit involves no 
 more difficulty in it than that of 
 body. 
 
 32. We know nothing beyond our 
 simple ideas. 
 
 33-35. Idea of God. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 23 
 
 36. No ideas in our complex one of 
 spirits, but those got from sensa- 
 tion or reflection. 
 
 87. Recapitulation. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Of collective ideas of substances. 
 
 1. One idea. 
 
 2. Made by the power of composing 
 in the mind. 
 
 S. All artificial things are collective 
 ideas. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Of relation. 
 
 2. Relation,* what. 
 
 Relations, without correlative terms 
 not easily perceived. 
 
 3. Some seemingly absolute terms 
 contain relations. 
 
 4. Relation different from the things 
 related. 
 
 5. Change of relation may he without 
 any change in the subject. 
 
 6. Relation only betwixt two things. 
 
 7. All things capable of relation. 
 
 8. The ideas of relation clearer often, 
 than of the subjects related. 
 
 9. Relations all terminate in simple 
 ideas. 
 
 10. Terms leading the mind beyond 
 the subjects denominated, are rela- 
 tive. 
 
 11. Conclusion. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Of cause and effect , and other relations. 
 
 1. Whence their ideas got. 
 
 2. Creation, generation, making al- 
 teration. 
 
 3. 4. Relations of time. 
 
 5. Relations of place and extension. 
 
 6. Absolute terms ofLen stand for re- 
 lations. 
 
 V CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Of identity and diversity 
 
 1. Wherein identity consists. 
 
 2. Identity of substances. 
 
 Identity of modes. 
 
 3. Principium individuationis. 
 
 4. Identity of vegetables. 
 
 5. Identity of animals. 
 
 6. Identity of man. 
 
 7. Identity suited to the idea. 
 
 8. Same man. 
 
 9. Personal identity. 
 
 10. Consciousness makes personal iden- 
 tity. 
 
 11. Personal identity in change of sub- 
 stances. 
 
 12-15. Whether in the change of think- 
 ing substances. 
 
 16. Consciousness makes the same per- 
 son. 
 
 17. Self depends on consciousness. 
 
 18. 20. Objects of reward and punish- 
 ment. 
 
 21, 22. Difference between identity of 
 man and person. 
 
 23-25. Consciousness alone makes self. 
 
 26, 27. Person a forensic term. 
 
 28. The difficulty from ill use of names. 
 
 29. Continued existence makes iden- 
 tity. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 Of other relations. 
 
 1. Proportional. 
 
 2. Natural. 
 
 3. Instituted. 
 
 4. Moral. 
 
 5. Moral good and evil. 
 
 6. Moral rules. 
 
 7. Laws. 
 
 8. Divine law, the measure of sin and 
 duty. 
 
 9. Civil law, the measure of crimes 
 and innocence. 
 
 10, 11. Philosophical law, the measure 
 of virtue and vice. 
 
 12. Its enforcements, commendation, 
 and discredit. 
 
 13. These three laws the rules of mo- 
 ral good and evil. 
 
 14. 15. Morality is the relation of ac- 
 tions to these rules. 
 
 16. The denominations of actions often 
 mislead us. 
 
 17. Relations innumerable. 
 
 18. All relations terminate in simple 
 ideas. 
 
 19. We have ordinarily as clear (or 
 clearer) notions of the relation, as 
 of its foundation. 
 
 20. The notion of the relation is 
 the same, whether the rule any 
 action is compared to be true oi 
 false. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Of clear and distinct, obscu-e and con 
 fused ideas. 
 
 1. Ideas, some clear and distinct, 
 others obscure and confused. 
 
 2. Clear and obscure, explained by 
 sight. 
 
 3. Causes of obscurity. 
 
 4. Distinct and confused, what. 
 
 5. Objection. 
 
 6. Confusion of ideas is in refs» mce 
 to their names. 
 
24 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 7. Defaults which make confusion. 
 First, Complex ideas made up of 
 too few simple ones. 
 
 8. Secondly, Or its simple ones jum- 
 bled disorderly together. 
 
 9. Thirdly, Or are mutable or unde- 
 termined. 
 
 10. Confusion, without reference to 
 names, hardly conceivable. 
 
 11. Confusion concerns always two 
 ideas. 
 
 12. Causes of confusion. 
 
 IS. Complex ideas may be distinct in 
 one part, and confused in another. 
 
 14. This, if not heeded, causes confu- 
 sion in ourarguings. 
 
 15. Instance in eternity. 
 
 1G. Divisibility of matter. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 Of real and fantastical ideas. 
 
 1. Real ideas are conformable to their 
 archetypes. 
 
 2. Simple ideas all real. 
 
 3. Complex ideas are voluntary com- 
 binations. 
 
 4. Mixed modes, made of consistent 
 ideas, are real. 
 
 5. Ideas of substances are real, when 
 they agree with the existence of 
 things. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXr. 
 
 Of adequate and inadequate ideas. 
 
 1. Adequate ideas are such as per- 
 fectly represent their archetypes. 
 
 2. Simple ideas all adequate. 
 
 3. Modes are all adequate. 
 
 4. 5. Modes, in reference to settled 
 
 names, may be inadequate. 
 
 6, 7. Ideas of substances, as referred to 
 real essences, not adequate. 
 
 8-11. Ideas of substances, as collec- 
 tions of their qualities, are all in- 
 adequate. 
 
 12. Simple ideas (Krumt, and adequate. 
 
 13. Ideas of substances are Ihtutto., and 
 inadequate. 
 
 14. Ideas of modes and relations are 
 archetypes, and cannot but be ade- 
 quate. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII, 
 
 Of true and false ideas. 
 
 1. Truth and falsehood properly be- 
 longs to propositions. 
 
 2. Metaphysical truth contains a tacit 
 proposition. 
 
 3. No idea, as an appearance in the 
 mind, true or false. 
 
 4. Ideas referred to any thing, may 
 be true or false. 
 
 5. Other men’s ideas, real existence, 
 and supposed real essences, are 
 what men usually refer their ideas 
 to. 
 
 6-8. The cause of such references. 
 
 9. Simple ideas may be false in re- 
 ference to others of the same name, 
 but are least liable to be so. 
 
 10. Ideas of mixed modes most liable 
 to be false in this sense. 
 
 11. Or at least to be thought false. 
 
 12. And why. 
 
 13. As referred to real existences, none 
 of our ideas can be false, but those 
 of substances. 
 
 14. 16. First, Simple ideas in this sense 
 not false, and why. 
 
 15. Though one man’s idea of blue 
 should be different from another’s. 
 
 17. Secondly, Modes not false. 
 
 18. Thirdly, Ideas of substances, when 
 false. 
 
 19. Truth or falsehood always sup- 
 poses affirmation or negation, 
 
 20. Ideas in themselves neither true 
 nor false. 
 
 21. But are false, first, when judged 
 agreeable to another man’s idea, 
 without being so. 
 
 22. Secondly, when judged to agree to 
 real existence, when they do not. 
 
 23. Thirdly, when judged adequate 
 without being so. 
 
 24. Fourthly, when judged to represenr 
 the real essence. 
 
 25. Ideas, when false. 
 
 26. More properly to be called right 
 or wrong. 
 
 27. Conclusion. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 Of the association of ideas. 
 
 1. Something unreasonable in most 
 men. 
 
 2. Not wholly from self-love. 
 
 3. Nor from education. 
 
 4. A degree of madness. 
 
 5. From a wrong connexion of ideas. 
 
 6. This connexion how made. 
 
 7,8. Some antipathies an effect of it. 
 
 9. A great cause of errors. 
 
 10 — 12. Instances. 
 
 13. Why time cures some disorders in 
 the mind, which reason cannot. 
 
 14-16. Farther instances of the effects 
 of the association of ideas. 
 
 17. Its influence on intellectual habits 
 
 18. Observable in different sects, 
 
 19. Conclusion. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 25 
 
 BOOK III. 
 OF WORDS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Of words or language in general. 
 
 Aect. 1. Man fitted to form articulate 
 sounds. 
 
 2. To make them signs of ideas. 
 
 3,4. To make general signs. 
 
 5. Words ultimately derived from 
 such as signify sensible ideas. 
 
 6. Distribution. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Of the signification of -words. 
 
 1. Words are sensible signs necessary 
 for communication. 
 
 2, 3. Words are the sensible signs of 
 his ideas who uses them. 
 
 4. Words often secretly referred, first, 
 to the ideas in other men’s minds. 
 
 5. Secondly, to the reality of things. 
 
 6. Words by use readily excite ideas. 
 
 7. Words often used without signifi- 
 cation. 
 
 8. Their signification perfectly arbi- 
 trary. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Of general terms. 
 
 1. The greatest part of words general. 
 
 2. For every particular thing to have 
 a name, is impossible. 
 
 3. 4. And useless. 
 
 5. What things have proper names. 
 
 6 — 8. How general words are made. 
 
 9. General natures are nothing but 
 abstract ideas. 
 
 10. Why the genus is ordinarily made 
 use of in definitions. 
 
 11. General and universal are crea- 
 tures of the understanding. 
 
 12. Abstract ideas are the essences of 
 the genera and species. 
 
 13. They are the workmanship of the 
 understanding, but have their 
 similitude in the foundation of 
 things. 
 
 14. Each distinct abstract idea is a dis- 
 tinct essence. 
 
 15. Real and nominal essence. 
 
 16. Constant connexion between the 
 name and nominal essence. 
 
 17. Supposition, that species are dis- 
 tinguished by their real essences, 
 useless. 
 
 18. Real and nominal essence the same 
 in simple ideas and modes, differ- 
 ent in substances. 
 
 D 
 
 19. Essences ingenerable and incor- 
 ruptible. 
 
 20. Recapitulation. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Of the names of simple ideas. 
 
 1. Names of simple ideas, modes, and 
 substances, have each something 
 peculiar. 
 
 2. First, Names of simple ideas and 
 substances, intimate real existence. 
 
 3. Secondly, Names of simple ideas 
 and modes signify always both real 
 and nominal essence. 
 
 4. Thirdly, Names of simple ideas un- 
 definable. 
 
 5. If all were definable, it would be a 
 process in infinitum. 
 
 6. What a definition is. 
 
 7. Simple ideas, why undefinable. 
 
 8,9. Instances, motion. 
 
 10. Light. 
 
 11. Simple ideas, why undefinable fur- 
 ther explained. 
 
 12. 13. The contrary showed in com- 
 plex ideas by instances of a statue 
 and rainbow. 
 
 14. The names of complex ideas when 
 to be made intelligible by words. 
 
 15. Fourthly, Names of simple ideas 
 least doubtful. 
 
 16. Fifthly, Simple ideas have few 
 ascents in linte prtedicamenlali. 
 
 17. Sixthly, Names of simple ideas 
 stand for ideas not at all arbitrary. 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 Of the names of mixed modes and rela- 
 tions. 
 
 1. They stand for abstract ideas as 
 other general names. 
 
 2. First, The ideas they stand for are 
 made by the understanding. 
 
 3. Secondly, Made arbitrarily, and 
 without patterns. 
 
 4. How this is done. 
 
 5. Evidently arbitrary, in that the ides 
 is often before the existence. 
 
 6. Instances, murder, incest, stabbing. 
 
 7. But still subservient to the end of 
 language. 
 
 8. Whereof the intranslatable words 
 of divers languages are a proof. 
 
 9. This shows species to be made for 
 communication. 
 
 10, 11. In mixed modes, it is the namt 
 
26 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 that ties the combination together, 
 and makes it a species. 
 
 12. For the originals of mixed modes, 
 we look no farther than the mind, 
 which also shows them to he the 
 workmanship of the understanding. 
 
 13. Their being made by the under- 
 standing without patterns, shows 
 the reason why they are so com- 
 pounded. 
 
 14. Names of mixed modes stand al- 
 ways for their real essences. 
 
 15. Why their names are usually got 
 before their ideas. 
 
 16. Reason of my being so large on 
 this subject. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Of the names of substances. 
 
 1. The common names of substances 
 stand for sorts. 
 
 2. The essence of each sort is the ab- 
 stract idea. 
 
 3. The nominal and real essence dif- 
 ferent. 
 
 4-6. Nothing essential to individuals. 
 
 7, 8. The nominal essence bounds the 
 species. 
 
 9 Not the real essence which we 
 know not. 
 
 10. Not substantial forms, which we 
 know less. 
 
 11. That the nominal essence is that 
 whereby we distinguish species, 
 farther evident from spirits. 
 
 .2. Whereof there are probably num- 
 berless species. 
 
 13. The nominal essence that of the 
 species, proved from water and ice. 
 
 14 — 18. Difficulties against a certain 
 number of real essences. 
 
 19. Our nominal essences of substan- 
 ces, not perfect collections of pro- 
 perties. 
 
 21. But such a collection as our name 
 stands for. 
 
 22. Our abstract ideas are to us the 
 measures of species. Instances in 
 that of man. 
 
 23. Species not distinguished by gene- 
 ration. 
 
 24. Not by substantial forms. 
 
 25. The spfcific essences are made by 
 the mit’d. 
 
 26. 27. Therefore very various and un- 
 certain. 
 
 28. I3ut not so arbitrary as mixed 
 •'nodes. 
 
 29 Though very imperfect. 
 
 39 Which yet serve for common con- 
 verse 
 
 31. But make several essences signified 
 by the same name. 
 
 32. The more general our ideas are, 
 the more incomplete and partial 
 they' are. 
 
 33. This all accommodated to the end 
 of speech. 
 
 34. Instance in cassiowary. 
 
 35. Men make the species. Instance 
 gold. 
 
 36. Though nature makes the simili- 
 tude. 
 
 37. And continues it in the races of 
 things. 
 
 38. Each abstract idea is an essence. 
 
 39. Genera and species are in order to 
 naming. Instance watch. 
 
 40. Species of artificial things less con- 
 fused than natural. 
 
 41. Artificial things of distinct species. 
 
 42. Substances alone have proper 
 names. 
 
 43. Difficulty to treat of words with 
 words. 
 
 44. 45. Instance of mixed modes in 
 kineah and niouph. 
 
 46, 47. Instance of substances in zahab. 
 
 45. Their ideas imperfect, and there- 
 fore various. 
 
 49. Therefore to fix their species a 
 real essence is supposed. 
 
 50. Which supposition is of no use. 
 
 51. Conclusion. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Of particles. 
 
 1. Particles connect parts or whole 
 sentences together. 
 
 2. In them consists the art of well 
 speaking. 
 
 3. 4. They show what relation the 
 mind gives to its own thoughts. 
 
 5. Instance in but. 
 
 6. This matter but lightly touched 
 here. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Of abstract and concrete terms. 
 
 1. Abstract terms not predicable one 
 of another, and why. 
 
 2. They show the difference of our 
 ideas. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Of the imperfection of -words . 
 
 1. Words are used for recording and 
 communicating our thoughts. 
 
 2. Any words will serve for recording. 
 
 3. Communication by words, civil or 
 philosophical. 
 
 4 The imperfection of words, is the 
 doubtfulness of their signification 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 2 7 
 
 5. Causes of their imperfection. 
 
 6. The names of mixed modes doubt- 
 ful: first, because the ideas they 
 stand for are so complex. 
 
 7. Secondly, Because they have no 
 standards. 
 
 8. Propriety not a sufficient remedy. 
 
 9. The way of learning these names 
 contributes also to their doubtful- 
 ness. 
 
 10. Hence unavoidable obscurity in an- 
 cient authors. 
 
 11. Names of substances of doubtful 
 signification. 
 
 12. Names of substances referred. — 
 First, To real essences that cannot 
 be known. 
 
 13. 14. Secondly, To coexisting quali- 
 ties, which are known but im- 
 perfectly. 
 
 15. With this imperfection they may 
 serve for civil, but not well for 
 philosophical use. 
 
 16. Instance — Liquor of nerves. 
 
 17. Instance — Gold. 
 
 18. The names of simple ideas the least 
 doubtful. 
 
 19. And next to them simple modes. 
 
 20. The most doubtful, are the names 
 of very compounded mixed modes 
 and substances. 
 
 21. Why this imperfection charged 
 upon words. 
 
 22. 23. This should teach us modera- 
 tion in imposing our own sense of 
 old authors. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Of the abuse of words. 
 
 1. Abuse of words. 
 
 2, 3. First, Words without any, or 
 without clear ideas. 
 
 4. Occasioned by learning names be- 
 fore the ideas they belong to. 
 
 5. Secondly, Unsteady application of 
 them. 
 
 6. Thirdly, Affected obscurity by 
 wrong application. 
 
 7. Logic and dispute have much con- 
 tributed to it. 
 
 8. Calling it subtilty 
 
 9. This learning very little benefits 
 society. 
 
 10. But destroys the instruments of 
 knowledge and communication. 
 
 11. As useful as to confound the sound 
 of the letters. 
 
 12. This art has perplexed religion and 
 justice. 
 
 13. And ought not to pass for learning. 
 
 14. Fourthly, Taking them for things. 
 
 15. Instance in matter. 
 
 16. This makes errors lasting. 
 
 17. Fifthly, Setting them for what they 
 cannot signify. 
 
 18. V. g. Putting them for the real es- 
 sences of substances. 
 
 19. Hence we think every change of 
 our idea in substances, not to 
 change the species. 
 
 20. The cause of this abuse, a supposi- 
 tion of nature’s working always re- 
 gularly. 
 
 21. This abuse contains two false sup- 
 positions. 
 
 22. Sixthly, A supposition that words 
 have a certain and evident signifi- 
 cation. 
 
 23. The ends of language. First, To 
 convey our ideas. 
 
 24. Secondly, To do it with quickness. 
 
 25. Thirdly, Therewith to convey the 
 knowledge of things. 
 
 26-31. How men’s words fail in all these. 
 
 32. How in substances. 
 
 33. How in modes and relations. 
 
 34. Seventhly, Figurative speech also 
 an abuse of language. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Of the remedies of the foregoing irnper 
 fections and abuses. 
 
 1. They are worth seeking. 
 
 2. Are not easy. 
 
 3. But yet necessary to philosophy. 
 
 4. Misuse of words, the cause of great 
 errors. 
 
 5. Obstinacy. 
 
 6. And wrangling. 
 
 7. Instance — Bat and bird. 
 
 8. First remedy, T o use no word with- 
 out an idea. 
 
 9. Secondly, To have distinct ideas 
 annexed to them in modes. 
 
 10. And distinct and conformable in 
 substances. 
 
 11. Thirdly, Propriety. 
 
 12. Fourthly, To make known their 
 meaning. 
 
 13. And that in three ways. 
 
 14. First, In simple ideas by synony- 
 mous terms or showing. 
 
 15. Secondly, In mixed modes by de- 
 finition. 
 
 16. Morality capable of demonstration. 
 
 17. Definitions can make moral dis- 
 courses clear. 
 
 18. And is the only way. 
 
 19. Thirdly, In substances by showing 
 and defining. 
 
 20. 21. Ideas of the leading qualities ot 
 substances, are best got by showing 
 
28 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 22. The ideas of their powers best by 
 definition. 
 
 £3. A reflection on the knowledge of 
 spirits. 
 
 24. Ideas also of substances must be 
 conformable to things. 
 
 25. Not easy to be made so. 
 
 26. Fifthly, By constancy in their sig- 
 nification. 
 
 27. When the variation is to be ex- 
 plained. 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 OF KNOWLEDGE AND OPINION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Of knowledge in general. 
 
 Sect. 1. Our knowledge conversant 
 about our ideas. 
 
 2. Knowledge is the perception of the 
 agreement or disagreement of two 
 ideas. 
 
 3. This agreement fourfold. 
 
 4. First, Of identity or diversity. 
 
 5. Secondly, Relation. 
 
 6. Thirdly, Of coexistence. 
 
 7. Fourthly, Of real existence. 
 
 8. Knowledge actual or habitual. 
 
 9. Habitual knowledge twofold. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Of the degrees of our knowledge. 
 
 1. Intuitive. 
 
 2. Demonstrative. 
 
 3. Depends on proofs. 
 
 4. But not so easy. 
 
 5. Not without precedent doubt. 
 
 6. Not so clear. 
 
 7. Each step must have intuitive evi- 
 dence. 
 
 8. Hence the mistake ex pracognitis 
 et prseconcessis. 
 
 9. Demonstration not limited to quan- 
 tity. 
 
 10 — 13. Why it has been so thought. 
 
 14. Sensitive knowledge of particular 
 existence. 
 
 15. Knowledge not always clear, where 
 the ideas are so. 
 
 V CHAPTER III. 
 
 Of the extent of human knowledge. 
 
 1. First, No farther than we have ideas. 
 
 2. Secondly, No farther than we can 
 perceive their agreement or disa- 
 greement. 
 
 S. Thirdly, Intuitive knowledge ex- 
 tends itself not to all the relations 
 of all our ideas. 
 
 4. Fourthly, Not demonstrative know- 
 ledge. 
 
 5. Fifthly, Sensitive knowledge nar- 
 
 __ rower than either. 
 
 ■.6.' Sixthly, Our knowledge therefore 
 narrower than our ideas. 
 
 7. How far our knowledge reaches. 
 
 8. First, Our knowledge of identity 
 and diversity, as far as our ideas. 
 
 9. Secondly, Of coexistence a very 
 little way. 
 
 10. Because the connexion between 
 most simple ideas is unknown. 
 
 11. Especially of secondary qualities. 
 
 12-14. And farther, because all connex- 
 ion between any secondary and pri- 
 mary qualities is undiscoverable. 
 
 15. Of repugnancy to coexist larger. 
 
 16. Of the coexistence of powers a very 
 little way. 
 
 17. Of spirits yet narrower. 
 
 18. Thirdly, Of other relations, it is not 
 easy to say how far. Morality ca- 
 pable of demonstration. 
 
 19. Two things have made moral ideas 
 thought incapable of demonstra- 
 tion. Their complexedness and 
 want of sensible representations. 
 
 20. Remedies of those difficulties. 
 
 21. Fourthly, Of real existence, we 
 have an intuitive knowledge of our 
 own, demonstrative of God’s, sen- 
 sitive of some few other things. 
 
 22. Our ignorance great. 
 
 23. First, One cause of it want of ideas, 
 either such a3 we have no concep- 
 tion of, or such as particularly we 
 have not. 
 
 24. Because of their remoteness, or, 
 
 25. Because of their minuteness. 
 
 26. Hence no science of bodies. 
 
 27. Much less of spirits. 
 
 28. Secondly, Want of a discoverable 
 connexion between ideas we have. 
 
 29. Instances. 
 
 30. Thirdly, Want of tracing our ideas. 
 
 31. Extent in respect of universality. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Of the reality of our knowledge. 
 
 1. Objection, knowledge placed in 
 ideas, may be all bare vision. 
 
 2, 3. Answer, not so, where ideas 
 agree with things. 
 
 4. As, first, all simple ideas do. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 
 5. Secondly, All complex ideas, ex- 
 cept of substances. 
 
 6. Hence the reality of mathematical 
 knowledge. 
 
 7. And of moral. 
 
 8. Existence not required to make it 
 real. 
 
 9. Nor will it be less true or certain, 
 because moral ideas are of our own 
 making and naming. 
 
 10. Misnaming disturbs not the cer- 
 tainty of the knowledge. 
 
 tl. Ideas of substances have their ar- 
 chetypes without us. 
 
 12. So far as they agree with those, so 
 far our knowledge concerning them 
 is real. 
 
 13. In our inquiries about substances, 
 we inust consider ideas, and not 
 confine our thoughts to names or 
 species supposed set out by names. 
 
 14. 15. Objection against a changeling 
 being something between man and 
 beast, answered. 
 
 16. Monsters. 
 
 17. Words and species. 
 
 15. Recapitulation. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Of truth in general . 
 
 1. What truth is. 
 
 2. A right joining or separating of 
 signs; i. e. ideas or words. 
 
 3. Which makes mental or verbal pro- 
 positions. 
 
 4. Mental propositions are very hard 
 to be treated of. 
 
 5. Being nothing but joining, or se- 
 parating ideas without words. 
 
 6. When mental propositions contain 
 real truth, and when verbal. 
 
 7. Objection against verbal truth, that 
 thus it may be all chimerical. 
 
 8. Answered, Real truth is about ideas 
 agreeing to things. 
 
 9. Falsehood is the joining of names 
 otherwise than their ideas agree. 
 
 10. General propositions to be treated 
 of more at large. 
 
 It. Moral^ and metaphysical truth. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Of universal propositions, their truth 
 and certainty, 
 
 1. Treating of words, necessary to 
 knowledge. 
 
 2. General truths, hardly to be under- 
 stood, but in verbal propositions. 
 
 3. Certainty two-fold, of truth and of 
 knowledge. 
 
 4 . No proposition can be known to be 
 
 true, where the essence of each spe 
 cies mentioned is not known. 
 
 5. This more particularly concerns 
 substances. 
 
 6. The truth of few universal propo- 
 sitions concerning substances, is to 
 be known. 
 
 7. Because coexistence of ideas in few 
 cases is to be known. 
 
 8. 9. Instance in gold. 
 
 10. As far as any such coexistence can 
 be known, so far universal proposi- 
 tions may be certain. But this will 
 go but a little way, because, 
 
 11, 12. The qualities which make our 
 complex ideas of substances depend 
 mostly on external, remote, and 
 unperceived causes. 
 
 13. Judgment may reach farther, but 
 that is not knowledge. 
 
 14. What is requisite for our know- 
 ledge of substances. 
 
 15. Whilst our ideas of substances con- 
 tain not their real constitutions, we 
 can make but few general certain 
 propositions concerning them. 
 
 16. Wherein lies the general certainty 
 of propositions. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Of maxims. 
 
 1. They are self-evident 
 
 2. Wherein that self-evidence consists. 
 
 3. Self-evidence not peculiar to re- 
 ceived axioms. 
 
 4. First, As to identity and diversity, 
 all propositions are equally self- 
 evident. 
 
 5. Secondly, In coexistence we have 
 few self-evident propositions. 
 
 6. Thirdly, In other relations we may 
 have. 
 
 7. Fourthly, Concerning real exist- 
 ence, we have none. 
 
 8. These axioms do not much influ- 
 our other knowledge. 
 
 9. Because they are not the truths 
 the first known. 
 
 10. Because on them the other parts of 
 our knowledge do not depend. 
 
 11. What use these general maxims 
 have. 
 
 12. Maxims, if care be not taken in 
 the use of words, may prove con- 
 tradictions. 
 
 13. Instance in vacuum. 
 
 14. They prove not the existence of 
 things without us. 
 
 15. Their application dangerous about 
 complex ideas. 
 
 16 — 18. Instance in man. 
 
30 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 19. Little use of these maxims in proofs 
 where we have clear arul distinct 
 ideas. 
 
 20. Their use dangerous, where our 
 ideas are confused. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Of trifling propositions . 
 
 1. Some propositions bring no in- 
 crease to our knowledge. 
 
 2, 3. As, first, identical propositions. 
 
 4. Secondly, When apart of any com- 
 plex idea is predicated of the whole. 
 
 5. As part of the definition of the 
 term defined. 
 
 f). Instance — Man and palfry. 
 
 7. For this teaches hut the significa- 
 tion of words. 
 
 8. But no real knowledge. 
 
 9. General propositions concerning 
 substances are often trifling. 
 
 10. And why. 
 
 11. Thirdly, Using words variously is 
 trifling with them. 
 
 12. Marks ofverbal propositions. First, 
 Predicated in abstract. 
 
 13. Secondly, A part of the definition 
 predicated of any term. 
 
 >' CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Of our knowledge of existence. 
 
 1. General certain propositions con- 
 cern not existence. 
 
 2. A threefold knowledge of existence. 
 
 3. Our knowledge of our own exist- 
 ence is intuitive. 
 
 ^ CHAPTER X. 
 
 Of the existence of a God. 
 
 1. We are capable of knowing cer- 
 tainly that there is a God. 
 
 2. Man knows that he himself is. 
 
 3. He knows also, that nothing can- 
 not produce a being, therefore 
 something eternal. 
 
 4. That eternal Being must be most 
 powerful. 
 
 5. And most knowing. 
 
 6. And therefore God. 
 
 7. Our idea of a most perfect being, 
 not the sole proof of a God. 
 
 S. Something from eternity. 
 
 9 Two sorts of beings, cogitative and 
 incogitative. 
 
 1') Incogitative being cannot produce 
 a cogitative. 
 
 11, 12. Therefore, there has been an 
 eternal wisdom. 
 
 13. Whether material or no. 
 
 14. Not material, First, Because every 
 ^article of matter is not cogitative. 
 
 15. Secondly, One particle alone of 
 matter cannot he cogitative. 
 
 16. Thirdly, A system ol incogitative 
 matter cannot be cogitative. 
 
 17. Whether in motion or at rest. 
 
 18. 19. Matter not coeternal with an 
 eternal mind. 
 
 * CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Of the knowledge of the existence of 
 other things. 
 
 1. Is to be had only by sensation. 
 
 2. Instance — Whiteness of this paper. 
 
 3. This, though not so certain as 
 demonstration, yet may be called 
 knowledge, and proves the exist- 
 ence of things without us. 
 
 4. First, Because we cannot hi|ve them 
 but by the inlets of the senses. 
 
 5. Secondly, Because an idea from ac- 
 tual sensation, and another from me- 
 mory, are very distinct perceptions. 
 
 6. Thirdly, Pleasure or pain, which 
 accompanies actual sensation, ac- 
 companies not the returning of those 
 ideas without the external objects. 
 
 7. Fourthly, Our senses assist one 
 another’s testimony of the exist- 
 ence of outward things. 
 
 8. This certainty is as great as our 
 condition needs. 
 
 9. But reaches no farther than actual 
 sensation. 
 
 10. Folly to expect demonstration in 
 every thing. 
 
 11. Pastexistence isknown by memory. 
 
 12. The existence of spirits not know, 
 able. 
 
 13. Particular propositions concerning 
 existence are knowable. 
 
 14. And general propositions concern- 
 ing abstract ideas. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Of the improvement of our knowledge. 
 
 1. Knowledge is not from maxims. 
 
 2. The occasion of that opinion. 
 
 3. But from the comparing clear and 
 distinct ideas. 
 
 4. Dangerous to build upon precarious 
 principles. 
 
 5. This no certain way to truth. 
 
 6. But to compare clear complete ideas 
 under steady names. 
 
 7. The true method of advancing 
 knowledge is by considering our 
 abstract ideas. 
 
 8. By which morality also may be 
 made clearer. 
 
 9. But knowledge of bodies is to be 
 improved only by experience. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 31 
 
 10. This may procure us convenience, 
 not science. 
 
 11. We are fitted for moral knowledge 
 and natural improvements. 
 
 12. But must beware of hypotheses and 
 wrong principles. 
 
 13 The true use of hypotheses. 
 
 14. Clear and distinct ideas with set- 
 tled names, and the finding of those 
 which show their agreement or 
 disagreement, are the ways to en- 
 large our knowledge. 
 
 5. Mathematics an instance of it. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Some other considerations concerning 
 our knoxvledge. 
 
 1. Our knowledge partly necessary, 
 partly voluntary. 
 
 2. The application voluntary; but we 
 know as things are, not as we please. 
 
 3. Instances in number, and in natural 
 religion. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Of judgment. 
 
 1. Our knowledge being short, we 
 want something else. 
 
 2. What use to be made of this twi- 
 light estate. 
 
 3. Judgment supplies the want of 
 knowledge. 
 
 4. Judgment is the presuming things 
 to be so, without perceiving it. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Of p-obability. 
 
 1. Probability is the appearance of 
 agreement upon fallible proots. 
 
 2. It is to supply the want of know- 
 ledge. 
 
 3. Being that which makes us pre- 
 sume things to be true, before we 
 know them to be so. 
 
 4. The grounds of probability are two; 
 conformity with our own expe- 
 rience, or the testimony of others’ 
 experience. 
 
 5. In this all the agreements, pro and 
 con, ought to be examined before 
 we come to a judgment. 
 
 6. They being capable ofgreat variety. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Of the degrees of assent. 
 
 1. Our assent ought to be regulated 
 by the grounds of probability. 
 
 2. These cannot be always all actually 
 
 n view, and then we must content 
 ourselves with the remembrance 
 that we once saw ground for such 
 a degree of assent. 
 
 3. The ill consequence of this, if our 
 former judgment were not rightly 
 made. 
 
 4. The right use of it is mutual chari- 
 ty and forbearance 
 
 5. Probability is either of matter of 
 4pct or speculation. 
 
 6. The concurrent experience of all 
 other men with ours, produces as- 
 surance approaching to knowledge. 
 
 7. Unquestionable testimony and ex- 
 perience for the most part produce 
 confidence. 
 
 8. Fair testimony, and the nature of 
 the thing indifferent, produces also 
 confident belief. 
 
 9. Experience and testimonies clash- 
 ing, infinitely vary the degrees ot 
 probability. 
 
 10. Traditional testimonies, the farther 
 removed, the less their proof. 
 
 11. Yet history is ofgreat use. 
 
 12. In things which sense cannot dis- 
 cover, analogy is the great rule of 
 probability. 
 
 13. One case where contrary experi- 
 ence lessens not the testimony. 
 
 14. The bare testimony of revelation 
 is the highest certainty. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Of reason. 
 
 1. Various significations of the word 
 reason. 
 
 2. Wherein reasoning consists. 
 
 3. Its four parts. 
 
 4. Syllogism not the great instrument 
 of reason. 
 
 5. Helps little in demonstration, less 
 in probability. 
 
 G. Serves not to increase our know- 
 ledge, but fence with it. 
 
 7. Other helps should be sought 
 
 8. We reason about particulars. 
 
 9. First, Reason fails us for want of 
 ideas. 
 
 10. Secondly, Because of obscure and 
 imperfect ideas. 
 
 11. Thirdly, For want of intermediate 
 ideas. 
 
 12. Fourthly, Because of wrong prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 13. Fifthly, Because of doubtful terms. 
 
 14. Our highest degree of knowledge 
 is intuitive without reasoning. 
 
 15. The next is demonstration by rea- 
 
 1G. To supply the narrowness of this, 
 we have nothing but judgment upon 
 probable reasoning. 
 
 17. Intuition, demonstration, judgment. 
 
32 
 
 OF HUH1AN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 J8. Consequences of words, and conse- 
 quences of ideas. 
 
 19. Four sorts of arguments: first. Ad 
 ve-ecundiam. 
 
 20. Secondly, Ad ignorantiam. 
 
 2t. Thirdly, Ad hominem. 
 
 22. Fourthly, Ad judicium- , 
 
 23. Above, contrary, and according to 
 reason. 
 
 24. Reason and faith not opposite. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Of faith and reason, and their distinct 
 provinces. 
 
 1. Necessary to know their bounda- 
 ries. 
 
 2. Faith and reason what, as contra- 
 distinguished. 
 
 3. No new simple idea can be con- 
 veyed by traditional revelation. 
 
 4. Traditional revelation may make 
 us know propositions knowable also 
 by reason, but not with the same 
 certainty that reason doth. 
 
 5. Revelation cannot be admitted 
 against the clear evidence of reason. 
 
 6. Traditional revelation much less. 
 
 7. Things above reason. 
 
 8. Or not contrary to reason, if reveal- 
 ed, are matter of faith. 
 
 9. Revelation, in matters where rea- 
 son cannot judge, or hut probably, 
 ought to be hearkened to. 
 
 10. In matters where reason can afford 
 certain knowledge, that is to be 
 hearkened to. 
 
 11. If the boundaries be set between 
 faith and reason, no enthusiasm, or 
 extravagancy in religion, can be 
 contradicted. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Of enthusiasm. 
 
 1. Love of truth necessary. 
 
 2. A forwardness to dictate, whence. 
 
 3. Force of enthusiasm. 
 
 4. Reason and revelation. 
 
 5. Rise of enthusiasm. 
 
 6. 7. Enthusiasm. 
 
 8, 9. Enthusiasm mistaken for seeing 
 and feeling. 
 
 10. Enthusiasm how to be discovered. 
 
 11. Enthusiasm fails of evidence that 
 the proposition is from God. 
 
 12. Firmness of persuasion no proof 
 that any proposition is from God. 
 
 13. Light in the mind, what. 
 
 14. Revelation must be judged of by 
 reason. 
 
 15. 16. Belief no proof of revelation. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Of -wrong assent, or error. 
 
 1. Causes of error. 
 
 2. First, Want of proofs. 
 
 3. Obj. What shall become of those 
 who want them, answered. 
 
 4. People hindered from inquiry. 
 
 5. Secondly, Want of skill to use 
 them. 
 
 6. Thirdly, Want of will to use them. 
 
 7. Fourthly, Wrong measures of pro- 
 bability: whereof. 
 
 8 — 10. First, Doubtful propositions 
 taken from principles. 
 
 11. Secondly, Received hypotheses. 
 
 12. Thirdly, Predominant passions. 
 
 13. The means of evading probabili- 
 ties, 1st, Supposeil fallacy. 
 
 14. 2dly, Supposed arguments for the 
 contrary. 
 
 15. What probabilities determine the 
 assent. 
 
 16. Where it is in our power to sus- 
 pend it. 
 
 17. Fourthly, Authority. 
 
 18. Men not in so many errors as Is 
 imagined. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Of the division of the sciences. 
 
 1. Three sorts. 
 
 2. First, Physica. 
 
 3. Secondly, Practica. 
 
 4. Thirdly, Sa^tstaiTOtii. 
 
 5. This is the first division of the ob- 
 jects of knowledge. 
 
OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 ON INNATE NOTIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Sect. 1 . An inquiry into the understanding, pleasant and useful . — • 
 Since it is the understanding' that sets man above the rest of sensible 
 beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has over 
 them; it is certainly a subject, even from its nobleness, worth our labour to 
 inquire into. The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and 
 perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and 
 pains to set it at a distance, and make it its own object. But whatever 
 be the difficulties that lie in the way of this inquiry, whatever it be that 
 keeps us so much in the dark to ourselves, sure I am, that all the light we 
 can let in upon our own minds, all the acquaintance we can make with our 
 own understandings, will not only be very pleasant, but bring us great ad- 
 vantage, in directing our thoughts in the search of other things. 
 
 Sect. 2. Design. — This, therefore, being my purpose, to inquire into 
 the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with the 
 grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent; I shall not at present 
 meddle with the physical consideration of the mind, or trouble myself to 
 examine wherein its essence consists, or by what motions of our spirits, 
 or alterations of our bodies, we come to have any sensation by our organs, 
 or any ideas in our understandings; and whether those ideas do, in their 
 formation, any, or all of them, depend on matter or no : these are specu- 
 lations, which, however curious and entertaining, I shall decline, as lying 
 out of my way, in the design I am now upon. It shall suffice to my present 
 purpose, to consider the discerning faculties of a man, as they are employ- 
 ed about the objects which they have to do with : and I shall imagine I have 
 not wholly misemployed myself in the thoughts I shall have on this occa- 
 sion, if, in this historical, plain method, I can give any account of the ways 
 whereby our understandings~come " to attain those notions of things we 
 RaveV and can set down any measures of the certainty of our knowledge, 
 orthegrounds of those persuasions, which are to be found amongst men, so 
 various, different, and wholly contradictory ; and yet asserted somewhere 
 or other with such assurance and confidence, that he that shall take a 
 view of the opinions of mankind, observe their opposition, and at the same 
 time consider the fondness and devotion wherewith they are embraced, the 
 resolution and eagerness wherewith they are maintained, may perhaps have 
 reason to suspect, that either there is no such thing as truth at all, or that 
 mankind hath no sufficient means to attain a certain knowledge of it. 
 
 E 
 
34 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book I. 
 
 Sect. 3. Method. — It is, therefore, worth while to search out the bounds 
 between opinion and knowledge; and examine by what measures, in 
 tilings, whereof we have no certain knowledge, we ought to regulate our 
 assent, and moderate our persuasionsr In order whereunto, I shall pursue 
 this following method. 
 
 First, I shall inquire into the original of those ideas, notions, or whatever 
 else you please to call them, which a man observes, and is conscious to 
 himself he has in his mind; and the ways whereby the understanding 
 comes to be furnished with them. 
 
 Secondly, I shall endeavour to show what knowledge the understanding 
 hath by those ideas ; and the certainty, evidence, and extent of it. 
 
 Thirdly, I shall make some inquiry into the nature and grounds of faith 
 or opinion ; whereby I mean that assent which we give to any proposition 
 as true, of whose truth yet we have no certain knowledge : and here we 
 shall have occasion to examine the reasons and degrees of assent. 
 
 Sect. 4. Useful to know the extent of our comprehension. — If, by this 
 inquiry into the nature of the understanding, I can discover the powers 
 thereof, how far they reach, to what things they are in any degree propor- 
 tionate, and where they fail us; I suppose it may be of use to prevail with 
 the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things exceed- 
 ing its comprehension ; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether ; 
 and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things, which, upon examina- 
 tion, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities. We .should not 
 then, perhaps, be so forward, out of an affectation of a universal knowledge, 
 to raise questions, and perplex ourselves and others with disputes about 
 things to which our understandings are not suited, and of which we can- 
 not frame in our minds any clear or distinct perceptions, or whereof (as it 
 has, perhaps, too often happened) we have not any notions at all. If we 
 can find out how far the understanding can extend its views, how far it has 
 faculties to attain certainty, and in what cases it can only judge and guess, 
 we may learn to content ourselves with what is attainable by us in this 
 state. 
 
 Sect. 5. Our capacity suited to our state and concerns. — For, though 
 the comprehension of our understandings comes exceeding short of the 
 vast extent of things, yet we shall have cause enough to magnify the boun- 
 tiful Author of our being, for that proportion and degree of knowledge he 
 nas bestowed on us, so far above all the rest of the inhabitants of this our 
 mansion. Men have reason to be well satisfied with what God hath 
 thought fit for them, since he has given them (as St. Peter says) 
 
 fwiiv ehs-lCuav, whatsoeveris necessary for the conveniences of life, 
 and information of virtue $ and has put within the reach of their discovery the 
 comfortable provision for this life, and the way that leads to a better. 
 Howv«hort soever their knowledge may come of an universal or perfect 
 comprehension of whatsoever is, it yot secures their great concernments, 
 that they have light enough to lead them to the knowledge of their Maker, 
 and the sight of their own duties. Men may find matter sufficient to busy 
 their heads, and employ their hands with variety, delight, and satisfaction , 
 if they will not boldly quarrel with their own constitution, and throw away 
 the blessings their hands are filled with, because they are not big enough 
 to grasp every thing. We shall not have much reason to complain of the 
 narrowness of our mifids, if we will but employ them about what may 
 be of use to us : for of that they are very capable : and it will be an unpar 
 donable, as well as childish peevishness, if we undervalue the advantages 
 of our knowledge, and neglect to improve it to the ends for which it was 
 given us, because there are some things that are set out of the reach of it. 
 
 It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant, who would not at- 
 tend his business by candlelight, to plead that he had not broad sunshine. 
 The candle that is set up in us, shines bright enough for all our purposes 
 
£ 
 
 Ch. 1. INTRODUCTION. S5 
 
 The discoveries we can make with this, ought to satisfy us . and we shall 
 then use our understanding right, when we entertain all objects in that 
 way and proportion that they are suited to our faculties, and upon those 
 grounds they are capable of being proposed to us ; and not peremptorily or 
 intemperately require demonstration, and demand certainty, where proba- 
 bility only is to be had, and which is sufficient to govern all our concern- 
 ments. If we will disbelieve every thing, because we cannot certainly 
 know all things, we shall do much-what as wisely as he, who would not 
 use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly. 
 
 Sect. 6. Knowledge of our capacity a cure of scepticism and idleness . — 
 When we know our own strength, we shall the better know what to un- 
 dertake with hopes of success ; and when we have well surveyed the pow- 
 ers of our own minds, and made some estimate what we may expect from 
 them, we shall not be inclined either to sit still, and not set our thoughts 
 on work at all, in despair of knowing any thing; or, on the other side, ques- 
 tion every thing, and disclaim all knowledge, because some things are not 
 to be understood. It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of 
 his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean. It 
 is well he knows that it is long enough to reach the bottom, at such places 
 as are necessary to direct his voyage, and caution him against running 
 upon shoals that may ruin him. ^ Our business here is hot to know all things, 
 but those which concern our conctaEtf If we can find out those measures 
 whereby a rational creature, put in that state in which man is in, in this world, 
 may and ought to govern his opinions, and actions depending thereon, we 
 need not to be troubled that some other things escape our knowledge. 
 
 Sect. 7. Occasion of this essay. — This was that which gave the first rise 
 to this essay concerning the understanding. For I thought that the first 
 step towards satisfying several inquiries the mind of man was very apt to 
 run into, was to take a survey of our own understanding, examine our 
 own powers, and see to what things they were adapted. Till that was 
 done, I suspected we began at the wrong end, and in vain sought for satis- 
 faction in a quiet and sure possession of truths that most concerned us, 
 whilst we let loose our thoughts into the vast ocean of being ; as if all that 
 boundless extent were the natural and unbounded possession of our under- 
 standings, wherein there was nothing exempt from its decisions, or that 
 escaped its comprehension. Thus men, extending their inquiries beyond 
 their capacites, and letting their thoughts wander into those depths where 
 they can find no sure footing, it is no wonder that they raise questions, 
 and multiply disputes, which, never coming to any clear resolution, are 
 proper only to continue and increase their doubts, and to confirm them at 
 last in perfect scepticism. Whereas, were the capacities of our understand- 
 ings well considered, the extent of our knowledge once discovered, and the 
 horizon found, which sets the bounds between the enlightened and dark 
 parts of things, between what is and what is not comprehensible by us; 
 men would, perhaps, with less scruple acquiesce in the avowed ignorance of 
 the one, and employ their thoughts and discourse with more advantage and 
 satisfaction in the other. 
 
 Sect. 8. What idea stands for . — Thus much I thought necessary to say 
 concerning the occasion of this inquiry into human understanding. But, 
 before I proceed on to what I have thought on this subject, I must here in 
 the entrance beg pardon of my reader for the frequent use ofthe word “idea,” 
 which he will find in the following treatise. It being that term” which, I 
 think, serves best to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understand- 
 ing when a man thinks ; I have used it to express whatever is meant by 
 phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed 
 about in thinking; and I could not avoid frequently using it(l). 
 
 (1) This modest apology of our author could not procure him the free Use 
 of the word idea: but great offence has been taken at it, and it has been censured 
 
36 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 1, 
 
 I presume it will be easily granted me, that there are such ideas in men’s 
 minds; every one is conscious of them in himself, and men’s words and ac- 
 tions will satisfy him that they are in others. 
 
 Our first inquiry then shall be, how they come into the mind. 
 
 as of dangerous consequence: to which you may see what he answers. “The 
 world,” saith the bishop of Worcester,* “hath been strangely amused with ideas 
 of late, and we have been told, that strange things might be done by the help of 
 ideas; and yet these ideas, at last, come to be only common notions of things, 
 which we must make use of in our reasoning. You [i. e. the author of the 
 Essay concerning Human Understanding) say in that chapter about the exis- 
 tence of God, you thought it most proper to express yourself in the most usual 
 and familiar way, by common words and expressions. I would you had done so 
 quite through your book; for then you had never given that occasion to the ene- 
 mies of our faith, to take up your new way of ideas, as an effectual battery (as 
 they imagined) against the mysteries of the Christian faith. But you might have 
 enjoyed the satisfaction of your ideas long enough before I had taken notice of 
 them, unless I had found them employed about doing mischief.” 
 
 To which our author repliesf, It is plain, that that which your lordship appre- 
 hends, in my book, may be of dangerous consequence to the article which your 
 lordship has endeavoured to defend, is my introducing neiv terms; and that 
 which your lordship instances in, is that of ideas. And the reason your lord- 
 ship gives in every of these places, why your lordship has such an apprehension 
 of ideas, that they may be of dangerous consequence to that article of faith which 
 your lordship has endeavoured to defend, is because they have been applied to 
 such purposes. And I might (your lordship says) have enjoyed the satisfaction 
 of my ideas long enough before you had taken notice of them, unless your lord- 
 ship had found them employed in doing mischief. Which, at last, as I humbly 
 conceive, amounts to thus much, and no more, viz: That your lordship fears 
 ideas, i. e. the term ideas, may, some time or other, prove of very dangerous 
 consequence to what your lordship has endeavoured to defend, because they 
 have been made use of in arguing against it. For I am sure your lordship does 
 not mean, that you apprehend the things signified by ideas, may be of dangerous 
 consequence to the article of faith your lordship endeavours to defend, because 
 they have been made use of against it: for (besides that your lordship mentions 
 terms) that would be to expect that those who oppose that article, should op- 
 pose it without any thoughts; for the things signified by ideas, are nothing but 
 the immediate objects of our minds in thinking: so that unless any one can op- 
 pose the article your lordship defends, without thinking on something, he must 
 use the things signified by ideas; for he that thinks, must have some immediate 
 object of his mind in thinking, i. e. must have ideas. 
 
 But whether it he the name, or the thing; ideas in sound, or ideas in significa- 
 tion; that your lordship apprehends may be of dangerous consequence to that ar- 
 ticle of faith -which your lordship endeavours to defend; it seems to me, I will 
 not say a ne-w way of reasoning (for that belongs to me), but were it not your 
 lordship’s, I should think it a very extraordinary way of reasoning, to write 
 against a book, wherein your lordship acknowledges they are not used to bad 
 purposes, nor employed to do mischief, only because you find that ideas are, 
 by those who oppose your lordship, employed to do mischief; and so apprehend 
 they may be of dangerous consequence to the article your lordship has en- 
 gaged in the defence of. For whether ideas as terms, or ideas as the immediate 
 objects of the mind signified by those terms, may be, in your lordship’s appre- 
 hension, of dangerous consequence to that article ; I do not see how your lord- 
 ship’s writing against the notions of ideas, as stated in my book, will at all hinder 
 your opposers from employing them in doing mischief, as before. 
 
 However, be that as it will, so it is, that your lordship apprehends these net* 
 terms, these ideas, with which the world hath of late been so strangely amused, 
 
 * Answer to Mr Locke’s First Letter. 
 
 t In his Second Letter to the Bishop of Worcester 
 
Ch. 1. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 37 
 
 (though at Mst they come to be only common notions of things, as your lordship 
 owns, ) may be of clangorous consequence to that article. 
 
 My lord, if any, in answer to your lordship’s sermons, and in other pamphlets, 
 wherein your lordship complains they have talked so much of ideas, have been 
 troublesome to your lordship with that term, it is not strange that your lordship 
 should be tired with that sound: but how natural soever it be to our weak con- 
 stitutions to be offended with any sound wherewith an importunate din hath been 
 made about our ears; yet, my lord, I know your lordship has a better opinion of 
 the articles of our faith, than to think any of them can be overturned, or so much 
 as shaken, with a breath formed into any sound or term whatsoever. 
 
 Names are but the arbitrary marks of conceptions; and so they be sufficiently 
 appropriated to them in their use, I know no other difference any of them have 
 in particular, but as they are of easy or difficult pronunciation, and of a more or 
 less pleasant sound; and what particular antipathies there maybe in men to some 
 of them, upon that account, it is not easy to be foreseen. This, l am sure, no term 
 whatsoever in itself, bears one more than another, any opposition to truth of any 
 kind; they are only propositions that do or can oppose the truth of any article or 
 doctrine; and thus no tei-m is privileged from being set in opposition to truth. 
 
 There is no word to be found, which may not be brought into a proposition, 
 wherein the most sacred and most evident truths may be opposed; but that is not 
 a fault in the term, but him that uses it. And therefore I cannot easily persuade 
 myself (whatever your lordship hath said in the heat of your concern) that you 
 have bestowed so much pains upon my book, because the word idea is so much 
 used there. For though upon my saying, in my chapter about the existence 
 of God, ‘that I scarce used the word idea in that chapter,’ your lordship 
 ■wishes that I had done so quite through my book; yet I must rather look upon 
 that asa compliment to me, wherein yourlordship wished that my book had been 
 all through suited to vulgar readers, not used to that and the like terms, than 
 that your lordship has such an apprehension of the word idea; or that there is 
 any such harm in the use of it, instead of the word notion (with which your lord- 
 ship seems to take it to agree in signification,) that your lordship would think it 
 worth your while to spend any part of your valuable time and thoughts about my 
 book, for having the word idea so often in it; for this would be to make your 
 lordship to write only against an impropriety of speech. I own to your lord- 
 ship, it is a great, condescension in your lordship to have done it, if that word 
 have such a share in what your lordship has writ against my book, as some 
 expressions would persuade one; and I would, for the satisfaction of yourlord- 
 ship, change the term of idea for a better, if your lordship, or any one, could 
 help me to it; for, that notion will not so well stand for every immediate object 
 of the mind in thinking, as idea does, I have (as I guess) somewhere given 
 a reason in my book, by showing that the term notion is more peculiarly appro- 
 priated to a certain sort of those objects, which I call mixed modes: and I think 
 it would not sound altogether so well, to say, the notion of red, and the notion of 
 a horse; as the idea of red, and the idea of a horse. But if any one thiuks it will, 
 I contend not; for I have no fondness for, nor any antipathy to, any particular 
 articulate sounds; nor do I think there is any spell or fascination in any of them. 
 
 But be the word idea proper or improper, I do not see how it is the better or 
 the worse, because ill men have made use of it, or because it has been made use 
 of to bad purposes; for if that be a reason to condemn, or lay it by, we must lay 
 by the terms scripture, reason, perception, distinct , clear, kc. Nay, the name 
 *f God himself will not escape; for I do not think any one of these, or any other 
 term, can be produced, which hath not been made use of by such men, and to 
 such purposes. And, therefore, if the Unitarians, in their late pamphlets, have 
 talked very much of, and strangely amused the -world -with ideas, I cannot believe 
 your lordship will think that word one jot the worst, or the more dangerous, 
 because they use it; any more than, for their use of them, you will think reason 
 or scripture terms ill or dangerous. And therefore what your lordship says, tfcr*' 
 I might have enjoyed the satisfaction of my ideas long enough before your lordship 
 had taken notice of them, unless you had found them employed in doing mischief, 
 will, I presume, when your lordship has considered again of this matter, prevail 
 with your lordship, to let me ev.joy still the satisfaction I take in my ideas, i. e. 
 
38 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 1 
 
 as much satisfaction as I can take in so small a matter, as is the using of a proper 
 term, notwithstanding it should be employed by others in doing mischief. 
 
 For, my lord, if 1 should leave it wholly out of my book and substitute the 
 word notion every where in the room of it, and every body else should do so too, 
 (though your lordship does not, I suppose, suspect that I have the vanity to think 
 they would follow my example) my book would, it seems, be the more to your 
 lordship’s liking; but Ido not see how this would one jot abate the mischief 
 your lordship complains of. For the Unitarians might as much employ notions 
 as they do now ideas to do mischief; unless they are such fools to think they can 
 conjure with this notable word idea, and that the force of what they say lies in 
 the sound, and not in the signification of their terms. 
 
 This I am sure of, that the truths of the Christian religion can be no mors 
 aattered by one word than another; nor can they be beaten down or endangered 
 by any sound whatsoever. And I am apt to flatter myself, that your lordship is 
 satisfied that there is no harm in the word ideas, because you say, you should not 
 have taken any notice of my ideas, if the enemies of our faith had not taken up 
 my new way of ideas, as an effectual battery against the mysteries of the Chris- 
 tian faith. In which place, by new way of ideas, nothing, I think, can be con- 
 strued to be meant, but my expressing myself by that of ideas; and not by other 
 more common words and of ancienter standing in the English lstnguage. 
 
 As to the objection of the author’s way by ideas being a new way, he thus an- 
 swers: my new way by ideas, or my way by ideas, which often occurs in your 
 lordship’s letter, is, I confess, a very large and doubtful expression; and may, in 
 the full latitude, comprehend my whole essay; because treating in it of the un- 
 derstanding, which is nothing but the faculty of thinking, I could not well treat 
 of that faculty of the mind, which consists in thinking, without considering the 
 immediate objects of the mind in thinking, which I call ideas: and therefore, in 
 treating of the understanding, 1 guess it will not be thought strange, that the 
 greatest part of my book has been taken up in considering what these objects of 
 the mind, in thinking, are; whence they come; what use the mind makes of them, 
 m its several ways of thinking; and what are the outward marks whereby it sig- 
 nifies them to others, or records them for its own use. And this, in short, is 
 my way by ideas, that which your lordship calls my new way by ideas; which, 
 my lord, if it be new, it is but a new history of an old thing. For I think it will 
 not be doubted, that men always performed the actions of thinking, reasoning, be- 
 lieving, and knowing, just after the same manner that they do now ; though whether 
 the same account has heretofore been given of the way how they performed 
 these actions, or wherein they consisted, I do not know. Where I as well read 
 as your lordship, I should have been safe from that gentle reprimand of your 
 lordships for thinking my way of ideas new, for want of looking into other men’s 
 thoughts, which appear in their books. 
 
 Your lordship’s words, as an acknowledgement of your instructions in the case, 
 and as a warning to others, who will be so bold adventurers as to spin anything 
 barely out of their own thoughts, I shall set down at large. And they run thus: 
 “Whether you took this way of ideas from the modern philosopher mention- 
 ed by you, is not at all material; but I intended no reflection upon you in it 
 (for that you mean, by my commending you as a scholar of so great a master.) 
 I never meant to take from you the honour of your own inventions: and I do 
 believe you when you say, That you wrote from your own thoughts, and the 
 ideas you had there. But many things may r seem new to one, that converses 
 only with his own thoughts, which really are not so; as he may find, when he 
 looks into the thoughts of other men, which appear in their books. And, there- 
 fore, although I have a just esteem for the invention of such, who can spin vo- 
 lumes barely out of their own thoughts, yet I am apt to think they would oblige 
 the world more, if, after they have thought so much themselves, they would 
 examine what thoughts others have had before them, concerning the same things; 
 that so those may not be thought their own inventions, which are common to 
 themselves and others. If a man should try all the magnetical experiments himself, 
 and publish them as his own thoughts, he might take himself to be the inventor 
 of them; but he that examines and compares them with what Gilbert and others 
 
Ch. 1. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 39 
 
 have done before him, will not diminish the praise of his diligence, but may 
 wish he had compared his thoughts with other men’s; by which the world would 
 receive greater advantage, although he had lost the honour of being an original.'* 
 
 To alleviate my fault herein, I agree with yourlordship, that many things may 
 seem new to one that converses only -with his own thoughts, which really are not 
 so. but I must crave leave to suggest to your lordship, that if, in the spinning of 
 them out of his own thoughts, they seem new to him, he is certainly the inven- 
 tor of them; and they may as justly be thought his own invention, as any one’s; 
 and he is as certainly the inventor of them, as any one who thought on them be- 
 fore him; the distinction of invention, or not invention, lyingnot in thinking first, 
 or not first, but in borrowing, or not borrowing, our thoughts from another: and 
 he to whom, spinning them out of his own thoughts, they seem ?iew, could not 
 certainly borrow them from another. So he truly invented printing in Europe, 
 who, without any communication with the Chinese, spun it out of his own thoughts; 
 though it was never so true, that the Chinese had the use of printing, nay of 
 printing in the very same way among them, many ages before him. So that he 
 that spins any thing out of his own thoughts, that seems new to him, cannot cease 
 to think it his own invention, should he examine ever so far: what thoughts 
 others have had before him, concerning the same thing, and should find, by ex- 
 amining, that they had the same thoughts too. 
 
 But what great obligation this would be to the world, or weighty cause of turn- 
 ing over and looking into books, I confess I do not see. The great end to me, 
 in conversing with my own or other men’s thoughts, in matters of speculation, 
 is to find truth, without being much concerned whether my own spinning of it 
 out nf mine, or their spinning of it out of their own thoughts, helps me to it. 
 And how little I affect the honour of an original, may r be seen at that place of my 
 book, where, if any where, that itch of vain. glory was likeliest to have shown 
 itself, had I been so overrun with it as to need a cure: it is where I speak of 
 certainty', in these following words, taken notice of by y'our lordship, in another 
 place: “ 1 think I have shown wherein it is that certainty, real certainty consists; 
 which, whatever it was to others, was, I confess, to me, heretofore, one of those 
 desiderata which I found great want of.” 
 
 Here, my lord, however new this seemed to me, (and the more so because 
 possibly I had in vain hunted for it in the books of others) yet I spoke of it as 
 new, only to myself; leaving others in the undisturbed possession of what, either 
 by invention, or reading, was theirs before; without assuming to myself any other 
 honour, but that of my own ignorance, until that time, if others before had shown 
 wherein certainty lay. And y r et, my lord, if I had, upon this occasion, been for- 
 ward to assume to my'self the honour of an original, I think I had been pretty 
 safe in it; since I should have had your lordship for my guarantee and vindicator 
 in that point, who are pleased to call it new, and, as such, to write against it. 
 
 And truly, my lord, in this respect, my book has had very unlucky stars, since 
 it hath had the misfortune to displease your lordship, with many things in it, for 
 their novelty; as, new way of reasoning, new hypothesis about reason, new sort 
 of certainty, new terms, new way of ideas, new method of certainty, isc. And 
 yet, in other places, your lordship seems to think it worthy in me of j our lord- 
 ship’s reflection, for saying but what others have said before; as where I say, 
 “In the different make of men’s tempers, and application of their thoughts, soma 
 arguments prevail more on one, and some on another, for the confirmation of the 
 same truth.” Your lordship asks, “ What is this different from what all men of 
 understanding have said Again, I take it, your lordship meant not these words 
 for a commendation of my book, where you say, but if no more be meant by 
 “The simple ideas that come in by sensation, or reflection, and their being the 
 foundation ol our knowledge,” but that our notions of things come in, either from 
 mir senses, or the exercise of our minds; as there is nothing extraordinary in the 
 discovery, so your lordship is far enough from opposing that, wherein you think 
 all mankind are agreed. 
 
 And again, But what need all this great noise about ideas and certainty, true 
 and real certainty by ideas, if, after all, it comes only to this, that our ideas only 
 represent to us such thijigs, from whence we bring arguments to prove the truth 
 of things ? 
 
OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 1. 
 
 «0 
 
 But the -world hath been strangely amused -with ideas of late; and tee have been 
 told , that strange things might be done by the help of ideas; and yet these ideas, at 
 last, come to be only common notions of things, which -we must make use of in our 
 reasoning. And to the like purpose in other places. 
 
 Whether, therefore, at last, your lordship will resolve that it is ne-w or no, 
 or more faulty by its being new, must be left to your lordship. This I find by 
 it, that my book cannot avoid being condemned on the one side or the other; nor 
 do I see a possibility to help it. If there be readers that like only new thoughts; 
 or, on the other side, others that can bear nothing but what can be justified by 
 received authorities in print; I must desire them to make themselves amends in 
 that part which they like, for the displeasure they receive in the other; but if 
 any should be so exact, as to find fault with both, truly I know not well what to 
 say to them. The case is a plain case; the book is all over naught, and there is 
 not a sentence in it, that is not, either for its antiquity or novelty, to be con- 
 demned; and so there is a short end of it. From your lordship, indeed, in par- 
 ticular, I can hope for something better; for your lordship thinks the general 
 design of it so good, that this, I flatter myself, would prevail on your lordship to 
 preserve it from the fire. 
 
 But as to the way, your lordship thinks, I should have taken to prevent the 
 having it thought my invention, when it was common to me with othei-s, it unluck- 
 ily so fell out, in the subject of my Essay of Human Understanding, that I 
 could not look into the thoughts of other men to inform myself: for my design 
 being', as. well ns I could, to copy nature, and to give an account of the opera- 
 tions of the mind in thinking, I could look into nobody’s understanding but my 
 own, to see how it wrought; nor have a prospect into other men’s minds, to 
 view their thoughts there, and observe what steps and motions they took, and 
 by what gradations they proceeded in their acquainting themselves with truth, 
 and their advance in knowledge: what we find of their thoughts in books, is but 
 the result of this, and not the progress and working of their minds, in coming 
 to the opinions or conclusions they set down and published. 
 
 All, therefore, that I can say of my book is, that it is a copy of my own mind, 
 in its several ways of operation: and all that I can say for the publishing of it is, 
 that l think the intellectual faculties are made, and operate alike in most men; 
 and that some, that I showed it to before I published it, liked it so well, that I 
 was confirmed in that opinion. And, therefore, if it should happen that it should 
 not be so, but that some men should have ways of thinking, reasoning, or arriv- 
 ing at certainty, different from others, and above those that I find my r mind to use 
 and acquiesce in, I do not see of what use my book can be to them. I can only 
 make it my humble request, in my own name, and in the name of those that are 
 of my size, who find their minds work, reason, and know in the same low way 
 that mine does, that those men of a more happy genius would show us the way 
 of their nobler flights; and particularly would discover to us their shorter or 
 surer way to certainty, than by ideas, and the observing their agreement or 
 disagreement. 
 
 Your lordship adds, But now it seems, nothing is intelligible but what suits with 
 the new way of ideas. My lord, the new way of ideas, and the old way of speak- 
 ing intelligibly* , was always and ever will be the same; and if I may take the 
 liberty to declare my sense of it, herein it consists; 1. That a man use no words, 
 but such as he makes the sign of certain determined objects of his mind in 
 thinking, which he can make known to another. 2. Next, That he use the 
 same word steadily for the sign of the same immediate object of his mind in 
 thinking. 3. That he join those words together in propositions, according to 
 the grammatical rules of that language he speaks in. 4. That he unites those 
 sentences into a coherent discourse. Thus, and thus only, I humbly conceive, 
 any one may preserve himself from the confines and suspicion of jargon, whether 
 he pleases t( > call those immediate objects of his mind, which his words do, or 
 should stand for, ideas or no. 
 
 Mr Locke’s Third Letter to the Bishop of Worcester. 
 
Ch. 2. 
 
 NO INNATE PRINCIPLES IN THE MIND. 
 
 11 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 NO INNATE PRINCIPLES IN THE MIND. 
 
 Sect. 1. The way shown how we come by any knowledge, sufficient to 
 prove it not innate. — It is an established opinion among some men, that 
 there are in the understanding certain innate principles ; some primary no- 
 tions ; Kooai Inoutt, characters as it were, stamped upon the mind of man, 
 which the soul receives in its very first being, and brings into the world 
 with it. It would be sufficient to convince unprejudiced readers of the false- 
 ness of this supposition, if I should only show (as I hope I shall in the 
 following parts of this discourse) how men, barely by the use of their nat- 
 ural faculties, may attain to all the knowledge they have, without the help of 
 ■-any innate impressions ; and may arrive at certainty, without any such ori- 
 ginal notions or principles. For I imagine any one will easily grant, that 
 it would be impertinent to suppose the ideas of colour innate in a creature, 
 to whom God hath given sight and a power to receive them by the eyes, 
 from external objects : and no less unreasonable would it be to attribute se- 
 veral truths to the impressions of nature, and innate characters, when we 
 may observe in ourselves faculties fit to attain as easy and certain know- 
 ledge of them, as if they were originally imprinted on the mind. 
 
 But because a man is not permitted, without censure, to follow his own 
 thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the 
 common road, I shall set down the reasons that made me doubt of the truth 
 of that opinion, as an excuse for my mistake, if I be in one ; which I leave to 
 be considered by those, who, with me, dispose themselves to embrace truth, 
 wherever they find it. 
 
 Sect. 2. General assent, the great argument. — There is nothing more 
 commonly taken for granted," than that there are certain principles, both 
 speculative and practical (for they speak of both) universally agreed upon 
 by all mankind ; which, therefore, they argue, must needs be constant im- 
 pressions which the souls of men receive in their first beings, and which 
 they bring into the world with them, as necessarily and really as they do 
 any of their inherent faculties. 
 
 Sect. 3. Universal consent proves nothing innate. — This argument, 
 drawn from universal consent, has this misfortune in it, that if it were true, 
 in matter of fact, that there were certain truths wherein all mankind agreed, 
 it would not prove them innate, if there ca n be any other way shown how 
 men may come to that universal agreement in the things" they "do consent 
 in; which I presume may be done. — ' 
 
 Sect. 4. “ What is,, is "and “ iti» impossible for the same thing to be, 
 and not to be,'” not universally assented to. — But, which is worse, this ar- 
 gument of universal consent, which is made use of to prove innate princi- 
 ples, seems to me a demonstration that there are none such ; because there 
 are none to which all mankind give a universal assent. I shall begin with 
 the speculative, and instance in those magnified principles of demonstration, 
 ‘'whatsoever is, is;” and, “ it is impossible for the same tiling to be, and 
 not to be;” which, of all others, I think have the most allowed title to in- 
 nate. These have so settled a reputation of maxims universally received, 
 that it will no doubt be thought strange, if any one should seem to question 
 it. But yet I take liberty to say, that these propositions are so far from 
 having a universal assent, that there are a great part of mankind to whom 
 they are not so much as known. 
 
 F 
 
42 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 1. 
 
 Sect. 5. Not on the mind naturally imprinted, because not known to 
 children, ideots, <|-c. — For, first, it is e vident-, tliat all children and ideots 
 have not the least apprehension or thought of them ; and the want of that is 
 enough to destroy that universal assent, which must needs be the neces- 
 sary concomitant of all innate truths ; it seeming to me near a contradiction 
 to say, that there are truths imprinted on the soul, which it perceives or 
 understands not ; imprinting, if it signify any thing, being nothing else but, 
 the making certain truths to be perceived. For, to imprint any thing on 
 the mind, without the mind’s perceiving it, seems to me hardly intelligible. 
 If, therefore, children and ideots have souls, have minds, with those impres- 
 sions upon them, they must unavoidably perceive them, and necessarily 
 know and assent to these truths; which, since they do not, it is evident 
 that there are no such impressions: for if they are not notions naturally 
 imprinted, how can they be innate 1 and if they are notions imprinted, how 
 can they be unknown 1 To say a notion is imprinted on the mind, and yet 
 at the same time to say that the mind is ignorant of it, and never yet 
 took notice of it, is to make this impression nothing. No proposition can 
 be said to be in the mind, which it never yet knew, which it was never yet 
 conscious of : for if any one may, then, by the same reason, all propositions 
 that are true, and the mind is capable of ever assenting to, may be said to 
 be in the mind, and to be imprinted : since, if any one can be said to be in 
 the mind, which it never yet knew, it must be only because it is capable 
 of knowing it ; and so the mind is of all truths it ever shall know. Nay, 
 thus truths may be imprinted on the mind which it never did, nor ever shall 
 know ; for a man may live long, and die at last in ignorance of many truths, 
 which his mind was capable of knowing, and that with certainty. So that, 
 if the capacity of knowing be the natural impression contended for, all the 
 truths a man ever comes to know, will, by this account, be every one of 
 them innate ; and this great point will amount to no more, but only to a 
 very improper way of speaking: which, whilst it pretends to assert the 
 contrary, says nothing different from those who deny innate principles; 
 for nobody, I think, ever denied that the mind was capable cf knowing 
 several truths. The capacity, they say, is innate; the knowledge, ac- 
 quired. But then, to what end such contest for certain innate max- 
 ims] If truths can be imprinted on the understanding without being per- 
 ceived, I can see no difference there can be between any truths the mind 
 is capable of knowing, in respect of their original : they must all be innate, 
 or all adventitious : in vain shall a man go about to distinguish them. He, 
 therefore, that talks of innate notions in the understanding, cannot (if he 
 intend thereby any distinct sort of truths) mean such truths to be in the 
 understanding, as it never perceived, and is yet wholly ignorant of: for if 
 these words (to be in the understanding) have any propriety, they signify 
 to be understood : so that, to be in the understanding, and not to be un- 
 derstood — to be in the mind, and never to be perceived — is all one as to 
 say, any thing is, and is not, in the mind or understanding. If therefore 
 these two propositions, “ whatsoever is, is,” and, “ it is impossible for the 
 same thing to be, and not to be,” are by nature imprinted, children cannot 
 be ignorant of them ; infants, and all that have souls, must necessarily have 
 them in their understandings, know the truth of them, and assent to it. 
 
 Sect. 6. That men know them when they come to the use of reason 
 answered. — To avoid this, it is usually answered, Thaflill men know and 
 assent to them, when they come to the use of reason, and this is enough to 
 prove them innate. I answer, 
 
 Sect. 7. Doubtful expressions, that have scarce any signification, go 
 for clear reasons to those who, being prepossessed, take not the pains to 
 examine even what they themselves say. For to apply this answer with 
 any tolerable sense to our present purpose, it must signify one of these 
 two things: either, that as soon as men come to the use of reason, these 
 simnosed native inscriptions come to be known and observed by them ; or 
 
JL 
 
 Ch. 2 NO INNATE PRINCIPLES IN THE MIND. 43 
 
 else that the use and exercise of men’s reason assists them in the discove- 
 ry of these principles, and certainly makes them known to them. 
 
 Sect. 8. If reason discovered them., that would not prove theminnate. 
 
 — If they mean, that by the use of reason men may discover these prin- 
 ciples, and that this is sufficient to prove them innate, their way of argu- 
 ing will stand thus, viz. that whatever truths reason can certainly discover 
 to us, and make us firmly assent to, those are all naturally imprinted on 
 the mind; since that universal assent, which is made the mark of them, 
 amounts to no more but this ; that by the use of reason we are capable to 
 come to a certain knowledge of, and assent to them ; and by this means, 
 there will be no difference between the maxims of the mathematicians, and 
 theorems they deduce from them : all must be equally allowed innate ; they 
 being all discoveries made by the use of reason, and truths that a rational 
 creature may certainly come to know, if he apply his thoughts rightly that 
 way. 
 
 Sect. 9. It is false that reason discovers them. — But how can these 
 men think the use of reason necessary to discover principles that are sup- 
 posed innate, when reason (if we may believe them) is nothing else but 
 the faculty of deducing unknown truths from principles, or propositions, 
 that are already known 1 That certainly can never be thought innate, which 
 we have need of reason to discover ; unless, as I have said, we will have 
 all the certain truths that reason ever teaches us to be innate. We may 
 as well think the use of reason necessary to make our eyes discover visi 
 ble objects, as that there should be need of reason, or the exercise thereof, 
 to make the understanding see what is originally engraven on it, and can- 
 not be in the understanding, before it be perceived by it. So that to make 
 reason discover those truths thus imprinted, is to say, that the use of rea- 
 son discovers to a man what he knew before ; and if men have those innate 
 impressed truths originally, and before the use of reason, and yet are always 
 . ignorant of them, till they come to the use of reason ; it is in effect to say, 
 that men know, and know them not, at the same time. 
 
 Sect. 10. It will here perhaps be said, that mathematical demonstrations, 
 and other truths that are not innate, are not assented to as soon as pro- 
 posed, wherein they are distinguished from these maxims, and other innate 
 truths. I shall have occasion to speak of assent upon the first proposing, 
 more particularly by and bye. I shall here only, and that very readily, al- 
 low, that these maxims and mathematical demonstrations are in this differ- 
 ent; that the one has need of reason, using of proofs, to make them out, 
 and to gain our assent; but the other, as soon as understood, are, without 
 any the least reasoning, embraced and assented to. But I withal beg leave 
 to observe, that it lays open the weakness of this subterfuge, which re- 
 quires the use of reason for the discovery of these general truths ; since it 
 must be confessed that in their discovery there is no use made of reasoning at 
 all. And I think those who give this answer will not be forward to affirm, 
 that the knowledge of this maxim, “ that it is impossible for the same 
 tiling to be, and not to be,” is a deduction of our reason; for this would be • 
 to destroy that bounty of nature they seem so fond of, whilst they make 
 the knowledge of those principles to depend on the labour of our thoughts. 
 For all reasoning is search, and casting about, and requires pains and ap- '• 
 pRcationTand how can it, with anyrtoleTable sense, be supposed, that what 
 was i rn p r i n t c d hy n at u re, as the foundation and guide of our reason, should 
 need the use of reason to discover it! 
 
 Sect. 11. Those who will take the pains to reflect with a little atten- 
 tion on the operations of the understanding, will, find, that .this ready assent 
 of the mind to some truths, ^depends not either on native inscription, or on * 
 the use of reason ; but on a faculty of the mind quite distinct from both of 
 ''hem, as we shall see hereafter. Reason, therefore, Having nothing to do 
 ui procuring our assent to these maxims, if by saying that men know and 
 
44 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 1 
 
 assent to them when they come to the use of reason, be meant, that the 
 ase of reason assists us in the knowledge of these maxims, it is utterly fa.se ; 
 and were it true, would prove them not to be innate. 
 
 Sect. 12. The coming to the use of reason, not the time we come to 
 know these maxims. — If by knowing and assenting to them, when we como 
 to the use of reason, be meant, that this is the time when they come to be 
 taken notice of by the mind ; and that, as soon as children come to the use 
 of reason, they come also to know and assent to these maxims; this also 
 is false and frivolous. First, it is false : because it is evident these maxims 
 are not in the mind so early as the use of reason, and therefore the coming 
 to the use of reason is falsely assigned as the time of their discovery. How 
 many instances of the use of reason may we observe in children, a long 
 time before they have any knowledge of this maxim, “ that it is impossi- 
 ble for the same thing to be, and not to be!” And a great part of illiterate 
 people, and savages, pass many years, even of their rational age, without 
 ever thinking on this and the like general propositions. I grant, men come 
 not to the knowledge of these general and more abstract truths, wliich are 
 thought innate, till they come to the use of reason ; and I add, nor then 
 neither: which is so because, till after they come to the use of reason, those 
 general abstract ideas are not framed in the mind, about which those gener- 
 al maxims are, which are mistaken for innate principles: but are indeed 
 discoveries made, and verities introduced and brought into the mind, by 
 the same way, and discovered by the same steps, as several other propo- 
 sitions, which nobody was ever so extravagant as to suppose innate. This 
 I hope to make plain in the sequel of this discourse. I allow therefore a 
 necessity that men should come to the use of reason before they get the 
 knowledge of those general truths, but deny that men’s coming to the use 
 of reason is the time of their discovery. 
 
 Sect. 13. By this they are not distinguished from other know able truths. 
 — In the mean time it is observable, that this saying, That men know and 
 assent to these maxims when they come to the use of reason, amounts, in 
 reality of fact, to no more but this, That they are never known nor taken 
 notice of, before the use of reason, but may possibly be assented to, some 
 time after, during a man’s life, but when, is uncertain; and so may all other 
 knowable truths, as well as these ; which therefore have no advantage nor 
 distinction from others, by this note of being known when we come to 
 the use of reason, nor are thereby proved to be innate, but quite contrary. 
 
 Sect. 14. If coming to the use of reason were the time of their discov- 
 ery, it would not prove them innate. — But, secondly, were it true that the 
 precise time of their being known and assented to were when men come 
 to the use of reason, neither would that prove them innate. This way of 
 arguing is as frivolous as the supposition of itself is false. For by what 
 kind of logic will it appear, that any notion is originally by nature imprin- 
 ted in the mind in its first constitution, because it comes first to be obser- 
 ved and assented to, when faculty of the mind, which has quite a distinct 
 * province, begins. to exert itself ! And therefore, the coming to the use of 
 ' speech, if it were supposed the time that these maxims are first assented 
 to, (which it may be with as much truth as the time when men come to 
 the use of reason) would be as good a proof that they were innate, as to 
 >say, they are innate, because men assent to them wnen they come to tne 
 use of reason. I agree then with these men of innate principles, that there 
 is no knowledge of these general and self-evident maxims in the mind, tiL 
 it comes to the exercise of reason ; but I deny that the coming to the use 
 .^of reason is the precise time when they are first taken notice of; and if 
 J that were the precise time, I deny that it would prove them innate. All 
 that can, with any truth, be meant by this proposition, that men assent to 
 them when they come to the use of reason, is no more but this; that the 
 
Ch. 2. 
 
 ON INNATE PRINCIPLES IN THE MIND. 
 
 45 
 
 making of general abstract ideas, and the understanding of general names, 
 being a concomitant of the rational faculty, and growing up with it, children 
 commonly get not those general ideas, nor learn the names that stand for 
 
 them, till, having for a good while exercised their reason about familiar and 
 more particular ideas, they are, by their ordinary discourse and actions with 
 others, acknowledged to be capable of rational conversation. If assenting 
 to these maxims, when men come to the use of reason, can be true in any 
 other sense, I desire it may be shown ; or at least, how in this, or any other 
 sense, it proves them innate. 
 
 -SlE.pt • 15. The steps by which the mind attains several truths. — The 
 senses at first let in particular ideas, and furnish the yet empty cabinet ; 
 and the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodg- 
 ed in the memory, and names got to them : afterward the mind, proceeding 
 farther, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general name^ In 
 this manner, the mind comes to be furnished with ideas and language, the 
 materials about which to exercise its discursive faculty; and the use of 
 reason becomes daily more visible, as these materials that give it employ- 
 ment increase. But though the having of general ideas, and the use of gen- 
 eral words and reason, usually grow together, yet, I see not how this any 
 way proves them innate. The knowledge of some truths, I confess, is very 
 early in the mind, but in a way that shows them not to be innate. For, if 
 we will observe, we shall find it still to be about ideas, not innate, but ac- 
 quired ; it being about those first which are imprinted by external things, 
 with which infants have earliest to do, which make the most frequent im- 
 pressions on their senses. In ideas thus got, the mind discovers that some 
 agTee and others differ, probably as soon as it has any use of memory ; a3 
 soon as it is able to retain and perceive distinct ideas. But whether it be 
 
 then, or no, this is certain; it does so long before it has the use of words, or 
 comes to that, which we commonly call “the use of reason.” For a child 
 knows as certainly, before it can speak, the difference between the ideas of 
 sweet and bitter (i. e. that sweet is not bitter) as it knows afterward (when it 
 comes to speak) that wormwood and sugar plums are not the same thing. 
 
 Sect. 16. — A child knows not that three and four are equal to seven, till 
 he comes to be able to count seven, and has got the name and idea of equal- 
 ity ; ana then, upon explaining those words, he presently assents to, or ra- 
 ther perceives the truth of, that proposition. But neither does he then 
 readily assent, because it is an innate truth, nor was his assent wanting till 
 then, because he wanted the use of reason ; but the truth of it appears to 
 him, as soon as he has settled in his mind the clear and distinct ideas that 
 these names stand for ; and then he knows the truth of that proposition, 
 upon the same grounds, and by the same means, that he knew before that 
 a rod and a cherry are not the same thing ; and upon the same grounds also, 
 that he may come to know afterward, “that it is impossible for the same 
 thing to be, and not to be,” as shall be more fully shown hereafter. So that 
 the later it is before any one comes to have those general ideas, about which 
 those maxims are ; or to know the signification of those general terms that 
 stand for them ; or to put together in his mind the ideas they stand for ; the later 
 also will it be before he comes to assent to those maxims, whose terms, 
 with the ideas they stand for, being no more innate than those of a cat or 
 a weasel, he must stay till time and observation have acquainted him with 
 them ; and then he will be in a capacity to know the truth of these maxims, 
 upon the first occasion that shall make him put together those ideas in his 
 mind, and observe whether they agree or disagree, according as is expres- 
 sed in those propositions. And therefore it is, that a man knows that eigh- 
 teen and nineteen are equal to thirty-seven, by the same self-evidence that 
 he knows one and two to be equal to three; yet a child knows this not so 
 60 on as the other, not for want of the use of reason, but because the ideas 
 
46 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 1 
 
 the words eighteen, nineteen, and thirty-seven stand for, are not so soon 
 got, as those which are signified by one, two, and three. 
 
 Sect. 17. Assenting as soon as proposed and understood, proves them 
 not innate. — This evasion therefore of general assent, when men come to 
 the use of reason, failing as it does, and leaving no difference between those 
 supposed innate, and other truths that are afterward acquired and learnt, 
 men have endeavoured to secure a universal assent to those they call max- 
 ims, by saying, they are generally assented to as soon as proposed, and the 
 terms they are proposed in, understood : seeing all men, even children, as 
 soon as they hear and understand the terms, assent to these propositions, 
 they think it is sufficient to prove them innate. For since men never fail, 
 after they have once understood the words, to acknowledge them for undoubt- 
 ed truths they would infer, that certainly these propositions were first lodged 
 ,n the understanding, which, without any teaching, the mind, at the very 
 first® roposal, immediately closes with, and assents to, and after that never 
 doubts again. 
 
 Sect. 18. If such an assent he a marli of innate, then “ that one and 
 two are equal to threes that sweetness is not bitterness,” and a thousand 
 the like, must be innate. — In answer to this, I demand “ whether ready as- 
 sent given to a proposition upon first hearing, and understanding the terms, 
 be a certain mark of an innate principle V’ If it be not, such a general assent 
 is in vain urged as a proof of them : if it be said, that it is a mark of innate, 
 they must then allow all such propositions to be innate which are generally 
 assented to as soon as heard, whereby they will find themselves plentifully 
 stored with innate principles. For upon the same ground, viz. of assent 
 at first hearing and understanding the terms, that men would have those 
 maxims pass for innate, they must also admit several propositions about 
 numbers to be innate; and thus, that one and two are equal to three; that 
 two and two are equal to four; and a multitude of other the like proposi- 
 tions in numbers, that every body assents to at first hearing and understand- 
 ing the terms, must have a place among these innate axioms. Nor is this 
 the prerogative of numbers alone, and propositions made about several of 
 them ; but even natural philosophy and all the other sciences, afford proposi- r 
 tions which are su*o to meet with assent as soon as they are understood. 
 That two bodies cannot be in the same place, is a truth that nobody any 
 more sticks at, than at these maxims: “that it is impossible for the same 
 tilings to be, and not to be ; that white is not black ; that a square is not a 
 circle ; that yellowness is not sweetness ;” these, and a million of other such 
 propositions (as many at least as we have distinct ideas of), every man in 
 his wits, at first hearing, and knowing what the names stand for, must ne- 
 cessarily assent to. If these men will be true to their own rule, and have 
 assent at first hearing and understanding the terms to be a mark of innate, 
 they must allow, not only as many innate propositions, as men have dis- 
 tinct ideas, but as many as men can make propositions, wherein different 
 ideas are denied one of another. Since every proposition, wherein one dif- 
 ferent idea is denied of another, will as certainly find assent at first hear- 
 ing and understanding the terms, as this general one, “it is impossible for 
 the same thing to be, and not to-be;” or that which is the foundation of it, * 
 and is the easier understood of the two, “the same is not different:” by 
 which account they will have legions of innate propositions of this one 
 sort, without mentioning any other. But since no proposition can be in- 
 nate, unless the ideas, about which it is, be innate ; this will be, to suppose 
 all our ideas of colours, sounds, taste, figure, &c. innate, than which there 
 cannot be any thing more opposite to reason and experience. Universal 
 and ready assent, upon hearing and understanding the terms, is (I- grant) 
 a mark of self-evidence ; but self-evidence, depending not on innate impres- 
 sions, but on something else (as we shall show hereafter), belongs to sev- 
 eral propositions, which nobody was yet so extravagant as to pretend to be 
 innate. 
 
Ch. 2. 
 
 NO INNATE PRINCIPLES IN THE MIND. 
 
 47 
 
 Sect. 10 Such less general prop ositions known before these universal 
 rrmxnns:— Nor letTtircrsOTdTTlIat those TMore-pasticala* seif-e video, pro- 
 '~positi©jis,-whicli are assented to at first hearing, as, that one and two are 
 equal to three ; that green is not red, &c. ; are received as the consequence 
 of those more universal propositions, which aTe looked on as innate prin- 
 ciples ; since any one, who will but take the pains to observe what passes in 
 the understanding, will certainly find, that these, and the like less general 
 propositions, are certainly known, and firmly assented to, by those who are 
 utterly ignorant of those more general maxims; and so, being earlier in the 
 mind than those (as they are called) first principles, cannot owe to them 
 the assent wherewith they are received at first hearing. 
 
 Sect. 20. One and one equal to two, $c. not general nor useful, 
 answered. — If it be said, that “ these propositions, viz. two and two are 
 equal to four; red is not blue, &c. are not general maxims, nor of any ^great 
 use;” I answer, that makes nothing to the argument of universal assent , upon 
 hearing and understanding: for, if that be the certain mark of innate, whatever 
 proposition can be found that receives general assent as soon as heard and 
 understood, that must be admitted for an innate proposition, as well as this 
 maxim, “ that it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be;” they 
 being upon this ground equal. And as to the difference of being more gen- 
 eral, that makes this maxim more remote from being innate ; those general 
 and abstract ideas being more strangers to our first apprehensions, than those 
 of more particular self-evident propositions ; and therefore it is longer be- 
 fore they are admitted and assented to by the growing understanding. 
 And as to the usefulness of these magnified maxims, that perhaps will not 
 be found so great as is generally conceived, when it comes in its due place 
 to be more fully considered. 
 
 Sect. 21. These maxims not being knoicn^jometimes_unLil jirojjosf;(l, 
 -ftroves-tfrer/rWTt—^ we have not yet done with assenting to 
 
 propositions at first hearing and understanding their terms ; it is fit we first 
 take notice, that this, instead of being a mark that they are innate, is a proof 
 of the contrary ; since it supposes that several, who understand and know 
 other things, are ignorant of these principles, until they are proposed to them ; 
 *'^nd that one may be unacquainted with these truths, until he hears them 
 from others. For if they were innate, what need they be proposed in ol- 
 der to gaining assent ; when, by being in the understanding, by a natural 
 and original impression (ifthere were any such), they could not but be known 
 before) Or doth-the proposing them print them clearer in the mind than 
 nature did) If so, then the consequence will be, that a man knows them 
 better after he has been thus taught them than he did before. Whence it 
 will follow, that these principles maybe made more evident to us by others’ 
 teaching, than nature has made them by impression; which will ill agree 
 with the opinion of innate principles, and give but little authority to them; 
 nut, on the contrary, makes them unfit to be the foundations of all our other 
 knowledge, as they are pretended to be. This cannot be denied; that men 
 grow first acquainted with many of these self-evident truths, upon their 
 being proposed; but it is clear, that whosoever does so, finds in himself 
 
 « at he then begins to know a proposition which he knew not before, and 
 rich, from thenceforth, he never questions; not because it was innate, 
 but because the consideration of the nature of the things contained in those 
 words, would not suffer him to think otherwise, how or whensoever he is 
 brought to reflect on them : and if whatever is assented to, at first hearing 
 and understanding the terms, must pass for an innate principle, every well- 
 grounded observation, drawn from particulars into a general rule, must be 
 innate; when yet it is certain, that not all, but only sagacious heads, light 
 at first on these observations, and reduce them into general propositions, 
 not innate, but collected from a preceding acquaintance, and reflection on 
 particular instances. These, when observing men have made them, tin- 
 
4S OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book!, 
 
 observing men, when they are proposed to them, cannot refuse their as. 
 sent to. 
 
 Sect. 22. Implicitly known before proposing^ signifies, thal the mind is 
 capable of understanding them, or else signifies nothing. — If it be said, 
 ‘‘‘the understanding hath an implicit knowledge of these principles, but not 
 an explicit, before this first hearing,” (as they must, who will say, “ that 
 they are in the understanding, before they are known”) it will be hard to 
 conceive what is meant by a principle imprinted on the understanding im- 
 plicitly, unless it be this ; that the mind is capable of understanding and 
 assenting firmly to such propositions. And thus all mathematical demon- 
 strations, as well as first principles, must be received as native impressions 
 t>n the mind.; which.. J. fear they will scarce allow them to be, who find it 
 harder to demonstrate a proposition, than assent to it when demonstrated. 
 And few mathematicians will be forward to believe, that all the diagrams 
 they have drawn were but copies of those innate characters which nature 
 had engraven upon their minds. 
 
 Sect. 23. The argument of assenting on first hearing, is upon a false 
 supposition of no precedent teaching. — There is, I fear, this further weak- 
 ness in the foregoing argument, which would persuade us, that therefore 
 those maxims are to be thought innate, which men admit at first hearing, 
 because they assent to propositions, which they are not taught, nor do re- 
 ceive from the force of any argument or demonstration, but a bare explication 
 or understanding of the terms. Under which, there seems to me to lie this 
 fallacy ; that men are supposed not to be taught, nor to learn any thing de 
 novo ; when, in truth, they are taught, and do learn something they were 
 ignorant of before. For first, it is evident, that they have learned the terms 
 and their signification, neither of which was born with them. But this is 
 not all the acquired knowledge in the case : the ideas themselves, about which 
 the proposition is, are not born with them, no more than their names, but 
 got afterward. So that in all propositions that are assented to at first hearing, 1 
 the terms of the proposition, their standing for such ideas, and the ideas them- 
 selves that they stand for, being neither of them innate, I would lain know 
 what there is remaining in such propositions that is innate. For I would glad- 
 ly have any one name that proposition, whose terms or ideas were either of^ 
 them innate. We by degrees get ideas and names, and learn their appro-” 
 priated connexion one with another ; and then to propositions made in such 
 terms, whose signification we have learnt, and wherein the agreement or dis- 
 agreement we can perceive in our ideas, when put together, is expressed, 
 we at first hearing assent ; though to other propositions, in themselves as 
 certain and evident, but which are concerning ideas not so soon or so ea- 
 sily got, we are at the same time no way capable of assenting. For though 
 a child quickly assents to this proposition, that an “ apple is not' fii 
 when, by familiar acquaintance, he has got the ideas of those two different 
 things distinctly imprinted on his mind, and has learnt that the names apple 
 and fire stand for them ; yet, it will be some years after, perhaps, before the 
 same child will assent to this proposition, “ that it is impossible for the same 
 thing to be, and not to be;” because, that though, perhaps, the words are as 
 easy to be learnt, yet the signification of them being more large, comprehen- 
 sive, and abstract, than of the names annexed to those sensible things thfl} 
 child hath to do with, it is longer before he learns their precise meaning, anal 
 it requires more time plainly to form in his mind those general ideas they j 
 stand for. Till that be done, you will in vain endeavour to make any child 
 assent to a proposition made up of such general terms : but as soon as ever 
 he has got those ideas, and learned their names, he forwardly closes with 
 the one as well as the other of the fore-mentioned propositions, and with 
 both for the same reason, viz. because he finds the ideas he has in his 
 mind to agree or disagree, according as the words standing for them are 
 affirmed or denied one of another in the proposition. But if propositions 
 
Ck 2. 
 
 NO INNATE PRINCIPLES IN THE MIND. 
 
 49 
 
 be brought to him in words, which stand for ideas he has not yet in his 
 mind, to such propositions, however evidently true or false in themselves, 
 he affords neither assent nor dis’sent, but is ignorant ' for words being but 
 empty sounds, any farther than they are signs of our ideas, we cannot but 
 assent to them, as they correspond to those ideas we have, but no 
 farther than that. But the showing by what steps and ways knowledge 
 comes into our minds, and the grounds of several degrees of assent, being 
 the business of the following discourse, it may suffice to have only touched 
 on it here, as one reason that made me doubt of those innate principles. 
 
 Sect. 24. NotinhafA,hecausenotiiniversally assented to. — To conclude 
 this argument of universal consent, I agree, with these defenders of innate 
 princi ples, that if t hey are innate, they must needs have universal assent ; 
 foTthaT^truthshould be innate, a nd^eOm f~a§ sen t e d "to, is io me as unin- 
 telligible, as for a man to know a truth, and be ignorant of it at the same : 
 time. But then, by these men’s own confession, they cannot be innate ; 
 since th ey ar e not_ assented to by those who understand not the terms, nor 
 
 hy~argfeat part of those who do understand them, but Jiave yet never heard 
 
 nor thought of those propositions ; which, I think, Ii~at least one' half of 
 mSTrkrrith' — Bst-wereAhe number far less, it would be enough to destroy 
 universal assent, and thereby show these propositions not to be innate, if 
 children alone yrnre ignorant of them. 
 
 Sect. 25. These maxims not the first known.— But that I may not be 
 accused to argue from the tfibughts“of ltitants, which are unknown to us, 
 and to conclude from what passes in their understandings before they ex- 
 press it ; I say next, that these two general propositions are not the truths 
 that first possess the minds of children, nor are antecedent to all acquired 
 and adventitious notions : which, Tfthey were innate, they must needs be. 
 Whether we can determine it or no, it matters not ; there is certainly a 
 time when children begin to think, and their words and actions do assure 
 us that they do so. When therefore they are capable of thought, of know- 
 ledge, of assent, can it rationally be supposed they can be ignorant of those 
 notions that nature has imprinted, were there any such! Can it be imagi- 
 ned with any appearance of reason, that they perceive the impressions 
 from things without, and be at the same time ignorant of those characters- 
 which nature itself has taken care to stamp within! Can they receive and' 
 assent to adventitious notions, and be ignorant of those which are supposed 
 woven into the very principles of their being, and imprinted there in in- 
 delible characters, to be the foundation and guide of all their acquired know-^ 
 ledge and future reasonings ! This would be to make nature take pains to 
 no purpose, or at least, to write very ill ; since its characters could not be 
 read by those eyes which saw other things very well ; and those are very 
 ill supposed the clearest parts of truth, and the foundations of all our know- 
 ledge, which are not first known, and without which the undoubted know- 
 ledge of several other things may be had. The child certainly knows that 
 the nurse that feeds it is neither the cat it plays with, nor the blackmoor 
 it is afraid of; that the wormseed or mustard it refuses is not the apple or 
 sugar it cries for; this it is certaintly and undoubtedly assured of: but 
 will any one say, it is by virtue of this principle, “ that it is impossible for 
 the same thing to be, and not to be,” that it so firmly assents to these and 
 other parts of its knowledge; or that the child has any notion or apprehen- 
 sion of that proposition, at an age, wherein yet, it is plain, it knows a 
 great many other truths ! He that will say, children join these general 
 abstract speculations with their sucking bottles, and their rattles, may per- 
 haps with justice, be thought to have more passion and zeal for his opinion, 
 but less sincerity and truth, than one of that age. 
 
 Sect. 28. And so not innate. — Tnough therefore there be several gen- 
 eral propositions that meet with :onstant and ready assent, as soon as 
 proposed to men grown up, who have attained the use of more general 
 G 
 
50 
 
 1F1,' t 'hau,^ ^ ,«^«4 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Rook i. 
 
 and abstract ideas, and names standing for them ; yet they not being to be 
 found in those of tender years, who nevertheless know other things, they 
 cannot pretend to universal assent of intelligent persons, and so by no 
 means can be supposed innate ; it being impossible that any truth which is 
 innate (if there were any such) should be unknown, at least to any one 
 who knows any thing else: since, if there are innate truths, they must be 
 innate thoughts ; there being nothing a truth in the mind that it has never 
 thought on. Whereby it is evident, if there be any innate truths in the 
 mind, they must necessarily bo the first of any thought on; the first that 
 appear there. 
 
 Sect. 27. Not innate , because they appear least, where what is innate 
 shows itself clearest. — That the general maxims we are discoursing of are 
 not known to children, idiots, and a great part of mankind, we have already 
 sufficiently proved ; whereby it is evident, they have not a universal assent, 
 nor are general impressions. But there is this farther argument in it 
 against their being innate : that these characters, if they were native and 
 original impressions, should appear fairest and clearest in those persons 
 in whom yet we find no footsteps ofthem : and it is, in my opinion, a strong 
 presumption that they are not innate, since they are least known to those, 
 in whom, if they were innate, they must needs exert themselves with most 
 force and vigour. For children, idiots, savages, and illiterate people, being 
 of all others the least corrupted by custom, or borrowed opinions, learning 
 and education having not cast their native thoughts into new moulds, nor 
 by superinducing foreign and studied doctrines, confounded those fair 
 characters nature had written there; one might reasonably imagine, that 
 in their minds, these innate notions should lie open fairly to every one’s 
 view, as it is certain the thoughts of children do. It might very well be 
 expected, that these principles should be perfectly known to naturals, which 
 being stamped immediately on the soul (as these men suppose), can have 
 no dependence on the constitutions or organs of the body, the only con- 
 fessed difference between them and others. One would think, according 
 to these men’s principles, that all these native beams of light (were there 
 any such) should in those who have no reserves, no arts of concealment, 
 shine out in their full lustre, and leave us in no more doubt of their being 
 xhere, than we are of their love of pleasure and abhorrence of pain. But, 
 alas ! among children, idiots, savages, and the grossly illiterate, what gen- 
 eral maxims are to be found ! What universal principles of knowledge? 
 Their notions are few and narrow, borrowed only from those objects they have 
 had most to do with, and which have made upon their senses the frequentest 
 and strongest impressions. A child knows his nurse and his cradle, and by 
 degrees, the playthings of a little more advanced age; and a young savage 
 has, perhaps, his head filled with love and hunting, according to the fashion 
 of nis tribe. But he that from a child untaught, or a wild inhabitant of the 
 woods, would expect these abstract maxims and reputed principles ot 
 sciences, will, I fear, find himself mistaken. Such kind of general propo- 
 sitions are seldom mentioned in the huts of Indians, much less are they to 
 be found in the thoughts of children, or any impressions of them on the 
 minds of naturals. They are the language and business of the schools and 
 academies of learned nations, accustomed to that sort of conversation or 
 learning, where disputes are frequent; these maxims being suited to arti- 
 ficial argumentation, and useful for conviction, but not much conducing to 
 the discovery of truth or advancement of knowledge. But of their small use 
 for the improvement of knowledge, I shall have occasion to speak more at 
 large, l. 4, c. 7. 
 
 Sect. 28. Recapitulation. — I know not how absurd this may seem to 
 the masters of demonstration : and probably it will hardly down with any 
 body at first hearing. I must therefore beg a little truce with prejudice, 
 and the forbearance of censure, till I have been heard out in the sequel of 
 
Ch. 2 
 
 NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 51 
 
 this discourse, being very willing to submit to better judgments. And since 
 I impartially search after truth, I shall not be sorry to be convinced that I 
 have been too fond of my own notions ; which, I confess, we are all apt to 
 be, when application and study have warmed our heads with them. 
 
 Upon the whole matter, I cannot see any ground to think these two 
 speculative maxims innate, since they are not universally assented to ; and 
 the assent they so generally find is no other than what several propositions, 
 not allowed to be innate, equally partake in with them ; and since the as- 
 sent that is given them is produced another way, and comes not from 
 natural inscription, as I doubt not but to make appear in the following dis- 
 course. And if these first principles of knowledge and science are found 
 not to be innate, no other speculative maxims can (I suppose) with better 
 right pretend to be so. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 Sect. 1. No moral principles so clear and so generally received as the 
 f or ementioned speculative maxims .— If those speculative maxims, whereof 
 \ve discoursed in the foregoing chapter, have not an actual universal assent 
 from all mankind, as we there proved, it is much more visible concerning 
 practical principles, that they.come short of a universal reception : and I 
 think it will be hard to instance any one moral rule which can pretend to 
 so general and ready an assent as, “what is, is;” or to be so manifest a 
 truth as this, “that it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be.” 
 Whereby it is evident that they are farther removed from a title to be in- 
 nate ; and the doubt of their being native impressions on the mind is stronger 
 against those moral principles than the other. Not that it brings their truth 
 at all in question : they are equally true, though not equally evident. Those 
 speculative maxims carry their own evidence with them: but moral princi- 
 ples require reasoning and discourse, and some exercise of the mind, to dis- 
 cover the certainty of their truth. They lie not open as natural characters 
 engraven on the mind ; which, if any such were, they must needs be visible 
 by themselves, and by their own light be certain and known to every body. 
 But this is no derogation to truth and certainty, no more than it is to 
 the truth or certainty of the three angles of a triangle being equal to two 
 right ones ; because it is not so evident, as, “the whole is bigger than a part 
 nor so apt to be assented to at first hearing. It may suffice, that these 
 moral rules are capable of demonstration ; and therefore it is our own fault 
 if we come not to a certain knowledge of them. But the ignorance wherein 
 many men are of them, and the slowness of assent wherewith others receive 
 them, are manifest proofs that they are not innate, and such as offer them- 
 selves to their view without searching. 
 
 Sect. UNFa ith a ruljusticenot- owriexbf^pr4n(dplesJ)y aU men . — Whether 
 there be any such moral principles, wherein all men do agree, I appeal to 
 any who have been but moderately conversant in the history of mankind, 
 and looked abroad beyond the smoke of their own chimneys. Where is 
 that practical truth, that is universally received without doubt or question, 
 as it must be if innate? Justice, and keeping of contracts, is that which 
 most men seem to agree in. This is a principle which is thought to extend 
 itself to the dens of thieves, and the confederacies of the greatest villains ; and 
 they who have gone farthest towards the putting off of humanity itself, keep 
 faith and rules of justice one with another. I grant that outlaws themselves 
 do this one amongst another; but it is without receiving these as the innate 
 

 i. 
 
 02 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book. 1. 
 
 lavs nf nature. They practise them as rules of convenience within their 
 own communities: hut it is impossible to conceive, that he embraces justice 
 as a practical principle, who acts fairly with his fellow-highwayman, and 
 t the same time plunders or kills the next honest man he meets with. Jus- 
 tice and truth are the common ties of society ; and, therefore, even outlaws 
 and robbers, who break with all the world besides, must keep faith and rules 
 of equity among themselves, or else they cannot hold together. But will 
 any one say, that those that live by fraud or rapine have innate principles 
 of truth and justice which they allow and assent to. 
 
 Sect. 3. Objection, Though men deny them in their practice, yet they 
 admit them in their thoughts, answered. — Perhaps it will be urged, that 
 the tacit assent of their minds agrees to what their practice contradicts. 
 I answer, first, I have always thought the actions of men the best interpre- 
 ters of their thoughts. But since it is certain, that most men’s practices, 
 and some men’s open professions, have either questioned or denied these prin- 
 ciples, it is impossible to establish an universal consent (though we should 
 look for it only amongst grown men,) without which it is impossible to con- 
 clude them innate. Secondly^ it is very strange and unreasonable to sup- 
 pose innate practical principles that terminate only in contemplation. Prac- 
 tical principles derived from nature are there for operation, and must pro- 
 duce conformity of action, not barely speculative assent to their truth, or 
 else they are in vain distinguished from speculative maxims. Nature, I con- 
 fess, has put into man a desire of happiness, and an aversion to misery ; 
 these indeed are innate practical principles, which (as practical principles 
 ought) do continue constantly to operate and influence all our actions with- 
 out ceasing; these may be observed, in all persons and all ages, steady and 
 universal; but these are inclinations of the appetite to good, not impressions 
 of truth on the understanding. I deny not that there are natural tendencies 
 imprinted on the minds of men ; and that, from the very first instances of 
 sense and perception, there are some things that are grateful, and others un- 
 welcome to them ; some things that they incline to, and others that they 
 fly ; but this makes nothing for innate characters on the mind, which are to 
 be the principles of knowledge, regulating our practice. Such natural im- 
 pressions on the understanding are so far from being confirmed hereby, that 
 this is an argument against them ; since, if there were certain characters 
 imprinted by nature on the understanding, as the principles of knowledge, 
 we could not but perceive them constantly operate in us, and influence our 
 knowledge, as we do those others on the will and appetite ; which never 
 cease to be the constant springs and motives of all our actions, to which we 
 perpetually feel them strongly impelling us. 
 
 Sect. 4. Moral rules need a proof, ergo, not innate. — Another reason 
 that makes me “doubt of any innate practical principles, is, that I think 
 there cannot any one moral rule be proposed, whereof a man may not just- 
 ly demand a reason ; which would be perfectly ridiculous and absurd, if they 
 were innate, or so much as self-evident ; which every innate principle must 
 needs be, and not need any proof to ascertain its truth, nor want any reason 
 to gain it approbation. He would be thought void of common sense, who 
 asked, on the one side, or on the other side went to give a reason, why “it 
 is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be.” It carries its own 
 light and evidence with it, and needs no other proof : he that understands the 
 terms, assents to it for its own sake, or else nothing will ever be able to 
 prevail with him to do it. But should that most unshaken rule of morality, 
 and foundation of all social virtue, “ that one should do as he would be 
 done unto,” be proposed to one who never heard it before, but yet is of ca- 
 pacity to understand its meaning, might he not, without any absurdity, ask 
 a reason why] And were not he that proposed it bound to make out the 
 truth and reasonableness of it to him 1 which plainly shows it not to be in- 
 nate ; for if it were, it could neither want nor receive any proof; but must 
 
Ch. 3 
 
 NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 52 
 
 needs (at least as soon as heard and understood) be received and assented 
 to, as an unquestionable truth, which a man can by no means doubt of. So 
 that the truth of all these moral rules plainly depends upon some other an- 
 tecedent to them, and from which they must be deduced ; which could not 
 be, if either they were innate, or so much as self-evident. 
 
 Sect. 5. Instance in keeping compacts. — That men should keep their 
 compa'ctSTTs certainly a'gre'ht and undeniable rule in morality. But yet, if 
 a Christian, who has the view of happiness and misery in another life, be 
 asked why a man must keep his word ! he will give this as a reason ; Because 
 God, who has the power of eternal life and death, requires it of us. But if 
 a Hobbist be asked why, he will answer, Because the public requires it, 
 and the leviathan will punish you if you do not. And if one of the old 
 philosophers had been asked, he would have answered, Because it was dis- 
 honest, below the dignity of a man, and opposite to virtue, the highest per- 
 fection of human nature, to do otherwise. 
 
 Virtue generally approved, not because innate, but because 
 profitable. — Hence naturally flows the great variety of opinions concern- 
 ing moral rules which are to be found among men, according to the differ- 
 ent sorts of happiness they have a prospect of, or propose to themselves : 
 which could not be, if practical principles were innate, and imprinted in our 
 minds immediately by the hand of God. I grant the existence of God is so 
 many ways manifest, and the obedience we owe him so congruous to the 
 light of reason, that a great part of mankind give testimony to the law of 
 nature; but yet I think it must be allowed, that several moral rules may re- 
 ceive from mankind a very general approbation, without either knowing or 
 admitting the true ground of morality ; which can only be the' will and law 
 of a God, who sees men in the dark, has in his hand rewards and punish- 
 ments, and power enough to call to account the proudest offender: for God 
 having, by an inseparable connexion, joined virtue and public happiness to- 
 gether, and made the practice thereof necessary to the preservation of society, 
 and visibly beneficial to all with whom the virtuous man has to do, it is no 
 wonder that every one should not only allow, but recommend and magnify, 
 those rules to others, from whose observance of them he is sure to reap ad- 
 vantage to himself. He may, out of interest as well as conviction, cry up 
 that for sacred, which, if once trampled on and profaned, he himself cannot 
 be safe nor secure. This, though it takes nothing from the moral and eter- 
 nal obligation which these rules evidently have, yet it shows that the out- 
 ward acknowledgment men pay to them in their words, proves not that 
 they are innate principles ; nay, it proves not so much as that men as- 
 sent to them inwardly in their own minds, as the inviolable ndes of their own 
 practice ; since we find that self-interest, and the conveniences of this life, 
 make many men own an outward profession and approbation of them, whose 
 actions sufficiently prove that they very little consider the lawgiver that 
 prescribed these rules, nor the hell that he has ordained for the punishment 
 of those that transgress them. 
 
 Sect. 7. Men’s actions convince us that the rule of virtue is not their, 
 internal principle. — For if we will not in civility allow too muOh sincerity 
 to professioris^ofmost men, but think their actions to be the interpreters of 
 their thoughts, we shall find that they have no such internal veneration for 
 these rules, nor so full a persuasion of their certainty and obligation. The 
 great principle of morality, “to do as one would be done to,” is more com- 
 mended than practised. But the breach of this rule cannot be a greater 
 vice than to teach others that it is no moral rule, nor obligatory, would be 
 thought madness, and contrary to that interest men sacrifice to, when they 
 break it themselves. Perhaps conscience will be urged as checking us for 
 such breaches, and so the internal obligation and establishment of the rule 
 be preserved. 
 
 Sect. 8. Consci ence no proo f of any innate moral rule. — To which I 
 
54 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book i 
 
 answer, that I doubt not but, without being written on their hearts, many 
 r-c/n may, by the same way that they come to the knowledge of other things, 
 come to assent to several moral rules, and be convinced of their obligation. 
 Others also may come to be of the same mind, from their education, com- 
 pany, and customs of their country ; which persuasion, however got, will 
 serve to set conscience on work, which is nothing else but our own opinion 
 or judgment of the moral rectitude or pravity of our own actions. And if 
 conscience be a proof of innate principles, contraries may be .innate princi- 
 ples ; since some men, with the same bent of conscience, prosecute what 
 others avoid. 
 
 Sect. 9. Instances of enormities practised without remorse . — But I 
 cannot see how any men should ever transgress those moral rules, with 
 confidence and serenity, were they innate, and stamped upon their minds. 
 View but an army at the sacking of a town, and see what observation or 
 sense of moral principles, or what touch of conscience for all the out- 
 rages they do. Robberies, murders, rapes, are the sports of men set at 
 liberty from punishment and censure. Have there not been whole nations, 
 and those of the most civilized people, amongst whom the exposing their 
 children, and leaving them in the fields to perish by want or wild beasts, 
 has been the practice, as little condemned or scrupled, as the begetting them I 
 Do they not still, in some countries, put them into the same graves with 
 their mothers, if they die in childbirth ; or despatch them, if a pretended 
 astrologer declares them to have unhappy stars'! And are there not places 
 where, at a certain age, they kill or expose their parents without any re- 
 morse at all ! In a part of Asia, the sick, when their case comes to be 
 thought desperate, are carried out and laid on the earth, before they are 
 dead ; and left there, exposed to wind and weather, to perish without as- 
 sistance or pity(a). It is familiar among the Mingrelians, a people professing 
 Christianity, to bury their children alive without scruple(6). There are 
 places where they geld their children (c). The Caribbees were wont 
 to geld their children, on purpose to fat and eat them(d). And Garcilasso 
 de la Vega tells us of a people in Peru which were wont to fat and eat the 
 children they got on their female captives, whom they kept as concubines 
 for that purpose ; and when they were past breeding, the mothers them- 
 selves were killed, too, and eaten(e). The virtues whereby the Tououpin- 
 ambos believed they merited paradise were revenge, and eating abundance 
 of their enemies. They have not so much as the name of God(/), and have 
 bo religion, no worship. The saints who are canonized amongst the Turks 
 lead lives which one cannot with modesty relate. A remarkable passage 
 to this purpose, out of the voyage of Baumgarten, which is a book not 
 every day to be met with, I shall set down at large in the language it is 
 published in. Ibi (sc. prope Belbes in AUgypto) vidimus sanctum unum 
 Saracenicum inter arenarum cumulos, ita ut ex utero matris prodiit, nudum 
 sedentem. Mos est, ut didicimus, Mahometistis, ut eos, qui amentes et 
 sine ratione sunt, pro sanctis colant et venerentur. Insuper et eos, qui cum 
 diu vitam egerint inquinatissimam, voluntariam demum peemtentiam et pau- 
 pertatem, sanctitate venerandos deputant. Ejusmodi vero genus hominum 
 libertatem quandam effr®nem habent, domos quas volunt intrandi, edendi, 
 bibendi, et quod majus est, concumbendi; ex quo concubitu si proles secuta 
 fuerit, sancta similiter habetur. His ergo hominibus dum vivunt, mag- 
 nos exhibent honores ; mortuis vero vel templa vel monumenta extruunt 
 amplissima, eosque contingere ac sepelire maxim® fortun® dueunt loco. 
 Audivimus h®c dicta et dicenda per interpretem a Mucrelo nostro. Insuper 
 sanctum ilium, quern eo loco vidimus, publicitus apprime commendari, eum 
 
 (a) Gruber apud Thevenot, part 4, p. 13. ( h ) Lambert apud Thevenot, p. 3S. 
 
 (c) Vossius de Nili Origine, c IS, 19. (d) P. Mart. Dec. 1. 
 
 (e) Hist, des Incas. 1. 1. c. 12 (f) Lery, c. 16, 216 231. 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 55 
 
 esse hominem sanctum, divinum ac integritate prajcipuum ; eo quod, nec 
 fceminarum unquam esset, nec puerorum sed tantummodo assellarum con- 
 cubitor atque muliarum. Peregr. Baumgarten, 1. 2, c. 1, p. 73. More of 
 the same kind, concerning these precious saints among the Turks, may be 
 seen in Pietro della Valle, in his letter of the 25th of January 1816. Where 
 then are those innate principles of justice, piety, gratitude, equity, chastity 1 
 Or, where is that universal consent, that assures us there are such inbred 
 rules 1 Murders in duels, when fashion has made them honourable, are 
 committed without remorse of conscience ; nay, in many places, innocence 
 in this case is the greatest ignominy. And if we look abroad, to take a 
 view of men as they are,- we shall find that they have remorse in one place, 
 for doing or omitting that which others, in another place, think they merit by. 
 
 Sect. 10. Men have contrary practical principles. — He that will care- 
 fullif^efusFfMlnMbry~bT nTanlrind, and look abroad into the several tribes 
 of men, and with indifference survey their actions, will be able to satisfy 
 himself that there is scarce that principle of morality to be named, or rule 
 of virtue to be thought on, (those only excepted that are absolutely neces- 
 sary to hold society together, which commonly, too, are neglected betwixt 
 distinct societies,) which is not, somewhere or other, slighted and con- 
 demned by the general fashion of whole societies of men, governed by 
 practical opinions and rules of living quite opposite to others. 
 
 Sect. 11. Whole nations reject several moral rules. — Here, perhaps, it 
 will be objected, that it is no argument that the rule is not known, because 
 it is broken. I grant the objection good where men, though they transgress, 
 yet disown nobtlTelaw ; where fear of shame, censure, or punishment, car- 
 ries the mark of some awe it has upon them. But it is impossible to con- 
 ceive that a whole nation of men should all publicly reject and renounce 
 what every one of them, certainly and infallibly, knew to be a law; for so 
 they must, who have it naturally imprinted on their minds. It is possible 
 men may sometimes own rules of morality, which, in their private thoughts, 
 they do not believe to be true, only to keep themselves in reputation and 
 esteem among those who are persuaded of their obligation. But it is not 
 to be imagined that a whole society of men should publicly and professed- 
 ly disown and cast off a rule, which’ they could not, in their own minds, 
 but be infallibly certain was a law ; nor be ignorant that all men they should 
 have to do with knew it to be such : and therefore must every one of them 
 apprehend from others all the contempt and abhorrence due to one who 
 professes himself void of humanity : and one, who, confounding the known 
 and natural measures of right and wrong, cannot but be looked on as the 
 professed enemy of their peace and happiness. Whatever practical prin- 
 ciple is innate, cannot but be known to every one to be just and good. It is 
 therefore little less than a contradiction to suppose that whole nations of 
 men should, both in their professions and practice, unanimously and uni- 
 versally give the lie to what, by the most invincible evidence, every one of 
 them knew to be true, right, and good. This is enough to satisfy us that 
 no practical rule, which is any where universally, and with public approba- 
 tion or allowance, transgressed, can be supposed innate. But I have some- 
 tiling further to add, in answer to this objection. 
 
 Sect. 12. The breaking of a rule, say you, is no argument that it is 
 unknown. I grant it : but the generally allowed breach of it any where, 
 I say, is a proof that it is not innate. For example, let us take any of these 
 rules, which being the most obvious deductions of human reason, and con- 
 formable to the natural inclination of the greatest part of men, fewest 
 people have had the impudence to deny, or inconsideration to doubt of. 
 If any can be thought to be naturally imprinted, none, I think, can have a 
 fairer pretence to be innate than this; “ parents preserve and cherish your 
 children.” When, therefore, you say that this is an innate rule, what dc 
 vou mean 1 Either that it is an innate principle, which upon all occasions 
 
56 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 1. 
 
 excites ano (iirects the actions of all men ; or else, that it is a truth, which 
 all men have imprinted on their minds, and which therefore they know and 
 assent to. But in neither of these senses is it innate. First, that it is 
 not a principle which influences all men’s actions, is what I have proved 
 by the examples before cited: nor need we seek so far as Mingrelia or 
 Peru to find instances of such as neglect, abuse, nay, and destroy their chil- 
 dren ; or look on it only as the more than brutality of some savage and 
 barbarous nations, when we remember that it was a familiar and uncon- 
 demned practice among the Greeks and Romans to expose, without pity 
 or remorse, their innocent infants. Secondly, that it is an innate truth, 
 known to all men, is also false. For “ parents, preserve your children,” 
 is so far from an innate truth, that it is no truth at all : it being a com- 
 mand, and not a proposition, and so not capable of truth or falsehood. To 
 make it capable of being assented to as true, it must be reduced to some 
 such propositions as this: “it is the duty of parents to preserve their chil- 
 dren.” But what duty is, cannot be understood without a law; nor a law 
 be known, or supposed, without a lawmaker, or without reward and punish- 
 ment; so that it is impossible that this, or any other practical principle, 
 should be innate, i. e. be imprinted on the mind as a duty, without suppos- 
 ing the ideas of God, of law, of obligation, of punishment, of a life after 
 this, innate. For that punishment follows not, in this life, the breach of this 
 rule, and consequently, that it has not the force of a law in countries where 
 the generally allowed practice runs counter to it, is in itself evident. But 
 these ideas (which must be all of them innate, if any thing as a duty be so) 
 are so far from being innate, that it is not every studious or thinking man, 
 much less every one that is born, in whom they are to be found clear and 
 distinct: and that one of them, which of all others seems most likely to be 
 innate, is not so (I mean the idea of God) I think, in the next chapter, 
 will appear very evident to any considering man. 
 
 Sect. 13. From what has been said, I think we may safely conclude, 
 that whatever, practical rule is, in any place, generally, and with allowance, 
 broken, cannot be supposed innate: it being impossible that men should, 
 without shame or fear, confidently and serenely break a rule, which they 
 could not but evidently know that God had set up, and would certainly 
 punish the breach of (which they must, if it were innate) to a degree to 
 make it a very ill bargain to the transgressor. Without such a knowledge 
 as this, a man can never be certain that any thing is his duty. Ignorance, 
 or doubt of the law, hopes to escape the knowledge or power of the law- 
 maker, or the like, may make men give way to a present appetite ; but 
 let any one see the fault, and the rod by it, and with the transgression a 
 fire ready to punish it ; a pleasure tempting, and the hand of the Almighty 
 visibly held up, and prepared to take vengeance (for this must be the case, 
 where any duty is imprinted on the mind ;) and then tell me whether it be 
 possible for people, with such a prospect, such a certain knowledge as this, 
 wantonly, and without scruple, to offend against a law which they carry 
 about them in indelible characters, and that stares them in the face whilst 
 they are breaking it ! Whether men, at the same time that they feel in them- 
 selves the imprinted edicts of an omnipotent lawmaker, can with assurance 
 and gaiety slight and trample under foot his most sacred injunctions ? And 
 lastly, whether il be possible, that whilst a man thus openly bids defiance 
 to this innate law and supreme lawgiver, all the by-standers, yea, even the 
 governors and rulers of the people, full of the same sense both of the law 
 and law-maker, should silently connive, without testifying their dislike, or 
 laying the least blame on it 1 Principles of actions indeed there are lodged 
 in men’s appetites, but these are so far from being innate moral principles, 
 that, if they were left to their full swing, they would carry men to the over- 
 turning of all morality. Moral laws are set as a curb and restraint to these 
 exorbitant desires, which they cannot be but by rewards and punishments, that 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 5? 
 
 
 will overbalance the satisfaction any one shall propose to himself in the 
 breach of the law. If, therefore, any thing he imprinted on the mind )f all 
 men as a law, ail men must have a certain and unavoidable knowledge ;hat 
 certain and unavoidable punishment will attend the breach of it. For if 
 men can be ignorant or doubtful of what is innate, innate principles are in- 
 sisted on and urged to no purpose ; truth and certainty (the things pretended) 
 are not at all secured by them ; but men are in the same uncertain floating 
 estate with as without them. An evident indubitable knowledge of unavoida- 
 ble punishment, great enough to make the transgression very uneligible, must 
 accompany an innate law ; unless, with an innate law, they can suppose an 
 innate gospel too. I would not be here mistaken, as if, because I deny an 
 innate law, I thought there were none but positive laws. There is a great 
 deal of difference between an innate law, and a law of nature ; between 
 something imprinted on our minds in their very original, and something 
 that we being ignorant of, may attain to the knowledge of by the use and 
 due application of our natural faculties. And I think they equally forsake the 
 truth, who, running into contrary extremes, either affirm an innate law, or 
 deny that there is a law knowable by the light of nature, i. e. without the 
 help of positive revelation. 
 
 Sect. 14. Those who maintain innate practical principles , tell us not 
 what they are. — The difference there is among men in their practical prin- 
 ciples is so evident, that, I think, I need say no more to evince that it will 
 be impossible to find any innate moral rules by this mark of general assent : 
 and it is enough to make one suspect that the supposition of such innate 
 principles is but an opinion taken up at pleasure ; since those who talk so 
 confidently of them are so sparing to tell us which they are. This might 
 with justice be expected from those men who lay stress upon this opinion ; 
 and it gives occasion to distrust either their knowledge or charity, who, 
 declaring that God has imprinted on the minds of men the foundations of 
 knowledge, and the rules of living, are yet so little favourable to the infor- 
 mation of their neighbours, or the quiet of mankind, as not to point out 
 to them which they are, in the variety men are distracted with. But, 
 in truth, were there any such innate principles, there would be no need to 
 teach them. Did men find such innate propositions stamped on their minds, 
 they would easily be able to distinguish them from other truths, that they 
 afterwards learned and deduced from them ; and there would be nothing 
 more easy than to know what, and how many, they were. There could be 
 no more doubt about their number than there is about the number of our 
 fingers ; and it is like then every system would be ready to give them us 
 by tale. But since nobody, that I know, has yet ventured to give a cata- 
 logue of them, they cannot blame those who doubt of these innate principles ; 
 since even they who require men to believe that there are such innate 
 propositions, do not tell us what they are. It is easy to foresee, that if 
 different men of different sects should go about to give us a list of those 
 innate practical principles, they would set down only such as suited their 
 distinct hypotheses, and were fit to support the doctrines of their particu- 
 lar schools or churches ; a plain evidence that there are no such innate 
 truths. Nay, a great part of men are so far from finding any such innate 
 moral principles in themselves, that by denying freedom to mankind, and 
 thereby making men no other than bare machines, they take away not only 
 innate, but all moral rules whatsoever, and leave not a possibility to believe 
 any such, to those who cannot conceive how any thing can be capable of 
 a law that is not a free agent ; and, upon that ground, they must necessa- 
 rily reject all principles of virtue, who cannot put morality and mechanism 
 together; which are not very easy to be reconciled or made consistent. 
 
 Sect. 15. Lord Herbert’s innate principles examined. — When I had 
 writ this, being informed that my lord Herbert had, in his book Be Veritate, 
 assigned these innate principles, I presently consulted him, hoping to find, 
 
58 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 1. 
 
 in a man of so great parts, something that might satisfy me in this point, 
 and put an end to my inquiry. In his chapter de Instinctu Naturali, p. 72, 
 edit. 1656,1 met with these six marks of his Notitiae Communes : 1. Prioritas. 
 2. Independents. 3. Universalitas. 4. Certitudo. 5. Necessitas, i. e. 
 as he explains it, faciunt ad hominis conservationem. 6. Modus conforma- 
 tions, i. e. Assensus nulla interposita mora. And at the latter end of his 
 little treatise, De Religione Laici, he says this of these innate principles : 
 Adeo ut non uniuscujusvis religionis confinio arctentur que ubique vigent 
 veritates. Sunt enim in ipsa mente ccelitus descriptce, nullisque traditioni- 
 bus, sive scriptis, sive non scriptis, obnoxias, p. 3. And “ Veritates nostree 
 catholics; quse tanquam indubia Dei effata in foro interiori descriptee. Thus 
 having given the marks of the innate principles, or common notions, and 
 asserted their being imprinted on the minds of men by the hand of God, he 
 proceeds to set them down, and they are these : 1. Esse aliquod supremum 
 numen. 2. Numen illud coli debere. 3. Virtutem cum pietate conjunc- 
 tam optiman esse rationem cultus divini. 4. Resipiscendum esse a pecca- 
 tis. 5. Dari proemium vel pcenam post hanc vitam transactam. Though 
 I allow these to be clear truths, and such as, if rightly explained, a rational 
 creature can hardly avoid giving his assent to ; yet I think he is far from 
 proving them innate impressions “ in foro interiori descriptee.” For I must 
 take leave to observe, 
 
 Sect. 16. First, that these five propositions are either not all, or more than 
 all, those common notions writ on our minds by the finger of God, if it 
 were reasonable to believe any at all to be so written : since there are other 
 propositions, which, even by his own rules, have as just a pretence to such 
 an original, and may be as well admitted for innate principles, as at least 
 some of these five he enumerates, viz. “ do as thou wouldst be done unto;” 
 and perhaps some hundreds of others, when well considered. 
 
 Sect. 17. Secondly, that all his marks are not to be found in each of 
 his five propositions, viz. his first, second, and third marks agree perfectly 
 to neither of them ; and the first, second, third, fourth, and sixth marks 
 agree but ill to his third, fourth, and fifth propositions. For besides that 
 we are assured from history of many men, nay, whole nations, who doubt 
 or disbelieve some or all of them, I cannot see how the third, viz. “ that 
 virtue joined with piety is the best worship of God,” can be an innate prin- 
 ciple, when the name or sound, virtue, is so hard to be understood ; liable 
 to so much uncertainty in its signification ; and the thing it stands for so 
 much contended about, and difficult to be known. And therefore this can 
 be but a very uncertain rule of human practice, and serve but very 
 little to the conduct of our lives, and is therefore very unfit to be assign- 
 ed as an innate practical principle. 
 
 Sect. 18. For let us consider this proposition as to its meaning (for it 
 is the sense, and not sound, that is and must be the principle or common 
 notion,) viz. “ virtue is the best worship of God;” i. e. is most acceptable 
 to him ; which, if virtue be taken, as most commonly it is, for those actions 
 which, according to the different opinions of several countries, are accoun- 
 ted laudable, will be a proposition so far from being certain, that it will 
 not be true. If virtue be taken for actions conformable to God’s will, 
 or to the rule prescribed by God, which is the true and only measure 
 of virtue, when virtue is used to signify what is in its own nature right 
 and good : then this proposition, “ that virtue is the best worship of God,” 
 will be most true and certain, but of very little use in human life : since it 
 will amount to no more but this, viz. “ that God is pleased with the doing 
 of what he commands;” which a man may certainly know to be true, with- 
 out knowing what it is that God doth command ; and so be as far from 
 any rule or principle of his actions as he was before. And I think very 
 few will take a proposition which amounts to no more than this, viz. 
 “ that God is pleased with the doing of what he himself commands,” for 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 52 
 
 an innate moral principle writ on the minds of all men (however true 
 and certain it may be,) since it teaches so little. Whosoever does so, 
 will have reason to think hundreds of propositions innate principles ; since 
 there are many which have as good a title to be received for such, which 
 nobody yet ever put into that rank of innate principles. 
 
 Sect. 19. Nor is the fourth proposition (viz. “ men must repent of their 
 sins”) much more instructive, till what those actions are that are meant by 
 sins beset down. For the word peccata, or sins, being put, as it usually is, to 
 signify in general ill actions, that will draw punishment upon the doers, 
 what great principle of morality can that be, to tell us we should be sorry, 
 and cease to do that which will bring mischief upon us, without knowing 
 what those particular actions are, that will do so I Indeed, this is a very 
 true proposition, and fit to be inculcated on, and received by those, who 
 are supposed to have been taught, what actions in all kinds are sins ; but 
 neither this nor the former can be imagined to be innate principles, nor 
 to be of any use, if they were innate, unless the particular measures and 
 bounds of all virtues and vices were engraven in men’s minds, and 
 were innate principles also ; which I think is very much to be doubted. 
 And, therefore, I imagine it will scarce seem possible that God should en- 
 grave principles in men’s minds, in words of uncertain signification, such 
 as virtues and sins, which, among different men, stand for different things ; 
 nay, it cannot be supposed to be in words at all ; which, being in most of 
 these principles very general names, cannot be understood, but by knowing 
 the particulars comprehended under them. And, in the practical instances, 
 the measures must be taken from the knowledge of the actions themselves, 
 and the rules of them, abstracted from words, and antecedent to the know- 
 ledge of names ; which rules a man must know, what language soever he 
 chance to learn, whether English or Japanese, or if he should learn no lan- 
 guageat all, or never should understand the use of words, as happens in 
 the case of dumb and deaf men. When it shall be made out that men 
 ignorant of words, or untaught by the laws and customs of their country, 
 know that it is part of the worship of God not to kill another man ; not to 
 know more women than one ; not to procure abortion ; not to ex- 
 pose their children ; not to take from another what is his, though 
 we want it ourselves, but, on the contrary, relieve and supply his 
 wants ; and whenever we have done the contrary we ought to repent, 
 be sorry, and resolve to do so no more : when, I say, all men shall be proved 
 actually to know and allow all these, and a thousand other such rules, all 
 which come under these two general words made use of above, viz. “ virtues 
 et peccata,” virtues and sins, there will be more reason for admitting these 
 and the like for common notions and practical principles. Yet, after all, 
 universal consent (were there any in moral principles) to truths, the know- 
 ledge whereof may be attained otherwise, would scarce prove them innate ; 
 which is all I contend for. 
 
 Sect. 20. Obj. — innate 'principles may be corrupted, answered.— Nor 
 will it be of much moment here to offer that very ready, but not very ma- 
 terial answer, (viz.) that the innate principles of morality may, by education 
 and custom, and the general opinion of those among whom we converse, 
 be darkened, and at last quite worn out of the minds of men. Which as- 
 sertion of theirs, if true, quite takes away the argument of universal consent, 
 by which this opinion of innate principles is endeavoured to be proved; un- 
 less those men will think it reasonable that their private persuasions, or tnat 
 of their party, should pass for universal consent : a thing not unfrequently 
 done., when men, presuming themselves to be the only masters of right rea- 
 son, cast by the votes and opinions of the rest of mankind as not worthy the 
 reckoning. And then their argument stands thus: “the principles which 
 all mankind allow for true are innate ; those that men of right reason admit, 
 are the principles allowed by all mankind ; we, and those of our mind, ars 
 
60 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 1. 
 
 men of reason; therefore, we agreeing, our principles are innate;” which 13 
 a very pretty way of arguing, and a short cut to infallibility. For other- 
 wise it will be hard to understand, how there be some principles which all 
 men do acknowledge and agree in ; and yet there are none of those princi- 
 ples, which are not by depraved custom and ill education blotted out of the 
 minds of many men ; which is to say, that all men admit, but yet many men 
 do deny and dissent from them. And indeed the supposition of such first 
 principles will serve us to very litle purpose ; and we shall be as much at a 
 loss with as without them, if they may, by any human power, such as the 
 will of our teachers, or opinions of our companions, be altered or lost in us ' 
 and notwithstanding all this boast of first principles and innate light, we 
 shall be as much in the dark and uncertainty, as if there were no such thing 
 at all: it being all one, to have no rule, and one that will warp any way; 
 or, among various and contrary rules, not to know which is the right. But 
 concerning innate principles, I desire these men to say, whether they can, 
 or cannot, by education and custom, be blurred and blotted out : if they can- 
 not, we must find them in all mankind alike, and they must be clear in every 
 body : and if they may suffer variation from adventitious notions, we must 
 then find them clearest and most perspicuous nearest the fountain, in chil- 
 dren and illiterate people, who have received least impressions from foreign 
 opinions. Let them take which side they please, they will certainly find 
 it inconsistent with visible matter of fact and daily observation. 
 
 Sect. 21. Contrary principles in the world. — I easily grant that there 
 are great numbers of opinions, which by men of different countries, educa- 
 tions, and tempers, are received and embraced as first and unquestionable 
 principles ; many whereof, both for their absurdity, as well as oppositions 
 to one another, it is impossible should be true. But yet all those proposi- 
 tions, how remote soever from reason, are so sacred somewhere or other, 
 that men, even of good understanding in other matters, will sooner part 
 with their lives, and whatever is dearest to them, than suffer themselves to 
 doubt, or others to question, the truth of them. 
 
 Sect. 22. How men commonly come by their principles. — This, however 
 strange it may seem, is that which every day’s experience confirms ; and 
 will not, perhaps, appear so wonderful, if we consider the ways and steps 
 by which it is brought about ; and how really it may come to pass, that doc- 
 trines that have been derived from no better original than the superstition 
 of a nurse, or the authority of an old woman, may, by length of time and 
 consent of neighbours, grow up to the dignity of principles in religion or 
 morality. For such who are careful (as they call it) to principle children 
 well (and few there be who have not a set of those principles for them, 
 which they believe in) instil into the unwary, and as yet unprejudiced un- 
 derstanding (for white paper receives any characters,) those doctrines they 
 would have them retain and profess. These being taught them as soon as 
 they have any apprehension, and still as they grow up confirmed to them, 
 either by the open profession, or tacit consent, of all they have to do with : 
 or at least by those of whose wisdom, knowledge, and piety, they have an 
 opinion, who never suffer those propositions to be otherwise mentioned 
 but as the basis and foundation on which they build their religion and man- 
 ners ; come, by these means, to have the reputation of unquestionable, self- 
 evident, and innate truths. 
 
 Sect. 23. To which we may add, that when men, so instructed, are 
 grown up, and reflect on their own minds, they cannot find any thing more 
 ancient there than those opinions which were taught them before their me- 
 mory began to keep a register of their actions, or date the time when any new 
 thing appeared to them ; and therefore make no scruple to conclude, that 
 those propositions, of whose knowledge they can find in themselves no ori- 
 ginal, were certainly the impress of God and nature upon their minds, ana 
 not taught them by any one else. These they entertain and submit to, as 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 61 
 
 many dc .o their parents, with veneration ; not because it is natural ; nor 
 do childrm do it where they are not so taught; but because, having been 
 always so educated, and having no remembrance of the beginning of this 
 respect, they think it is natural. 
 
 Sect. 24. This will appear very likely, and almost unavoidably to come 
 to pass, if we consider the nature of mankind, and the constitution of hu- 
 man affairs ; wherein most men cannot live without employing their time 
 in the daily labours of their calling ; nor be at quiet in their minds without 
 some foundation or principle to rest their thoughts on. There is scarce 
 any one so floating and superficial in his understanding, who hath not some 
 reverenced propositions, which are to him the principles on which he bot- 
 toms his reasonings ; and by whiqji he judgeth of truth and falsehood, right 
 and wrong : which some, wanting skill and leisure, and others the inclina- 
 tion, and some being taught that they ought not to examine, there are few 
 to be found who are not exposed by their ignorance, laziness, education, or 
 precipitancy, to take them upon trust. 
 
 Sect. 25. This is evidently the case of all children and young folk , and 
 custom, a greater power than nature, seldom failing to make them worship 
 for divine what she hath inured them to bow their minds and submit 
 their understandings to, it is no wonder that grown men, either perplexed 
 m the necessary affairs of life, or hot in the pursuit of pleasures, should 
 not seriously sit down to examine their own tenets ; especially when one 
 of their principles is, that principles ought not to be questioned. And had 
 men leisure, parts, and will, who is there almost that dare shake the foun- 
 dations of all his past thoughts and actions, and endure to bring upon him- 
 self the shame of having been a long time wholly in mistake and error! 
 Who is there hardy enough to contend with the reproach which is every 
 where prepared for those who dare venture to dissent from the received 
 opinions of their country or party! And where is the man to be found 
 that can patiently prepare himself to bear the name of whimsical, skeptical, 
 or atheist, which he is sure to meet with, who does in the least scruple any 
 of the common opinions! And he will be much more afraid to question 
 those principles, when he shall think them, as most men do, the standards 
 set up by God in his mind, to be the rule and touchstone of all other opin- 
 ions. And what can hinder him from thinking them sacred, when he finds 
 them the earliest of his own thoughts, and the most reverenced by others! 
 
 Sect. 26. It is easy to imagine how by these means it comes to pass 
 that men worship the idols that have been setup in their minds ; grow fond 
 of the notions they have long been acquainted with there ; and stamp the 
 characters of divinity upon absurdities and errors ; become zealous votaries 
 to bulls and monkeys ; and contend too, fight and die, in defence of their 
 opinions ; “ Dum solos credit habendos esse deos, quos ipse colit.” For 
 since the reasoning faculties of the soul, which are almost constantly, though 
 not always warily nor wisely employed, would not know how to move, 
 for want of a foundatian and footing, in most men; who, through laziness 
 or avocation, do not, or for want of time, or true helps, or for other causes, 
 cannot penetrate into the principles of knowledge, and trace truth to its 
 fountain and original; it is natural for them, and almost unavoidable to 
 take up with some borrowed principles : which being reputed and pre- 
 sumed to be the evident proofs of other things, are thought not to need 
 any other proof themselves. Whoever shall receive any of these into his 
 mind, and entertain them there, with the reverence usually paid to prin- 
 ciples, never venturing to examine them, but accustoming himself to believe 
 them, because they are to be believed, may take up from his education, and 
 the fashions of his country, any absurdity for innate principles ; and by long 
 poring on the same objects, to dim his sight, as to take monsters lodged 
 in his own brain for the images of the Deity, and the workmanship of his 
 hands. 
 
OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 1. 
 
 *2 
 
 Sect. 27. Principles must be examined. — By this progress now many there 
 are who arrive at principles winch they believe innate may be easily observ- 
 ed, in the variety of opposite principles held and contended for by all sorts 
 and degrees of men. And he that shad deny this to be the method where- 
 in most men proceed to the assurance they have of the truth and evidence 
 of their principles, will perhaps find it a hard matter any other way to ac- 
 count for the contrary tenets which are firmly believed, confidently asserted, 
 and which great numbers are ready at any time to seal with their blood. 
 And, indeed, if it be the privilege of innate principles to be received upon 
 their own authority, without examination, I know not what may not be believ- 
 ed, or how any one’s principles can be questioned. If they may and ought to 
 be examined, and tried, I desire to know how first and innate principles 
 can be tried ; or at least it is reasonable to demand the marks and charac- 
 ters, whereby the genuine innate principles may be distinguished from 
 others ; that so, amidst the great variety of pretenders, I may be kept from 
 mistakes in so material a point as this. When this is done, I shall be 
 ready to embrace such welcome and useful propositions ; and till then, I may 
 with modesty doubt, since I fear universal consent, which is the only one 
 produced, will scarce prove a sufficient mark to direct my choice and as- 
 sure me of any innate principles. From what has been said, I think it 
 past doubt that there are no practical principles wherein all men agree, 
 and therefore none innate. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING INNATE PRINCIPLES 
 BOTH SPECULATIVE AND PRACTICAL. 
 
 Sect. 1. Principles not innate, unless tlieir ideas be innate. — Had 
 those who would persuade, us that there are innate principles, not taken 
 them together in gross, but considered separately the parts out of which 
 those propositions are made, they would not, perhaps, have been so for- 
 ward to believe they were innate : since, if the ideas which made up those 
 truths were not, it was impossible that the propositions made up of them 
 should be innate, or the knowledge of them be born with us. For if the 
 ideas be not innate, there was a time when the mind was without those 
 principles ; and then they will not be innate, but be derived from some 
 other original. For where the ideas themselves are not, there can be no 
 knowledge, no assent, no mental or verbal propositions about them. 
 
 Sect. 2. Ideas, especially those belonging to principles, not born with 
 children. — If we will attentively consider new-born children, we shall have 
 little reason to think that they bring many ideas into the world with them. 
 For bating perhaps some faint ideas of hunger and thirst, and warmth, 
 and some pains which they may have felt in the womb, there is not the 
 least appearance of any settled ideas at all in them; especially of ideas 
 answering the terms which make up those universal propositions that are 
 esteemed innate principles. One may perceive how, by degrees, after- 
 ward, ideas come into their minds ; and that they get no more, nor no other 
 than what experience, and the observation of things that come in their 
 way, furnish them with: which might be enough to satisfy us that they 
 are not original characters stamped on the mind. 
 
 Sect. 3. “ It is impossible for the same thing to be, and hot to be,” is 
 certainly (if there be any such) an innate principle. But can any one 
 think, or will any one say, that impossibility and identity are two innate 
 ideas 1 Are they such as all mankind have, and bring into the world with 
 
 i 
 
Ch. 4. 
 
 NO INNATE PRINCIPLES. 
 
 63 
 
 them 1 ! And are those which are the first in children, and antecedent to 
 all acquired ones'! If they are innate, they must needs be so. Hath a 
 child an idea of impossibility and identity before it has of white or black, 
 sweet or bitter! And is it from the knowledge of this principle that it 
 concludes, that wormwood rubbed on the nipple hath not the same taste 
 that it used to receive from thence! Is it the actual knowledge of “ im- 
 possibile est idem esse, et non esse,” that makes a child’ distinguish between 
 its mother and a stranger! or that makes it fond of the one and flee the 
 other! Or does the mind regulate itself and its assent by ideas that it never 
 yet had! or the understanding draw conclusions from principles which it 
 never yet knew nor understood! The names impossibility and identity 
 stand for two ideas, so far from being innate, or bom with us, that 1 think 
 it requires great care and attention to form them right in our understanding. 
 They ar^saiar from being brought into the world with us, so remote from 
 the"thoughts of infancy and childhood, that I believe, upon examination, it 
 will be found that many grown men want them. 
 
 Sect. 4. Identity, an idea not innate. — If identity (to instance in that 
 alone) be a native impression, and consequently so clear and obvious to us, 
 that we must needs know it even from our cradles, I would gladly be re- 
 solved by one of seven, or seventy years old, whether a man, being a crea- 
 ture, consisting of soul and body, be the same man when his body is chan- 
 ged! Whether Euphorbus and Pythagoras, having had the same soul, 
 were the same men, though they lived several ages asunder! Nay, 
 whether the cock too, which had the same soul, were not the same with 
 both of them! Whereby, perhaps, it will appear that our idea of sameness 
 is not so settled and clear as to deserve to be thought innate in us. For 
 if those innate ideas are not clear and distinct, so as to be universally 
 known, and naturally agreed on, they cannot be subjects of universal and 
 undoubted truths ; but will be the unavoidable occasion of perpetual un- 
 certainty. For, I suppose, every one’s idea of identity will not be the 
 same that Pythagoras and others of his followers have : and which then 
 shall be true ! Which innate ! Or are there two different ideas of identity, 
 both innate! 
 
 Sect. 5. Nor let any one think that the questions I have here proposed 
 about the identity of man, are bare empty speculations ; which, if they were, 
 would be enough to show that there was in the understandings of men no 
 innate idea of identity. He that shall, with a little attention, reflect on 
 the resurrection, and consider that divine justice will bring to judgment, 
 at the last day, the very same persons, to be happy or miserable in the 
 other, who did well or ill in this life, will find it perhaps not easy to resolve 
 with himself what makes the same man, or wherein identity consists : and will 
 not be forward to think he, and every one, even children themselves, have 
 naturally a clear idea of it. 
 
 Sect. 6. Whole and part not innate ideas. — Let us examine that prin- 
 ciple of mathematics, viz. “ that a whole is bigger than a part.” This, 
 I take it, is reckoned among innate principles. I am sure it has as good 
 a title as any to be thought so ; which yet nobody can think it to be, when 
 he considers the ideas it comprehends in it, “ whole and part,” are perfect- 
 ly relative ; but the positive ideas, to which they properly and immediately 
 belong, are extension and number, of which alone whole and part are re- 
 lations. Go that if whole and part are innate ideas, extension and number 
 must be so too ; it being impossible to have an idea of a relation without 
 having any at all of the thing to which it belongs, and in which it is found- 
 ed. Now, whether the minds of men have naturally imprinted on them 
 the ideas of extension and number, I leave to be considered by those who 
 are the patrons of innate principles. 
 
 Sect. 7. Ideas of worship not innate. — “ That God is to be worshipped,” 
 s, without doubt as great a truth as any can enter into the mind of man, 
 
64 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 1. 
 
 and deserves the first place among all practical principles. But yet it can 
 by no means be thought innate, unless the ideas of God and worship are 
 innate. That the idea the term worship stands for is not in the understand- 
 ing of children, and a character stamped on the mind in its first original, 1 
 think, will be easily granted by any one that considers how few there be. 
 among grown men, who have a clear and distinct notion of it. And, I 
 suppose, there cannot be any thing more ridiculous than to say that 
 children have this practical principle innate, “that God is to be worship- 
 ped:” and yet that they know not what that worship of God is, which is 
 their duty. But to pass by this : 
 
 Sect. 8. Idea of God not innate. — If any idea can be imagined innate, 
 the idea of God may, of all others, for many reasons, be thought so ; since it 
 is hard to conceive how there should be innate moral principles without an 
 innate idea of a Deity: without a notion of a lawmaker, it is impossible to 
 have a notion of a law, and an obligation to observe it. Besides the 
 atheists taken notice of among the ancients, and left branded upon the re- 
 cords of history, hath not navigation discovered, in these later ages, whole 
 nations, at the bay of Soldaniafa), in Brazil(fe), in Boranday(c), and in the 
 Caribee islands, &c. among whom there was to be found no notion of a God, 
 no religion! Nicholaus del Techo in Jiteris ex Paraquaria de Caaiguarum 
 conversions, has these words(cZ): “ Reperi earn gentem nullum nomen 
 habere, quod Deum et hominis animam significet, nulla sacra habet, nulla 
 idola.” These are instances of nations where uncultivated nature has 
 been left to itself, without the help of letters and discipline, and the im- 
 provement of arts and sciences. But there are others to be found, who have 
 enjoyed these in a very great measure, who yet, for want of a due application 
 of their thoughts this way, want the idea and knowledge of God. It will, I 
 doubt not, be a surprise to others, as it was to me, to find the Siamites of this 
 number. But for this let them consult the king of France’s late envoy 
 thither(e), who gives no better account of the Chinese themselves(/). 
 And if we will not believe La Loubcre, the missionaries of China, even the 
 Jesuits themselves, the great encomiasts of the Chinese, do all, to a man, 
 agree, and will convince us that the sect of the literati, or learned, keeping 
 to the old religion of China, and the ruling party there, are all of them 
 atheists. [Vid. Navarette, in the collection of voyages, vol. i. and 
 Historia cultus Sinensium.] And perhaps if we should, with attention, 
 mind the lives and discourse of people not so far off, we should have too 
 much reason to fear, that many in more civilized countries have no very 
 strong and clear impressions of a Deity upon their minds; and that the com- 
 plaints of atheism, made from the pulpit, are not without reason. And 
 though only some profligate wretches own it too barefacedly now ; yet per- 
 haps we should hear more than we do of it from others, did not the fear of 
 the magistrate’s sword, or their neighbour’s censure, tie up people’s 
 tongues ; which, were the apprehensions of punishment or shame taken 
 away, would as openly proclaim their atheism, as their lives do (gj 
 
 (a) Roe apud Thevenot, p. 2. (6) Jo. de Lery, c. 16. 
 
 c) Martiniere |-|l. Terry _L7_. and Ovington 
 
 (d) Relatio triplex de rebus Indieis Caaiguarum . 
 
 (e) La Loubere du Royaume du Siam, t. 1, c. 9, sect. 15, and c. 20, sect. 22, 
 and c. 22, sect. 6. 
 
 (f) lb. t. 1. c. 20, sect. 4, and c. 23. 
 
 (g) On this reasoning of the author against innate ideas, great blame hath been 
 laid ; because it seems to invalidate an argument commonly used to prove the 
 being of a God, viz. universal consent: to which our author answers*, I think 
 that the universal consent of mankind, as to the being of a God, amounts to thus 
 much, that the vastly greater majority of mankind have, in all ages of the world, 
 
 * In his third letter to the Bishop of Worcester. 
 
Ch. 4. 
 
 NO INNATE PRINCIPLES. 
 
 65 
 
 Sect. 9. But had all mankind, every where, a notion of a God, (whereof 
 yet history tells us the contrary) it would not from thence follow that the 
 idea of him was innate. For though no nation were to be found without a 
 name, and some few dark notions of him, yet that would not prove them to 
 be natural impressions on the mind, any more than the names of fire, or the 
 sun, heat, or number, do prove the ideas they stand for to be innate, be- 
 cause the names of those things, and the ideas of them, are so universally 
 received and known among mankind. Nor, on the contrary, is the want 
 of such a name, or the absence of such a notion, out of men’s minds, any 
 argument against the being of a God; any more than it would be a proof 
 that there was no loadstone in the world, because a great part of mankind 
 had neither a notion of any such thing, nor a name for it; or by any show 
 of argument to prove, that there are no distinct and various species of 
 angels or intelligent beings above us, because we have no ideas of such dis- 
 tinct species, or names for them: for men being furnished with words, by 
 the common language of their own countries, can scarce avoid having 
 some kind of ideas of those things, whose names those they converse with 
 have occasion frequently to mention to them. And if they carry with it 
 the notion of excellency, greatness, or something extraordinary; if ap- 
 prehension and concernment accompany it ; if the fear of absolute and ir- 
 resistible power set it on upon the mind, the idea is likely to sink the deeper, 
 and spread the farther ; especially if it be sucli an idea as is agreeable to the 
 common light of reason, and naturally deductible from every part of our 
 knowledge, as that of a God is. For the visible marks of extraordinary 
 wisdom and power appear so plainly in 'xU '.he works of the creation, that 
 a rational creature, who will but seriously reflect on them, cannot miss the 
 discovery of a Deity. And the influence that the discovery of such a being 
 must necessarily have on the minds of all, that have but once heard of it, is 
 so great, and carries such a weight of thought and communication with it, 
 that it seems strange to me that a whole nation of men should be any 
 
 actually believed a God ; that the majority of the remaining part have not 
 actually disbelieved it ; and consequently those who have actually opposed the 
 belief of a God have truly been very few. So that comparing those that have 
 actually disbelieved, with those who have actually believed a God, their number 
 is so inconsiderable, that in respect ofthis incomparably greater majority, ofthose 
 who have owned the belief of a God, it may be said to be the universal consent 
 of mankind. 
 
 This is all the universal consent which truth or matter of fact will allow ; and 
 therefore all that can be made use of to prove a God. But if any one would ex- 
 tend it farther, and speak deceitfully for God ; if this universality should be 
 urged in a strict sense, not for much the majority, but for a general consent ot 
 every one, even to a man, in all ages and countries, this would make it either no 
 argument, ora perfectly useless and unnecessary one. For if any one deny a God, 
 such an universality of consent is destroyed ; and if nobody does deny a God, what 
 need of arguments to convince atheists ? 
 
 I would crave leave to ask you lordship, were there ever in the world anv 
 atheists or no ? If there were not, what need is there of raising a question about 
 the being of a God, when nobody questions it ? What need of provisional argu- 
 ments against a fault, from which mankind are so wholly free, and which by an 
 universal consent, they may be presumed to be secure from ? If you say (as I 
 doubt not but you will) that there have been atheists in the world, then yout 
 lordship’s universal consent reduces itself to only a great majority ; and then 
 make that majority as great as you will, what I have said in the place quoted by 
 your lordship leaves it in its full force ; and I have not said one word that does 
 in the least invalidate this argument for a God. The argument I was upon there, 
 was to show, that the idea of God was not innate; and to my purpose it was 
 sufficient, if there were but a less number found in the world, who had no idea 
 of God, than your lot 'ship will allow there have been of professed atheists ; for 
 
OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 B 1. 
 
 00 
 
 where found so brutish as to want the notion of a God, than that they 
 should be without any notion of numbers or fire. 
 
 Sect. 10. The name of God being once mentioned in any part of the 
 world, to express a superior, powerful, wise, invisible being, the suitable- 
 ness of such a notion to the principles of common reason, and the interest 
 men will always have to mention it often, must necessarily spread it far and 
 wide, and continue it down to all generations; though yet the general re- 
 ception of this name, and some imperfect and unsteady notions conveyed 
 thereby to the unthinking part of mankind, prove not the idea to be innate ; 
 but only that they who made the discovery had made a right use of their 
 reason, thought maturely of the causes of things, and traced them to their 
 original; from whom other less considering people, having once received so 
 important a notion, it could not easily be lost again. 
 
 Sect. 11. This is all could be inferred from the notion of a God, were 
 it to be found universally in all the tribes of mankind, and generally 
 acknowledged by men grown to maturity in all countries. For the 
 generality of the acknowledging of a God, as I imagine, is extended no 
 farther than that; which if it be sufficient to prove the idea of God innate, 
 will as well prove the idea of fire innate; since, I think, it may be truly 
 said, that there is not a person in the world, who has a notion of a God, 
 who has not also the idea of fire. I doubt not, but if a colony of young 
 children should be placed in an island where no fire was, they would 
 certainly neither have any notion of such a thing, nor name for it; how 
 generally soever it were received and known in all the world besides: and 
 perhaps too their apprehensions would be as far removed from any name 
 or notion of a God, till some one among them had employed his thoughts 
 to inquire into the constitution and causes of things, which would easily 
 lead him to the notion of a God; which having once taught to others, rea- 
 son, and the natural propensity of their own thoughts, would afterward pro- 
 pagate and continue among them. 
 
 whatsoever is innate must be universal in the strictest sense. One exception is 
 a sufficient proof against it. So that all that I said, and which was quite to ano- 
 ther purpose, did not at all tend, nor can be made use of, to invalidate the argu- 
 ment for a Deity, grounded on such an universal consent, as your lordship, and 
 al! that build on it, must own ; which is only a very disproportionate majority ; 
 such an universal consent my argument there neither affirms nor requires to be 
 less than you will be pleased to allow it. Your lordship therefore might, with- 
 out any prejudice to those declarations of good-will and favour you have for the 
 author of the “Essay of Human Understanding,” have spared the mentioning 
 his quoting authors that are in print, for matters of fact to quite another purpose, 
 “as going aboutto invalidate the argument for a Deity, from the universal con- 
 sent of mankind; since he leaves that universal consent as entire and as large 
 as you yourself do, or can own, or suppose it. But here I have no reason to be 
 sorry that your lordship has given me this occasion for the vindication of this 
 passage of my hook ; if there should be any one besides your lordship, who 
 should so far mistake it, as to think it in the least invalidates the argument for a 
 God, from the universal consent of mankind. 
 
 But because you question the credibility of those authors I have quoted, which 
 you say were very ill-chosen, 1 will crave leave to say, that he whom I relied on 
 for his testimony concerning the Hottentots of Soldania, was no less a man than 
 an ambassador from the king of England to the Great Mogul ; of whose rela- 
 tion, Monsieur Thevenot, no ill judge in the case, had so great an esteem, 
 that he was at the pains to translate into French and publish it in his 
 (which is counted no injudicious) Collection of Travels. But to intercede with 
 your lordship for a little more favourable allowance of credit to Sir Thomas 
 Roe’s relation ; Coore, an inhabitant of the country, who could speak English, 
 assured Mr Terry*, that they ofSoldania had no God. But if lie, too, have the 
 
 * Terry’s Voyage, p. 17, 23. 
 
Ch. 4. 
 
 NO INNATE PRINCIPLES. 
 
 97 
 
 Sect. 12. Suitable to God's goodness, that all men should have an 
 idea of him, therefore naturally imprinted by him, answered. — Indeed 
 it is urged, that it is suitable to the goodness of God to imprint upon the 
 .minds of men characters and notions of himself, and not to leave them in 
 the dark and doubt in so grand a concernment ; and also by that means to 
 secure to himself the homage and veneration due from so intelligent a 
 creature as man ; and therefore he has done it. 
 
 This argument, if it be of any force, will prove much more than those 
 who use it in this case expect from it. For if we may conclude that God 
 hath done for men all that men shall judge is best for them, because it is 
 suitable to his goodness so to do ; it will prove not only that God has im- 
 printed on the minds of men an idea of himself, but that he hath plainly 
 stamped there, in fair characters, all that men ought to know or believe of 
 him, all that they ought to do in obedience to his will; and that he hath 
 given them a will and affections conformable to it. This, no doubt, every 
 one will think better for men, than that they should in the dark grope after 
 knowledge, as St Paul tells us all nations did after God, Acts xvii. 27, 
 than that their wills should clash with their understandings, and their ap- 
 petites cross their duty. The Romanists say, it is best for men, and so 
 suitable to the goodness of God, that there should be an infallible judge of 
 controversies on earth; and therefore there is one. And I, by the same 
 reason say, it is better for men that every man himself should be infallible. 
 I leave them to consider, whether by the force of this argument they 
 shall think that every man is so. I think it a very good argument to say, 
 the infinitely wise God hath made it so ; and therefore it is best. But it 
 
 ill luck to find no credit with you, I hope you will be a little more favourable to 
 a divine of the church of England, now living, and admit of his testimony in 
 confirmation of Sir Thomas Roe’s. This worthy gentleman, in the relation 
 of his voyage to Surat, printed hut two years since, speaking of the same 
 people, has these words* : “ They are sunk even below idolatry, are desti- 
 
 tute of both priest and temple, and, saving a little show of rejoicing, which 
 is made at the full and new moon, have lost all kin 1 of religious devotion. 
 Nature has so richly provided for their convenience in this life, that they have 
 drowned all sense of the God of it, and are grown quite careless of the next.” 
 
 But to provide against the clearest evidence of atheism in these people, you 
 say, “that the account given of them makes them not fit to be a standard 
 for the sense of mankind.” This, I think, may pass for nothing, till some- 
 body be found that makes friem to be a standard for the sense of mankind. 
 All the use I made of them was to show, that there were men in the world 
 that had no innate idea of a God. But to keep something like an argument 
 going, (for what will not that do ?) you go near denying those Cafers to be men. 
 What else do these words signify? “A people so strangely bereft of common 
 sense, that they can hardly be reckoned among mankind, as appears by the 
 best accounts of the Cafers of Soldania, &c. ” I hope, if any of them were 
 called Peter, James, or John, it would be past scruple that they were men • 
 however, Courwee, Wewena, and Cowsheda, and those others who had names, 
 that had no places in your nomenclator, would hardly pass muster with your 
 lordship. 
 
 My Lord, I should not mention this, but that what you yourself say here, 
 may be a motive to you to consider, that what you have laid such stress on 
 concerning the general nature of man, as a real being, and the subject of proper- 
 ties, amounts to nothingfor the distinguishing of species ; since you yourself own, 
 that there may be Individuals, wherein there is a common nature with a parti- 
 cular subsistence proper to each of them ; whereby you are so little able to know 
 of which of the ranks or sorts they are, into which you say God has ordered be- 
 ings, and which he hath distinguished, by essential properties, that y'ou are in 
 doubt whether they ought to be reckoned among mankind or no. 
 
 * Mr Ovington, p. 489. 
 
GS 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book j 
 
 seems to me a little too much confidence of our own wisdom to say, “I 
 think it best, and therefore God hath made it so and, in the matter in 
 hand, it will be in vain to argue from such a topic that God hath done so, 
 when certain experience shows us that he hath not. But the goodness of 
 God hath not been wanting to men without such original impressions of 
 knowledge, or ideas stamped on the mind : since he hath furnished man 
 with those faculties, which will serve for the sufficient discovery of all 
 things requisite to the end of such a being. And I doubt not but to show 
 that a man, by the right use of his natural abilities, may, without any innate 
 principles, attain a knowledge of a God, and other things that concern him. 
 God having endued man with those faculties of knowing which he hath, was 
 no more obliged by his goodness to plant those innate notions in his mind, 
 than that, having given him reason, hands, and materials, he should build 
 him bridges or houses ; which some people in the world, however of good 
 parts, do either totally want, or are but ill provided of, as well as others 
 are wholly without ideas of God, and principles of morality ; or at least 
 have but very ill ones. The reason in both cases being, that they never 
 employed their parts, faculties, and powers industriously that way, but con- 
 tented themselves with the opinions, fashions, and things of their country, 
 as they found them, without looking any farther. Had you or I been born 
 at the bay of Soldania, possibly our thoughts and notions had not exceeded 
 those brutish ones of the Hottentots that inhabit there : and had the Virginia 
 king Apochancana been educated in England, he had been, perhaps, as 
 knowing a divine, and as good a mathematician, as any in it. The differ- 
 ence between him and a more improved Englishman lying barely in this, 
 that the exercise of his faculties was bounded within the ways, modes, and 
 notions of his own country, and never directed to any other of farther in- 
 quiries; and if he had not any idea of a God, it was only because he pur- 
 sued not those thoughts that would have led him to it. 
 
 Sect. 13. Ideas of God various in different men . — I grant that if there 
 were any idea to be found imprinted on the minds of men, we have reason 
 to expect it should be the notion of his Maker, as a mark God set on his 
 own workmanship, to mind man of his dependence and duty ; and that here- 
 in should appear the first instances of human knowledge. But how late is 
 it before any such notion is discoverable in children 1 And when we find 
 it there, how much more does it resemble the opinion and notion of the 
 teacher, than represent the true God 1 He that shall observe in children 
 the progress whereby their minds attain the knowledge they have, will think 
 that the objects they do first and most familiarly converse with, are those that 
 make the first impressions on their understandings ; nor will he find the 
 least footsteps of any other. It is easy to take notice how their thoughts 
 enlarge themselves, only as they come to be acquainted with a greater 
 variety of sensible objects, to retain the ideas of them in their memories ; 
 and to get the skill to compound and enlarge them, and several ways put 
 them together. How by these means they come to frame in their minds 
 an idea men have of a Deity I shall hereafter show. 
 
 Sect. 14. Can it be thought that the ideas men have of God are the 
 chara cters and marks of himself, engraven on their minds by his own fin- 
 der, when we see that in the same country, under one and the same name, 
 men have far different, nay, often contrary and inconsistent ideas and 
 conceptions of him! Their agreeing in a name or sound, will scarce 
 prove an innate notion of him. 
 
 Sect. 15. What true or tolerable notion of a Deity could they have 
 who acknowledged and worshipped hundreds'! Every deity that they 
 owned above one was an infallible evidence of their ignorance of him, and 
 a proof that they had no true notion of God, where unity, infinity, and 
 eternity, were excluded. To which, if we add their gross conceptions of 
 torporeity, expressed in their images and representations of their deities ; • 
 
Oh. 4. 
 
 NO INNATE PRINCIPLES. 
 
 69 
 
 the amours, marriages, copulations, lusts, quarrels, and other mean qualities 
 attributed by them to their gods ; we shall have little reason to think, that 
 the heathen world, i. e. the greatest part of mankind, had such ideas of 
 God in their minds, as lie himself, out of care that they should not be mis* 
 taken about him, was author of. And this universality of consent, so 
 much argued, if it prove any native impressions, it will be only this, 
 that God imprinted on the minds of all men, speaking the same language, 
 a name for himself, but not any idea : since those people, who agreed in 
 the name, had at the same time far different apprehensions about the 
 thing signified. If they say, that the variety of deities worshipped by the 
 heathen world were but figurative ways of expressing the several attributes 
 of that incomprehensible being, or several parts of his providence ; I an- 
 swer, what they might be in their original I will not here inquire ; but that 
 they were so in the thoughts of the vulgar, I think nobody will affirm. 
 And he that will consult the voyage of the bishop of Beryte. c. 13, (not to 
 mention other testimonies) will find that the theology of the Siamites 
 professedly owns a plurality of gods : or as the Abbe de Choisy more judi- 
 ciously remarks, in his Journal du Voyage de Siam, \yj, it consists properly 
 in acknowledging no God at all. 
 
 If it be said, that wise men of all nations came to have true conceptions 
 of the unity and infinity of the Deity, I grant it. But then this, 
 
 First, Excludes universality of consent in any thing but the name ; for 
 those wise men being very few, perhaps one of a thousand, this universality 
 is very narrow. 
 
 Secondly, It seems to me plainly to prove, that the truest and best no- 
 tions men had of God, were not imprinted, but acquired by thought and 
 meditation, and a right use of their faculties : since the wise and considerate 
 men of the world, by a right and careful employment of their thoughts and 
 reason, attained true notions in this, as well as other things ; whilst the 
 lazy and inconsiderate part of men, making far the greater number, took 
 up their notions by chance, from common tradition and vulgar conceptions, 
 without much beating their heads about them. And if it be a reason tc 
 think the notion of God innate, because all wise men had it, virtue, too, 
 must be innate, for that also wise men have always had. 
 
 Sect. 16. This was evidently the case of all Gentilism: nor hath even 
 among Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, who acknowledge but one God, 
 this doctrine, and the care taken in those nations to teach men to have true 
 notions of a God, prevailed so far as to make men to have the same and the 
 true ideas ofhim. How many, even among us, will be found, upon inquiry, to 
 fancy him in the shape of a man sitting in heaven ; and to have many other ab- 
 surd and unfit conceptions of him! Christians, as well as Turks, have had 
 whole sects owning and contending earnestly for it, and that the Deity 
 was corporeal, and of human shape : and though we find few among us 
 who profess themselves anthropomorphites, (though some I have met with 
 that own it) yet, I believe, he that will make it his business, may find among 
 the ignorant and uninstructed Christians, many of that opinion. Talk but 
 with country people, of almost any age, or young people of almost any 
 condition ; and you shall find, that though the name of God be frequently 
 in their mouths, yet the notions they apply this name to are so odd, low, 
 and pitiful, that nobody can imagine they were taught by a rational man, 
 much less that they were characters written by the finger of God himself. 
 Nor do I see how it derogates more from the goodness of God, that he has 
 given us minds unfurnished with these ideas of himself, than that he hath 
 sent us into the world with bodies unclothed, and that there is no art or 
 skill born with us : for, being fitted with faculties to attain these, it is want 
 of industry and consideration in us, and not of bounty in him, if we have 
 them not. It is as certain that there is a God, as that the opposite angles. 
 
70 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 1 
 
 made by the intersection of two strait lines, are equal. There was never 
 any rational creature, that set himself sincerely to examine the truth of 
 these propositions, that could fail to assent to them ; though yet it be past 
 doubt that there are many men, who, having not applied their thoughts 
 that way, are ignorant both of the one and the other. If any one think 
 fit to call this, (which is the utmost of its extent) universal consent, such 
 an one I easily allow ; but such an universal consent as this, proves, not the 
 idea of God, any more than it does the idea of such angles, innate. 
 
 Sect. 17. If the idea of God be not innate, no other can be supposedin- 
 nate. — Since, then, though the knowledge of a God be the most natural 
 discovery of human reason, yet the idea of him is not innate, as, I think, 
 is evident from what has been said ; I imagine there will scarcely be another 
 idea found, that can pretend to it: since, if God hath set any impression, 
 any character, on the understanding of men, it is most reasonable to expect 
 it should have been some clear and uniform idea of himself, as far as our weak 
 capacities were capable to receive so incomprehensible and infinite an ob- 
 ject. But our minds being at first void of that idea, which we are most 
 concerned to have, it is a strong presumption against all other innate char- 
 acters. I must own, as far as I can observe, I can find none, and would 
 be glad to be informed by any other. 
 
 Sect. 18. Idea of substance-not innate. — I confess there is another idea, 
 which would be of general use for mankind to have, as it is of general 
 talk, as if they had it ; and that is the idea of substance, which we neither have, 
 nor can have, by sensation or reflection. If nature took care to provide 
 us any ideas, we might well expect they should be such as by our own 
 faculties we cannot procure to ourselves ; but we see, on the contrary, that 
 since by those ways, whereby our ideas are brought into our minds, this 
 is not, we have no such clear idea at all, and therefore sig-nify nothing by 
 the word substance, but only an uncertain supposition of we know not 
 what, i. e. of something whereof we have no particular distinct positive 
 idea, which we take to be the substratum, or support, of those ideas we 
 know. 
 
 Sect. 19. No propositions can be innate, since no ideas are innate . — 
 Whatever then we talk of innate, either speculative or practical, principles, 
 it may, with as much probability, be said, that a man hath 100Z. sterling in 
 his pocket, and yet denied that he hath either penny, shilling, crown, or any 
 other coin out of which the sum is to be made up, as to think that certain 
 propositions are innate, when the ideas about which they are, can by no 
 means be supposed to be so. The general reception and assent that is 
 given doth not at all prove that the ideas expressed in them are innate: 
 for in many cases, however the ideas came there, the assent to words, 
 expressing the agreement or disagreement of such ideas, will necessarily 
 follow. Every one, that hath a true idea of God and worship, will assent 
 to this proposition, “ that God is to be worshipped,” when expressed in a 
 language he understands: and every rational man, that hath not thought 
 on it to-day, may be ready to assent to this proposition to-morrow ; and 
 yet millions of men may be well supposed to want one or both those ideas 
 to-day. For if we will allow savages and most country people to have 
 ideas of God and worship, (which conversation with them will not make 
 one forward to believe,) yet I think few children can be supposed to have 
 those ideas, which therefore they must begin to have some time or other: 
 and then they will begin to assent to that proposition, and make very lit- 
 tle question of it ever after. But such an assent upon hearing, no more 
 proves the ideas to be innate, than it does that one born blind (with cataracts, 
 which will be couched to-morrow) had the innate ideas of the sun, or 
 light, or saffron, or yellow; because, when his sight is cleared, he will cer- 
 tainly assent to this proposition, “ that the sun is lucid, or that saffron is 
 yellow;” and, therefore, if such an assent upon hearing cannot prove the 
 
Ch. 4, 
 
 NO INNATE PRINCIPLES. 
 
 71 
 
 ideas innate, it can much less the propositions made up of those ideas. 
 If they ha ve any innate ideas, I would be glad to be told what, and how 
 many, they are. 
 
 Sect. a te ideas in the memory . — To which let me add : if 
 
 there' be any innate ideas, any ideas in the mind, which the mind does not 
 actually-thinkon, they must be lodged in the memory, and from thence must 
 be brought into view by remembrance: i. e. must be known, when they 
 are remembered to have been perceptions in the mind before, unless remem- 
 orance can be without remembrance. For to remember is to perceive any 
 thing with memory, or with a consciousness that it was known or perceived 
 before : without this, whatever idea comes into the mind is new, and not re- 
 membered ; this consciousness of its havingbeen in the mind before, being that 
 which distinguishes remembering from all other ways of thinking. What- 
 ever idea was never perceived by the mind was never in the mind. What- 
 ever idea is in the mind, is either an actual perception, or else, having been 
 an actual preception, is so in the mind, that by the memory it can be made 
 an actual perception again. Whenever there is the actual perception of 
 an idea without memory, the idea appears perfectly new and unknown 
 before to the understanding. Whenever the memory brings any idea into 
 actual view, it is with a consciousness that it had been there before, and 
 was not wholly a stranger to the mind. Whether this be not so, I appeal 
 to every one’s observation ; and then I desire an instance of an idea, pre- 
 tended to be innate, which (before any impression of it, by ways hereafter 
 to be mentioned) any one could revive and remember as an idea he had 
 formerly known; without which consciousness of a former perception 
 there is no remembrance ; and whatever idea comes into the mind without 
 that consciousness, is not remembered, or comes not out of the memory, nor 
 can be said to be in the mind before that appearance : for what is not either 
 actually in view, or in the memory, is in the mind no way at all, and is all one 
 as if it had never been there. Suppose a child had the use of his eyes, till 
 he knows and distinguishes colours ; but then cataracts shut the windows, 
 and he is forty or fifty years perfectly in the dark, and in that time per- 
 fectly loses all memory of the ideas of colours he once had. This was the 
 case of a blind man I once talked with, who lost his sight by the small-pox 
 when he was a child, and had no more notion of colours than one born blind. 
 I ask, whether any one can say this man had then any ideas of colours in his 
 mind, any more than one born blind"! And I think nobody will say that 
 either of them had in his mind any idea of colours at all. His cataracts are 
 couched, and then he has the ideas (which he remembers not) of colours, 
 de novo, by his restored sight, conveyed to his mind, and that without any 
 consciousness of a former acquaintance : and these now he can revive and 
 call to mind in the dark. In this case all these ideas of colours, which 
 when out of view can be revived with a consciousness of a former acquain- 
 tance, being thus in the memory, are said to be in the mind. The 
 use I make of this is, that whatever idea, being not actually in view, is in 
 the mind, is there only by being in the memory; and if it be not in the 
 memory, it is not in the mind; and if it be in the memory, it cannot by the 
 memory be brought into actual view, without a perception that it comes 
 out of the memory ; which is this, that it had been known before, and is 
 now remembered. If, therefore, there be any innate ideas, they must.be in 
 the memory, or else no where in the mind; and if they be in the memory, 
 they can be revived without any impression from without ; and whenever 
 they are brought into the mind, they are remembered, i. e. they bring with 
 them a perception of their not being wholly new to it. This being a con- 
 stant and distinguishing difference between what is, and what is not in 
 the memory, or in the mind ; that what is not in the memory, whenever it 
 appears there, appears perfectly new and unknown before ; and what is in the 
 memory, or in the mind, whenever it is suggested by the memory, appears not 
 
72 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 1. 
 
 to be new, but the mind finds it in itself, and knows it was there before. 
 By this it may be tried, whether there be any- innate ideas in die mind, be- 
 fore impression from sensation or reflection. I would fain meet with the 
 man who, when he came to the use of reason, or at any other time, re- 
 membered any one of them ; and to whom, after he was born, they were 
 never new. If any one will say, there are ideas in the mind that are not 
 in the memory, I desire him to explain himself, and make what he says 
 intelligible. 
 
 Sect. 21. Principles not innate, because of little use, or little cer- 
 tainty .—Besides what I have already said, there is another reason why I 
 doubt that neither these nor any other principles are innate. I that am 
 fully persuaded that the infinitely wise God made all things in perfect 
 wisdom, cannot satisfy myself why he should be supposed to print upon the 
 minds of men some universal principles ; whereof those that are pretended 
 innate, and concern speculation, are of no great use ; and those that con- 
 cern practice not self evident: and neither of them distinguishable from 
 some other truths, not allowed to be innate. For to what purpose should 
 characters be graven on the mind by the finger of God, which are not 
 clearerthere than those which are afterwards introduced, or cannot be distin- 
 guished from them ! If any one thinks there are such innate ideas and pro- 
 positions, which by their clearness and usefulness are distinguishable from 
 all that is adventitious in the mind, and acquired, it will not be a hard 
 matter for him to tell us which they are, and then every one will be a fit 
 judge whether they be so or no ; since if there be such innate ideas and im- 
 pressions, plainly different from all other perceptions and knowledge, 
 every one will find it true in himself. Of the evidence of these supposed 
 innate maxims I have spoken already ; of their usefulness I shall have oc- 
 casion to speak more hereafter. 
 
 Sect. 22. Difference of men’s discoveries depends upon the different 
 application of their faculties. — To conclude: some ideas forwardly offer 
 themselves to all men’s understandings ; some sorts of truth result from any 
 ideas, as soon as the mind puts them into propositions ; othertruths require 
 a train of ideas placed in order, a due comparing of them, and deductions 
 made with attention, before they can be discovered and assented to. 
 Some of the first sort, because of their general and easy reception, have 
 been mistaken for innate ; but the truth is, ideas and notions are no more 
 born with us f han arts and sciences, though some of them indeed offer 
 themselves to our faculties more readily than others, and therefore are more 
 generally received; though that too be according as the organs of our 
 bodies and powers of our minds happen to be employed : God having fitted 
 men with faculties and means to discover, receive, and retain truths, ac- 
 coi’ding as they are employed. The great difference that is to be found 
 in the notions of mankind is from the different use they put their faculties 
 to ; whilst some (and those the most) taking things upon trust, misem- 
 ploy their power of assent, by lazily enslaving their minds to the dictates 
 and dominion of others in doctrines, which it is their duty carefully to ex- 
 amine, and not blindly, with an implicit faith, to swallow ; others, employ- 
 ing their thoughts only about some few things, grow acquainted sufficiently 
 with them, attain great degrees of knowledge in them, and are ignorant ot 
 all other, having never let their thoughts loose in the search of other in- 
 quiries. Thus, that the three anglesof atriangleare equal to two right ones, 
 is a truth as certain as any thing can be, and I think more evident than 
 many of those propositions that go for principles ; and yet there are millions, 
 however expert in other things, who know not this at all, because they 
 never set their thoughts on work about such angles ; and he that certainly 
 knows this proposition, may yet be utterly ignorantof the truth of other pro- 
 positions, in mathematics itself, which are as clear and evident as this, be- 
 cause, in his search of those mathematical truths, he stopped his thoughts 
 
Ch. 4. 
 
 NO INNATE PRINCIPLES. 
 
 73 
 
 short, and went not so far. The same may happen concerning the notions 
 we have of the being of a Deity ; for though there be no truth which a man 
 may more evidently make out to himself than the existence of a God, yet 
 he that shall content himself with things as he finds them, in this world, 
 as they minister to his pleasures and passions, and not make inquiry a little 
 farther into the causes, ends, and admirable contrivances, and pursue the 
 thoughts thereof with diligence and attention, may live long without any 
 notion of such a being. And if any person hath by talk put such a notion 
 into his head, he may perhaps believe it ; but if he hath never examined it, 
 his knowledge of it will be no perfecter than his, who having been told that 
 the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones, takes it upon 
 trust, without examining the demonstration ; and may yield his assent as a 
 probable opinion, but hath no knowledge of the truth of it; which yet his 
 faculties, if carefully employed, were able to make clear and evident to 
 him. But this only by the by, to show how much our knowledge depends 
 upon the right use of those powers nature hath bestowed upon us, and how 
 little upon such innate principles, as are in vain supposed to be in all man- 
 kind for their direction ; which all men could not but know, if they were 
 there, or else they would be there to no purpose ; and which, since all men 
 do not know, nor can distinguish from other adventitious truths, we may 
 well conclude there are no such. 
 
 Sect. 23. Men must think and know for themselves. — What censure, 
 doubting thus of innate principles, may deserve from men, who- will be apt 
 to call it pulling up the old foundations of knowledge and certainty, I can- 
 not tell ; I persuade myself, at least, that the way I have pursued, being 
 conformable to truth, lays those foundations surer. This, I am certain, I 
 nave not made it my business either to quit or follow any authority in the 
 ensuing discourse : truth has been my only aim, and wherever that has ap- 
 peared to lead, my thoughts have impartially followed, without minding 
 whether the footsteps of any other lay that way or no. Not that I want a 
 due respect to other men’s opinions ; but after all, the greatest reverence is 
 due to truth : and I hope it will not be thought arrogance to say that per- 
 haps we should make greater progress in the discovery of rational and con- 
 templative knowledge if we sought it in the fountain, in the consideration 
 of things themselves, and made use rather of our own thoughts than other 
 men’s to find it; for I think we may as rationally hope to see with other 
 men’s eyes, as to know by other men’s understandings. So much as we 
 ourselves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so much we pos- 
 sess of real and true knowledge. The floating of other men’s opinions in 
 our brains makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to 
 be true. What in them was science, is in us but opiniatrety ; whilst we 
 give up our assent only to reverend names, and do not, as they did, employ 
 our own reason to understand those truths which gave them reputation. 
 Aristotle was certainly a knowing man, but nobody ever thought him so, 
 because he blindly embraced, and confidently vented, the opinions of another. 
 And if the taking up of another’s principles, without examining them, made 
 not him a philosopher, I suppose it will hardly make any body else so. In 
 the sciences, every one has so much as he really knows and comprehends ; 
 what he believes only, and takes upon trust, are but shreds ; which, how- 
 ever well in the whole piece, make no considerable addition to his stock who 
 gathers them. Such borrowed wealth, like fairy-money, though it were 
 gold in the hand from which he received it, will be but leaves and dust 
 when it comes to use. 
 
 Sect. 24. Whence the opinion of innate principles. — When men have 
 found some general propositions, that could not be doubted of as soon as 
 understood, it was, I know, a short and easy way to conclude them innate. 
 This being once received, it eased the lazy from the pains of search, and 
 stopped the inquiry of the doubtful concerning all that was once styled in- 
 
OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 1 
 
 74 
 
 nate. And it was of no small advantage to those who affected to be 
 masters and teachers, to make this the principle of principles, “ that princi- 
 ples must not be questioned for having once established this tenet, that 
 _there are innate principles, it put their followers upon a necessity of receiv- 
 ing some doctrines as such; which was to take them off from the use o, 
 their own reason and judgment, and put them upon believing and taking 
 them upon trust, without farther examination : in which posture of blind 
 credulity they might be more easily governed by, and made useful to, some 
 sort of men, who had the skill and office to principle and guide them. Nor 
 is it a small power it gives one man over another, to have the authority to 
 be the dictator of principles, and teacher of unquestionable truths ; and to 
 make a man swallow that for an innate principle which may serve to his 
 purpose who teacheth them ; whereas, had they examined the ways where- 
 by men came to the knowledge of many universal truths, they would have 
 found them to result in the minds of men, from the being of things them- 
 selves, when duly considered; and that they were discovered by the appli- 
 cation of those faculties that were fitted by nature to receive and judge of 
 them, when duly employed about them. 
 
 Sect. 25. Conclusion . — To show how the understanding proceeds here- 
 in, is the design of the following discourse ; which I shall proceed to, when 
 I have first premised, that hitherto, to clear my way to those foundations 
 which I conceive are the only true ones whereon to establish those notions 
 we can have of our own knowledge, it hath been necessary for me to give 
 an account of the reasons I had to doubt of innate principles. And since 
 the arguments which are against them do some of them rise from common 
 received opinions, I have been forced to take several things for granted, 
 which is hardly avoidable to any one, whose task it is to show the false- 
 hood or improbability of any tenet: it happening in controversial discourses 
 as it does in assaulting of towns, where, if the ground be but firm whereon 
 the batteries are erected, there is no farther inquiry of whom it is borrow- 
 ed, nor whom it belongs to, so it affords but a fit rise for the present pur- 
 pose. But in the future part of this discourse, designing to raise an edifice 
 uniform and consistent with itself, as far as my own experience and obser- 
 vation will assist me, I hope to erect it on such a basis, that I shall not 
 need to shore it up with props and buttresses, leaning on borrowed or 
 begged foundations ; or at least, if mine prove a castle in the air, I will 
 endeavour it shall be all of a piece, and hang together. Wherein I warn 
 the reader not to expect undeniable cogent demonstrations, unless I may be 
 allowed the privilege, not seldom assumed by others, to take my princi- 
 ciples for granted; and then, I doubt not, but I can demonstrate too. All 
 that I shall say for the principles I proceed on, is, that I can only appeal to 
 men’s own unprejudiced experience and observation, whether they be true 
 or no ; and this is enough for a man who professes no more than to lay 
 down candidly and freely his own conjectures concerning a subject lying 
 somewhat in the dark, without any other design than an unbiassed inquiry 
 after truth. 
 
Ch. 1. 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 7f 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 OF IDEAS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF IDEAS IN GENERAL, AND THEIR ORIGINAL. 
 
 Sect. 1 . Idea is the object of thinking. — Every man being conscious 
 to liimself that he thinks, and that which his mind is applied about whilst 
 thinking, being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt, that men have in 
 their minds several ideas, such as are those expressed by the words white- 
 ness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drun- 
 kenness, and others. It is in the first place then to be inquired, how he 
 comes by them. I know it is a received doctrine, that men have native ideas 
 and original characters stamped upon their minds in their very first being. 
 This opinion I have, at large, examined already ; and I suppose, what I 
 have said, in the foregoing book, will be much more easily admitted, when 
 I have shown whence the understanding may get all the ideas it has, and 
 by what ways and degrees they may come into the mind ; for which I shall 
 appeal to every one’s own observation and experience. 
 
 Sect. 2. All ideas come, from sensation or reflection. — Let us then suppose 
 the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any 
 ideas ; how comes it to be furnished 1 Whence comes it by that vast store 
 which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, witli an 
 almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and 
 knowledge ? To this I answer in one word, from, experience ; in that all 
 our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately 'derives itself. Our 
 observation employed either about external sensible objects, or about the 
 internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, 
 is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. 
 These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we 
 have, or can naturally have, do spring. 
 
 Sect. 3. The objects of sensation one source of ideas. — First, Our 
 senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind 
 several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways 
 wherein those objects do affect them : and thus we come by those ideas 
 we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all 
 those which we call sensible qualities; which, when I say the senses con- 
 vey into the mind, I mean, they, from external objects, convey into the mind 
 what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most of the 
 ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to 
 the understanding, I call sensation. 
 
 Sect. 4. The operations of our minds the other source of them . — 
 Secondly, The other fountain from which experience furnisheth the un- 
 derstanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own mind 
 within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got, which operations, 
 when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the under- 
 standing with another set of idea, which could not be had from things with- 
 out; and such are preception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, 
 knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds ; which we 
 being conscious of and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our 
 understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses, 
 
76 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be 
 not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like 
 it, and might properly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the 
 other sensation, so 1 call this, reflection, the ideas it affords being such 
 only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself. By 
 reflection, then, in the following part of this discourse, I would be under- 
 stood to mean that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and 
 the manner of them ; by reason whereof there come to be ideas of these 
 operations in the understanding. These two, I say, viz. external material 
 things, as the objects of sensation and the operations of our own minds with- 
 in, as the objects of reflection ; are to me the only originals from whence 
 all our ideas take their beginnings. The term operations here I use in a 
 large sense, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about 
 its ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from them, such as is 
 the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought. 
 
 Sect. 5. All our ideas are of the one or the other of these. — The un- 
 derstanding seems to me not to have the least glimmering of any ideas, 
 which it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish 
 the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different 
 perceptions they produce in us : and the mind furnishes the understand- 
 ing with ideas of its own operations. 
 
 These, when we have taken a full survey of them and their several 
 modes, combinations, and relations, we shall find to contain all our whole 
 stock of ideas ; and that we have nothing in our minds which did not come 
 in one of these two ways. Let any one examine his own thoughts, and 
 thoroughly search into his understanding ; and then let him tell me, whe- 
 ther all the original ideas he has there are any other than of the objects of 
 his senses, or of the operations of his mind, considered as objects of his re- 
 flection ; and how great a mass of knowledge soever he imagines to be lodg- 
 ed there, he will, upon taking a strict view, see that he has not any idea in 
 his mind, but what one of these two have imprinted ; though perhaps with 
 infinite variety compounded and enlarged by the understanding, as we shall 
 see hereafter. 
 
 Sect. 6. Observable in children.— -He that attentively considers the 
 state of a child, at his first coming into the world, will have little reason to 
 think him stored with plenty of ideas, that are to be the matter of his future 
 knowledge : it is by degrees he comes to be furnished with them. And 
 though the ideas of obvious and familiar qualities imprint themselves before 
 the memory begins to keep a register of time or order, yet it is often so late 
 befoie some unusual 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 surrounded with bodies that per- 
 petually and diversely affect them, variety of ideas, whether care be taken 
 of it or no, are imprinted on the minds of children. Light and colours are 
 busy at hand every where, when the eye is but open ; sounds and some 
 tangible qualities fail not to solicit their proper senses, and force an entrance 
 to the mind ; but yet, I think, it will be granted easily, that if a child were 
 kept in a place where he never saw any other but black and white till he 
 were a man, he would have no more ideas of scarlet or green, than he that 
 from his childhood never tasted an oyster or a pine-apple has of those par- 
 ticular relishes. 
 
 Sect. 7. Men are differently furnished with these, according to the 
 different objects they converse with. — Men then come to be furnished 
 with fewer or more simple ideas from without, according as the objects they 
 converse with afford greater or less variety ; and from the operations o 
 their minds within, according as they more or less reflect on them. Foi 
 
Ch. 1. 
 
 THE ORIGINAL OF OUR IDEAS. 
 
 77 
 
 though ne 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 con. 
 siders them attentively, he will no more have clear and distinct ideas of all 
 the operations of his mind, and all that may be observed 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 so 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 consider them 
 each in particular. 
 
 gE TT S T l b ns of reflection later. because tJiey need attention,— And 
 hence we see the reason, why it is pretty late before most children get ideas 
 of the operations of their own minds : and some have not any very clear or 
 perfect ideas of the greatest part of them all their lives : because, though they 
 pass there continually, yet, like floating visions, they make not deep impres- 
 sions enough to leave in the mind clear, distinct^ lasting ideas, till the un- 
 derstanding turns inward upon itself, reflects on its own operations, and 
 makes them the objects ofits own contemplation.- Children, when they come 
 first into it, are surrounded with a world of new things, which, by a con- 
 stant solicitation of their senses, draw the mind constantly to them, forward 
 to take notice of new, and apt to be delighted with the variety of changing 
 objects. Thus the first years are usually employed and diverted in looking 
 abroad. Men’s business in them is to acquaint themselves with what is 
 to be found without: and so growing up in a constant attention to outward 
 sensation, seldom make any considerable reflection on what passes within 
 them, until they come to be of riper years ; and some scarce ever at all. 
 
 Sect. 9. The soul begins to have ideas, when it begins to perceive . — 
 To ask at what time a man has first any id'eas, is to ask when he begins to 
 perceive! having ideas, and perception, being the same thing. I know it 
 is an opinion, that the soul always thinks, and that it has the actual per- 
 ception of ideas in itself constantly, as long as it exists ; and that actual 
 thinking is as inseparable from the soul as actual extension is from the 
 oody ; which, if true, to inquire after the beginning of a man’s ideas is the 
 same as to inquire after the beginning of his soul : for by this account soul 
 and its ideas, as body and its extension, will begin to exist both at the 
 same time. 
 
 Sect. 10. The soul thinks not always, for this wants proof. — But 
 whether the soul be supposed to exist antecedent to, or coeval with, or some 
 time after the first rudiments of organization, or the beginnings of life in 
 the body, I leave to be disputed by those who have better thought of that 
 matter. I confe_ss_myself to have one of those dull souls, that doth not per- 
 ceive itself always to contemplate ideas, nor can conceive it any more ne- 
 cessary for the soul always to think, than for the body always to move ; the 
 perception of ideas being (as I conceive) to the soul, what motion is to the 
 body, not its essence, but one of its operations. And, therefore, though 
 thinking be supposed ever so much the proper action ofthe soul, yet it is 
 not necessary to suppose that it should be always thinking, always in ac- 
 tion. That, perhaps, is the privilege of the infinite Author and Preserver of 
 things, who never slumbers nor sleeps ; but is not competent to any finite 
 being, at least not to the soul of man. We know certainly, by experience, 
 that we sometimes think, and thence draw this infallible consequence, that 
 there is something in us that has a power to think : but whether that sub- 
 stance perpetually thinks or no, we can be no farther assured than experi- 
 ence informs us. For to say that actual thinking is essential to the soul, 
 and inseparable from it, is to beg what is in question, and not to prove it by 
 reason ; which is necessary to be done, if it be not a self-evident proposition. 
 Bur whether this, “that the soul always thinks,” be a self-evident proposi- 
 ion, that every body assents to at first hearing, I appeal to mankind. It 
 
73 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 is doubted whether I thought at all last night or no ; the question being abcut 
 a matter of fact, it is begging it to bring, as a proof for it, an hypothesis, 
 which is the very thing in dispute ; by which way one may prove any thing : 
 and it is but supposing that all watches, whilst the balance beats, think ; 
 and it is sufficiently proved, and past doubt, that my watch thought all last 
 night. But he that would not deceive himself, ought to build his hypothesis 
 on matter of fact, and make it out by sensible experience, and not presume 
 on matter of fact, because of his hypothesis : that is, because he supposes it 
 to be so : which way of proving amounts to this, that I must necessarily 
 think all last night, because another supposes I always think, though I my- 
 self cannot perceive that I always do so. 
 
 But men in love with their opinions may not only suppose what is in 
 question, but allege wrong matter of fact. IIow else could any one make 
 it an inference of mine, “ that a thing is not, because we are not sensible of 
 it in our sleep 1” I do not say there is no soul in a man, because he is not 
 sensible of it in his sleep : but I do say, he cannot think at any time, waking 
 or sleeping, without being sensible of it. Our being sensible of it, is not 
 necessary to any thing, but to our thoughts : and to them it is, and to them 
 it will always be necessary, till we can think without being conscious of it. 
 
 Sect. 11. It is not always conscious of it. — I grant that the soul in a 
 waking man is never without thought, because it is the condition of being 
 awake : but whether sleeping without dreaming be not an affection of the 
 whole man, mind as well as body, may be worth a waking man’s considera- 
 tion ; it being hard to conceive that any thing should think, and not be con- 
 scious of it. If the soul doth think in a sleeping man without being con- 
 scious of it, I ask, whether, during such thinking, it has any pleasure or pain, 
 or is capable of happiness or misery 1 I am sure the man is not, any more 
 than the bed or earth he lies on. For to be happy or miserable, without being 
 conscious of it, seems to me utterly inconsistent and impossible. Or if it be 
 possible that the soul can, whilst the body is sleeping, have its thinking, en- 
 joyments and concerns, its pleasure or pain apart, which the man is not 
 conscious of, nor partakes in ; it is certain that Socrates asleep, and So- 
 crates awake, is not the same person ; but his soul when he sleeps, and So- 
 rates the man, consisting of body and soul when he is waking, are two per- 
 sons ; since waking Socrates has no knowledge of, or concernment for, that 
 happiness or misery ofhis soul which it enjoys alone by itself whilst he sleeps, 
 without perceiving any thing of it, any more than he has for the happiness 
 or misery of a man in the Indies, whom he knows not. For if we take 
 wholly away all consciousness of our actions and sensations, especially of 
 pleasure and pain, and the concernment that accompanies it, it will be hard to 
 know wherein to place personal identity. 
 
 Sect. 12. If a sleeping man thinks- udthout knowing it, the sleeping 
 andwaMnggman are two persons. — “The soul, during sound sleep, thinks,” 
 say these men. Whilst it thinks and perceives, it is capable certainly of 
 those of deligffit or trouble, as well as any other perceptions ; and it must 
 necessarily be conscious ofits own perceptions. But it has all this apart ; 
 the sleeping man, it is plain, is conscious of nothing of all this. Let us 
 suppose then that the soul of Castor, while he is sleeping, retired fromhis 
 tody, which is no impossible supposition for the men I have here to do with, 
 who so liberally allow life, without a thinking soul, to all other animals. 
 These men cannot then judge it impossible or a contradiction, that the body 
 should live without the soul ; nor that the soul should subsist and think, or 
 have perception, even perception of happiness or misery, without the body. 
 Let us then, as 1 say, suppose the soul of Castor separated, during his sleep, 
 from his body, to think apart. Let us suppose, too, that it chooses for its 
 scene of thinking, the body of another man, v. g. Pollux, who is sleeping 
 without a soul : for if Castor’s soul can think, whilst Castor is asleep, what 
 Castor is never conscious of, it is no matter what place he chooses to think in. 
 
Ch. 1. 
 
 THE ORIGINAL OF OUR IDEAS. 
 
 79 
 
 We have here, then, the bodies of two men with only one soul between them, 
 which we will suppose to sleep and wake by turns ; and the soul still think- 
 ing in the waking man, whereof the sleeping man is never conscious, has 
 never the least perception. I ask, then, whether Castor and Pollux, thus, 
 with only one soul between them, which thinks and perceives in one what 
 the other is never conscious of, nor is concerned for, are not two distinct 
 persons, as Castor and Hercules, or as Socrates and Plato were 1 And 
 whether one of them might not be very happy, and the other very miser- 
 able ? Just by the same reason they make the soul and the man two per- 
 sons, who make the soul think apart what the man is not conscious of. 
 For I suppose nobody will make identity of person to consist in the soul's 
 being united to the very same numerical particles of matter ; for if that be 
 necessary to identity, it will be impossible in that constant flux of the par- 
 ticles of our bodies, that any man should be the same person two days, or 
 two moments, together. 
 
 Sect. 13. Impossible to convince those that sleep without dreaming, 
 that they think. — Thus, methinks, every drowsy nod shakes their doctrine, 
 who teach, that the soul is always thinking. Those, at least, who do at 
 any time sleep without dreaming, can never be convinced that their thoughts 
 are sometimes for four hours busy without their knowing of it ; and if they 
 are taken in the very act, waked in the middle of that sleeping contempla- 
 tion, can give no manner of account of it. 
 
 Sect. 14. That men dream without remembering it, in vain urged. — It 
 will perhaps be said, “ that the soul thinks even in the soundest sleep, but 
 the memory retains it not.” That the soul in a sleeping man should be 
 this moment busy a thinking, and the next moment in a waking man, not 
 remember nor be able to recollect one jot of all those thoughts, is very hard 
 to be conceived, and would need some better proof than bare assertion to 
 make it be believed. For who can, without any more ado, but being barely 
 told so, imagine that the greatest part of men do, during all their lives, for 
 several hours every day, think of something, which if they were asked, even 
 in the middle of these thoughts, they could remember nothing at all of! 
 Most men, I think, pass a great part of their sleep without dreaming. I 
 once knew a man that was bred a scholar, and had no bad memory, who told 
 me he had never dreamed in his life till he had that fever he was then 
 newly recovered of, which was about the five or six and twentieth year of 
 his age. I suppose the world affords more such instances : at least every 
 one’s acquaintance will furnish him with examples enough of such as pass 
 most of their nights without dreaming. 
 
 Sect. 15. Upon this hypothesis the thoughts of a sleeping man ought 
 to be most rational. — To think often, and never to retain it so much as 
 one moment, is a very useless sort of thinking ; and the soul, in such a state 
 of thinking, does very little, if at all, excel that of a looking-glass, which 
 constantly receives a variety of images, or ideas, but retains none ; they 
 disappear and vanish, and there remain no footsteps of them ; the looking- 
 glass is never the better for such ideas, nor the soul for such thoughts. 
 Perhaps it will be said, “ that in a waking man the materials of the body 
 are employed and made use of in thinking; and that the memory of thoughts 
 is retained by the impressions that are made on the brain, and the traces 
 there left after such thinking; but that in the thinking of the soul, which 
 is not perceived in a sleeping man, there the sold thinks apart, and making 
 no use ofthe organs ofthe body, leaves no impression on it, and consequently no 
 memory ofsuch thoughts.” Not to mention again the absurdity of two distinct 
 persons, which follows from this supposition, I answer farther, that what- 
 ever ideas the mind can receive and contemplate with cut the help ofthe body, 
 it is reasonable to conclude it can retain without the help of the body too ; 
 or else the soul, or any separate spirit, will have but little advantage by 
 thinking. If it has no memory of its own thoughts ; if it cannot lay them 
 
so 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 up for its own use, and be able to recall them upon occasion; if it cannot 
 reflect upon what is past, and make use of its former experiences, rea- 
 sonings, and contemplations, to what purpose does it think ! They, who 
 make the soul a thinking thing, at this rate, will not make it a much more 
 noble being, than those do, whom they condemn for allowing it to be noth- 
 ing but the subtilest parts of matter. Characters drawn on dust, that the 
 first breath of wind effaces ; or impressions made on a heap of atoms, or ani- 
 mal spirits, are altogether as useful, and render the subject as noble, as 
 the thoughts of a soul that perish in thinking ; that once out of sight are 
 gone for ever, and leave no memory of themselves behind them. Nature 
 never makes excellent things for mean or no uses : and it is hardly to be 
 conceived, that our infinitely wise Creator should make so admirable a 
 faculty as the power of thinking, that faculty which comes nearest the ex- 
 cellency of his own incomprehensible being, to be so idly and uselessly 
 employed, at least a fourth part of its time here, as to think constantly, 
 without remembering any of those thoughts, without doing any good to 
 itself or others, or being any way useful to any other part of the creation. 
 If we will examine it, we shall not find, I suppose, the motion of dull and 
 senseless matter, any where in the universe, made so little use of, and so 
 wholly thrown away. 
 
 Sect. 16. On this hypothesis the soul must have ideas not derived 
 from sensation or reflection, of which there is no appearance. — It is true, 
 we have sometimes instances of perception whilst we are asleep, and re- 
 tain the memory of those thoughts ; but how extravagant and incoherent 
 for the most part they are, how little conformable to the perfection and 
 order of a rational being, those who are acquainted with dreams need not 
 be told. This I would willingly be satisfied in, whether the soul, when it 
 thinks thus apart, and as it were separate from the body, acts less ration- 
 ally than when conjointly with it or no. If its separate thoughts be less ra- 
 tional, then these men must sav, that the soul owes the perfection of 
 rational thinking to the body : if it does not, it is a wonder that our dreams 
 should be, for the most part, so frivolous and irrational; and that the soul 
 should retain none of its more rational soliloquies and meditations. 
 
 Sect. 17. If I think when I know it not, nobody else can know it . — 
 Those who so confidently tell us that “the soul always actually thinks,” I 
 would they would also tell us what those ideas are that are in the soul of 
 a child before, or just at the union with the body, before it hath received 
 any by sensation. The dreams of sleeping men are, as I take it, all 
 made up of the waking man’s ideas, though for the most part, oddly put 
 together. It is strange, if the soul has ideas of its own, that it derived not 
 from sensation or reflection (as it must have if it thought before it recei- 
 ved any impressions from the body) that it should never in its private 
 thinking (so private that the man himself perceives it not) retain any 
 of them, the very moment it wakes out of them, and then make the man 
 glad with new discoveries. Whocanfind it reasonable that the soul should, 
 in its retirement, during sleep, have so many hours’ thoughts, and yet 
 never light on any one of those ideas it borrowed not from sensation 
 or reflection ; or, at least, preserve the memory of none but such, which 
 being occasioned from the body, must needs be less natural to a spirit 1 
 It is strange the soul should never once in a man’s whole life recall over 
 any of its pure native thoughts, and those ideas it had before it borrowed 
 any thing from the body ; never bring into the waking man’s view any other 
 ideas but what have a tang of the cask, and manifestly derive their ori- 
 ginal from that union. If it always thinks, and so had ideas before it was 
 united, or before it received any from the body, it is not to be supposed but 
 that during sleep it recollects its native ideas ; and during that retirement 
 from communicating with the body, whilst it thinks by itself, the ideas it 
 is busied about should be, sometimes at least, those more natural and con- 
 
Ch. 1. 
 
 THE ORIGINAL OF OUR IDEAS. 
 
 81 
 
 genial ones which it had in itself, underived from the body, or its own 
 operations about them ; which, since the waking man never remembers, 
 we must from this hypothesis conclude, either that the soul remembers 
 omething that the man does not, or else that memory belongs only to 
 6uch ideas as are derived from the body, or the mind’s operations about 
 them. 
 
 Sect. IS. How knowsany onethat the soul always thinks'! for if it be not 
 3 self-evident proposition, it needs proof . — I would' be glad also to learn 
 from these men, who so coTifidently pronounce that the human soul, or, 
 which is all one, that a man always thinks, how they come to know it I 
 nay how they come to know that they themselves think, when they them- 
 selves do not perceive it l This, I am afraid, is to be sure without proofs ; 
 and to know, without perceiving: it is, I suspect, a confused notion, 
 taken up to serve an hypothesis ; and none of those clear truths, that 
 either their own evidence forces us to admit, or common experience 
 makes it impudence to deny. For the most that can be said of it is, 
 that it is possible the soul may always think, but not always retain it in 
 nemory: and I say, it is a.s possible that the soul may not always think, 
 end much more probable that it should sometimes not think, than that it 
 should often think, and that a long while together, and not be conscious to 
 itself the next moment after that it had thought. 
 
 Sect. 1 9. That a man should be busy in thinking, and yet not retain, it 
 the next moment, very improbable.— To~suppose~the soul to think, and the 
 man not to 'perc?tVH"it, is, as "Fas’ been said, to make two persons in one 
 man; and if one considers well these men’s way of speaking, one should 
 be led into a suspicion that they do so. For they who tell us that the soul 
 always thinks, do never, that I remember, say that a man always thinks. 
 Can the soul think, and not the man! or a man think, and not be conscious 
 of it! This, perhaps, would be suspected of jargon in others. If they say 
 the man thinks always, but is not always conscious of it, they may as well 
 say his body is extended without having parts : for it is altogether as in- 
 telligible to say, that a body is extended without parts, as that any thing 
 thinks without being conscious of it, or perceiving that it does so. They 
 who talk thus may, with as much reason, if it be necessary to their hypo- 
 thesis, say, that a man is always hungry, but that he does not always feel 
 it : whereas hunger consists in that very sensation, as thinking consists in 
 being conscious that one thinks. If they say that a man is always conscious 
 to himself of thinking ; I ask how they know it. Consciousness is the 
 perception of what passes in a man’s own mind. Can another man per- 
 ceive that I am conscious of any thing, when I perceive it not myself 1 
 No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience. Wake a man 
 out of a sound sleep, and ask him what he was that moment thinking of! 
 If he himself be conscious of nothing he then thought on, he must be a 
 notable diviner of thoughts that can assure him that he was thinking ; may 
 he not with more reason assure him he was not asleep! This is something 
 beyond philosophy ; and it cannot be less than revelation, that discovers to 
 another thoughts in my mind, when I can find none there myself : and they 
 must needs have a penetrating sight, who can certainly see that I think, when 
 I cannot perceive it myself, and when I declare that I do not : and yet 
 can see that dogs or elephants do not think, when they give all the demon- 
 stration of it imaginable, except only telling us that they do so. This 
 some may suspect to be a step beyond the Rosicrucians ; it seeming easier 
 to make one’s self invisible to others, than to make another’s thoughts 
 visible to me, which are not visible to himself. But it is but defining 
 the soul to be “ a substance that always thinks,” and the business is done. 
 If such a definition be of any authority, I know not what it can serve for, 
 but to make many men suspect that they have no souls at all, since they 
 find a good part of their lives pass away without thinking. For no defi- 
 L 
 
82 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Bool; 2. 
 
 nitions that I know, no suppositions of any sect, are of force enough to 
 destroy constant experience ; and perhaps it is the affectation of knowing 
 beyond what we perceive, that makes so much useless dispute and noise 
 in the world. 
 
 Sect. 20. No ideas but from sensation or reflection evident, if we ob- 
 serve children. — I see no reason, therefore, to believe that the soul thinks 
 before the senses have furnished it with ideas to think on ; and as those are 
 increased and retained, so it comes, by exercise, to improve its faculty of 
 thinking, in the several parts ofit, as well as afterward, by compounding those 
 ideas, and reflecting on its own operations; it increases its stock as well as 
 facility in remembering, imagining, reasoning, and other modes of thinking. 
 
 Sect. 21. IIo that will sulfer himself to be informed by observation and 
 experience, and not make his own hypothesis the rule of nature, will find 
 few signs of a soul accustomed to much thinking in ’"a 'new -born child, and 
 much fewer of any reasoning at all. And yet it is hard to imagine, that 
 the rational soul should think so much, and not reason at all. And he 
 that will consider that infants newly come into the world, spend the great- 
 est part of their time in sleep, and are seldom awake, but when either hunger 
 calls for the teat, or some pain (the most importunate of all sensations), or 
 some other violent impression upon the body, forces the mind to perceive 
 and attend to it: he, 1 say, who considers this, will, perhaps, find reason to 
 imagine, that a foetus in the mother’s womb differs not much from the state 
 of a vegetable ; but passes the greatest part of its time without percep- 
 tion or thought, doing very little in a place where it needs not seek for food, 
 and is surrounded with liquor, always equally soft, and near of the same 
 temper; where the eyes have no light, and the ears, so shut up, are not 
 very susceptible of sounds ; and where there is little or no variety, or change 
 of objects to move the senses. 
 
 Sect. 22. Follow a child from its birth, and observe the alterations that 
 time makes, and you shall find, as the mind by the senses 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 some time it be- 
 gins to know the objects, which, being most familiar with it, have made 
 lasting impressions. Thus it comes by degrees to know the persons it 
 daily converses with, and distinguish them from strangers ; which are in- 
 stances and effects of its coming to retain and distinguish the ideas the 
 senses convey to it. And so we may observe how the mind, by degrees, 
 improves in these, and advances to the exercise of those other faculties of 
 enlarging, compounding, and abstracting its ideas, and of reasoning about 
 them, and reflecting upon all these, of which I shall have occasion to speak 
 more hereafter. 
 
 Sect. 23. If it shall be demanded, then, when a man begins to have 
 any. ideas-! I -tit-ink -the— tr ue answ er is, when he first has any sensation. 
 For since there appear not to be any ideas in the mind, before the-senses 
 have conveyed any in, I conceive that ideas in the understanding are coeval 
 with sensation; which is such an impression or motion, made in some part 
 of the body, as produces some perception in the understanding. It is about 
 these impressions made on our senses by outward objects, that the mind 
 seems first to employ itself in such operations as we call perception, re- 
 membering, consideration, reasoning, &c. 
 
 Sect. 24. The original of all ovrknowledge. — In time the mind comes 
 to reflect on iTs'otvrr operations about the ideas got by sensation, and there- 
 by stores itself with a new set of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection. 
 These are the impressions that are made on our senses by outward objects, that 
 are extrinsical to the mind, and its own operations, proceeding from powers 
 intrinsical and proper to itself : which, when reflected on by itself, becoming 
 also objects of its contemplation, are, as I have said, the original of all 
 knowledge. Thus, the first capacity of human intellect is that the mind 
 
Ch. 1. 
 
 THE ORIGINAL OF OUR IDEAS. 
 
 83 
 
 is fitted to receive the impressions made on it, either through the senses, 
 by outward objects, or by its own operations, when it reflects on them. 
 This is the first step a man makes towards the discovery of any thing, and 
 the ground work whereon to'build" all those notions which ever he shall 
 have, naturally in this world. AH those sublime thoughts which tower above 
 the clouds, and reach as high as heaven itself, take their rise and footing 
 here : in all that good extent wherein the mind wanders, in those remote 
 speculations it may seem to be elevated with, it stirs not one jot beyond 
 those ideas which sense or reflection have offered for its contemplation. 
 
 Sect. 25. In the reception of simple ideas, the understanding is for 
 the most part passive. — In this part the understanding is merely passive ; 
 and whether or no it will have these beginnings, and, as it were, materials 
 of knowledge, is not in its own power. For the objects of our senses do, 
 many of them, obtrude 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, some obscure notions of them. No man can be wholly ignorant of 
 what he does when he thinks. These simple 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 set 
 before it do therein produce. As the bodies that surround us do diversely 
 affect our organs, the mind is forced to receive the impressions, and can- 
 not avoid the perception of those ideas that are annexed to them. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OF SIMPLE IDEAS. 
 
 Sect. 1. Uncompounded appearances. — The better to understand the 
 nature, manner, and extent of our knowledge, one thing is carefully to be 
 observed concerning the ideas we have : and that is, that some of them are 
 simple, and some complex. 
 
 Though the qualities that affect our senses are, in the things themselves, 
 so united and blended, that there is no separation, no distance between 
 them ; yet it is plain the ideas they produce in the mind enter by the senses 
 simple and unmixed : for though the sight and touch often take in from the 
 same object, at the same time, different ideas, as a man sees at once mo- 
 tion and colour, the hand feels softness and warmth in the same piece of 
 wax ; yet the simple ideas, thus united in the same subject, are as perfectly 
 distinct as those that come in by different senses : the coldness and hard- 
 ness which a man feels rn a piece of ice being as distinct ideas in the 
 mind as the smell and whiteness of a lily ; or as the taste of sugar and 
 smell of a rose. And there is nothing can be plainer to a man than the 
 clear and distinct perceptions he has of those simple ideas ; which, being 
 each in itself uncompounded, contains in it nothing but one uniform ap- 
 pearance o conception in the mind, and is not distinguishable into differ- 
 ent ideas. 
 
 Sect. 2. The mind can neither make nor destroy them. — These simple 
 i deas, the .jmterjrfs-rrf/aTouf Lhbwledge,3r6 suggested ahTlumished to 
 'the mindonly by those two ways above mentioned, viz. sensation and re- 
 flection^). When the understanding is once stored with these simple 
 
 (1) Against this, that the materials of all our knowledge are suggested, and 
 furnished to the mind only by sensation and reflection, the Bishop of Worcester 
 makes use of the idea of substance in these words: “ If the idea of substance he 
 grounded upon plain and evident reason, then we must allow an idea of substance 
 
84 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book. I. 
 
 ideas, it has the power to repeat, compare, and unite them, even to an al- 
 most infinite variety ; and so can make at pleasure new complex ideas. 
 But it is not in the power of the most exalted wit or enlarged understand- 
 ing, by any quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new 
 simple idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways aforementioned : nor can 
 any force of the understanding destroy those that are there. The dominion 
 or man in this little world of his own understanding, being much-what the 
 
 which comes not in by sensation or reflection ; and so we may be certain of some- 
 thing whicli we have not by these ideas.” 
 
 To which our author answers*: These words of your lordship’s contain nothing 
 as I see in them against me: for I never said that the general idea of substance 
 comes in by sensation and reflection; or that it is a simple idea of sensation or 
 reflection, though it be ultimately founded in them; for it is a complex idea, made 
 up of the general idea of something, or being with the relation of a support to 
 accidents. For general ideas come not into the mind by sensation or reflection, 
 but are the creatures or inventions of the understanding, as I think I have shownf; 
 and also how the mind makes them from ideas which it has got „y sensation 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 sensation and reflec- 
 tion, I have likewise shown. 
 
 But that I may not be mistaken, what I mean, when I speak of ideas of sensa- 
 tion and reflection, as the materials of all our knowledge; give me leave, my lord, 
 to set down here a place or two, out of my book, to explain myself; as I thus 
 speak of ideas of sensation and reflection: 
 
 “ That these, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several 
 modes, and the compositions made out of them, we shall find to contain all our 
 whole stock of ideas, and we have nothing in our minds which did not come in 
 one of these two ways:):.” This thought, in another place, I express thus: 
 
 “ These are the most considerable of those simple 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 sensation and reflection§.” And, 
 
 “ Thus 1 have, in a short 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, said in other places, is what I have thought concerning ideas 
 of sensation and reflection, as the foundation and materials of all our ideas, and 
 consequently of all our knowledge : I have set down these particulars out of my 
 book, that the reader, having a full view of my opinion herein, may the better 
 see what in it is liable to your lordship’s reprehension. For that your lordship 
 is not very well satisfied with it, appears not only by the words under consider- 
 ation, but by these also: “ But we are still told, that our understanding can have 
 no other ideas, but either from sensation or reflection.” 
 
 Your lordship’s argument, in the passage we are upon, stands thus : if the gene- 
 ral idea of substance be grounded upon plain and evident reason, then we must 
 allow an idea of substance, which comes not in by sensation or reflection. This 
 is a consequence which, with submission, I think will not hold, because it is 
 founded upon a supposition which I think will not hold, viz. That reason 
 and ideas are inconsistent ; for if that supposition be not true, then the general 
 idea of substance 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 sensation or reflection, and so cannot be said to come 
 in by sensation or reflection. 
 
 To explain myself, and clear my meaning in this matter. All the ideas of all 
 the sensible qualities of a cherry come into my mind by sensation ; the ideas of 
 perceiving, thinking, reasoning, knowing, See. come into my mind by reflection, 
 rhe ideas of these qualities and actions, or powers, are perceived by the mind to 
 be by themselves inconsistent with existence : or as your lordship well expresses 
 
 * In his first letter to the Bishop of Worcester, 
 t B. 3. c. 3. B. 2. c. 25, &c. 28. sect. 18. 
 
 t B. 2. c. 1. sect. 5. § B. 2. c. 7. sect. 10. |j B. 2. c. 21. sect. 73- 
 
Ch. 2. 
 
 OF SIMPLE IDEAS. 
 
 «5 
 
 same as it is ir. the great world of visible things ; wherein his power, how- 
 ever managed by art and skill, reaches no farther than to compound and 
 divide the materials that are made to his hand ; but can do nothing towards 
 the making the least particle of new matter, or destroying one atom of 
 what is already in being. The same inability will every one find in him- 
 self, who shall go about to fashion in his understanding any simple idea, 
 not received in by his senses from external objects, or by reflection from 
 the operations of his own mind about them. I would have any one cry to 
 fancy any taste which had never affected his palate ; or frame the idea of a 
 scent he had never smelt : and when he can do this, I will also conclude 
 that a blind man hath ideas of colours, and a deaf man true distinct notions 
 of sounds. 
 
 Sect. 3. This is the reason why, though we cannot believe it impossi- 
 ble to God to make a creature with other organs, and more ways to con- 
 vey into the understanding the notice of those corporeal things than those 
 five, as they are usually counted, which he has given to man : yet I think 
 it is not possible for any one to imagine any other qualities in bodies, how- 
 soever constituted, whereby they can be taken notice of, besides sounds, 
 tastes, smells, visible and tangible qualities. And had mankind been made 
 but with four senses, the qualities then which are the object of the fifth 
 
 it, we find that we can have no true conception of any modes or accidents, but wi 
 must conceive a substratum, or subject, wherein they are, i. e. that they cannot 
 exist or subsist of themselves. Hence the mind perceives their necessary con- 
 nexion with inherence, or being supported ; which being a relative idea, super- 
 added to the red colour in a cherry, or to thinking in a man, the mind frames 
 the correlative idea of a support. For I never denied that the mind could frame 
 *o itself ideas of relation, but have showed the quite contrary in my chapters 
 about relation. But because a relation cannot be founded in nothing, or be the 
 "elation of nothing, and the thing here related as a supporter, ora support, is not 
 "epresented to the mind by any clear and distinct idea; therefore the obscure 
 and indistinct vague idea of thing, or something, is all that is left to be the positive 
 dea, which has the relation of a support or substratum, to modes or accidents ; 
 and that general indetermined idea of something is, by the abstraction of the mind, 
 derived also from the simple ideas of sensation and reflection; and thus the mind, 
 from the positive, simple ideas got by sensation and reflection, eomes to the gene- 
 ral relative idea of substance, which, without these positive simple ideas, it would 
 never have. 
 
 This your lordship (without giving by detail all the particular steps of the 
 mind in this business) has well expressed in this more familiar way: we find 
 we can have no true conception of any modes or accidents but we must coneeive 
 a substratum, or subject, wherein they are ; since it is a repugnancy to our con- 
 ceptions of things, that modes or accidents should subsist by themselves. 
 
 Hence your lordship calls it the rational idea of substance : and says, “ I grant, 
 that by sensation and reflection we come to know the powers and properties of 
 things ; but our reason is satisfied that there must be something beyond these, be- 
 cause it is impossible that they should subsist by themselves:” so that if this be 
 that which your lordship means by the rational idea of substance, I see nothing 
 there is in it against what I have said, that it is founded on simple ideas of sensa- 
 tion or reflection, and that it is a very obscure idea. 
 
 Your lordship’s conclusion from your foregoing words is, “and so we may 
 be certain of some things which we have not by those ideas ;” which is a propo- 
 sition, whose precise meaning your lordship will forgive me, if I profess, as it 
 stands there, I do not understand. For it is uncertain to me whether your lord- 
 ship means, we may certainly know the existence of something, which we have 
 not by those ideas ; or certainly know the distinct properties of something, which 
 we have not by those ideas: or certainly know the truth of some proposition which 
 we have not by those ideas : for to be certain of something may signify either of 
 these. But in which soever of these it be meant, I do not see how l am concerned 
 in it. 
 
86 
 
 01 HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 sense, had been as far from our notice, imagination, and conception, as now 
 any belonging to a sixth, seventh, or eighth sense, can possibly be : which, 
 whether yet some other creatures, in some other parts of this vast and 
 stupendous universe, may not have, will be a great presumption to deny. 
 He that will not set himself proudly at the top of all things, but will con- 
 sider the immensity of this fabric, and the great variety that is to be found 
 in this little and inconsiderable part of it which he has to do with, may be 
 apt to think, that in other mansions of it there may be other and different 
 intelligent beings, of whose faculties he has as little knowledge or appre- 
 hension, as a worm shut up in one drawer of a cabinet hath of the senses 
 or understanding of a man : such variety and excellency being suitable to 
 the wisdom and power of the Maker. I have here followed the common 
 opinion of man’s having but five senses ; though, perhaps, there may be 
 justly counted more : but either supposition serves equally to my present 
 purpose. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OF IDEAS OF ONE SENSE. 
 
 Sect. 1. Division o£jimple ideas . — The better to conceive the ideas 
 we receiveTrom senstlfion, it may not be amiss for us to consider them in 
 reference to the different ways whereby they make their approaches to our 
 minds, and make themselves perceivable by us. 
 
 Ijhrst, then, There are some which come into our minds by one sense 
 onlyi 
 
 Secondly, There are others, that convey themselves into the mind by 
 more senses than one. 
 
 Thirdly,- Others that are had from reflection only. 
 
 Fourthly, There are some that make themselves way, and are suggested 
 to the mind by all the ways of sensation and reflection. 
 
 We shall consider them apart under their several heads. 
 
 First, There are some ideas which have admittance only through one 
 sense, which is peculiarly adapted to receive them. Thus light and colours, 
 as white, red, yellow, blue, with their several degrees or shades, and mix- 
 tures, as green, scarlet, purple, sea-green, and the rest, come in only by 
 the eyes : all kinds of noises, sounds, and tones, only by the ears : the se- 
 veral tastes and smells, by the nose and palate. And if these organs, or 
 the nerves, which are the conduits to convey them from without to their 
 audience in the brain, the mind’s presence room (as I may so call it), are 
 any of them so disordered, as not to perform their functions, they have no 
 postern to be admitted by; no other way to bring themselves into view, 
 and be perceived by the understanding. 
 
 The most considerable of those belonging to the touch are heat and cold, 
 and solidity ; all the rest, consisting almost wholly in the sensible configu- 
 ration, as smooth and rough, or else more or less firm adhesion of the 
 parts, as hard and soft, tough and brittle, are obvious enough. 
 
 Sect. 2. Few simple ideas have names . — I think it will be needless to 
 enumerate all the particular simple ideas belonging to each sense. Nor 
 indeed is it possible, if we would; there being a great many more of them 
 belonging to most of the senses than we have names for. The variety of 
 smells, which are as many almost, if not more, than species of bodies in the 
 world, do most of them want names. Sweet and stinking commonly serve 
 our turn for these ideas, which in effect is little more than to call them 
 pleasing or displeasing; though the smell of a rose and violet, both sweet 
 we certainly very distinct ideas. Nor are the different tastes, that by our 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 OF IDEAS OF ONE SENSE. 
 
 87 
 
 palates we receive ideas of, much better provided with names. Sweet, 
 bitter, sour, harsh, and salt, are almost all the epithets we have to denomi- 
 nate that numberless variety of relishes which are to be found distinct, not 
 only in almost every sort of creatures, but in the different parts of the same 
 plant, fruit, or animal. The same may be said of colours and sounds. I 
 shall, therefore, in the account of simple ideas I am here giving, content 
 myself to set down only such as are most material to our present purpose, 
 or are in themselves less apt to be taken notice of, though they are very 
 frequently the ingredients of our complex ideas, among which, I thina, I 
 may well account solidity ; which, therefore, I shall treat ofm the next chap- 
 ter. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF SOLIDITY. 
 
 Sect. 4— J Ve receive thi s idea from touch .—' The idea of solidity were- 
 <fe«i a.by ou r tou chy and, it which we find in body, 
 
 to the entrance oTany other body into the place it possesses, till it has left 
 it. There is no idea which we receive more constantly from sensation 
 than solidity. Whether we move or rest, in what posture soever we are, 
 we always feel something under us that supports us, and hinders our far- 
 ther sinking downward : and the bodies which we daily handle make us 
 perceive, that, whilst they remain between them, they do by an insurmount- 
 able force hinder the approach of the parts of our hands that press them. 
 That which thus hinders the approach of two bodies, when they are moved 
 one toward another, I call solidity. I will not dispute whether this ac- 
 ceptation of the word solid be nearer to its original signification than that 
 which mathematicians use it in : it suffices, that I think the common notion 
 of solidity will allow, if not justify, this use of it ; but, if any one think it 
 better to call it impenetrability, he has my consent. Only I have thought 
 the term solidity the more proper to express this idea, not only because of 
 its vulgar use in that sense, but also because it carries something more of 
 positive in it than impenetrability, which is negative, and is, perhaps, more 
 a consequence of solidity than solidity itself. This, of all others, seems the 
 idea most intimately connected with, and essential to, body, so as nowhere 
 else to be found or imagined, but only in matter. And though our senses 
 take no notice of it, but in masses of matter, of a bulk sufficient to cause a 
 sensation in us ; yet the mind, having once got this idea from such grosser 
 sensible bodies, traces it farther ; and considers it, as well as figure, in the 
 minutest particle of matter that can exist; and finds it inseparably inherent 
 in body, wherever or however modified. 
 
 Sect .^ 2. Solid ity fills space . — This is the idea which belongs to body 
 whereby werconceiVefftrtoffill space. The idea of which filling of space is, 
 that, where we imagine any space taken up by a solid substance, we con- 
 ceive it so to possess it, that it excludes all other solid substances ; and will 
 for ever hinder any other two bodies, that move toward one another in a 
 straight line, from coming to touch one another, unless it removes from 
 between them, in a line not parallel to that which they move in. This idea 
 of it the bodies which we ordinarily handle sufficiently furnish us with. 
 
 Sect. ^Distinct from space . — This resistance, whereby it keeps other 
 bodies out75fThe~gpace which it possesses, is so great, that no force, how 
 great soever, can surmount it. All the bodies in the world, pressing a drop 
 of water on all sides, will never be able to overcome the resistance which 
 it will make, soft as it is, to their approaching one another, till it be re 
 
ss 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 moved out of their way : whereby our idea of solidity is distinguished both 
 from pure space, which is capable neither of resistance nor motion, and 
 from the ordinary idea of hardness. For a man may conceive two bodies at a 
 distance, so as they may approach one another, without touching or dis- 
 placing any solid thing, till their superficies come to meet : whereby I think 
 we have the clear idea of space without solidity. For (not to go so far as 
 annihilation of any particular body) I ask, whether a man cannot have the 
 idea of the motion of one single body alone, without any other succeeding 
 immediately into its place 1 I think it is evident he can : the idea of mo- 
 tion in one body no more including the idea of motion in another, than the 
 idea of a square figure in one body includes the idea of a square figure in 
 another. I do not ask, whether bodies do so exist that the motion of one 
 body cannot be really without the motion of another! To determine this 
 either way, is to beg the question for or against a vacuum. But my ques- 
 tion is, whether one cannot have the idea of one body moved whilst others 
 are at rest! And I think this no one will deny. If so, then the place it 
 deserted gives us the the idea of pure space without solidity, whereinto 
 any other body may enter, without either resistance or protrusion of any 
 thing. When the sucker in a pump is drawn, the space it filled in the 
 tube is certainly the same whether any other body follows the motion of 
 the sucker or not : nor does it imply a contradiction that, upon the motion 
 of one body, another that is only contiguous to it should not follow it. The 
 necessity of such a motion is built only on the supposition that the world 
 is full, but not on the distinct ideas of space and solidity ; which are as 
 different as resistance and not resistance ; protrusion and not protrusion. 
 And that men have ideas of space without a body, their very disputes about 
 a vacuum plainly demonstrate, as is showed in another place. 
 
 Sect. 4. From hardness. — Solidity is hereby also diff erenced from hard- 
 ness, in that ’solidify consists in repletion, and so anAltter ^exclusion of 
 other bodies out of the space it possesses ; but hardness, in a firm cohesion 
 of the parts of matter, making up masses of a sensible bulk, so that the 
 whole does not easily change its figure. And, indeed, hard and soft are 
 names that we give to things only in relation to the constitutions of our 
 own bodies ; that being generally called hard by us which will put us to 
 pain sooner than change figure by the pressure of any part of our bodies ; 
 and that on the contrary soft, which changes the situation of its parts upon 
 an easy and unpainfi:’ touch. 
 
 But this difficulty of changing the situation of the sensible parts among 
 themselves, or of the figure of the whole, gives no more solidity to the 
 hardest body in the world, than to the softest; nor is an adamant one jot 
 more solid than water. For though the two flat sides of two pieces of 
 marble will more easily approach each other, between which there is noth- 
 ing but water or air, than if there be a diamond between them ; yet it is not 
 that the parts of the diamond are more solid than those of water, or resist 
 more ; but because, the parts of water being more easily separable from 
 each other, they will, by a side-motion, be more easily removed, and give 
 way to the approach of the two pieces of marble. But if they could be 
 kept from making place by that side-motion, they would eternally hindei 
 the approach of these two pieces of marble as much as the diamond ; and it 
 would be as impossible by any force to surmount their resistance, as to 
 surmount the resistance of the parts of a diamond. The softest body in 
 the world will as invincibly resist the coming together of any other two bodies 
 if it be not put out of the way, but remain between them, as the hardest 
 that can be found or imagined. He that shall fill the yielding soft body 
 well with air or water, will quickly find its resistance : and he that thinks 
 that nothing but bodies that are hard can keep his hands from approach- 
 ing one another, will be pleased to make a trial with the air enclosed in a 
 football. The experiment, I have been told, was made at Florence with a 
 
Ch. 4. 
 
 OF SOLIDITY. 
 
 89 
 
 hollow globe of gold filled with water, and exactly closed, which farther 
 shows the solidity of so soft a body as water. For the golden globe thus fill- 
 ed being put into a press which was driven by the extreme force of screws, 
 the water made itself way through the pores of that very close metal ; and, 
 finding no room for a near approach of its particles within, got to the out- 
 side, where it rose like a dew, and so fell in drops, before the sides of the 
 globe could be made to yield to the violent compression of the engine 
 that squeezed it. 
 
 Sect. 5. On solidity defend impulse, resistance, and protrusion . — By 
 this idea bFsblidity,Ts the extension of body distinguished from the exten- 
 sion of space: the extension of body being nothing but the cohesion or con- 
 tinuity of solid, separable, moveable parts ; and the extension of space, the 
 continuity of unsolid, inseparable, and immoveable parts. Upon the soli- 
 dity of bodies also depend their mutual impulse, resistance, and protrusion. 
 Of pure space then, and solidity, there are several, (among which I confess 
 myself one) who persuade themselves they have clear and distinct ideas ; 
 and that they can think on space, without any thing in it that resists or is 
 protruded by body. This is the idea of pure space, which they think they 
 have as clear as any idea they can have of the extension of body ; the idea 
 of the distance between the opposite parts of a concave superficies being 
 equally as clear without as with the idea of any solid parts between : and 
 on the other side they persuade themselves, that they have, distinct from 
 that of pure space, the idea of something that fills space, that can be pro- 
 truded by the impulse of other bodies, or resist their motion. If there be 
 others that have not these two ideas distinct, but confound them, and 
 make but one of them, I know not how men, who have the same idea 
 under different names, or different ideas under the same name, can in that 
 case talk wi'.u one anoit.er; any more than a man, who, not being blind or 
 deaf, has district .oeas of the colour of scarlet, and the sound of a trumpet, 
 could disco rse concert.. r.g scarlet colour with the blind man I mentioned 
 in another p.ace, who landed that the idea of scarlet was like the sound 
 of a trumpet. 
 
 Sect. 6. What it is . — -If any one ask me what this solidity is 1 I send 
 him to his-^errees'iro Inform him ; let him put a flint or a football between 
 his hands and then endeavour to join them, and he will know. If he thinks 
 this not a sufficient explication of solidity, what it is, and wherein it con- 
 sists, I promisb to tell him what it is, and wherein it consists, when he 
 tells me what thinking is, or wherein it consists : or explains to me what 
 extension or motion is, which perhaps seems much easier. The simple 
 ideas we have are such as experience teaches them us : but if, beyond that, 
 we endeavour by words to make them clearer in the mind, we shall suc- 
 ceed no better than if we went about to clear up the darkness of a blind 
 man’s mind by talking ; and to discourse into him the ideas of light and 
 colours. The reason of this I shall show in another place. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The ideas we get by more than one sense are of space, or extension, 
 figure, rest, and motion ; for these make perceivable impressions, both on 
 the eyes and touch : and we can receive and convey into our minds the 
 ideas of the extension, figure, motion, and rest of bodies, both by seeinu 
 and feeling. But having occasion to speak more at large of these in ano- 
 ther place, I here only enumerate them. 
 
 M 
 
90 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2, 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF REFLECTION. 
 
 Sect. 1. Simple ideas are the operations of the mind about its other 
 ideas. — The mind, receiving the ideas, mentioned in the foregoing chapters 
 from without, when it turns its view inward upon itself, and observes its 
 own actions about those ideas it has, takes from thence other ideas, which 
 are as capable to be the objects of its contemplation as any of those it re- 
 ceived from foreign things. 
 
 Sect. 2. The idea of perception, and idea of willing, we have from re- 
 flection. — The two great and principal actions of the mind, which are 
 most frequently considered, and which are so frequent, that every one that 
 pleases may take notice of them in himself, are these two : perception or 
 thinking; and volition or willing. The power of thinking is called the un- 
 derstanding, and the power of volition is called the will ; and these two 
 powers or abilities in the mind are denominated faculties. Of some of the 
 modes of these simple ideas of reflection, such as are remembrance, dis- 
 cerning, reasoning, judging, knowledge, faith, &c., I shall have occasion to 
 speak hearafter. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF BOTH SENSATION AND REFLECTION. 
 
 Sect. 1. Pleasure and pain. — There be other simple ideas which con- 
 vey themselves into the mind by all the ways of sensation and reflection 
 viz. pleasure or delight, and its opposite, pain or uneasiness, power, ex- 
 istence, unity. 
 
 Sect. 2. — Delight or uneasiness, one or other of them, join themselves 
 to almost all our ideas, both of sensation and reflection : and there is scarce 
 any affection of our senses from without, any retired thought of our mind 
 within, which is not able to produce in us pleasure or pain. By pleasure 
 and pain I would be understood to signify whatsoever delights or molests 
 us most; whether it arises from the thoughts of our minds, or anything 
 operating on ourbodies. For whether we call it satisfaction, delight, plea- 
 sure, nappiness, & c. on the one side ; or uneasiness, trouble, pain, torment, 
 anguish, misery, &c. on the other; they are still but different degrees of 
 the same thing, and belong to the ideas of pleasure and pain, delight or un- 
 easiness; which are the names I shall most commonly use for those two 
 sorts of ideas. 
 
 Sect. 3. The infinitely wise Author of our being, having given us the 
 power over several parts of our bodies, to move or keep them at rest as we 
 think fit; and also, by the motion of them, to move ourselves and other 
 contiguous bodies in which consist all the actions of our body; having also 
 given a power to our minds, in several instances, to choose among its ideas, 
 which it will think on, and to pursue the inquiry of this or that subject with 
 consideration and attention, to excite us to these actions of thinking and 
 motion that we are capable of; has been pleased to join to several thoughts, 
 and several sensations, a perception of delight. If this were wholly sepa- 
 rated from all our outward sensations and inward thoughts, we should 
 have no reason to prefer one thought or action to another ; negligence to 
 attention, or motion to rest. And so we should neither stir our bodies, 
 
Ch. 7. IDEAS OF SENSATION AND REFLECTION. 
 
 91 
 
 nor employ our minds, but let our thoughts (if I may so call it) run adrift, 
 without any direction or design; and suffer the ideas of our minds, like un- 
 regarded shadows, to make their appearances there, as it happened, without 
 attending to them. In which state, man, however furnished with the facul- 
 ties of understanding and will, would be a very idle inactive creature, and 
 pass his time only in a lazy, lethargic dream. It has therefore pleased our 
 wise Creator to annex to several objects, and the ideas which we receive 
 from them, as also to several of our thoughts, a concomitant pleasure, and 
 that in several objects, to several degrees : that those faculties which he 
 had endowed us with might not remain wholly idle and unemployed by us. 
 
 Sect. 4. Pain has the same efficacy and use to set us on work that 
 pleasure has, we being as ready to employ our faculties to avoid that, as to 
 pursue this ; only this is worth our consideration, that pain is often produ- 
 ced by the same objects and ideas that produce pleasure in us. This their 
 near conjunction, which makes us often feel pain in the sensations where 
 we expected pleasure, gives us new occasion of admiring the wisdom and 
 goodness of our Maker ; who, designing the preservation of our being, has 
 annexed pain to the application of many things to our bodies, to warn us 
 of the harm that they will do, and as advices to withdraw from them. But 
 he, not designing our preservation barely, but the preservation of every part 
 and organ in its perfection, hath, in many cases, annexed pain to those 
 very ideas which delight us. Thus heat, that is very agreeable to us in one 
 degree, by a little greater increase of it, proves no ordinary torment ; and 
 the most pleasant of all sensible objects, light itself, if there be too much 
 of it, if increased beyond a due proportion to our eyes, causes a very pain- 
 ful sensation ; which is wisely and favourably so ordered by nature, that 
 when any object does by the vehemency of its operation disorder the in- 
 struments of sensation, whose structures cannot but be very nice and 
 delicate, we might, by the pain, be warned to withdraw before the organ 
 be quite put out of order, and so be unfitted for its proper function for the 
 future. The consideration of those objects that produce it may well per- 
 suade us, that this is the end or use of pain. For though great light be 
 insufferable to our eyes, yet the highest degree of darkness does not at all 
 disease them ; because that causing no disorderly motion in it, leaves that 
 curious organ unharmed, in its natural state. But yet excess of cold as well 
 as heat pains us, because it is equally destructive to that temper which is 
 necessary to the preservation of life, and the exercise of the several func- 
 tions of the body, and which consists in a moderate degree of warmth; or, 
 if you please, a motion of the insensible parts of our bodies confined within 
 certain bounds. 
 
 Sect. 5. Beyond all this we may find another reason, why God hath 
 scattered up and down several degrees of pleasure and pain, in all the things 
 that environ and affect us, and blended them together in almost all that 
 our thoughts and senses have to do with; that we finding imperfection, dis- 
 satisfaction, and want of complete happiness, in all the enjoyments which 
 the creatures can afford us, might be led to seek it in the enjoyment of Him, 
 “ with whom there is fulness of joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures 
 for evermore.” 
 
 Sect. 6. Pleasure and pain . — Though what I have here said may not 
 perhaps make the ideas of pleasure and pain clearer to us than our own 
 experience does, which is the only way that we are capable of having them ; 
 yet t'ne consideration of the reason why they are annexed to so many other 
 ideas, serving to give us due sentiments of the wisdom and goodness ofthe 
 Sovereign Disposer of all things, may not be unsuitable to the main end of 
 these inquiries ; the knowledge and veneration of him being the chief end of 
 all our thoughts, and the proper business of all understandings. 
 
 Sect 7. Existence and unity . — Existence and unity are two other ideas 
 that are suggested to the understanding by every object without, and every 
 
92 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 idea within. When ideas are in our minds, we consider them as being ac- 
 tually there, as well as we consider things to be actually without us : which 
 is, that they exist, or have existence ; and whatever we can consider as one 
 thing, whether a real being or idea, suggests to the understanding the idea 
 of unity. 
 
 Sect. 8. Power. — Power also is another of those simple ideas which 
 we receive from sensation and reflection. For observing in ourselves, that 
 we can at pleasure move several parts of our bodies which were at rest, the 
 effects also tliat natural bodies are able to produce in one another occur- 
 mg every moment to our senses, we both these ways get the idea of power. 
 
 Sect. 9. Succession. — Besides these there is another idea, which, 
 though suggested by our senses, yet is more constantly offered to us by 
 what passes in our minds ; and that is the idea of succession. For if we 
 .ook immediately into ourselves, and reflect on what is observable there, 
 we shall find our ideas always, whilst we are awake, or have any thought, 
 passing in train, one going and another coming without intermission. 
 
 Sect. 10. Simple ideas the materials of all our knowledge. — These, if 
 they are not all, are at least (as I think) the most considerable of those 
 simple ideas which the mind has, and out of which is made all its other 
 knowledge ; all which it receives only by the two forementioned ways of sen- 
 sation and reflection. 
 
 Nor let any one think these too narrow bounds for the capacious mind 
 of man to expatiate in, which takes its flight farther than the stars, and 
 cannot be confined by the limits of the world ; that extends its thoughts often 
 even beyond the utmost expansion of matter, and makes incursions into that 
 incomprehensible inane. I grant all this, but desire any one to assign any 
 simple idea which is not received from one of those inlets before mention- 
 ed, or any complex idea not made out of those simple ones. Nor will it 
 be so strange to think these few simple ideas sufficient to employ the quick- 
 est thought or largest capacity, and to furnish the materials of all that va- 
 rious knowledge, and more various fancies and opinions of all mankind, if 
 we consider how many words may be made out of the various composition 
 of twenty-four letters, or if, going one step farther, we will but reflect on 
 the variety of combinations that may be made with barely one ofthe above- 
 mentioned ideas, viz. number, whose stock is inexhaustible and truly infinite; 
 and what a large and immense field doth extension alone afford the mathe- 
 maticians ! 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SOME FARTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING OUR SIMPLE 
 
 IDEAS. 
 
 Sect. 1. Positive ideas from privative causes. — Concerning the simple 
 ideas of sensation it is to be considered, that whatsoever is so constituted 
 in nature as to be able, by affecting our senses, to cause any perception 
 in the mind, doth thereby produce in the understanding a simple idea, which, 
 whatever be the external cause of it, when it comes to be taken notice of 
 by our discerning faculty, it is by the mind looked on and considered there 
 to be a real positive idea in the understanding, as much as any other whatso- 
 ever, though perhaps the cause of it be but privation of the subject. 
 
 Sect. 2. Thus the ideas ofheat and cold, light and darkness, white and 
 black, motion and rest, are equally clear and positive ideas in the mind, 
 though perhaps some of the causes which produce them are barely priva- 
 tions in subjects, from whence our senses derive those ideas. These the 
 
Ch. 8. 
 
 SIMPLE IDEAS 
 
 93 
 
 understanding, in its view of them, considers ai as distinct positive ideas, 
 without taking notice of the causes that produce them ; which is an inquiry 
 not belonging to the idea, as it is in the understanding, but to the nature 
 of the things existing without us. These are two very different things, and 
 carefully to be distinguished ; it being one thing to perceive and know the 
 idea of white or black, and quite another to examine what kind of particles 
 they must be, and how ranged in the superficies, to make any object ap. 
 pear white or black. 
 
 Sect. 3. A painter or dyer, who never inquired into their causes, hath 
 the ideas of white and black, and other colours, as clearly, perfectly, and 
 distinctly in his understanding, and perhaps more distinctly, than the philo- 
 sopher, who hath busied himself in considering their natures, and thinks he 
 knows how far either of them is in its cause positive or privative ; and the idea 
 of black is no less positive in his mind than that of white, however the cause 
 of that colour in the external object may be only a privation. 
 
 Sect. 4. If it were the design of my present undertaking to inquire into the 
 natural causes and manner of perception, I should offer this as a reason 
 why a privat ive cause might, in some cases at least, produce a positive idea, 
 viz. that all sensation being produced in us, only by different degrees and modes 
 of motion in our animal spirits, variously agitated by external objects, the 
 abatement of any former motion must as necessarily produce a new sensa- 
 tion, as the variation or increase of it ; and so introduce a new idea, which 
 depends only on a different motion of the animal spirits in that organ. 
 
 Sect. 5. But whether this be so or no, I will not here determine, but 
 appeal to every one’s own experience, whether the shadow of a man, though 
 it consist of nothing but the absence of light (and the more the absence of 
 light is, the more discernible is the shadow) does not, when a man looks 
 on it, cause as clear and positive idea in his mind, as a man himself, though 
 covered over with a clear sunshine ! and the picture of a shadow is a posi- 
 tive thing. Indeed, we have negative names, which stand not directly for 
 positive ideas, but for their absence, such as insipid, silence, nihil, &c. 
 which words denote positive ideas; v. g. taste, sound, being, with a sig- 
 nification of their absence 1 
 
 Sect. 6. Positive ideas from privative causes . — And thus one may 
 truly be said to see darkness. For supposing a hole perfectly dark, from 
 whence no light is reflected, it is certain one may see the figure of it, or 
 it may be painted; or whether the ink I write with makes any other idea, 
 is a question. The privative causes I have here assigned of positive ideas 
 are according to the common opinion : but in truth it will be hard to deter- 
 mine whether there be really any ideas from a privative cause, till it be de- 
 termined whether rest be any more a privation than motion. 
 
 Sect. 7. Ideas in the mind, qualities in bodies . — To discover the nature 
 of our ideas the better, and to discourse of them intelligibly, it will be con- 
 venient to distinguish them as they are ideas or perceptions in our minds, 
 and as they are modifications of matter in the bodies that cause such per- 
 ceptions in us ; that so we may not think (as perhaps usually is done) that 
 they are exactly the images and resemblances of something inherent in 
 the subject ; most of those of sensation being in the mind no more the like- 
 ness of something existing without us, than the names that stand for them 
 are the likeness of our idea3, which yet, upon hearing, they are apt to ex- 
 cite in us. 
 
 Sect. 8. Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate 
 object of perception, thought, or understanding, that I cail idea; and the 
 power to produce any idea in our mind I call quality of the subject wherein 
 that power is. Thus a snowball having the power to produce in us the 
 ideas of white, cold, and round, the powers to produce those ideas in us 
 as they are in the snowball, I call qualities ; and as they are sensations oi 
 Derceotions in our understandings, I call them ideas; which ideas, if , 
 
94 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 speak of sometimes as in the things themselves, I would be understood to 
 mean those qualities in the objects which produce them in us 
 
 Sect. 9. Primary qualities. — Qualities thus considered in bodies are, 
 first, such as are utterly inseparable from the body, in what estate soever 
 it be ; such as in all the alterations and changes it suffers, all the force can 
 be used upon it, it constantly keeps ; and such as sense constantly finds in 
 every particle of matter which has bulk enough to be perceived, and the 
 1 mind finds inseparable from every particle of matter, though less than to 
 make itself singly be perceived by our senses : v. g. take a grain of wheat, 
 divide it into two parts, each part has still solidity, extension, figure, and 
 mobility; divide it again and it retains still the same qualities; and so di- 
 vide it on till the parts become insensible, they must retain still each of 
 them all those qualities : for division (which is all that a mill, or pestle, 
 or any other body does upon another, in reducing it to insensible parts) 
 can never take away either solidity, extension, figure, or mobility from any 
 body, but only makes two or more distinct separate masses of matter of 
 that which was but one before ; all which distinct masses, reckoned as so 
 many distinct bodies, after division, make a certain number. These I call 
 original or primary qualities of body, which I think we may observe to 
 produce simple ideas in us, viz. solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, 
 and number. 
 
 Sect. 10. Secondary qualities. — Secondly, such qualities which in truth 
 are nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensa- 
 tions in us by their primary qualities, i. e. by the bulk, figure, texture, and 
 motion of their insensible parts, as colours, sounds, tastes, &c. these I call 
 secondary qualities. To these might be added a third sort, which are al- 
 lowed to be barely powers, though they are as much real qualities in the 
 subject as those which I, to comply with the common way of speaking, 
 call qualities, but for distinction, secondary qualities. For the power in 
 fire to produce a new colour, or consistency, in wax or clay, by its primary 
 qualities, is as much a quality in fire as the power it has to produce in me 
 a new idea or sensation of warmth or burning, which I felt not before, by 
 the same primary qualities, viz. the bulk, texture, and motion of its insen- 
 sible parts. 
 
 Sect. 11. How 'primary qualities produce their ideas. — The next thing 
 to be considered is, how bodies produce ideas in us ; and that is manifestly 
 by impulse, the only way which we can conceive bodies to operate in. 
 
 Sect. 12. If then external objects be not united to our minds, when they 
 produce ideas therein, and yet we perceive these original qualities in such 
 of them as singly fall under our senses, it is evident that some motion 
 must be thence continued by our nerves or animal spirits, by some parts 
 of our bodies, to the brain, or the seat of sensation, there to produce in our 
 minds the particular ideas we have of them. And since the extension, 
 figure, number, and motion of bodies, of an observable bigness, may be per- 
 ceived at a distance by the sight, it is evident some singly imperceptible 
 bodies must come from them to the eyes, and thereby convey to the brain 
 some motion, which produces these ideas which we have of them in us, 
 
 Sect. 13. How secondary . — After the same manner that the ideas of 
 these original qualities are produced -in -ns, we may conceive that the ideas 
 of secondary qualities are also produced, viz. by the operations of insensi- 
 ble particles on our senses. For it being manifest that there are bodies, 
 each whereof are so small that we cannot, by any of our senses, discover 
 either their bulk, figure, or motion, as is evident in the particles of the air 
 and water, and others extremely smaller than those, perhaps as much small- 
 er than the particles of air and water, as the particles of air and water are 
 smaller than peae or hailstones; let us suppose at present, that the different 
 motions and figures, bulk and number of such particles, affecting the se. 
 veral organs of our senses, produce in us those different sensations, which 
 
Ch. 8 
 
 SIMPLE IDEAS. 
 
 65 
 
 we have from the colours and smells of bodies; v. g. that a violet, by the 
 impulse of such insensible particles of matter of peculiar figures and bulks, 
 and in different degrees and modifications of their motions, causes the 
 ideas of the blue colour and sweet scent of that flower to be produced in 
 our minds, it being no more impossible to conceive that God should annex 
 such ideas to such motions, with which they have no similitude, than that 
 he should annex the idea of pain to the motion of a piece of steel dividing 
 our flesh, with which that idea hath no resemblance. 
 
 Sect. 14. What I have said concerning colours and smells may be un- 
 derstood also of tastes and sounds, and other the like sensible qualities ; 
 which, whatever reality we by mistake attribute to them, are in truth noth- 
 ing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in 
 us, and depend on those primary qualities, viz. bulk, figure, texture, and 
 motion of parts, as I have said. 
 
 Sect. 15. Ideas of primary qualities are resemblances ; of secondary, 
 not. — From whence I think it easy to draw this observation, that the ideas 
 of primary qualities cf bodies are resemblances of them, and their patterns 
 do really exist in the bodies themselves ; but the ideas produced in us by 
 these secondary qualities have no resemblance of them at all. There is 
 nothing like our ideas existing in the bodies themselves. They are in 
 the bodies, we denominate from them, only a power to produce those sen- 
 sations in us ; and what is sweet, blue, or warm in idea, is but the certain 
 bulk, figure, and motion of the insensible parts in the bodies themselves, 
 which we call so. 
 
 Sect. 16. Flame is denominated hot and light; snow white and cold; 
 and manna white and sweet, from the ideas they produce in us : which 
 qualities are commonly thought to be the same in those bodies that those 
 ideas are in us, the one the periect resemblance of the other, as they are in 
 a mirror ; and it would by most men be judged very extravagant if one should 
 say otherwise. And yet he that will consider that the same fire, that 
 at one distance produces in us the sensation of warmth, does at a nearer 
 approach produce in us the far different sensations of pain, ought to bethink 
 himself what reason he has to say, that his idea of warmth, which was 
 produced in him by the fire, is actually in the fire : and his idea of pain, 
 which the same fire produced in him the same way, is not in the fire. 
 Why are whiteness and coldness in snow, and pain not, when it produces 
 the one and the other idea in us, and can do neither but by the bulk, figure, 
 number, and motion of its solid parts. 
 
 Sect. 17. The particular bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts 
 of fire, or snow, are really in them, whether any one’s senses perceive them 
 or no ; and therefore they may be called real qualities, because they really 
 exist in those bodies ; but light, heat, whiteness, or coldness, are no more 
 really in them than sickness or pain is in manna. Take away the sensa- 
 tion of them ; let not the eyes see light or colours, nor the ears hear sounds; 
 let the palate not taste, nor the nose smell; and all colours, tastes, odours, 
 and sounds, as they are such particular ideas, vanish and cease, and are 
 reduced to their causes, i. e . bulk, figure, and motion of parts. 
 
 Sect. 18. A piece of manna of a sensible bulk is able to produce in us the 
 idea of a round or square figure, and, by being removed from one place to 
 another, the idea of motion. This idea of motion represents it as it really 
 is in the manna moving : a circle or square are the same, whether in idea 
 or existence, in the mind or in the manna ; and this both motion and figure 
 are really in the manna,’ whether we take notice of them or no : this every 
 body is ready to agree to. Besides, manna, by the bulk, figure, texture, 
 and motion of its parts, has a power to produce the sensations of sickness, 
 and sometimes of acute pains or gripings in us. That these ideas of sick- 
 ness and pain are not in the manna, but effects of its operations on us, and 
 are nowhere when we feel them not : this also every one readily agrees to. 
 
96 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 And yet men are hardly to be brought to think, that sweetness and white- 
 ness are not really in manna ; which are but the effects of the operations 
 of manna, by the motion, size, and figure of its particles on the eyes and 
 palate ; as the pain and sickness caused by manna are confessedly nothing 
 but the effects of its operation on the stomach and guts, by the size, mo- 
 tion, and figure of its insensible parts (for by nothing else can a body 
 operate, as has been proved ;) as if it could not operate on the eyes and 
 palate, and thereby produce in the mind particular distinct ideas, which in 
 itself it has not, as well as we allow it can operate on the guts and stom- 
 ach, and thereby produce distinct ideas, which in itself it has not. These 
 ideas being all effects of the operations of manna on several parts of our 
 bodies, by the size, figure, number, and motion of its parts; why those pro- 
 duced by the eyes and palate, should rather be thought to be really in the 
 manna than those produced by the stomach and guts ; or why the pain and 
 sickness, ideas that are the effects of manna, should be thought to be no- 
 where when they are not felt; and yet the sweetness and whiteness, effects 
 of the same manna on other parts of the body, by ways ecpially as unknown, 
 should be thought to exist in the manna, when they are not seen or tasted, 
 would need some reason to explain. 
 
 Sect. 19. Ideas of primary qualities are resemblances ; of secondary, not. 
 — Let us consider the red and white colour in porphyry : hinder light from 
 striking on it, and its colours vanish; it no longer produces any such ideas 
 in us ; upon the return of light it produces these appearances on us again. 
 Can any one think any real alterations are made in the porphyry by the 
 presence or absence of light: and that those ideas of whiteness and redness 
 are really in porphyry in the light, when it is plain it has no colour in the 
 dark 1 It has, indeed, such a configuration of particles, both night and day, 
 as are apt by the rays of light rebounding from some parts of that hard 
 stone, to produce in us the idea of redness, and from others the idea q.f 
 whiteness ; but whiteness or redness are not in it at any time, but such a 
 texture, that hath the power to produce such a sensation in us. 
 
 Sect. 20. Pound an almond, and the clear white colour will be altered 
 into a dirty one, and the sweet taste into an oily one. What real altera- 
 tion can the beating of the pestle make in any body, but an alteration of 
 the texture of it 1 
 
 Sect. 21. Ideas being thus distinguished and understood, we may be able 
 to give an account how the same water, at the same time, may produce the 
 idea of cold by one hand, and of heat by the other; whereas it is impossible 
 that the same water, if those ideas were really in it, should at the same 
 time be both hot and cold : for if we imagine warmth, as it is in our hands, 
 to be nothing but a certain sort and degree of motion in the minute parti- 
 cles of our nerves or animal spirits, we may understand how it is possible 
 that the same water may, at the same time, produce the sensations of heat 
 in one hand, and cold in the other ; which yet figure never does, 
 that never producing the idea of a square by one hand, which has 
 produced the idea of a globe by another. But if the sensation of heat and 
 cold be nothing but the increase or diminution of the motion of the minute 
 parts of our bodies, caused by the corpuscles of any other body, it is easy 
 to be understood, that if that motion be greater in one hand than in the 
 other ; if a body be applied to the two hands, which has in its minute 
 particles a greater motion, than in those of one of the hands, and a less 
 than in those of the other ; it will increase the motion of the one hand, 
 and lessen it in the other, and so cause the different sensations -of heat and 
 cold that depend thereon. 
 
 Sect. 22. I have in what just goes before been engaged in physical in- 
 luiries a little farther than perhaps I intended. But it being necessary to 
 make the nature of sensation a little understood, and to make the differ- 
 ence between the qualities in bodies and the ideas produced by them in the 
 
Ch. 8. 
 
 SIMPLE IDEAS. 
 
 97 
 
 mind, to be distinctly conceived, without which it were impossible to dis- 
 course intelligibly of them, I hope I shall be pardoned this little excursion 
 into natural philosophy, it being necessary in our present inquiry to dis- 
 tino-uish the primary and real qualities of bodies, which are always in them 
 (viz. solidity, extension, figure, number, and motion or rest; and are 
 sometimes perceived by us, viz. when the bodies they are in are jig enough 
 singly to be discerned) from those secondary and imputed qualities, which 
 are but the powers of several combinations of those primary ones, when 
 they operate, without being distinctly discerned; whereby vve may also 
 come to know what ideas are, and what are not, resemblances ofsomething 
 really existing in the bodies we denominate from them. 
 
 Sect. 23. Three sorts of qualities m bodies. — The qualities then that 
 are in bodies, rightly -considered, are of three sorts. 
 
 First, The bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion or rest of their 
 solid parts ; those are in them, whether we perceive them or no ; and 
 when they are of that size that we can discover them, we have by these 
 an idea of the thing, as it is in itself, as is plain in artificial things. These 
 I call primary qualities. 
 
 Secondly, The power that is in any body, by reason of its insensible 
 primary qualities, to operate after a peculiar manner on any of our senses, 
 and thereby produce in us the different ideas of several colours, sounds, 
 smells, tastes, &c. These are usually called sensible qualities. 
 
 Thirdly, The power that is in any body, by reason of the particular con- 
 stitution of its primary qualities, to make such a change in the bulk, figure, 
 texture, and motion of another body, as to make it operate on our senses, 
 differently from what it did before. Thus the sun has a power to make 
 wax white, and fire to make lead fluid. These are usually called powers. 
 
 The first of these, as has been said, I think may be properly called real, 
 original, or primary qualities, because they are in the things themselves, 
 whether they are perceived or no ; and upon their different modifications 
 it is, that the secondary qualities depend. 
 
 The other two are only powers to act differently upon other things, 
 which powers result from the different modifications of those primary 
 qualities. 
 
 Sect. 24. The first are resemblances. The second thought resem- 
 blances, but are not. The third neither are, nor are thought so. — But 
 though the two latter sorts of qualities are powers barely, and nothing but 
 powers, relating to several other bodies, and resulting from the different 
 modifications of the original qualities, yet they are generally otherwise 
 thought of: for the second sort, viz. the powers to produce several ideas in 
 us by our senses, are looked upon as real qualities, in the things thus 
 affecting us ; but the third sort are called and esteemed barely powers, v. g. 
 the idea of heat or light, which we receive by our eyes or touch from the 
 sun, are commonly thought real qualities, existing in the sun, and some- 
 thing more than mere powers in it. But when we consider the sun, in 
 reference to wax, which itmelts or blanches, we look on the whiteness and 
 softness produced in the wax, not as qualities in ,the sun, but effects pro- 
 duced by powers in it : whereas, if rightly considered, these qualities of 
 light and warmth, which are perceptions in me when I am warmed or en- 
 lightened by the sun, are no otherwise in the sun, than the changes made 
 in the wax, when it is blanched or melted, are in the sun. They are all 
 of them equally powers in the sun, depending on its primary qualities ; 
 whereby it is able, in the one case, so to alter the bulk, figure, texture, or 
 motion of some of the insensible parts of my eyes or hands, as thereby to 
 produce in me the idea of light or heat ; and in the other, it is able so to 
 alter the bulk, figure, texture, or motion of the insensible parts of the wax, 
 as to make them fit to produce in me the distinct ideas of white and fluid. 
 
 Sect. 25. The reason why the one are ordinarily taken for real qualities, 
 N 
 
98 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 anu 1 he other^nly for bare powers, seems to be because the ideas we have 
 of distinct colours, sounds, &c. containing nothing at all in them of bulk, 
 figure, or motion, we are not apt to think them the effects of these primary 
 qualities, which appear not, to our senses, to operate in their production ; 
 and with which they have not any apparent congruity, or conceivable con- 
 nexion. Hence it is that we are so forward to imagine, that those ideas 
 are the resemblances of something really existing in the objects themselves ; 
 since sensation discovers nothing of bulk, figure, or motion of parts in 
 their production ; nor can reason show how bodies, by their bulk, figure, 
 and motion, should produce in the mind the ideas of blue or yellow, .^ic. 
 But in the other case, in the operations of bodies changing the qualities 
 one of another, we plainly discover, that the quality produced hath com- 
 monly no resemblance with any thing in the thing producing it : wherefore 
 we look on it as a bare effect of power. For though receiving the idea 
 of heat or light from the sun, we are apt to think it is a perception and re- 
 semblance of such a quality in the sun ; yet when we see wax, or a fair 
 face, receive change of colour from the sun, we cannot imagine that to be 
 the reception or resemblance of any thing in the sun, because we find not 
 those different colours in the sun itself. For our senses being able to ob- 
 serve a likeness or unlikeness of sensible qualities in two different external 
 objects, we forwardly enough conclude the production of any sensible 
 quality in any subject to be an effect of bare power, and not the communi- 
 cation of any quality, which was really in the efficient, when we find no 
 such sensible quality in the thing that produced it. But our senses not 
 being able to discover any unlikeness between the idea produced in us, and 
 the quality of the object producing it, we are apt to imagine that our ideas 
 are resemblances of something in the objects, and not the effects of certain 
 powers placed in the modification of their primary qualities, with which 
 primary qualities the ideas produced in us have no resemblance. 
 
 Sect. 28. Secondary qualities twofold ; first, immediately perceivable; 
 secondly, mediately perceivable. — To conclude : beside those before-men- 
 tioned primary qualities in bodies, viz. bulk, figure, extension, number, and 
 motion of their solid parts ; all the rest whereby we take notice of bodies, 
 and distinguish them one from another, are nothing else but several pow- 
 ers in them depending on those primary qualities ; whereby they are fitted, 
 either by immediately operating on our bodies to produce several different 
 ideas in us ; or else, by operating on other bodies, so to change their primary 
 qualities, as to render them capable of producing ideas in us different from 
 what before they did. The former of these, I think, may be called secon- 
 dary qualities, immediately perceivable : the latter, secondary qualities 
 mediately perceivable. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 Sect. 1. Perception the first simple idea of reflection. — Perception, as 
 it is the first faculty of the mind, exercised about our ideas ; so it is the first 
 and simplest idea we have from reflection, and is by some called thinking 
 in' general. Though thinking, in the propriety of the English tongue, sig- 
 nifies that sort of operation in the mind about its ideas, wherein the mind 
 is active; where it, with some degree of voluntary attention, considers 
 any thing. For in bare naked perception, the mind is, for the most part, 
 only passive ; and what it perceives, it cannot avoid perceiving. 
 
 Sect. 2. Perception is only when the mind receives the impression. — Wha 
 perception is, every one will know better by reflecting on what he does him 
 
Ch. 9. 
 
 OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 99 
 
 self, what he sees, hears, feels, &c. or thinks, than by any discourse of 
 mine. Whoever reflects on what passes in his own mind, cannot miss it. 
 and if he does not reflect, all the words in the world cannot make him have 
 any notion of it. 
 
 Sect. 3. This is certain, that whatever alterations are made in the body, 
 if they reach not the mind ; whatever impressions are made on the outward 
 parts, if they are not taken notice of within ; there is no perception. Fire 
 may burn our bodies, with no other effect than it does a billet, unless the 
 motion be continued to the brain, and there the sense of heat, or idea of 
 pain, be produced in the mind, wherein consists actual perception. 
 
 Sect. 4. How often may a man observe in himself, that whilst his mind 
 is intently employed in the contemplation of some objects, and curiously 
 surveying some ideas that are there, it takes no notice of impressions of 
 sounding bodies made upon the organ of hearing with the same alteration 
 that uses to be for the producing the idea of sound. A sufficient impulse 
 there may be on the organ ; but if not reaching the observation of the mind, 
 there follows no perception ; and though the motion that uses to produce 
 the idea of sound be made in the ear, yet no sound is heard. Want of 
 sensation, in this case, is not through any defect in the organ, or that the 
 man’s ears are less affected than at other times when he does hear: but 
 that which uses to produce the idea, though conveyed in by the usual or- 
 gan, not being taken notice of in the understanding, and so imprinting no 
 idea in the mind, there follows no sensation. So that wherever there is 
 sense, or perception there some idea is actually produced and present in 
 the understanding. 
 
 Sect. 5. Children, though they have ideas in the womb, have none in- 
 nate. — Therefore, I doubt not but children, by the exercise of their senses 
 about objects that affect them in the womb, receive some few ideas before 
 they are born ; as the unavoidable effects, either of the bodies that environ 
 them, or else of those wants or diseases they suffer : among which (if one 
 may conjecture concerning things not very capable of examination) I think 
 the ideas of hunger and warmth are two; which probably are some of the 
 first that children have, and which they scarce ever part with again. 
 
 Sect. 6. But though it be reasonable to imagine that children receive 
 some ideas before they come into the world, yet those simple ideas are far 
 from those innate principles which some contend for, and we above have 
 rejected. These here mentioned being the effects of sensation, are only 
 from some affections of the body, which happen to them there, and so de- 
 pend on something exterior to the mind ; no otherwise differing in their 
 manner of production from other ideas derived from sense, but only in the 
 precedency of time ; whereas those innate principles are supposed to be 
 quite of another nature, not coming into the mind by any accidental alter- 
 ations in, or operations on, the body; but, as it were, original characters 
 impressed upon it in the very first moment of its being and constitution. 
 
 Sect. 7. Which ideas first, is not evident. — As there are some ideas 
 which we may reasonably suppose may be introduced into the minds of 
 children in the womb, subservient to the necessities of their life and being 
 there ; so, after they are born, those ideas are the earliest imprinted which 
 happen to be the sensible qualities which first occur to them : among which 
 light is not the least considerable, nor of the weakest efficacy. And how 
 covetous the mind is to be furnished with all such ideas as have no pain ac- 
 companying them, may be a little guessed by what is observable in chil 
 dren new-born, who always turn their eyes to that part from whence the 
 light comes, lay them how you please. But the ideas that are most familiar 
 at first being various, according to the divers circumstances of children’s first 
 entertainment in the world, the order wherein the several ideas come at first 
 into the mind is very various and uncertain also ; neither is it much material 
 to know Jt 
 
100 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2, 
 
 Sect. 8. Ideas of sensation often changed by the judgment . — We are 
 further to consider concerning perception, that the ideas we receive by sen- 
 sation are often in grown people altered by the judgment, without our taking 
 notice of it. When we set before our eyes a round globe, of any uniform co- 
 lour, v. g. gold, alabaster, or jet, it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted 
 in our mind is of a flat circle variously shadowed, with several degrees of 
 light and brightness coming to our eyes; but we having by use been accus- 
 tomed to perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make 
 i;i us, what alterations are made in the reflections of light by the difference 
 of the sensible figures of bodies, the judgment presently, by an habitual cus- 
 tom, alters the appearances into their causes ; so that from that which is truly 
 variety of shadow or colour, collecting the figure it makes it pass for a mark 
 or figure, and frames to itself the perception of a convex figure and a uniform 
 colour: when the idea we receive from thence is only a plane, variously co- 
 loured, as is evident in painting. To which purpose I shall here insert a pro- 
 blem of that ingenious and studious promoter of real knovvledge, the learn- 
 ed and worthy Mr Molineaux, which he was pleased to send me in a letter 
 some months since ; and it is this : suppose a man born blind and now adult, 
 and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the 
 same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell when he felt one 
 and the other, which is the cube, which the sphere. Suppose then the cube 
 and the sphere placed on a table, and the blind man be made to see : quaere, 
 “whether by his sight, before he touched them, he could now distinguish and 
 tell which is the globe, which the cube!” to which the acute and judicious 
 proposer answers, not. For though he has obtained the experience of how 
 a globe, how a cube affects his touch ; yet he has not yet obtained the ex- 
 perience, that what affects his touch so or so, must affect his sight so or 
 so ; or that a protuberant angle in the cube that pressed his hand unequally 
 shall appear to his eye as it does in the cube. I agree with this thinking 
 gentleman, whom I am proud to call my friend, in his answer to this his 
 problem ; and am of opinion that the blind man, at first sight, would not 
 be able with certainty to say, which was the globe, which the cube, whilst 
 he only saw them : though he could unerringly name them by his touch, 
 and certainly distinguish them by the difference of their figures felt. This 
 I have set down, and leave with my reader, as an occasion for him to con- 
 sider how much he may be beholden to experience, improvement, and ac- 
 quired notions, where he thinks he had not the least use of, or help from 
 them : and the rather, because this observing gentleman farther adds, that 
 having, upon the occasion of my book, proposed this to divers very inge- 
 nious men, he hardly ever met with one, that at first gave the answer to it 
 which he thinks true, till by hearing his reasons they were convinced. 
 
 Sect. 9. But this is not, I think, usual in any of our ideas but those 
 received by sight : because sight, the most comprehensive of all our sen 
 ses, conveying to our minds the ideas of light and colours, which are pe- 
 culiar only to that sense; and also the far different ideas of space, figure, 
 and motion, the several varieties whereof change the appearance of its 
 proper object, viz. light and colours; we bring ourselves by use to judge of 
 the one by the other. This, in many cases, by a settled habit, in things 
 whereof we have frequent experience, is performed so constantly, and so 
 quick, that we take that for the reception of our sensation which is an idea 
 formed by our judgment : so that one, viz, that of sensation, serves only 
 to excite the other, and is scarce taken notice of itself: as a man who reads 
 or hears with attention and understanding, takes little notice of the char- 
 acters or sounds, but of the ideas that are excited in him by them. 
 
 Sect. 10. Nor need we wonder that this is done with so little notice, 
 If we consider how very quick the actions of the mind are performed : for 
 as itself is thought to take up no space, to have no extension, so its ac- 
 tions seem to require no time, but many of them seem to be crowded inta 
 
Ch, 9. 
 
 OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 101 
 
 an instant. I speak this in comparison to the actions of the body. Any 
 one may easily observe this in his own thoughts, who will take the pains 
 to reflect on them. How, as it were in an instant, do our minds with one 
 glance see all the parts of a demonstration, which may very well be called 
 a long one, if we consider the time it will require to put it into words, and 
 step by step show it another! Secondly, we shall not be so much surprised 
 that this is done in us with so little notice, if we consider how the facility 
 which we get of doing things, by a custom of doing, makes them often pass 
 in us without our notice. Habits, especially such as are begun very early, 
 come at last to produce actions in us which often escape our observation. 
 Plow frequently do we, in a day, cover our eyes with our eyelids, without 
 perceiving that we are at all in the dark! Men that by custom have got 
 the use of a by-word, do almost in every sentence pronounce sounds which, 
 though taken notice of by others, they themselves neither hear nor observe ; 
 and therefore it is not so strange that our mind should often change the 
 idea of its sensation into that of its judgment, and make one serve only to 
 excite the other, without our taking notice of it. 
 
 Sect. 11. Perception puts the difference between animals and inferior 
 beings .— This faculty of perception seems to me to be that which puts the 
 distinction betwixt the animal kingdom and the inferior parts of nature. 
 For however vegetables have, many of them, some degrees of motion, and 
 upon the different application of other bodies to them, do veiy briskly alter 
 their figures and motions, and so have obtained the name of sensitive plants, 
 from a motion which has some resemblance to that which in animals follows 
 upon sensation ; yet I suppose it is all bare mechanism, and no otherwise 
 produced than the turning of a wild oat-beard, by the insinuation of the 
 particles of moisture, or the shortening of a rope by the affusion of water; 
 all which is done without any sensation in the subject, or the having or 
 receiving any ideas. 
 
 Sect. -l-2HPer£ept i on , I believe, is in some degree in all sorts of animals; 
 though in some, possibly, the avenues provided by nature for the reception 
 of sensations ai*e so few, and the perception they are received with so ob- 
 scure and dull, that it comes extremely short of the quickness and variety 
 of sensation which are in other animals ; but yet it is sufficient for, and 
 wisely adapted to, the state and condition of that sort of animals who are 
 thus made; so that the wisdom and goodness of the Maker plainly appear 
 in all the parts of this stupendous fabric, and all the several degrees and 
 ranks of creatures in it. 
 
 Sect. 13. We may, I think, from the make of an oyster or cockle, reason- 
 ably conclude that it has not so many nor so quick senses as a man, or 
 several other animals ; nor if it had, would it, in that state and incapacity 
 of transferring itself from one place to another, be bettered by them. 
 What good would sight and hearing do to a creature that cannot move 
 itself to or from the objects wherein at a distance it perceives good or evil! 
 And would not quickness of sensation be an inconvenience to an animal 
 "that must lie still, where chance has once placed it; and there receive the 
 * afflux of colder or warmer, clean or foul water, as it happens to come to it ! 
 4 Sect. 14. But yet I cannot but think there is some smaL dull perception 
 whereby they are distinguished from perfect insensibility. And that this 
 may be so, we have plain instances even in mankind itself. Take one, in 
 whom decrepit old age has blotted out the memory of his past knowledge, 
 and clearly wiped out the ideas his mind was formerly stored with: and 
 has, by destroying his sight, hearing, and smell quite, and his taste to a 
 great degree, stopped up almost all the passages for new ones to enter; or, 
 if there be some of the inlets yet half open, the impressions made are scarce 
 perceived, or not at all retained. How far such an one (notwithstanding 
 ali that is boasted of innate principles) is in his knowledge and irtellectual 
 faculties above the condition of a cockle or an oyster, I leave to be consid- 
 
102 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 ered. And if a man had passed sixty years in snch a state, as it is possi- 
 ble he might, as well as three days, I wonder what difference there would 
 have been, in any intellectual perfections, between him and the lowest de- 
 gree of animals. 
 
 Sect. 15. Perception the inlet of knowledge. — Perception then being 
 the first step and degree towards knowledge, and the inlet of all the mate- 
 rials of it, the fewer senses any man, as well as any other creature, hath, 
 and the fewer and duller the impressions are that are made by them, and 
 the duller the faculties are that are employed about them, the more remote 
 are they from that knowledge which is to be found in some men. But this 
 being in great variety of degrees (as may be perceived among men) cannot 
 certainly be discovered in the several species of animals, much less in their 
 particular individuals. It suffices me only to have remarked here, that per- 
 ception is the first operation of all our intellectual faculties, and the inlet 
 of all knowledge in our minds : and I am apt, too, to imagine that it is 
 perception, in the lowest degree of it, which puts the boundaries between 
 animals and the inferior ranks of creatures. But this I mention only as 
 my conjecture by the by ; it being indifferent to the matter in hand which 
 way the learned shall determine of it. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OF RETENTION. 
 
 Sect. 1. Contemplation. — The next faculty of the mind, whereby it 
 makes a farther progress toward knowledge, is that which I call retention, 
 or the keeping of those simple ideas which from sensation or reflection it 
 hath received. This is done two ways ; first by keeping the idea, which 
 is brought into it, for some time actually in view ; which is called con- 
 templation. 
 
 Sect. 2. Memory. — The other way of retention is the power to revive 
 again in our minds those ideas which, after imprinting, have disappeared, 
 or have been as it were laid aside out of sight: and thus we do when we 
 conceive heat or light, yellow or sweet, the object being removed. This is 
 memory, which is as it were the store-house of our ideas. For the narrow 
 mind of man not being capable of having many ideas under view and con- 
 sideration at once, it was necessary to have a repository to lay up those 
 ideas, which at another time it might have use of. But our ideas be- 
 ing nothing but actual perceptions in the mind, which cease to be any 
 thing when there is no perception of them, this laying up of our ideas in 
 the repository of the memory signifies no more but this, that the mind has 
 a power in many cases to revive perceptions which it once had, with this 
 additional perception annexed to them, that it has had them before. And in 
 this sense it is, that our ideas are said to be in our memories, when indeed' 
 they are actually nowhere, but only there is an ability in the mind when it 
 will to revive them again, and as it were paint them anew on itself, though 
 some with more, some with less difficulty ; some more lively, and others more 
 obscurely. And thus it is, by the assistance of this faculty, that we are to 
 have all those ideas in our understandings, which, though we do not actually 
 contemplate, yet we can bring in sight, and make appear again, and be the 
 objects of our thoughts, without the help of those sensible qualities which 
 first imprinted them there. 
 
 Sect. 3. Attention, repetition, pleasure, and pain, fix ideas. — Attention 
 and repetition nelp much to the fixing any ideas in the rnernury : but those 
 which natually at first make the deepest and most lasting impression are 
 those which are accompanied with pleasure or pain. The great business 
 
Ch. 10. 
 
 OF RETENTION. 
 
 103 
 
 of the senses being to make us take notice of what hurts or advantages the 
 body, it is wisely ordered by nature (as has been shown) that pain should 
 accompany the reception of several ideas : which supplying the place of 
 consideration and reasoning in children, and acting quicker than considera- 
 tion in grown men, makes both the old and young avoid painful objects 
 with that haste which is necessary for their preservation ; and, in both, 
 settles in the memory a caution for the future. 
 
 Sect. 4. Ideas fade in the memory . — Concerning the several degrees of 
 lasting, wherewith ideas are imprinted on the memory, we may observe 
 that some of them have been produced in the understanding by an object 
 affecting the senses once only, and no more than once ; others, that have 
 m jre than once offered themselves to the senses, have yet been little taken 
 notice of: the mind either heedless, as in children, or otherwise employed, 
 as in men, intent only on one thing, not setting the stamp deep into itself : 
 and in some, where they are set on with care and repeated impressions, 
 either through the temper of the body, or some other fault, the memory is 
 very weak. In all these cases, ideas in the mind quickly fade, and often 
 vanish quite out of the understanding, leaving no more footsteps or remain- 
 ing characters of themselves than shadows do flying over fields of corn; 
 and the mind is as void of them as if they had never been there. 
 
 Sect. 5. Thus many of those ideas which were produced in the minds 
 of children, in the beginning of their sensation, (some of which, perhaps, 
 as of some pleasures and pains, were before they were born, and others in 
 their infancy,) if in the future course of their lives they are not repeated 
 again, are quite lost, without the least glimpse remaining of them. This 
 may be observed in those who by some mischance have lost their sight 
 when they were very young, in whom the ideas of colours having been but 
 slightly taken notice of, and ceasing to be repeated, do quite wear out; so 
 that some years after there is no more notion nor memory of colours left 
 in their minds than in those of people born blind. The memory of some, 
 it is true, is very tenacious, even to a miracle : but yet there seems to be 
 a constant decay of all our ideas, even of those which are struck deepest, 
 and in minds the most retentive; so that if they be not sometimes renewed 
 by repeated exercises of the senses, or reflection on those kinds of objects 
 which at first occasioned them, the print wears out, and at last there re- 
 mains nothing to be seen. Thus the ideas, as well as children of our youth, 
 often die before us : and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we 
 are approaching ; where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the in- 
 scriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away. The 
 pictures drawn in our minds are laid in fading colours, and if not sometimes 
 refreshed, vanish and disappear. How much the constitution of our bodies 
 and the make of our animal spirits are concerned in this, and whether the 
 temper of the brain makes this difference, that in some it retains the 
 characters draws on it like marble, in others like freestone, and in others 
 little better than sand, I shall not here inquire ; though it may seem pro- 
 bable, that the constitution of the body does sometimes influence the 
 memory ; since we oftentimes find a disease quite strip the mind of all its 
 ideas, and the flames of a fever in a few days calcine all those images to 
 dust and confusion, which seemed to be as lasting as if graved in marble. 
 
 Sect. 6. Constantly repeated ideas can scarce be lost. — But concerning 
 the ideas themselves, it is easy to remark that those that are oftenest re- 
 freshed (among which are those that are conveyed into the mind by more 
 ways than one) by a frequent return of the objects or actions that produce 
 them, fix themselves best in the memory, and remain clearest and longest 
 there : and therefore those which are of the original qualities of bodies, viz. 
 solidity, extension, figure, motion, and rest; and those that almost con- 
 stantly affect our bodies, as heat and cold : and those which are the affec- 
 tions of all kinds of beings, as existence, duration and number, which 
 
104 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 almost every object that affects our senses, every thought which employs 
 our minds, bring along with them : these, I say, and the like ideas, are 
 seldom quite lost whilst the mind retains any ideas at all. 
 
 Sect. 7. In remembering, the mind is often active. — In this secondary 
 perception, as I may so call it, or viewing again the ideas that are lodged in 
 the memory, the mind is oftentimes more than barely passive ; the appear- 
 ance of those dormant pictures depending sometimes on the will. The 
 mind very often sets itself on work in search of some hidden idea, and 
 turns as it were the eye of the soul upon it ; though sometimes too they 
 start up in our minds of their own accord, and offer themselves to the un- 
 derstanding; and very often are roused and tumbled out of their dark cells 
 into open daylight by turbulent and tempestuous passions, our affections 
 bringing ideas to our memory, which had otherwise lain quiet and unre- 
 garded. This farther is to be observed, concerning ideas lodged in the me- 
 mory, and upon occasion revived by the mind, that they are not only (as 
 the word revive imports) none of them new ones : but also that the mind 
 takes notice of them, as of a former impression, and renews its acquaintance 
 with them as with ideas it had known before ; so that though ideas formerly 
 imprinted are not all constantly in view, yet in remembrance they are con- 
 stantly known to be such as have been formerly imprinted, i. e. in view, 
 and taken notice of before by the understanding. 
 
 Sect. 8. Two defects in the memory, oblivion and slowness. — Memory, in 
 an intellectual creature, is necessary in the the next degree to perception. 
 It is of so great moment, that where it is wanting, all the rest of our 
 faculties are in a great measure useless ; and we, in our thoughts, reason- 
 ings, and knowledge, could not proceed beyond present objects, were it not 
 for the assistance of our memories, wherein there may be two defects. 
 
 First, That it loses the idea quite, and so far it produces perfect igno- 
 rance; for since we can know nothing farther than we have the idea 
 of it, when that is gone, we are in perfect ignorance. 
 
 Secondly, That it moves slowly, and retrieves not the ideas that it has, 
 and are laid up in store, quick enough to serve the mind upon occasion. 
 This, if it be to a great degree, is stupidity; and he who, through this default 
 in his memory, has not the ideas that are really preserved there ready at 
 hand when need and occasion call for them, were almost as good be without 
 them quite, since they serve him to little purpose. The dull man, who 
 loses the opportunity whilst he is seeking in his mind for those ideas that 
 should serve his turn, is not much more happy in his knowledge than one 
 that is perfectly ignorant. It is the business therefore of the memory to fur- 
 nish to the mind those dormant ideas which it has present occasion for; 
 in the having them ready at hand on all occasions consists that which we call 
 invention, fancy, and quickness of parts. 
 
 Sect. 9. These are defects, we may observe, in the memory of one man 
 compared with another. There is another defect which we may conceive 
 to be in the memory of man in general, compared with some superior 
 created intellectual beings, which in this faculty may so far excel man, 
 that they may have constantly in view the whole scene of all their former 
 actions, wherein no one of the thoughts they have ever had may slip out 
 of their sight. The omniscience of God, who knows all things, past, pre- 
 sent, and to come, and to whom the thoughts of men’s hearts always lie 
 open, may satisfy us of the possibility of this. For who can doubt but God 
 may communicate to those glorious spirits, his immediate attendants, any 
 of bis perfections, in what proportions he pleases, as far as created finite 
 beings can be capable? It is reported of that prodigy of parts, Monsieur 
 Pascal, that till the decay of his health had impaired his memory, he for- 
 got nothing of what he had done, read, or thought, in any part of his 
 rational age. This is a privilege so little known to most men, that it 
 seems almost incredible to those who, after the ordinary way, measure all 
 
Ch. 10. 
 
 OF RETENTION 
 
 105 
 
 others by themseives : but yet, when considered, may help us to enlarge 
 our thoughts towards greater perfection of it in superior ranks of spirits. 
 For this of Mr Pascal was still with the narrowness that human minds are 
 confined to here, of having great variety of ideas only by succession, not 
 all at once ; whereas the several degrees of angels may probably have 
 larger views, and some of them be endowed with capacities able to retain 
 together, and constantly set before them, as in one picture, all their past 
 knowledge at once. This, we may conceive, would be no small advantage 
 to the knowledge of a thinking man, if all his past thoughts and reasonings 
 could be always present to him : and therefore we may suppose it one of 
 those ways wherein the knowledge of separate spirits may exceedingly 
 surpass ours. 
 
 ~&LCX--10- Brutes have memory . — This faculty of laying up and retain- 
 ing the ideas that are brought into the mind, several other animals seem 
 to have to a great degree, as well as man : for, to pass by other instances, 
 birds learning of tunes, and the endeavours one may observe in them to hit 
 the notes right, put it past doubt with me that they have perception, and 
 retain ideas in their memories, and use them for patterns : for it seems to 
 me impossible that they should endeavour to conform their voices to notes 
 (as it is plain they do) of which they had no ideas. For though I should 
 grant sound may mechanically cause a certain motion of the animals spirits, 
 in the brains of those birds, whilst the tune is actually playing; and that 
 motion may be continued on to the muscles of the wings, and so the bird 
 mechanically be driven away by certain noises, because this may tend to 
 the bird’s preservation ; yet that can never be supposed a reason why it 
 should cause mechanically, either whilst the tune is playing, much less after 
 it has ceased, such a motion of the organs in the bird’s voice, as should con- 
 form it to the notes of a foreign sound, which imitation can be of no use to 
 the bird’s preservation. But, which is more, it cannot with any appear- 
 ance of reason be supposed (much less proved) that birds, without sense 
 and memory, can approach their notes nearer and nearer by degrees to a 
 tune played yesterday, which, if they have no idea of in their memory, is 
 nowhere, nor can be a pattern for them to imitate, or which any repeated 
 essays can bring them nearer to : since there is no reason why the sound 
 of a pipe should leave traces in their brains, which, not at first, but by their 
 after endeavours, should produce the like sounds ; and why the sounds they 
 make themselves should not make traces which they should follow, as well 
 as those of the pipe, is impossible to conceive. 
 
 fe 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 OF DISCERNING AND OTHER OPERATIONS OF THE MIND. 
 
 Sect. 1. No knowledge without discernment . — Another faculty we may 
 take notice of in our minds, is that of discerning and distinguishing between 
 the several ideas it has. It is not enough to have a confused perception 
 of something in general : unless the mind had a distinct perception of differ- 
 ent objects, and their qualities, it would be capable of very little knowledge, 
 though the bodies that affect us were as busy about us as they are now, and 
 the mind were continually employed in thinking. On this faculty of distin- 
 guishing one thing from another depends the evidence and certainty of 
 several, even very general propositions, which have passed for innate truths ; 
 because men overlooking the true cause why those propositions find univer- 
 sal assent, impute it wholly to native uniform impressions, whereas in truth 
 it depends upon this clear discerning faculty of the mind, whereby it perceives 
 two ideas to be the same or different But of this more hereafter. 
 
 O 
 
106 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 5 
 
 Sect. 2. The difference of wit and judgment. — How much the imper- 
 fection of accurately discriminating ideas one from another lies either in 
 the dulness or faults of the organs of sense, or want of acuteness, exercise., 
 or attention in the understanding, or hastiness and precipitancy, nature 
 to some tempers, I will not here examine ; it suffices to take notice, that 
 this is one of the operations that the mind may reflect on and observe in 
 itself. It is of that consequence to its other knowledge, that so far as this 
 faculty is in itself dull, or not rightly made use of, for the distinguishing 
 one thing from another, so far our notions are confused, and our reason 
 and judgment disturbed or misled. If in having our ideas in the memory 
 ready at hand consists quickness of parts : in this of havingthem unconfused, 
 and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where there 
 is but the least difference, consists, in a great measure, the exactness of 
 judgment and clearness of reason, which is to be observed in one man above 
 another. And hence perhaps may be given some reason of that common 
 observation, that men who have a great deal of wit, and prompt memories, 
 have not always the clearest judgment or deepest reason : for wit lying 
 most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness 
 and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby 
 to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy; judgment, 
 on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully, one 
 from another, ideas, wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to 
 avoid being misledby similitude, and by affinity to take one thing for another. 
 This is a way of proceeding quite contrary to metaphor and allusion, wherein 
 for the most part lies that entertainment and pleasantry of wit which strikes 
 so lively on the fancy, and therefore is so acceptable to all people, because its 
 beauty appears at first sight, and there is required no labour of thought to ex- 
 amine what truth or reason there is in it. The mind, without looking any 
 further, rests satisfied with the agreeableness of the picture, and the gayety 
 of the fancy ; and it is a kind of an affront to go about to examine it by the se- 
 vere rules of truth and good reason ; whereby it appears that it consists in 
 something that is not perfectly conformable to them. 
 
 Sect. 3. Clearness alone hinders confusion. — To the well distinguishing 
 our ideas, it chiefly contributes that they be clear and determinate ; and 
 where they are so, it will not breed any confusion or mistake about them, 
 though the senses should (as sometimes they do) convey them from the 
 same object differently on different occasions, and so seem to err : for 
 though a man in a fever should from sugar have a bitter taste, which at 
 another time would produce a sweet one, yet the idea of bitter in that man’s 
 mind would be as clear and distinct from the idea of sweet as if he had 
 tasted only gall. Nor does it make any more confusion between the two 
 ideas of sweet and bitter, that the same sort of body produces at one time 
 one, and at another time another idea by the taste, than it makes a confu- 
 sion in two ideas of white and sweet, or white and round, that the same 
 piece of sugar produces them both in the mind at the same time. And the 
 ideas of orange colour and azure that are produced in the mind by the same 
 parcel of infusion of lignum nephriticum, are no less distinct ideas than 
 those of the same colours taken from two very different bodies. 
 
 Sect. 4. Comparing. — The comparing them one with another, in res- 
 pect of extent, degrees, time, place, or any other circumstances, is another 
 operation of the mind about its ideas, and is that upon which depends all 
 that large tribe of ideas comprehended under relations ; which of how vast 
 an extent it is, I shall have occasion to consider hereafter. 
 
 Sect. 5. Brutes compare but imperfectly. — How far brutes partake in 
 this faculty is not easy to determine ; I imagine they have it not in any 
 great degree ; for though they probably have several ideas distinct enough, 
 yet it seems to me to be the prerogative of human understanding, wnen i* 
 has sufficiently distinguished any ideas so as to perceive them to be per. 
 
Ch. 11 
 
 DISCERNING. 
 
 107 
 
 fectly different, and so consequently two, to cast about and consider in what 
 circumstances they are capable to be compared ; and, therefore, I think 
 beasts compare not their ideas farther than some sensible circumstances 
 annexed to the objects themselves. The other power of comparing, which 
 may be observed in men, belonging to general ideas, and useful only to ab- 
 stract reasonings, we may probably conjecture beasts have not. 
 
 Sect. 6. Compounding . — The next operation we may observe in the 
 mind about its ideas, is composition, whereby it puts together several of those 
 simple ones it has received from sensation and reflection, and combines 
 them into complex ones. Under this of composition may be reckoned also 
 that of enlarging, wherein, though the composition does not so much ap- 
 pear as in more complex ones, yet it is nevertheless a putting several ideas 
 together, though of the same kind. Thus, by adding several units together, 
 we make the idea of a dozen ; and putting together the repeated ideas of 
 several perches, we frame that of a furlong. 
 
 Sect 7. Brutes compound but little . — In this, also, I suppose, brutes 
 come far short of men ; for though they take in and retain together 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 rather are so many 
 distinct marks whereby he knows him ; yet I do not think they do of 
 themselves ever compound them, and make complex ideas. And perhaps, 
 even where we think they have complex ideas, it is only one simple one 
 that directs them in the knowledge of several things, which possibly they 
 distinguish less by their sight than we imagine ; for I have been credibly 
 informed that a bitch will nurse, play with, and be fond of young foxes, as 
 much as, and in place of, her puppies, if you can but get them once to suck 
 her so long that her milk may go through them. And those animals which 
 have a numerous brood of young ones at once, appear not to have any 
 knowledge of their number ; for though they are mightily concerned for any 
 of their young that are taken from them whilst they are in sight or hearing, 
 yet if one or two of them be stolen from them in their absence, or with- 
 out noise, they appear not to miss them, or to have any sense that their 
 number is lessened. 
 
 Sect, 8. Naming . — When children have, by repeated sensations, got 
 ideas fixed in their memories, they begin by degrees to learn the use of signs. 
 And when they have got the skill to apply the organs of speech to the framing 
 of articulate sounds, they begin to make use of words to signify their ideas 
 to others. These verbal signs they sometimes borrow from others, and 
 sometimes make themselves, as one may observe among the new and un- 
 usual names children often give to things in the first use of language. 
 
 Sect. 9. Abstraction . — The use of words then being to stand as out- 
 ward marks of our internal ideas, and those ideas being taken from particu- 
 lar things, if every particular idea that we take in should have a distinct 
 name, names must be endless. To prevent this, the mind makes the par- 
 ticular ideas, received from particular objects, to become general ; which 
 is done by considering them as they are in the mind, such appearances, 
 separate from all other existences, and the circumstances of real existence, as 
 time, place, or any other concomitant ideas. This is called abstraction, 
 whereby ideas, taken from particular beings, becomes general representatives 
 of all of the same kind, and their names general names, applicable to 'what- 
 ever exists conformable to such abstract ideas. Such precise naked appear- 
 ances on the mind, without considering how, whence, or with what others 
 they came there, the understanding lays up (with names commonly annexed to 
 them) as the standard to rank real existences into sorts, as they agree with 
 these patterns, and to denominate them accordingly. Thus the same colour 
 being observed to-day in chalk or snow, which the mind yesterday received 
 from milk, it considers that appearance alone makes it a representath e of 
 all of that kind ; and having given it the name whiteness, it by that sound sig. 
 
xOS OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 
 
 nifies the same quality, wheresoever to be imagined or met with : and thus 
 universals, whether ideas or terms, are made. 
 
 Sect. 10. Brutes abstract not. — If it may be doubted, whether beasts 
 compound and enlarge their ideas that way to any degree ; this, I think, I 
 may be positive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them ; and 
 that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction be- 
 tween man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes 
 do by no means attain to. For it is evident we observe no footsteps in 
 them of making use of general signs for universal ideas ; from which we have 
 reason to imagine that they have not the faculty of abstracting, or making 
 general ideas, since they have no use of words, or any other general signs. 
 
 Sect. 11. Nor can it be imputed to their want of fit organs to frame articu- 
 late sounds, that they have no use or knowledge of general words ; since 
 many of them, we find, can fashion such sounds, and pronounce words dis- 
 tinctly enough, but never with any such application. And, on the other 
 side, men, who, through some defect in the organs want words, yet fail not 
 to express their universal ideas by signs, which serve them instead of gen- 
 eral words; a faculty which we see beasts come short in. And, therefore, 
 I think we may suppose, that it is in this that the species of brutes are dis- 
 criminated from man; and it is that proper difference wherein they are 
 wholly separated, and which at last widens to so vast a distance : for if they 
 have any ideas at all, and are not bare machines (as some would have them) 
 we cannot deny them to have some reason. It seems as evident to me, that 
 they do some of them in certain instances reason, as that they have 
 sense : but it is only in particular ideas, just as they received them from 
 their senses. 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 abstraction. 
 
 Sect. 12. Idiots and madmen . — How far idiots are concerned in the 
 want or weakness of any or all of the foregoing faculties, an exact observa- 
 tion 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. Those who cannot distinguish, compare, and abstract, would 
 hardly be able to understand and make use of language, or judge, or reason, 
 to any tolerable degree ; but only a little and imperfectly about things pre- 
 sent, and very familiar to their senses. And, indeed, any of the foremen- 
 tioned faculties, if wanting, or out of order, produce suitable effects in men’s 
 understandings and knowledge. 
 
 Sect. 13. In fine, the defect in naturals seems to proceed from want of 
 quickness, activity, and motion in the intellectual faculties, whereby they 
 are deprived of reason ; whereas madmen, on the other side, seem to suffer 
 by the other extreme ; for they do not appear to me to have lost the faculty 
 of reasoning; but having joined together some 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 
 shall find a distracted man fancying himself a king, with a right inference 
 require suitable attendance, respect, and obedience; others, who have 
 thought themselves made of glass, have used the caution necessary to pre- 
 serve such brittle bodies. Hence it comes to pass that a man, who is very 
 sober, and of a right understanding in all other things, may in one particu- 
 lar be as frantic as any in Bedlam ; if either by any sudden very strong im- 
 pression, or long fixing his fancy upon one sort of thoughts, incoherent 
 ideas have been cemented together so powerfully, as to remain united. But 
 there are degrees of madness, as of folly; the disorderly jumbling ideas to- 
 gether is in some more, some less. In short, herein seems to lie the difference 
 oetween idiots and madmen, that madmen put wrong ideas together, and 
 
Ch. 11. 
 
 DISCERNING. 
 
 109 
 
 so make wrong propositions, but argue and reason right from them ; but 
 idiots make very few or no propositions, and reason scarce at all. 
 
 Sect. 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 instances I have hitherto 
 given have been chiefly in simple ideas : and I have subjoined the explica- 
 tion of these faculties of the mind to that of simple ideas, before I come to 
 what I have to say concerning complex ones, for these following reasons : 
 
 First, Because several of these faculties being exercised at first princi- 
 pally about simple ideas, we might, by following nature in its ordinary 
 method, trace and discover them in their rise, progress, and gradual improve- 
 ments. 
 
 Secondly, Because observing the faculties of the mind, how they operate 
 about simple ideas, which are usually, in most men’s minds, much more 
 clear, precise, and distinct than complex ones ; we may the better examine 
 and learn how the mind abstracts, denominates, compares, and exercises 
 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 sensations, are themselves, when reflected on, another set of ideas, 
 derived from that other source of our knowledge which I call reflection, and 
 therefore fit to be considered in this place after the simple ideas of sensa- 
 tion. Of compounding, comparing, abstracting, &c., I have but just spoken, 
 having occasion to treat of them more at large in other places. 
 
 Sect. 15. These are the beginnings of human knowledge. — And thus I 
 have given a short, and, I think, true history of the first beginnings of hu- 
 man knowledge, whence the mind has its first objects, and by what steps 
 it makes its progress to the laying in and storing up those ideas, out of 
 which is to be framed all the knowledge it is capable of; wherein I must 
 appeal to experience and observation, whether 1 am in the right ; the best 
 way to come to truth being to examine things as really they are, and not lo 
 conclude they are, as we fancy of ourselves, or have been taught by others 
 to imagine. 
 
 Sect. 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 under- 
 standing : if other men have either innate ideas, or infused principles, they 
 have reason to enjoy them; and if they are sure of it, it is impossible for 
 others to deny them the privilege that they have above their neighbours. 
 I can speak but of what I find in myself, and is agreeable to those notions , 
 which, if we will examine the whole course of men in their several ages, 
 countries, and educations, seem to depend on those foundations which I 
 have laid, and to correspond with this method in all the parts and degrees 
 thereof. 
 
 Sect. 17. Dark room. — I pretend not to teach, but to inquire, and there- 
 fore cannot but confess here again, that external and internal sensation are 
 the only passages 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 closet 
 wholly shut from light, with only some 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 so orderly as to be found upon 
 occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in re- 
 ference to all objects of sight and the ideas of them. 
 
 These are my guesses concerning the means whereby the understand- 
 ing comes to have and retain simple ideas ; and the modes of them, with 
 some other operations about them. I proceed now to examine some of 
 these simple ideas, and their modes, a little more particularly. 
 
110 
 
 Ot HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 OF COMPLEX IDEAS. 
 
 Sect. 1. Made by the mind out of simple ones. — We have hitherto con. 
 sidered those ideas, in the reception whereof the mind is only passive 
 which are those simple ones received from sensation and reflection before 
 mentioned, whereof the mind cannot make one to itself, nor have any 
 idea which does not wholly consist of them. But as the mind is wholly 
 passive in the reception of all its simple ideas, so it exerts several acts 
 of its own, whereby, out of its simple ideas, as the materials and foun- 
 dations of the rest, the others are framed. The acts of the mind, wherein 
 it exerts its power over its simple ideas, are chiefly these three : 1. Com- 
 bining' several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex 
 ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or 
 complex, together, and setting them by one another, so 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 separating 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 shows man’s power, and its 
 way of operation, to be much-what the same in the material and intellec- 
 tual world : for the materials in both being such 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 separate them. I shall here begin 
 with the first of these, in the consideration of complex ideas, and come to 
 the other two in their due places. As simple ideas are observed to exist 
 in several combinations united together, so the mind has a power to con- 
 sider several of them united together 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 several simple ones put together, I call complex ; such as are 
 beauty, gratitude, a man, an army, the universe ; which, though complica- 
 ted of various simple ideas, or complex ideas made up of simple ones, yet 
 are, when the mind pleases, considered each by itself as one entire thing, 
 and signified by one name. 
 
 Sect. 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 sensation or reflection 
 furnished it with ; but all this still confined to those simple ideas which it 
 received from those two sources, and which are the ultimate materials of 
 all its compositions : for simple ideas are all from things themselves, and 
 of these the mind can have no more nor other than what are suggested to it. 
 It can have no other ideas of sensible qualities than what come from with- 
 out by the senses, nor any ideas of other kind of operations of a thinking 
 substance than what it finds in itself; butwhen it has once got these simple 
 ideas, it is not confined barely to observation, and what offers itself from 
 without: it can, by its own power, put together those ideas it has, and 
 make new complex ones, which it never received so united. 
 
 Sect 3. Are either inodes, substances, 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 . 1. 
 Modes. 2. Substances. 3. Relations. 
 
 Sect. 4. Modes. — First, Modes I call such complex ideas, which, how- 
 ever compounded, contain not in them the suppos'tion of subsisting by 
 
Ch. 12. 
 
 OF COMPLEX IDEAS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 themselves, but are considered as dependencies on, or affections of sub- 
 stances : such as are ideas signified by the words triangle, gratitude, mur- 
 der, &c. And if in this I use the word mode in somewhat a different sense 
 from its ordinary signification, I beg pardon : it being unavoidable in dis- 
 courses, differing from the ordinary received notions, either to make new 
 words, or to use old words in somewhat a new signification : the latter 
 whereof, in our present case, is perhaps the more tolerable of the two. 
 
 Sect. 5. Simple, and mixed rpodes. — Of these modes, there are two sorts 
 which deserve distinct consideration. First, there are some which are 
 only variations, or different combinations of the same simple idea, without 
 the mixture of any other, as a dozen or score ; which are nothing but the 
 ideas of so many distinct units added together ; and these I call simple modes, 
 as being contained within the bounds of one simple idea. 
 
 Secondly, There are others compounded of simple ideas of several kinds, 
 put together to make one complex one ; v. g. beauty, consisting of a cer- 
 tain composition of colour and figure, causing delight in the beholder ; 
 theft, winch being the concealed change of the possession of any thing, 
 without the consent of the proprietor, contains, as is visible, a combination 
 of several ideas of several kinds : and these I call mixed modes. 
 
 Sect. 6. Substances, single or collective. — Secondly, the ideas of sub- 
 stances are such combinations of simple ideas as are taken to represent 
 distinct particular things subsisting by themselves ; in W'hich the supposed 
 or confused idea of substance, such as it is, is always the first and chief. 
 Thus, if to substance be joined the simple idea of a certain dull whitish 
 colour, with certain degrees of weight, hardness, ductility, and fusibility, 
 we have the idea of lead, and a combination of the ideas of a certain sort 
 of figure, with the powers of motion. Thought and reasoning, joined to 
 substance, make the ordinary idea of a man. Now of substances also 
 there are two sorts of ideas ; one of single substances, as they exist 
 separately, as of a man, or a sheep ; the other of several of those put to- 
 gether, as an army of men, or flock of sheep ; which collective ideas of 
 several substances thus put together, are as much each of them one single 
 idea, as that of a man, or a unit. 
 
 Sect. 7. Relation. — Thirdly, the last sort of complex ideas is that we 
 call relation, which consists in the consideration and comparing one idea 
 with another. Of these several kinds we shall treat in their order. 
 
 Sect. 8. The abstrusest ideas from the two sources. — If we trace the 
 progress of our minds, and with attention observe hew it repeats, adds to- 
 gether, and unites its simple ideas received from sensation or reflection, it 
 will lead us farther than at first perhaps we should have imagined. And I 
 believe we shall find, if we warily observe the originals of our notions, that 
 even the most abstruse ideas, how remote soever they may seem from sense, 
 or from any operations of our own minds, are yet only such as the under- 
 standing frames to itself by repeating and joining together ideas, that it had 
 either from objects of sense, or from its own operations about them : so that 
 even those large and abstract ideas are derived from sensation or reflection, 
 being no other than what the mind, by the ordinary use of its own faculties, 
 employed about ideas received from objects of sense, or from the opera- 
 tions it observes in itself about them, may and does attain unto. This I 
 shall endeavour to show in the ideas we have of space, time, and infinity, 
 and some few others, that seem the most remr te from those originals. 
 
112 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 OF SIMPLE MODES ; AND FIRST, OF THE SIMPLE MODES OF 
 
 SPACE. 
 
 Sect. 1 . Simple modes. — Though in the foregoing part I have often men- 
 tioned simple ideas, which are truly the materials of all our knowledge ; yet 
 having treated of them there rather in the way that they come into the 
 mind, than as distinguished from others more compounded, it will not 
 be perhaps amiss to take a view of some of them again under this con- 
 sideration, and examine those different modifications of the same idea, 
 which the mind either finds in tilings existing, or is able to make within 
 itself, without the help of any extrinsical object, or any foreign suggestion. 
 
 Those modifications of any one simple idea (which, as has been said, I 
 call simple modes) are as perfectly different and distinct ideas in the mind 
 as those of the greatest distance or contrariety. For the idea of two is as 
 distinct from that of one as blueness from heat, or either of them from any 
 number : and yet it is made up only of that simple idea of a unit repeated ; 
 and repetitions of this kind joined together, make those distinct simple 
 modes, of a dozen, a gross, a million. 
 
 Sect. 2. Idea of space. — I shall begin with the simple idea of space. 
 I have showed above, chap. 4, that we get the idea of space both by our 
 sight and touch ; which I think is so evident, that it would be as needless to 
 go to prove that men perceive, by their sight, a distance between bodies of 
 different colours, or between the parts of the same body, as that they see 
 colours themselves ; nor is it less obvious that they can do so in the dark by 
 feeling and touch. 
 
 Sect. 3. Space and extension. — This space, considered barely in length 
 between any two beings, without considering any thing else between them, 
 is called distance ; if considered in length, breadth, and thickness, I think 
 it may be called capacity. The term extension is usually applied to it in 
 what manner soever considered. 
 
 Sect. 4. Immensity . — Each different distance is a different modification of 
 space : and each idea of any different distance or space is a simple mode 
 of this idea. Men, for the use and by the custom of measuring, settle in 
 their minds the ideas of certain stated lengths, such as are an inch, foot, 
 yard, fathom, mile, diameter of the earth, &c. which are so many distinct 
 ideas made up only of space. When any such stated lengths or measures 
 of space are made familiar to men’s thoughts, they can in their minds re- 
 peat them as often as they will, without mixing or joining to them the idea 
 of body, or any thing else ; and frame to themselves the ideas of long, 
 square, or cubic, feet, yards, or fathoms, here among the bodies of the 
 universe, or else beyond the utmost bounds of all bodies ; and by adding 
 these still one to another, enlarge their ideas of space as much as they 
 please. The power of repeating or doubling any idea we have of any dis- 
 tance, and adding it to the former as often as we will, without being ever 
 able to come to any stop or stint, let us enlarge it as much as we will, is 
 that which gives us the idea of immensity. 
 
 Sect. 5. Figure. — There is another modification of this idea, which is 
 nothing but the relation which the parts of the termination of extension oi 
 circumscribed space have among themselves. This the touch discovers in 
 sensible bodies, whose extremities come within our reach ; and the eye 
 takes both from bodies and colours, whose boundaries are within its view, 
 where observing how the extremities terminate either in straight lines, 
 which meet at discernible angles, or in crooked lines, wherein no angles 
 
Ch. 13. 
 
 SIMPLE MODES OF SPACE. 
 
 113 
 
 can be perceived, by considering' these as they relate to one another, in all 
 parts of the extremities of any body or space, it has that idea we call figure, 
 which affords to the mind infinite variety. For besides the vast number 
 of different figures that do really exist in the coherent masses of matter, 
 the stock that the mind has in its power, by varying the idea of space, and 
 thereby making still new compositions, by repeating its own ideas, and 
 joining them as it pleases, is perfectly inexhaustible ; and so it can multi- 
 ply figures in infinitum. 
 
 Sect. 6. Figure. — For the mind having a power to repeat the idea of 
 any length directly stretched out, and join it to another in the same direc- 
 tion, which is to double the length of that straight line, orelse join another 
 with what inclination it thinks fit, and so make what sort of angle it pleases ; 
 and being able also to shorten any line it imagines, by taking from it one- 
 half or one-fourth or what part it pleases, without being able to come to 
 an end of any such divisions, it can make an angle of any bigness ; so also 
 the lines that are its sides, of what length it pleases, with joining again to 
 other lines of different lengths, and at different angles, till it has wholly 
 inclosed any space, it is evident that it can multiply figures, both in their 
 shape and capacity, in infinitum ; all which are but so many different 
 simple modes of space. 
 
 The same that it can do with straight lines, it can also do with crooked, 
 or crooked and straight together; and the same it can do in lines it can 
 also in superficies : by which we may be led into farther thoughts of the 
 endless variety of figures, that the mind has a power to make, and thereby 
 to multiply the simple modes of space. 
 
 Sect. 7. Place. — Another idea coming under this head, and belongingto 
 this tribe, is that we call place. As in simple space we consider the re- 
 lation of distance between any two bodies or points; so in our idea of 
 place we consider the relation of distance betwixt any thing and any two 
 or more points, which are considered as keeping the same distance one 
 with another, and so considered as at rest: for when we find any tiling at 
 the same distance now which it was yesterday, from any two or more 
 points, which have not since changed their distance one with another, and 
 with which we then compared it, we say it hath kept the same place : but 
 if it hath sensibly altered its distance with either of those points, we say 
 it hath changed its place : though vulgarly speaking, in the common notion 
 of place, we do not always exactly observe the distance from these precise 
 points, but from larger portions of sensible objects, to which we consider 
 the thing placed to bear relation, and its distance from which we have 
 some reason to observe. 
 
 Sect. 8. Thus a company of chess-men standing on the same squares 
 of the chess-board where we left them, we say they are all in the same 
 place, or unmoved ; though perhaps the chess-board hath been in the mean 
 time carried out of one room into another ; because we compared them 
 only to the parts of the chess-board which keep the same distance one with 
 another. The chess-board, we also say, is in the same place it was, if it 
 remain in the same part of the cabin, though perhaps the ship which it is 
 in sails all the while : and the ship is said to be in the same place, supposing 
 it kept the same distance with the parts of the neighbouring land, though 
 perhaps the earth hath turned round : and so both chess-men, and board, 
 and ship, have every one changed place, in respect of remoter bodies, which 
 have kept the same distance one with another. But yet the distance from 
 certain parts of the board being that which determines the place of the 
 chess-men : and the distance from the fixed parts of the cabin (with which 
 we made the comparison) being that which determined the place of the 
 chess-board ; and the fixed parts of the earth that by which we determined 
 the place of the ship ; these things may be said to be in the same place in 
 those respects : though their distance from some other things, which in this 
 
114 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 matter we did not consider, being varied, they have undoubtedly changed 
 place in that respect: and we ourselves shall think so when we have occa- 
 sion to compare them with those other. 
 
 Sect. 9. But this modification of distance we call place, being made by 
 men for their common use, that by it they might be able to design the par- 
 ticular position of things, where they had occasion for such designation : 
 men consider and determine of this place by reference to those adjacent 
 things which best served to their present purpose, without considering 
 other things, which to answer another purpose would better determine the 
 place of the same thing. Thus, in the chess-board, the use of the designa- 
 tion of the place of each chess-man being determined only within that 
 chequered piece of wood, it would cross that purpose to measure it by any 
 thing else : but when these very chess-men are put up in a bag, if any one 
 should ask where the black king is, it would be proper to determine the 
 place by the parts of the room it was in, and not by the chess-board ; there 
 being another use of designing the place it is now in, than when in play it 
 was on the chess-board, and so must be determined by other bodies. So 
 if any one should ask, in what place are the verses which report the story 
 of Nisus and Euryalus, it would be very improper to determine this place 
 by saying, they were in such a part of the earth, or in Bodley’s library : 
 but the right designation of the place would be by the parts of Virgil’s 
 works ; and the proper answer would be, that these verses were about the 
 middle of the ninth book of his ASneid; and that they have been always 
 constantly in the same place ever since Virgil was printed; which is true, 
 though the book itself hath moved a thousand times ; the use of the idea 
 of place here being to know in what part of the book that story is, that so 
 upon occasion we may know where to find it, and have recourse to it for 
 use. 
 
 Sect. 10. Place. — That our idea of place is nothing else but such a rela- 
 tive position of any thing, as I have before mentioned, I think is plain, and 
 will be easily admitted, when we consider that we can have no idea of the 
 place of the universe, though we can of all the parts of it ; because beyond 
 that we have not the idea of any fixed, distinct, particular beings, in reference 
 to which we can imagine it to have any relation of distance ; but all 
 beyond it is one uniform space or expansion, wherein the mind finds no 
 variety, no marks. For to say that the world is somewhere, means no 
 more than that it does exist : this, though a phrase borrowed from place, 
 signifying only its existence, not location ; and when one can find out and 
 frame in his mind, clearly and distinctly, the place of the universe, he will 
 be able to tell us whether it moves or stands still in the undistinguishable 
 inane of infinite space: though it be true that the word place has some- 
 times a more confused sense, and stands for that space which any body 
 takes up ; and so the universe is in a place. The idea therefore of place 
 we have by the same means that we get the idea of space (whereof this is 
 but a particular limited consideration,) viz. by our sight and touch ; by 
 either of which we receive into our minds the ideas of extension or distance. 
 
 Sect. 11. Extension and body not the same . — There are some that 
 would persuade us that body and extension are the same thing : who 
 either change the signification of words, which I would not suspect them 
 of, they having so severely condemned the philosophy of others, because 
 it hath been too much placed in the uncertain meaning or deceitful ob- 
 scurity of doubtful or insignificant terms. If therefore they mean by body 
 and extension the same that other people do, viz. by body, something that 
 is solid and extended, whose parts are separable and moveable different 
 ways ; and by extension only the space that lies between the extremities 
 of those solid coherent parts, and which is possessed by them, they con- 
 found very diFerent ideas one with another. For I appeal to every man’s 
 own thoughts, whether the idea of space be not as distinct from that of 
 
Ch. 13. 
 
 SIMPLE MODES OF SPACE. 
 
 115 
 
 solidity as it is from tlie idea of scarlet colour 1 It is true, solidity cannot, exist 
 without extension, neither can scarlet colour exist without extension ; but 
 this hinders not but that they are distinct ideas. Many ideas require others 
 as necessary to their existence or conception, which yet are very distinct 
 ideas. Motion can neither be, nor be conceived, without space; and yet 
 motion is not space, nor space motion : space can exist without it, and they 
 are very distinct ideas ; and so, I think, are those of space and solidity. 
 Solidity is so inseparable an idea from body, that upon that depends its fill- 
 ing of space, its contact, impulse, and communication of motion upon 
 impulse. And if it be a reason to prove that spirit is different from 
 body, because thinking includes not the idea of extension in it, the same 
 reason will be as valid, I suppose, to prove that space is not body, because 
 it includes not the idea of solidity in it : space and solidity being as dis- 
 tinct ideas as thinking and extension, and as wholly separable in the mind 
 one from another. Body, then, and extension, it is evident, are two dis- 
 tinct ideas. For, 
 
 Sect. 12. First, Extension includes no solidity, nor resistance to the 
 motion of body, as body does. 
 
 Sect. 13. Secondly, The parts of pure space are inseparable one from 
 the other ; so that the continuity cannot be separated, neither really nor 
 mentally. For I demand of any one to remove any part of it from another 
 with which it is continued, even so much as in thought. To divide and 
 separate actually, is, as I think, by removing the parts one from another, to 
 make two superficies, where before there was a continuity ; and to divide 
 mentally, is to make in the mind two superficies, where before there was 
 a continuity, and consider them as removed one from the other ; which can 
 only be done in things considered by the mind as capable of being sepa- 
 rated, and by separation, of acquiring new distinct superficies, which they 
 then have not., but are capable of ; but neither of these ways of separation, 
 whether real or mental, is, as I think, compatible to pure space. 
 
 It is true, a man may consider so much of such a space as is answerable 
 or commensurate to a foot, without considering the rest ; which is in- 
 deed a partial consideration, but not so much as mental separation or 
 division ; since a man can no more mentally divide, without considering 
 two superficies separate one from the other, than he can actually divide 
 without making two superficies disjoined one from the other : but a partial 
 consideration is not separating. A man may consider light in the sun, 
 without its heat ; or mobility in body, without its extension, without think- 
 ing of their separation. One is only a partial consideration, terminating in 
 one alone ; and the other is a consideration of both, as existing separately. 
 
 Sect. 14. Thirdly, The parts of pure space are immovable, which fol- 
 lows from their inseparability ; motion being nothing but change of distance 
 between any two things ; but this cannot be between parts that are insepa- 
 rable, which therefore must needs be at perpetual rest one among another. 
 
 Thus the determined idea of simple space distinguishes it plainly and 
 sufficiently from body; since its parts are inseparable, immovable, and 
 without resistance to the motion of body. 
 
 Sect. 15. The definition of extension explains it not. — If any one ask 
 me what this space I speak of is 1 I will tell him, when he tells me what 
 his extension is. For to say, as is usually done, that extension is to have 
 partes extra partes, is to say only that extension is extension : for what am 
 I the better informed in the nature of extension when I am told, that ex- 
 tension is to have parts that are extended exterior to parts that are exten- 
 ded, i. e. extension consists of extended parts 1 As if one asking what a 
 fibre was 1 I should answer him, that it was a thing made up of several 
 fibres : would he thereby be enabled to understand what a fibre was better 
 than he did before 1 Or rather, would he not have reason to think that my 
 design was to make sport with him, rather than seriously to instruct him 7 
 
116 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 Sect. 16. Division of beings into bodies and spirits proves not space and 
 body the same. — Those who contend that space and body are the same, 
 bring this dilemma, either this space is something or nothing ; if nothing 
 oe between two bodies, they must necessarily touch ; if it be allowed to be 
 something, they ask whether it be body or spirit 1 To which I answer by 
 another question, who told them that there was or could be nothing but 
 solid beings which could not think, and thinking beings, that were not ex- 
 tended ? which is all they mean by the terms body and spirit. 
 
 Sect. 17. Substance which we know not, no proof against space with- 
 out body. — If it be demanded (as usually it is) whether this space, void of 
 body, be substance or accident, I shall readily answer, I know not, nor sl^all 
 be ashamed to own my ignorance, till they that ask show me a clear dis- 
 tinct idea of substance. 
 
 Sect. 18. I endeavour, as much as I can, to deliver myself from those 
 fallacies which we are apt to put upon ourselves by taking words for things. 
 It helps not our ignorance to feign a knowledge where we have none, by 
 making a noise with sounds, without clear and distinct significations. 
 Names made at pleasure neither alter the nature of things, nor make us 
 understand them, but as they are signs of, and stand for determined ideas : 
 and l desire those who lay so much stress on the sound of these two sylla- 
 bles, substance, to consider whether applying it, as they do, to the infinite, 
 incomprehensible God, to finite spirit, and to body, it be in the same sense ; 
 and whether it stands for the same idea, when each of those three so dif- 
 ferent beings are called substances? If so, whether it will thence follow 
 that God, spirits, and body, agreeing in the same common nature of sub- 
 stance, differ not any otherwise 'chan in a bare different modification of that 
 substance ; as a tree and a pebble, being in the same sense body, and agree- 
 ing in the common nature of body, differ only in the bare modification of that 
 common matter; which will be a very harsh doctrine. If they say that 
 they apply it to God, finite spirits, and matter, in three different significa- 
 tions ; and that it stands for one idea, when God is said to be a substance ; 
 for another, when the soul is called subtance; and fora third, when a body 
 is called so : if the name substance stands for three several distinct ideas, 
 they would do well to make known those distinct ideas, or at least to give 
 three distinct names to them, to prevent, in so important a notion, the con- 
 fusion and errors that will naturally follow from the promiscuous use of so 
 doubtful a term ; which is so far from being suspected to have three distinct, 
 that in ordinary use it has scarce one clear distinct signification ; and if they 
 can thus make three distinct ideas of substance, what hinders why another 
 may not make a fourth ’ 
 
 Sect. 19. Substance and accidents, of little use in philosophy, — They 
 who first ran into the notion of accidents, as a sort of real beings that needed 
 something to inhere in, were forced to find out the word substance to sup- 
 port them. Had the poor Indian philosopher (who imagined that the earth 
 also wanted something to bear it up) but thought of this word, substance, 
 he needed not to have been at the trouble to find an elephant to support it, 
 ind a tortoise to support his elephant : the word substance would have done 
 it effectually. And he that inquired might have taken it for as good an 
 answer from an Indian philosopher, that substance, without knowing what 
 it is, is that which supports the earth, as we take it for a sufficient answer, and 
 good doctrine, from our European philosophers, that substance, without 
 knowing what it is, is that which supports accidents. So that of substance 
 we have no idea of what it is, but only a confused obscure one of what it 
 does. 
 
 Sect. 20. Whatever a learned man may do here, an intelligent American, 
 who inquired into the nature of things, would scarce take it for a satisfac- 
 tory account, if, desiring to learn our architecture, he should be told that 
 a pillar was a thing supported by a basis, and a basis something that sup 
 
Ch. 13. 
 
 SIMPLE MODES OF SPACE. 
 
 117 
 
 ported a pillar. Would he not think himself mocked, instead of taught, 
 with such an account as this] And a stranger to them would be very lib. 
 erally instructed in the nature of books, and the things they contained, if 
 he should be told, that all learned books consisted of paper and letters, and that 
 letters were things inhering in paper, and paper a thing that held forth letters ; 
 a notable way of having clear ideas of letters and paper ! But were the Latin 
 words inhcerentia and substantia put into the plain English ones that an- 
 4 swer them, and were called sticking on and underpropping, they would bet- 
 ter discover to us the very great clearness there is in the doctrine of sub- 
 stance and accidents, and show of what use they are in deciding of questions 
 in philosophy. 
 
 Sect. 21. A vacuum beyond the utmost bounds of body . — But to return 
 to our idea of space. If body be not supposed infinite, which I think no 
 one will affirm, I would ask, whether, if God placed a man at the extremi- 
 ty of corporeal beings, he could not stretch his hand beyond his body] If 
 he could, then he would put his arm where there was before space with- 
 out body, and if there he spread his fingers, there would still be space be- 
 tween them without body. If he could not stretch out his hand, it must be 
 because of some external hindrance ; (for we suppose him alive, with such 
 a power of moving the parts of his body that he hath now, which is not in 
 itself impossible, if God so pleased to have it ; or at least it is not impossi- 
 ble for God so to move him :) and then I ask, whether tl at which hinders 
 his hand from moving outwards be substance or accident, something or 
 nothing ] And when they have resolved that, they will be able to resolve 
 themselves what that is, which is or may be between two bodies at a dis- 
 tance, that is not body, and has no solidity. In the mean time, the argu- 
 ment is at least as good, that where nothing hinders (as beyond the utmost 
 bounds of all bodies) a body put in motion may move on : as where there is 
 nothing between, there two bodies must necessarily touch: for pure space 
 between is sufficient to take away the necessity of mutual contact ; but bare 
 space in the way is not sufficient to stop motion. The truth is, these men 
 must either own that they think body infinite, though they are loath to speak 
 it out, or else affirm that space is not body. For I would fain meet with 
 that thinking man, that can in his thoughts set any bounds to space more 
 than he can to duration, or by thinking hope to arrive at the end of either: 
 and, therefore, if his idea of eternity be infinite, so is his idea of immensity: 
 they are both finite or infinite alike. 
 
 Sect. 22. The power of annihilation proves a vacuum. — Farther, those 
 who assert the impossibility of space existing without matter, must not on- 
 ly make body infinite, but must also deny a power in God to annihilate any 
 part of matter. No one, I suppose, will deny that God can put an end to 
 all motion that is in matter, and fix all the bodies of the universe in a per- 
 fect quiet and rest, and continue them so long as he pleases. Whoever 
 then will allow that God can, during such a general rest, annihilate either 
 this book, or the body of him that reads it, must necessarily admit the pos- 
 sibility of a vacuum ; for it is evident that the space that was filled by the 
 parts of the annihilated body will still remain, and be a space without body : 
 for the circumambient bodies being in perfect rest, are a wall of adamant, 
 and in that state make it a perfect impossibility for any other body to get 
 into that space. And indeed the necessary motion of one particle of mat. 
 ter into the place from whence another particle of matter is removed, is 
 but a consequence from the supposition of plentitude ; which will therefore 
 need some better proof than a supposed matter of fact, which experiment 
 can never make out : our own clear and distinct ideas plainly satisfying us 
 that there is no necessary connexion between space and solidity, since we 
 can conceive the one without the other. And those who dispute for or against 
 a vacuum, do thereby confess they hafe distinct ideas of vacuum and plenum, 
 i.e. that they have an idea of extension void of solidity, though they deny its 
 
OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 1I8 
 
 existence, or else they dispute about nothing at all. For they who so 
 much alter the signification of words as to call extension body, and conse- 
 quently make the whole essence of body to be nothing but pure extension 
 without solidity, must talk absurdly whenever they speak of vacuum, since 
 it is impossible for extension to be without extension : for vacuum, whether 
 we affirm or deny its existence, signifies space without body, whose very ex- 
 istence no one can deny to be possible, who will not make matter infinite, and 
 take from God a power to annihilate any particle of it. 
 
 Sect. 23. Motion proves a vacuum. — But not to go so far as beyond the 
 utmost bounds of body in the universe, nor appeal to God’s omnipotency 
 to find a vacuum, the motion of bodies that are in our view and neighbour- 
 hood seems to me plainly to evince it. For I desire any one so to divide 
 a solid body, of any dimension he pleases, as to make it possible for the 
 solid parts to move up and down freely every way within the bounds of 
 that superficies, if there be not left in it, a void space as big as the least 
 part into which he has divided the said solid body. And if where the 
 least particle of the body divided is as big as a mustard-seed, a void space 
 equal to the bulk of a mustard-seed be requisite to make room for the free 
 motion of the parts of the divided body within the bounds of its superficies, 
 where the particles of matter are 100,000,000 less than a mustard-seed, 
 there must also be a space void of solid matter as big as 100,000,000 part 
 of a mustard-seed ; for if it hold good in one it will hold in the other, and so on 
 in infinitum. And let this void space be as little as it will, it destroys the 
 hypothesis of plentitude : for if there can be a space void of body equal to 
 the smallest separate particle of matter now existing in nature, it is still 
 space without body, and makes as great a difference between space and 
 body, as if it were /utya. yfia/j.*, a distance as wide as any in nature. 
 And therefore if we suppose not the void space necessary to motion equal 
 to the least parcel of the divided solid matter, but to 1-10 or 1-1000 of it, the 
 same consequence will always follow of space without matter. 
 
 Sect. 24. The ideas of space and body distinct. — But the question being 
 here, “ whether the idea of space or extension be the same with the idea 
 of body,” it is not necessary to prove the real existence of a vacuum, but 
 the idea of it ; which it is plain men have, when they inquire and dispute 
 whether there be a vacuum or no : for if they had not the idea of space 
 without body, they could not make a question about its existence ; and if 
 their idea of body did not include in it something more than the bare idea 
 of space, they could have no doubt about the plentitude of the word ; and 
 it would be as absurd to demand whether there were space without body, 
 as whether there were space without space, or body without body, since 
 these were but different names of the same idea- 
 
 Sect. 25. Extension being inseparable from body, proves it not the. same. 
 — It is true, that the idea of extension joins itself so inseparably with all 
 visible and most tangible qualities, that it suffers us to see no one, or 
 feel very few external objects, without taking in impressions of extension 
 too. This readiness of extension to make itself be taken notice of so con- 
 stantly with other ideas, has been the occasion, I guess, that some have 
 made the whole essence of body to consist in extension ; which is not 
 much to be wondered at, since some have had their minds, by their eyes 
 and touch (the busiest of all our senses,) so filled with the idea of exten- 
 sion, and as it were wholly possessed with it, that they allowed no exist- 
 ence to any thing that had not extension. I shall not now argue with 
 those men who take the measure and possibility of all being only from their 
 narrow and gross imaginations ; but having here to do only with those who 
 conclude the essence ofbody to be extension, because they say they cannotim- 
 agine any sensible quality of any body without extension, I shall desire them 
 to consider, that had they reflected on their ideas of tastes and smells as 
 much as on those of sight and touch; nay, had they examined their ideas. 
 
Ch. 13 
 
 SIMPLE MODES OF SPACE. 
 
 119 
 
 of hunger and thirst, and several other pains, they would have found that 
 they included in them no idea of extension at all ; which is but an affec- 
 tion of body, as well as the rest, discoverable by our senses, which are 
 scarce acute enough to look into the pure essences of things. 
 
 Sect. 26. If those ideas which are constantly joined to all others must 
 therefore be concluded to be the essence of those things which have con- 
 stantly those ideas joined to them, and are inseparable from them, then 
 unity is, without doubt, the essence of every thing : for there is not any ob- 
 ject of sensation or reflection which does not carry with it the idea of one ; 
 but the weakness of this kind of argument we have already shown suffi- 
 ciently. 
 
 Sect. 27. Ideas of space and solidity distinct . — To conclude, whatever 
 men shall think concerning the existence of a vacuum, this is plain to me, 
 that we have as clear an idea of space distinct from solidity, as we have 
 of solidity distinct from motion, or motion from space. We have not any 
 two more distinct ideas, and we can as easily conceive space without 
 solidity, as we can conceive body or space without motion, though it be 
 never so certain that neither body nor motion can exist without space. But 
 whether any one will take space to be only a relation resulting from the 
 existence of other beings at a distance, or whether they will think the words 
 of the most knowing king Solomon, “The heaven, and the heaven of 
 heavens cannot contain thee,” or those more emphatical ones of the in- 
 spired philosopher St Paul, “ In him we live, move, and have our being,” 
 are to be understood in a literal sense, I leave every one to consider : only 
 our idea of space is, I think, such as I have mentioned, and distinct from 
 that of body. For whether we consider in matter itself the distance of 
 its coherent solid parts, and call it, in respect of those solid parts, exten- 
 sion; or whether, considering it as lying between the extremities of any 
 body in its several dimensions, we call it length, breadth, and thickness ; 
 or else, considering it as lying between any two bodies or positive beings, 
 without any consideration whether there be any matter or no between, we 
 call it distance : however named or considered, it is always the same uniform 
 simple idea of space, taken from objects about which our senses have been 
 conversant ; whereof having settled ideas in our minds, we can revive, re- 
 peat, and add them one to another as often as we will, and consider the 
 space or distance so imagined either as filled with solid parts, so that 
 another body cannot come there without displacing and thrusting out the 
 body that was there before, or else as void of solidity, so that a body of 
 equal dimensions to that empty or pure space may be placed in it without 
 the removing or expulsion of any thing that was there. But, to avoid con- 
 fusion in discourses concerning this matter, it were possibly to be wished 
 that the name extension were applied only to matter, orthe distance ofthe ex- 
 tremities of particular bodies ; and the term expansion to space in general, 
 with or without solid matter possessing it, so as to say space is expanded, 
 and body extended. But in this every one has liberty : I propose it only 
 for the more clear and distinct way of speaking. 
 
 Sect. 28 Men differ little in clear simple ideas . — The knowing precise- 
 ly what our words stand for, would, I imagine, in this, as well as a great 
 many other cases, quickly end the dispute : for I am apt to think that men, 
 when they come to examine them, find their simple ideas all generally to 
 agree, though in discourse with one another they perhaps confound one 
 another with different names. I imagine that men who abstract their thoughts, 
 and do well examine the ideas of their own minds, cannot much differ in 
 thinking, however they may perplex themselves with words, according to 
 the way of speaking of the several schools or sects they have been bred up 
 in : though among unthinking men, who examine not scrupulously and care- 
 fully their own ideas, and strip them not from the marks men use for them, 
 but confound 1 hem with words, there must be endless dispute, wrangling, 
 
OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 120 
 
 and jargon; especially if they be learned bookish men, devoted to some 
 sect, and accustomed to the language of it, and have learned to talk after 
 others. But if it should happen that any two thinking men should really 
 have different ideas, I do not see how they could discourse or argue one with 
 another. Here I must not be mistaken, to think that every floating imagi- 
 nation in men’s brains is presently of that sort of ideas I speak of. It is 
 not easy for the mind to put off those confused notions and prejudices it has 
 imbibed from custom, inadvertency, and common conversation 1 it requires 
 pains and assiduity to examine its ideas, till it resolves them into those 
 clear and distinct simple ones, out of which they are compounded , and to see 
 which, among its simples ones, have or have not a necessary connexion 
 and dependence one upon another. Till a man doth this in the primary 
 and original notion of things, he builds upon floating and uncertain princi- 
 ples, and will often find himself at a loss. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 OF DURATION, AND ITS SIMPLE MODES. 
 
 Sect. 1. Duration is fleeting extension. — There is another sort of dis- 
 tance or length, the idea whereof we get not from the permanent parts of 
 space, but from the fleeting and perpetually perishing parts of succession. 
 This we call duration, the simple modes whereof are any different lengths 
 of it whereof we have distinct ideas, as hours, days, years, &c. time and 
 eternity. 
 
 Sect. 2. Its idea from reflection on the train of our ideas. — The 
 answer of a great man to one who asked what time was “ Si non rogas 
 intelligo (which amounts to this, the more I set myself to think of it, 
 the less I understand it) might perhaps persuade one that time, which re- 
 veals all other things, is itself not to be discovered. Duration, time, and 
 eternity, are not without reason thought to have something very abstruse 
 in their nature. But however remote these may seem from our compre- 
 hension, yet if we trace them right to their originals, I doubt not but one of 
 those sources of all our knowledge, viz. sensation and reflection, will be 
 able to furnish us with these ideas as clear and distinct as many others which 
 are thought much less obscure ; and we shall find that the idea of eternity 
 itself is derived from the same common original with the rest of our ideas. 
 
 Sect. 3. To understand time and eternity aright, we ought with atten- 
 tion to consider what idea it is we have of duration, and how we came by 
 it. It is evident to any one, who will but observe what passes in his 
 own mind, that there is a train of ideas which constantly succeed one 
 another in his understanding as long as he is awake. Reflection on these 
 appearances of several ideas, one after another, in our minds, is that which 
 furnishes us with the idea of succession ; and the distance between any 
 parts of that succession, or between the appearance of any two ideas in our 
 minds, is that we call duration : for whilst we are thinking, or whilst we 
 receive successively several ideas in our minds, we know that we do exist; 
 and so we call the existence, or the continuation of the existence of our- 
 selves, or any thing else, commensurate to the succession of any ideas in 
 our minds, the duration of ourselves, or any other thing co-existent with 
 our thinking. 
 
 Sect. 4. That we have our notion of' succession and duration from this 
 original, viz. from reflection on the train of ideas which we find to appear 
 one after another in our own minds, seems plain to me, in that we ha^e nc 
 perception of duration, but by considering the train of ideas that take their 
 
Ch. 14. 
 
 DURATION, AND ITS SIMPLE MODES. 
 
 121 
 
 turns in our understandings. When that succession of ideas ceases, our ; 
 perception of duration ceases with it ; which every one clearly experiments ' 
 in himself, whilst he sleeps soundly, whether an hour or a day, a month 
 or a year; of which duration of things, while he sleeps or thinks not, he 
 has no perception at all, but it is quite lost to him ; and the moment where- 
 in he leaves off to think, till the moment he begins to think again, seems to 
 him to have no distance. And so I doubt not it would be to a waking man, 
 if it were possible for him to keep only one idea in his mind, without va- 
 riation and the succession of others. And we see that one who fixes his 
 thoughts very intently on one thing, so as to take but little notice of the 
 succession of ideas that pass in his mind, whilst he is taken up with that 
 earnest contemplation, lets slip out of his account a good part of that dura- 
 tion, and thinks that time shorter than it is. But if sleep commonly unites 
 the distant parts of duration, it is because during that time we have no suc- 
 cession of ideas in our minds : for if a man, during his sleep, dreams, and vari- 
 ety of ideas make themselves perceptible in his mind one after another, he hath 
 then, during such dreaming, a sense of duration, and the length of it : by 
 which it is to me very clear, that men derive their ideas of duration from 
 their reflections on the train of the ideas they observe to succeed one ano- 
 ther in their own understandings ; without which observation they can 
 have no notion of duration, whatever may happen in the world. 
 
 Sect. 5. The idea of duration applicable to things whilst we sleep . — 
 Indeed a man having, from reflecting on the succession and number of his 
 own thoughts, got the notion or idea of duration, he can apply that notion 
 to things which exist while he does not think; as he that has got the idea 
 cf extension from bodies by his sight or touch, can apply it to distances 
 where no body is seen or felt. And therefore, though a man has no percep- 
 tion of the length of duration, which passed whilst he slept or thought not, 
 yet having observed the revolution of days and nights, and found the length 
 of their duration to be in appearance regular and constant, he can, upon the 
 supposition that that revolution has proceeded after the same manner whilst 
 he was asleep, or thought not as it used to do at other times : he can, 1 say, 
 imagine and make allowance for the length of duration whilst lie slept. 
 But if Adam and Eve (when they were alone in the world,) instead of their 
 ordinary night’s sleep, had passed the whole twenty-four hours in one con- 
 tinued sleep, the duration of that twenty-four hours had been irrecoverably 
 lost to them, and been for ever left out of their account of time. 
 
 Sect. 6. The idea of succession not frommotion. — Thus, by reflecting 
 on the appearing of various ideas one after another in our understandings, 
 we get the notion of succession ; which, if any one would think we did 
 rather get from our observation of motion by our senses, he will perhaps 
 be of my mind when he considers, that even motion produces in his mind 
 an idea of succession no otherwise than as it produces there a continued 
 train of distinguishable ideas. For a man looking upon a body really 
 moving, perceives yet no motion at all, unless that motion produces a con- 
 stant train of successive ideas : v. g. a man becalmed at sea, out of 
 sight of land, in a fair day, may look on the sun, or sea, or ship, a whole 
 hour together, and perceive no motion at all in either; though it be certain 
 that two, and perhaps all cf them, have moved during that time a great 
 way. But as soon as he perceives either of them to have changed dis- 
 tance with some other body, as soon as this motion produces any new idea 
 in him, then he perceives that there has been motion. But wherever a 
 man is, with all things at rest about him, without perceiving any motion at all; 
 if during this hour of quiet he has been thinking, he will perceive the vari- 
 ous ideas of his own thoughts in his own mind, appearing one after another, 
 and thereby observe and find succession where he could observe no motion. 
 
 Sect. 7. And this, I think, is the reason why motions very slow, though 
 they are constant, are not perceived by us ; because, in their remove from 
 
OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 one sensible part toward another, their change of distance is so slow, that 
 it causes no new ideas in us, but a good while one after another : and so 
 not causing a constant train of new ideas to follow one another immediately 
 in our minds, we have no perception of motion ; which consisting in a con- 
 stant succession, we cannot perceive that succession, without a constant 
 succession of varying ideas arising from it. 
 
 Sect. 8. On the contrary, things that move so swift as not to affect the 
 senses distinctly with several distinguishable distances of their motion, and 
 so cause not any train of ideas in the mind, are not also perceived to move ; 
 for any thing that moves round about in a circle in less time than our ideas 
 are wont to succeed one another in our minds, is not perceived to move, 
 but seems to be a perfect entire circle of that matter or colour, and not a 
 part of a circle in motion. 
 
 Sect. 9. The train of ideas has a certain degree of quickness. — Hence 
 I leave it to others to judge whether it be not probable that our ideas do, 
 whilst we are awake, succeed one another in our minds at certain distances, 
 not much unlike the images in the inside of a lantern turned round by the 
 heat of a candle. This appearance of theirs in train, though perhaps it 
 may be sometimes faster, and sometime slower, yet I guess, vanes not 
 very much in a waking man : there seem to be certain bounds to the quick- 
 ness and slowness of the succession of those ideas one to another in our 
 minds, beyond which they can neither delay nor hasten. 
 
 Sect. 10. The reason I have for this odd conjecture is from observing, 
 that in the impressions made upon any of our senses we can but to a cer- 
 tain degree perceive any succession ; which, if exceeding quick, the sense 
 of succession is lost, even in cases where it is evident that there is a real 
 succession. Let a cannon-bullet pass through a room, and in its way take 
 with it any limb or fleshy parts of a man ; it is as clear as any demonstra- 
 tion can be, that it must strike successively the two sides of the room. It 
 is also evident, that it must touch one part of the flesh first, and another 
 after, and so in succession : and yet I believe nobody who ever felt the 
 pain of such a shot, or heard the blow against the two distant walls, could 
 perceive any succession either in the pain or sound of so swift a stroke. 
 Such a part of duration as this, wherein we perceive no succession, is that 
 which we may call an instant, and is that which takes up the time of only 
 one idea in our minds without the succession of another, wherein, there- 
 fore, we perceive no succession at all. 
 
 Sect. 11. This also happens where the motion is so slow as not to sup- 
 ply a constant train of fresh ideas to the senses as fast as the mind is ca- 
 pable of receiving new ones into it ; and so other ideas of our own thoughts, 
 having room to come into our minds between those offered to our senses 
 by the moving body, there the sense of motion is lost ; and the body, though 
 it really moves, yet not changing perceivable distance with some other bo- 
 dies as fast as the ideas of our own minds do naturally follow one another in 
 train, the thing seems to stand still, as is evident in the hands of clocks 
 and shadows of sun-dials, and other constant but slow motions ; where, 
 though after certain intervals, we perceive by the change of distance that 
 it hath moved, yet the motion itself we perceive not. 
 
 Sect. 12. This train the measure of other successions. — So that to me 
 it seems that the constant and regular succession of ideas in a waking man 
 is as it were, the measure and standard of all other successions : whereof if 
 any one either exceeds the pace of our ideas, as where two sounds or pains. 
 &c. take up in their succession the duration of but one idea, or else where 
 any motion or succession is so slow as that it keeps not pace with the ideas in 
 our minds, or the quickness in which they take their turns ; as when any 
 one or more ideas, in their ordinary course, come into our mind between 
 those which are offered to the sight by the different perceptible distances 
 of a body in motion, or between sounds or smells following one another • 
 
Ch. 14. 
 
 DURATION, AND ITS SIMPLE MODES. 
 
 123 
 
 there also the sense of a constant continued succession is lost, and we pei- 
 ceive it not but with certain gaps of rest between. 
 
 Sect. 13. The mind cannot fix long on one invariable idea. — If it be so 
 that the ideas of our minds, whilst we have any there, do constantly change 
 and shift in a continual succession, it would be impossible, may any one 
 say, for a man to think long of any one thing. By which, if it be meant 
 that a man may have one self-same single idea a long time alone in his 
 mind, without any variation at all, I think, in matter of fact, it is not pos- 
 sible ; for which (not knowing how the ideas of our minds are framed, of 
 what materials they are made, whence they have their light, and how they 
 come to make their appearances) I can give no other reason but experi- 
 ence : and I would have any one try whether he can keep one unvaried 
 single idea in his mind without any other, for any considerable time to- 
 gether. 
 
 Sect. 14. For trial, let him take any figure, any degree of light or white- 
 ness, or what other he pleases ; and he will, I suppose, find it difficult to 
 keep all other ideas out of his mind; but that some, either of another kind, 
 or various considerations of that idea (each of which considerations is a new 
 idea) will constantly succeed one another in his thoughts, let him be as 
 wary as he can. 
 
 Sect. 15. All that is in a man’s power in this case, I think, is only to 
 mind and observe what the ideas are that take their turns in his understand- 
 ing ; or else to direct the sort, and call in such as he hath a desire or use 
 of : but hinder the constant succession of fresh ones, I think, he cannot, 
 though he may commonly choose whether he will heedfully observe and 
 consider them. 
 
 Sect. 16. Ideas, however made, include no sense of motion. — Whether 
 these several ideas in a man’s mind be made by certain motions, I will not 
 here dispute : but this lam sure, that they include no idea of motion in their ap- 
 pearance ; and if a man had not the idea ofmotion otherwise, I think he would 
 have none at all ; which is enough to my present purpose, and sufficiently 
 shows that the notice we take of the ideas of our own minds appearing 
 there one after another, is that which gives us the idea of succession and 
 duration, without which we should have no such ideas at all. It is not then 
 motion, but the constant train of ideas in our minds, whilst we are waking, 
 that furnishes us with the idea of duration ; whereof motion no otherwise 
 gives us any perception than as it causes in our minds a constant succes- 
 sion of ideas, as I have before showed : and we have as clear an idea of 
 succession and duration, by the train of other ideas succeeding one another 
 in our minds, without the idea of any motion, as by the train of ideas caused 
 by the uninterrupted sensible change of distance between two bodies, which 
 we have from motion ; and therefore we should as well have the idea of 
 duration were there no sense of motion at all. 
 
 Sect. 17. Time is duration set out by measures. — Having thus got the 
 idea of duration, the next thing natural for the mind to do is to get some 
 measure of this common duration, whereby it might judge of its different 
 lengths, and consider the distinct order wherein several things exist, with- 
 out which a great part of our knowledge would be confused, and a great 
 part of history be rendered very useless. This consideration of duration, 
 as set out by certain periods, and marked by certain measures or epochs, 
 is that I think, which most properly we call time. 
 
 Sect. 18. A good measure of time must divide its whole duration into 
 • qual periods. — In the measuring of extension there is nothing more required 
 >ut the application of the standard or measure we make use of to the thing 
 if whose extension we would be informed. But in the measuring of du- 
 ation this cannot be done, because no two different parts of succession 
 ■an be put together to measure one another: and nothing being a measure 
 >f duration but duration, as nothing is of extension but extension, we cannot 
 
124 
 
 OP HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 keep by us any standing unvarying measure of duration, which consists in 
 a constant fleeting succession, as we can of certain lengths of extension, 
 as inches, feet, yards, (fee. marked out in permanent parcels of matter. 
 Nothing, then, could serve well for a convenient measure of time but what 
 has divided the whole length of its duration into apparently equal portions, 
 by constantly repeated periods. What portions of duration are not distin- 
 guished, or considered as distinguished and measured by such periods, 
 come not so properly under the notion of time, as appears by such phrases 
 as these, viz. before all time, and when time shall be no more. 
 
 Sect. 19. The revolutions of the sun and moon, the properest mea- 
 sures of time. — The diurnal and annual revolutions of the sun, as having 
 been, from the beginning of nature, constant, regular, and universally ob- 
 servable by all mankind, and supposed equal to one another, have been 
 with reason made use of for the” measure of duration. But the distinc- 
 tion of days and years having depended on the motion of the sun, it has 
 brought this mistake with it, that it has been thought that motion and 
 duration were the measure one of another: for men, in the measuring of 
 the length of time, having been accustomed to the ideas of minutes, hours, 
 days, months, years, &c. which they found themselves upon any mention 
 of time or duration presently to think on, all which portions of time were 
 measured out by the motion of those heavenly bodies ; they were apt to 
 confound time and motion, or at least to think that they had a necessary 
 connexion one with another: whereas any constant periodical appearance 
 or alteration of ideas in seemingly equidistant spaces of duration, if constant- 
 ly and universally observable, would have as well distinguished the intervals 
 of time as those that have been made use of. For supposing the sun, which 
 some have taken to be a fire, had been lighted up at the same distance of 
 time that it now every day comes about to the same meridian, and then 
 gone out again about twelve hours after, and that in the space of an annual 
 revolution it had sensibly increased in brightness and heat, and so decreas- 
 ed again ; would not such regular appearances serve to measure out the 
 distances of duration, to all that could observe it, as well without as with 
 motion? For if the appearances were constant, universally observable, 
 and in equidistant periods, they would serve mankind for measures of time 
 as well, were the motion away. 
 
 Sect. 20. But not by their motion, but periodical appearances. — For 
 the freezing of water, or the blowing of a plant, returning at equidistant 
 periods in all parts of the earth, would as well serve men to reckon their 
 years by, as the motions of the sun : and in effect we see that some people 
 in America counted their years by the coming of certain birds among them 
 at their certain seasons, and leaving them at others. For a fit of an ague, 
 the sense of hunger or thirst, a smell, or a taste, or any other idea return- 
 ing constantly at equidistant periods, and making itself universally be taken 
 notice of, would not fail to measure out the course of succession, and dis- 
 tinguish the distance of time. Thus, we see that men born blind count 
 time well enough by years, whose revolutions yet they cannot distinguish 
 by motions that they perceive not : and I ask whether a blind man, who 
 distinguished his years either by the heat of summer or cold of winter ; by 
 the smell of any flower of the spring, or taste of any fruit of the autumn ; 
 would not have a better measure of time than the Romans had before the 
 reformation of their calendar by Julius Caesar, or many other people, whose 
 years, notwithstanding the motion of the sun, which they pretend to make 
 use of, are very irregular? And it adds no small difficulty to chronology, that 
 the exact lengths of the years that several nations counted by are hard to be 
 known, they differing very much one from another, and I think I may sa 33 
 all of them from the precise motion of the sun. And if the sun moved from 
 the creation to the flood, constantly in the equator, and so equally dispersed 
 its light and heat to all habitable parts of the earth, in days all cf the same 
 
Ch. 14. 
 
 DURATION, AND ITS SIMPLE MODES. 
 
 125 
 
 length, without its annual variations to the tropics, as a late ingenious author 
 supposes(a) : I do not think it very easy to imagine that (notwithstanding 
 the motion of the sun) men should, in the antediluvian world, from the be- 
 ginning, count by years, or measure their time by periods, that had no sen- 
 sible marks very obvious to distinguish them by. 
 
 Sect. 21. No two parts of duration can be certainly known to be equal. 
 — But perhaps it will be said, without a regular motion, such as of the sun 
 or some other, how could it ever be known that such periods were equal? 
 To which I answer, the equality of any other returning appearances might 
 be known by the same way that that of days was known or presumed to 
 be so at first; which was only by judging of them by the train of ideas 
 which had passed in men’s mind, in the intervals : by which train of ideas 
 discovering inequality in the natural days, but none in the artificial days, 
 the artificial days, or were guessed to be equal, which was suf- 
 
 ficient to make them serve for a measure : though exacter search has since 
 discovered inequality in the diurnal revolutions of the sun, and we know 
 not whether the annual also be not unequal. These yet, by their presumed 
 and apparent equality, serve as well to reckon time by (though not to mea- 
 sure the parts of duration exactly) as if they could be proved to be exactly 
 equal. We must therefore carefully distinguish betwixt duration itself 
 and the measures we make use of to judge of its length. Duration in itself 
 is to be considered as going on in one constant, equal, uniform, course: 
 but none of the measures of it, which we make use of, can be known to 
 do so ; nor can we be assured that their assigned parts or periods are 
 equal in duration one to another; for two successive lengths of duration, 
 however measured, can never be demo'nstrated to be equal. The motion 
 of-the-sun, which the world used so long and so confidently for an exact 
 measure of duration, has, as I said, been found in its several parts unequal: 
 and though men have of late made use of a pendulum, as a more steady 
 and regular motion than that of the sun, or (to speak more truly) of the 
 earth ; yet if any one should be asked how he certainly knows that the two 
 successive swings of a pendulum are equal, it would be very hard to satisfy 
 him that they are infallibly so : since we cannot be sure that the cause of 
 that motion, which is unknown to us, shall always operate equally: and 
 we are sure that the medium in which the pendulum moves is not constantly 
 the same : either of which varying, may alter the equality of such periods, 
 and thereby destroy the certainty and exactness of the measure by motion, 
 as well as any other periods of other appearances ; the notion of duration 
 still remaining clear, though our measures of it cannot any of them be de- 
 monstrated to be exact. Since then no two portions of succession can be 
 brought together, it is impossible ever certainly to know their equality. 
 All that we can do for a measure of time, is to take such as have continual 
 successive appearances at seemingly equidistant periods ; of which seeming 
 equality we have no other measure but such as the train of our own ideas 
 have lodged in our memories, with the concurrence of other probable rea 
 sons, to persuade us of their equality. 
 
 Sect. 22. Time not the measure of motion. — One thing seems strange 
 to me, that whilst all men manifestly measured time by the motion of the 
 great and visible bodies of the world, time yet should be defined to be the 
 “ measure of motion ;” whereas it is obvious to every one who reflects ever 
 so little on it, that, to measure motion, space is as necessary to be consid- 
 ered as time ; and those who look a little farther, will find also the bulk of 
 the thing moved necessary to be taken into the computation by any one who 
 will estimate or measure motion, so as to judge right of it. Norindeed does 
 motion any otherwise conduce to the measuring of duration, than as it con- 
 stantly brings about the return of certain sensible ideas in seeming equidis- 
 
 (a) Dr Burnet’s Theory of the Earth. 
 
126 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Rook 2. 
 
 tant periods. For if the motion of the sun were as unequal as of a ship 
 driven by unsteady winds, sometimes very slow, and at others irregularly 
 very swift; or if, being constantly equally swift, it yet was not circular, and 
 produced not the same appearances, it would not at all help us to measure 
 time, any more than the seeming unequal motion of a comet does. 
 
 Sect. 23. Minutes, hours, days, and years, not necessary measures of 
 duration. — Minutes, hours, days, and years, are then no more necessary 
 ' to time or duration, than inches, feet, yards, and miles, marked out in any 
 matter, are to extension : for though we in this part of the universe, by the 
 constant use of them, as of periods set out by the revolutions of the sun, or as 
 known parts of such periods, have fixed the ideas of such lengths of dura- 
 tion in our minds, which we apply to all parts of time, whose lengths we 
 would consider; yet there may be other parts of the universe, where they 
 no more use these measures of ours, than in Japan they do our inches, feet, 
 or miles ; but yet something analogous to them there must be. Fi r without 
 some regular periodical returns, we could not measure ourselves, or signify 
 to others the length of any duration, though at the same time the world 
 were as full of motion as it is now, but no part of it disposed into regular and 
 apparently equidistant revolutions. But the different measures that may be 
 made use of for the account of time do not at all alter the notion of dura- 
 tion, which is the thing to be measured, no more than the different stand- 
 ards of a foot and a cubit alter the notion of extension to those who make 
 use of those different measures. 
 
 Sect. 24. Our measure of time applicable to duration before time . — 
 The mind having once got such a measure of time as the annual revolution 
 ofthesun, can apply that measure to duration, wherein that measure itself 
 did not exist, and with which, in the reality of its being, it had nothing to do : 
 for should one say, that Abraham was bom in the two thousand seven hundred 
 and twelfth year of the Julian period, it is altogether as intelligible as reck- 
 oning from the beginning of the world, though there were so far back no 
 motion of the sun, nor any motion at all. For though the Julian period be 
 supposed to begin several hundred years before there were realiy either 
 days, nights, or years, marked out by any revolutions of the sun ; yet we 
 reckon as right, and thereby measure durations as well, as if really at that 
 time the sun had existed, and kept the same ordinary motion it doth now. 
 The idea of duration equal to an annual revolution of the sun is as easily 
 applicable in our thoughts to duration, where no sun nor motion was, as 
 the idea of a foot or yard, taken from bodies here, can be applied in our 
 thoughts to distances beyond the confines of the world, where are no bodies 
 at all. 
 
 Sect. 25. For supposing it were five thousand six hundred and thirty- 
 nine miles, or millions of miles, from this place to the remotest body of the 
 universe (for, being finite, it must be at a certain distance) as we suppose 
 it to be five thousand six hundred and thirty nine years from this time to 
 the first existence of any body in the beginning of the world ; we can in 
 our thoughts, apply this measure of a year to duration before the creation, 
 or beyond the duration of bodies or motiriti, as \Ve can this measure of a 
 mile to space beyond the utmost bodies ; and by the one measure duration 
 where there was no motion, as well as by the other measure space in our 
 thoughts where there is no body. 
 
 Sect. 26. If it be objected to me here, that, in this way of explaining 
 of time, I have begged what I should not, viz. that the world is neither 
 eternal nor infinite ; I answer, that to my present purpose it is not needful, 
 in this place, to make use of arguments to evince the world to be finite, 
 both in duration and e..cension ; but it being at least as conceivable as the 
 contrary, I have certainly the liberty to suppose it, as well as any one hath 
 to suppose the contrary; and I doubt not but that every one that will go 
 about it, may easily conceive in his mind the beginning of motion, though 
 
Ch. 14. 
 
 DURATION, AND TTS SIMPLE MODES. 
 
 127 
 
 not of all duration, and so may ccme to a stop and non ultra in his con- 
 sideration of motion. So also in his thoughts he may set limits to body 
 and the extension belonging to it, but not to space where no body is; the 
 utmost bounds of space and duration being beyond the reach of thought, 
 as well as the utmost bounds of number are beyond the largest comprehen- 
 sion of the mind ; and all for the same reason, as we shall see in another 
 place. 
 
 Sect. 27. Eternity . — By the same means, therefore, and from the same 
 original that we come to have the idea of time, we have also that idea which 
 we call eternity ; viz. having got the idea of succession and duration, by re- 
 flecting on the train of our own ideas, caused in us either by the natural 
 appearances of those ideas coming constantly of themselves into our waking 
 thoughts, or else caused by external objects successively affecting our sen- 
 ses ; and having from the revolutions of the sun got the ideas of certain 
 lengths of duration, we can in our thoughts add such lengths of duration to 
 one another, as often as we please, and apply them, so added, to durations 
 past or to come : and this we can continue to do on, without bounds or 
 limits, and proceed in infinitum, and apply thus the length of the annual 
 motion of the sun to duration, supposed before the sun’s, or any other 
 motion had its being ; which is no more difficult or absurd, than to apply 
 the notion I have of the moving of a shadow one hour to-day upon the sun 
 dial to the duration of something last night, v. g. the burning of a candle, 
 which is now absolutely separate from all actual motion : and it is as impos- 
 sible for the duration of that flame for an hour last night to coexist with any 
 motion that now is, or for ever shall be, as for any part of duration, that 
 was before the beginning of the world to coexist with the motion of the 
 sun now. But yet this hinders not, but that having the idea of the length 
 of the motion of the shadow on a dial between the marks of two hours, I can 
 as distinctly measure in my thoughts the duration of that candlelight last night, 
 as I can the duration of any thingthat does now exist: and it is no more than 
 to think, that had the sun shone then on the dial, and moved after the same 
 rate it doth now, the shadow on the dial would have passed from one hour 
 line to another, whilst that flame of the candle lasted. 
 
 Sect. 28. The notion of an hour, day, or year, being only the idea I 
 have of the length of certain periodical regular motions, neither of which 
 motions do ever all at once exist, but only in the ideas I have of them in my 
 memory, derived from my senses or reflection ; I can with the same ease, 
 and for the same reason, apply it in my thoughts to duration antecedent 
 to all manner of motion, as well as to any thing that is but a minute, or a 
 day, antecedent to the motion, that at this very moment the sun is in. All 
 things past are equally and perfectly at rest; and to this way of consider- 
 ation of them are all one, whether they were before the beginning of the 
 world, or but yesterday : the measuring of any duration by some motion 
 depending not at all on the real coexistence of that thing to that motion, 
 or any other periods of revolution, but the having a clear idea of the length 
 of some periodical known motion, or other intervals of duration in my mind, 
 and applying that to the duration of the thing I would measure. 
 
 Sect. 29. Hence we see, that some men imagine the duration of the 
 world, from its first existence to this present year 1689, to have been five 
 thousand six hundred and thirty-nine years, or equal to five thousand six 
 hundred and thirty-nine annual revolutions of the sun, and others a great 
 deal more ; as the Egyptians of old, who in the time of Alexander counted 
 twenty-three thousand years from the reign of the sun ; and the Chinese 
 now, who account the world three millions two hundred and sixty-nine 
 thousand years old or more: which longer duration of the world, according 
 to their computation, though I should not believe it to be true, yet I can 
 equally imagine it with them, and as truly understand, and say one is lon- 
 ger than the other, as I understand that Metlmsalem’s life was longer than 
 
128 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 Enoch’s. And if the common reckoning of five thousand six hundred and 
 thirty-nine should be true (as it may be as well as any other assigned,) it 
 hinders not at all my imagining what others mean when they make the 
 world one thousand years older, since e-very one may with the same facility 
 imagine (I do not say believe) the world to be fifty thousand years old, as 
 five thousand six hundred and thirty-nine ; and may as well conceive the 
 duration of fifty thousand years as five thousand six hundred and thirty- 
 nine. Whereby it appears, that to the measuring the duration of any thing 
 by time, it is not requisite that that thing should be coexistent to the mo- 
 tion we measure by, or any other periodical revolution; but it suffices to 
 this purpose, that we have the idea of the length of any regular periodical 
 appearances, which we can in our minds apply to duration, with which 
 the motion or appearance never coexisted. 
 
 Sect. 30. For as in the history of the creation, delivered by Moses, I 
 can imagine that light existed three days before the sun was, or had any 
 motion, barely by thinking, that the duration of light, before the sun was 
 created, was so long as (if the sun had moved then, as it doth now) would 
 have been equal to three of his diurnal revolutions ; so by the same way I 
 can have an idea of the chaos, or angels being created before there was 
 either light, or any continued motion, a minute, an hour, a day, a year, or 
 one thousand years. For if I can but consider duration equal to one mi- 
 nute, before either the being or motion of any body, I can add one minute 
 more till I come to sixty ; and by the same way of adding minutes, hours, 
 or years, (i. e. such or such parts of the sun’s revolutions, or any other pe- 
 riod whereof I have the idea) proceed in infinitum, and suppose a duration 
 exceeding as many such periods as I can reckon, let me add whilst I will, 
 which I think is the notion we have of eternity, of whose infinity we have 
 no other notion than we have of the infinity of number, to which we can 
 add for ever without end. 
 
 Sect. 31. And thus I think it is plain, that from those two fountains of 
 all knowledge before mentioned, viz. reflection and sensation, we get ideas 
 of duration, and the measures of it. 
 
 For, first, By observing what passes in our minds, how our ideas there 
 in train constantly some vanish, and others begin to appear, we come by 
 the idea of succession. 
 
 Secondly, By observing a distance in the parts of this succession, we get 
 the idea of duration. 
 
 Thirdly, By sensation observing certain appearances, at certain regular 
 and seeming equidistant periods, we get the ideas of certain lengths or 
 measures of duration, as minutes, hours, days, years, &c. 
 
 Fourthly, By being able to repeat those measures of time or ideas of 
 stated length of duration in our minds, as often as we will, we can come 
 to imagine duration, where nothing does really endure or exist ; and thus 
 we imagine to-morrow, next year, or seven years hence. 
 
 Fifthly, By being able to repeat ideas of any length of time, as of a mi- 
 nute, a year, or an age, as often as we will, in our own thoughts, and ad- 
 ding them one to another, without ever coming to the end of such addition 
 any nearer than we can to the end of number, to which we can always add ; 
 we come by the idea of eternity, as the future eternal duration of our souls, 
 as well as the eternity of that infinite Being, which must necessarily have 
 always existed. 
 
 Sixthly, By considering any part of infinite duration, as set out by pe- 
 riodical measures, we come by the idea of what we call time in general 
 
Ch. 15. DURATION AND EXPANSION CONSIDERED. 129 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 OF DURATION AND EXPANSION CONSIDERED TOGETHER. 
 
 Sect. 1. Both capable of greater and less. — Though we have in the 
 precedent chapters dwelt pretty long on the considerations of space and 
 duration ; yet they being ideas of general concernment, that have some- 
 thing very abstruse and peculiar in their nature, the comparing them one 
 with another may perhaps be of use for their illustration ; and we may have 
 the more clear and distinct conception of them, by taking a view of them 
 too-ether. Distance or space, in its simple abstract conception, to avoid 
 confusion, I call expansion, to distinguish it from extension, which by some 
 is used to express this distance only as it is in the solid parts of matter, and so 
 includes, or at least intimate, the idea of body : whereas the idea of pure 
 distance includes no such thing. I prefer also the word expansion to space, 
 because space is often applied to distance of fleeting successive parts, which 
 never exist together, as well as to those which are permanent. In both 
 these (viz. expansion and duration) the mind has this common idea of 
 continued lengths, capable of greater or less quantities : for a man has as 
 clear an idea of the difference of the length of an hour and a day, as of an 
 inch and a foot. 
 
 Sect. 2. Expansion not bounded by matter. — The mind having got the 
 idea of the length of any part of expansion, let it be a span or a pace, or 
 what length you will, can, as has been said, repeat that idea ; and so, ad- 
 ding it to the former, enlarge its idea of length, and make it equal to two 
 spans, or two paces, and so as often as it will, till it equals the distance 
 of any parts of the earth, one from another, and increase thus, till it amounts 
 to the distance of the sun or remotest star. By such a progression as this, 
 setting out from the place where it is, or any other place, it can proceed 
 and pass beyond all those lengths, and find nothing to stop its going on, 
 either in, or without body. It is true, we can easily, in our thoughts, come 
 to the end of solid extension ; the extremity and bounds of all body we have 
 no difficulty to arrive at : but when the mind is there, it finds nothing to 
 hinder its progress into this endless expansion ; of that it can neither find 
 nor conceive any end. Nor let any one say, that beyond the bounds of 
 body there is nothing at all, unless he will confine God within the limits of 
 matter. Solomon, whose understanding was filled and enlarged with wis- 
 dom, seems to have other thoughts, when he says, “ heaven, and the heaven 
 of heavens, cannot contain thee and he, I think, very much magnifies to 
 himself the capacity of his own understanding, who persuades himself that 
 he can extend his thoughts farther than God exists, or imagine any expan- 
 sion where he is not. 
 
 Sect. 3. Nor duration by motion. — Just so is it in duration. The mind 
 having got the idea of any length of duration, can double, multiply, and 
 enlarge it, not only beyond its own, but beyond the existence of all cor- 
 porea 1 beings, and all the measures of time, taken from the great bodies of 
 the world and their motions. But yet every one easily admits, that though 
 we make duration boundless, as certainly it is, we cannot yet extend it be- 
 yond all being. God, every one easily allows, fills eternity, and it is hard 
 to find a reason why any one should doubt that he likewise fills immen- 
 sity. His infinite being is certainly as boundless one way as another, and 
 methinks it ascribes a little too much to matter to say where there is no 
 body, there is nothing. 
 
 Sect. 4. Why men more easily admit infinite duration than infinite 
 expansion. — Hence, I think, we may learn the reason why every one fami- 
 R 
 
130 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 liarly, and without the least hesitation, speaks of, and supposes, eternity, 
 and sticks not to ascribe infinity to duration; but it is with more doubting 
 and reserve that many admit or suppose the infinity of space. The reason 
 n hereof seems to me to be this; that duration and extension being used as 
 names of affections belonging to other beings, we easily conceive in God 
 infinite duration, and we cannot avoid doing so ; but not attributing to him 
 extension, but only to matter, which is finite, we are apter to doubt of the 
 existence of expansion without matter, of which alone we commonly sup- 
 pose it an attribute. And therefore when men pursue their thoughts of 
 space, they are apt to stop at the confines of body, as if space were there 
 at an end too, and reached no farther. Or if their ideas upon consideration 
 carry them farther, yet they term what is beyond the limits of the universe 
 imaginary space ; as if it were nothing, because there is no body existing 
 in it : whereas duration, antecedent to all body, and to the motions which 
 it is measured by, thej'' never term imaginary, because it is never supposed 
 void of some other real existence. And if the names of things may 
 at all direct our thoughts towards the originals of men’s ideas (as I am 
 apt to think they may very much) one may have occasion to think, by 
 the name duration, that the continuation of existence, with a kind of resis- 
 tance to any destructive force, and the continuation of solidity (which is 
 apt to be confounded with, and, if we look into the minute anatomical parts 
 of matter, is little different from, hardness) were thought to have some 
 analogy, and gave occasion to words so near of kin as durare and durum 
 esse. And that durare is applied to the idea of hardness as well as that 
 of existence, we see in Horace, epod. xvi. “ferro duravit secula.” But 
 be that as it will, this is certain, that whoever pursues his own thoughts, 
 will find them sometimes launch out beyond the extent of body into the 
 infinity of space or expansion; the idea whereof is distinct and separate 
 from body and all other things : which may (to those who please) be a sub- 
 ject of farther meditation. 
 
 Sect. 5. Time to duration is as place to expansion. — Time in general 
 is to duration as place to expansion. They are so much of those bound- 
 less oceans of eternity and immensity as is set out and distinguished from 
 the rest, as it were, by landmarks ; and so are made use of to denote 
 the position of finite real beings, in respect one to another, in those uni- 
 form infinite oceans of duration and space. These, rightly considered, are 
 only ideas of determinate distances, from certain known points fixed in 
 distinguishable sensible things, and supposed to keep the same distance 
 one from another. From such points fixed in sensible beings we reckon, 
 and from them we measure our portions of those infinite quantities ; which, 
 so considered, are that which we call time and place. For duration and 
 space being in themselves uniform and boundless, the order and position 
 of things, without such known settled points, would be lost in them, and 
 all things would lie jumbled in an incurable confusion. 
 
 Sect. 6. Time and place arc taken for so much of either , as are set out 
 by the existence and motion of bodies. — Time and place, taken thus for 
 determinate distinguishable portions of those infinite abysses of space and 
 duration, set out or supposed to be distinguished from the rest by marks 
 and known boundaries, have each of them a twofold acceptation. 
 
 First, Time in general is commonly taken for so much of infinite duration 
 as is measured by, and coexistent with, the existence and motions of the 
 great bodies of the universe, as far as we know any thing of them : and in 
 this sense time begins and ends with the frame of this sensible world, as 
 m these phrases before mentioned, before all time, or when time shall be 
 no more. Place likewise is taken sometime for that portion of infinite 
 Bpace which is possessed by, and comprehended within, the material world, 
 and is thereby distinguished from the rest of expansion ; though this may 
 more properly be called extension than place. Within these two are con 
 
Ch. 15. DURATION AND EXPANSION CONSIDERED. 
 
 131 
 
 fined, and by the observable parts of them are measured and determined, 
 the particular time or duration, and the particular extension and place of 
 all corporeal beings. 
 
 Sect. 7. Sometimes for so much of either, as we design by measures 
 taken from the bulk or motion of bodies. — Secondly, Sometimes the word 
 time is used in a larger sense, and is applied to parts of that infinite dura- 
 tion, not that were really distinguished and measured out by this real ex- 
 istence, and periodical motions of bodies that were appointed from the be- 
 ginning to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years, and are 
 accordingly our measure of time ; — but such other portions too of that in- 
 finite uniform duration, which we, upon any occasion, do suppose equal to 
 certain lengths of measured time ; and so consider them as bounded and 
 determined. For if vve should suppose the creation or fall of the angels 
 was at the beginning of the Julian period, we should speak properly enough, 
 and should be understood, if we said, it is a longer time since the creation 
 of angels than the creation of the world by seven thousand six hundred and 
 forty years ; whereby we would mark out so much of that undistinguished 
 duration as we suppose equal to, and would have admitted, seven thousand 
 six hundred and forty annual revolutions of the sun, moving at the rate it 
 now does. And thus likewise we sometimes speak of place, distance, or 
 bulk, in the great inane beyond the confines of the world, when we consid- 
 er so much of that space as is equal to, or capable to receive a body of any 
 assigned dimensions, as a cubic foot; or do suppose a point in it at such 
 a certain distance from any part of the universe. 
 
 Sect. 8. They belong to all beings. — Where and when are questions 
 belonging to all finite existences, and are by us always reckoned from some 
 known parts of this sensible world, and from some certain epochs marked 
 out to us by the motions observable in it. Without some such fixed parts 
 or periods, the order ofthings would be lost to our finite understandings, in the 
 boundless invariable oceans of duration and expansion which comprehend 
 in them all finite beings, and in their full extent belong only to the Deity. 
 And therefore we are not to wonder that we comprehend them not, and do 
 so often find our thoughts at a loss, when we would consider them either 
 abstractly in themselves, or as any way attributed to the first incomprehen- 
 sible being. But when applied to any particular finite beings, the extension 
 of any body is so much of that infinite space as the bulk of the body takes 
 up ; and place is the position of any body, when considered at a certain 
 "distance from some other. As the idea of the particular duration of any thing is 
 an idea of that portion of infinite duration which passed during the existence 
 of that tiling; so the time when the thing existed, is the idea of that space 
 of duration which passed between some known and fixed period of dura- 
 tion, and the being of that thing. One shows the distance of the extremi- 
 ties of the bulk or existence of the same thing, as that it is a foot square, 
 or lasted two years ; the other shows the distance of it in place or existence 
 from other fixed points of space or duration, as that it was in the middle 
 of Lincoln’s-inn-fields, or the first degree of Taurus, and in the year of 
 our Lord 1671, or the 1000th year of the Julian period: all which distances we 
 measure by preconceived ideas of certain lengths of space and duration, as 
 inches, feet, miles, and degrees ; and in the other, minutes, days, and years. 
 
 Sect. 9. All the parts of extension are extension; and all the parts of 
 duration are duration. — There is one thing more wherein space and dura- 
 tion have a great conformity : and that is, though they are justly reckoned 
 among our simple ideas, yet none of the distinct ideas we have of either is 
 without all manner of eomposition(2) ; it is the very nature of both of them 
 
 (2) Jt has been objected to Mr Locke, that if space consists of parts, as it is con- 
 fessed in this place, he should not have reckoned it in the number of simple ideas ; 
 because it seems to be inconsistent with what he says elsewhere, that a simple 
 
132 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 to consist of parts : but their parts being all of the same kind, and without 
 the mixture of any other idea, hinder them not from having a place among 
 simple ideas. Could the mind, as in number, come to so small a part of 
 extension or duration as excluded divisibility, that would be, as it were, 
 the indivisible unit or idea; by repetition of which it would make its more 
 enlarged ideas of extension and duration. But since the mind is not able 
 to frame an idea of any space without parts, instead thereof it makes use of 
 the common measures, which, by familiar use, in each country, have imprint- 
 ed themselves on the memory, (as inches and feet, or cubits and parasangs ; 
 and so seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years in duration :) the mind 
 makes use, I say, of such ideas as these, as simple ones ; and these are the 
 component parts oflarger ideas, which the mind, upon occasion, makes 
 by the addition of such known lengths, which it is acquainted with. On the 
 other side, the ordinary smallest measure we have of either is looked on as 
 an unit in number, when the mind by division would reduce them into less 
 
 idea is uncompounded, and contains in it nothing hut one uniform appearance or 
 conception of the mind, and is not distinguishable into different ideas. It is 
 farther objected, that Mr Locke has not given in the eleventh chapter of the second 
 book, where he begins to speak of simple ideas, an exact definition of what he 
 understands by the words simple ideas. To these difficulties Mr Locke answers 
 thus : To begin with the last, he declares that he has not treated his subject in an 
 order perfectly scholastic, having not had much familiarity with those sort of 
 books during the w riting of his, and not remembering at all the method in which 
 they are written ; and therefore his readers ought not to expect definitions regu- 
 larly placed at the beginning of each new subject. Mr Locke contents himself to 
 employ the principal terms that he uses, so that from his use of them the reader 
 may easily comprehend what he means by them. But with respect to the term 
 simple idea, he has had the good luck to define that in the place cited in the 
 objection ; and therefore there is no reason to supply that defect. The question 
 then is to know whether the idea of extension agrees with this definition ? which 
 will effectually agree to it, if it be understood in the sense which Mr Locke had 
 •principally in his view ; for that composition which he designed to exclude in 
 that definition was a composition of differeut ideas in the mind, and not a com- 
 position of the same kind in a thing whose essence consists in having parts of the 
 same kind, where you can never come to a part entirely exempted from this com- 
 position. So that if the idea of extension consists in having partes extra partes 
 (as the schools speak,) it is always, in the sense of Mr Locke, a simple idea; 
 because the idea of having partes extra partes cannot be resolved into two other 
 ideas. For the remainder of the objection made to Mr Locke, with respect to the 
 nature of extension, Mr Locke was aware of it, a3 may be seen in sect. 9, chap. 
 15, of the second book, where he says, that “ the least portion of space or exten- 
 sion, whereof we have a clear and distinct idea, may perhaps be the fittest to be 
 considered by us as a simple idea of that kind out of which our complex 
 modes of space and extension are made up.” So that, according to Mr Locke, 
 it may very fitly be called a simple idea, since it is the least idea of space that 
 the mind can form to itself, and that cannot be divided by the mind into any less, 
 whereof it has in itself any determined perception. From whence it follows, that 
 it is to the mind one simple idea : and that is sufficient to take away this objection : 
 for it is not the design of Mr Locke, in this place, to discourse of any thing but 
 concerning the idea of the mind. But if this is not sufficient to clear the diffi- 
 culty, Mr Locke hath nothing more to add, but that if the idea of extension is so 
 peculiar that it cannot exactly agree with the definition that he has given of those 
 simple ideas, so that it differs in some manner from all others of that kind, he 
 thinks it is better to leave it there exposed to this difficulty, than to make a new 
 division in his favour. It is enough for Mr Locke that his meaning can be un- 
 derstood. It is very common to observe intelligible discourses spoiled by too 
 much subtlety in nice divisions. We ought to put things together as well as wo 
 can, doctrinx causa : but, after all, several things will not be bundled up to- 
 gether under our torms and ways of speaking. 
 
Ch. 15. DURATION AND EXPANSION CONSIDERED. 
 
 133 
 
 fractions. Though on both sides, both in addition and division, either of 
 space or duration, when the idea under consideration becomes very big or 
 very small, its precise bulk becomes very obscure and confused ; and it is 
 the number of its repeated additions or divisions that alone remains clear 
 and distinct, as will easily appear to any one who will let his thoughts loose in 
 the vast expansion of space, or divisibility of matter. Every part of dura- 
 tion is duration too; and every part of extension is extension, both of them 
 capable of addition or division in infinitum. But the least portions of either 
 of them, whereof we have clear and distinct ideas, may perhaps be fittest 
 to be considered by us as the simple ideas of that kind, out of which our 
 complex modes of space, extension, and duration, are made up, and into 
 which they can again be distinctly resolved. Such a small part in duration 
 may be called a moment, and is the time of one idea in our minds in the 
 train of their ordinary succession there. The other wanting a proper name, 
 I know not whether I may be allowed to call a sensible point, meaning there- 
 by the least particle of matter or space we can discern, which is ordinarily 
 about a minute, and to the sharpest eyes seldom less than thirty seconds of 
 a circle, whereof the eye is the centre. 
 
 Sect. 10. Their parts inseparable. — Expansion and duration have this 
 farther agreement, that though they are both considered by us as having parts, 
 yet their parts are not separable one from another, no, not even in thought ; 
 though the parts of bodies from whence we take our measure of the 
 one, and the parts of motion, or ratherthe succession of ideas in our minds, 
 from whence we take the measure of the other, may be interrupted and 
 separated ; as the one is often by rest, and the other is by sleep, which we 
 call rest too. 
 
 Sect. 11. Duration, is as a line, expansion as a solid. — But there is 
 this manifest difference between them; that the ideas of length, which we 
 have of expansion, are turned everjr way, and so make figure, and breadth, 
 and thickness ; but duration is but as it were the length of one straight line 
 extended in infinitum, not capable of multiplicity, variation, or figure ; 
 but is one common measure of all existence whatsoever, wherein all things, 
 whilst they exist, equally partake. For this present moment is common to 
 all things that are now in being, and equally comprehends that part of 
 their existence, as much as if they were all but one single being; and we 
 may truly say, they all exist in the same moment of time. Whether an- 
 gels and spirits have any analogy to this, in respect of expansion, is beyond 
 my comprehension ; and, perhaps, for us, who have understandings and 
 comprehensions suited to our own preservation, and the ends of our 
 own being, but not to the reality and extent of all other beings ; it is near 
 as hard to conceive any existence, or to have an idea of any real being, 
 with a perfect negation of all manner of expansion, as it is to have the 
 idea of any real existence with the perfect negation of all manner of dura- 
 tion ; and therefore what spirits have to do with space, or how they com- 
 municate in it, we know not. All that we know is, that bodies do each 
 singly possess its proper portion of it, according to the extent of solid parts ; 
 and thereby exclude all other bodies from having any share in that parti- 
 cular portion of space, whilst it remains there. 
 
 Sect. 12. Duration has never two parts together, expansion all to- 
 gether. — Duration, and time, which is a part of it, is the idea we have of 
 perishing distance, of which no two parts exist together, but follow each other 
 in succession ; as expansion is the idea of lasting distance, all whose parts 
 exist together, and are not capable of succession. And therefore, though 
 we cannot conceive any duration without succession, nor can put it to- 
 gether in our thoughts, that any being does now exist to-morrow, or possess 
 at once more than the present moment of duration ; yet we can conceive 
 the eternal duration of the Almighty far different from that of man, or any 
 other finite being; because man comprehends not in his knowledge, or pow- 
 er, all past and future things ; his thoughts are but of yesterday, and he 
 
'34 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 knows not what to-morrow will bring forth. What is once passed he can 
 never recall, and what is yet to come lie cannot make present. What I 
 say of man I say of all finite beings ; who, though they may far exceed 
 man in knowledge and power, yet are no more than the meanest creature, 
 in comparison with God himself. Finite of any magnitude holds not any 
 portion to infinite. God’s infinite duration being accompanied with infinite 
 knowledge and infinite power, he sees all things past and to come ; and 
 they are no more distant from his knowledge, no farther removed from his 
 sight, than the present: they all lie under the same view; and there is no- 
 thing which he cannot make exist each moment he pleases. For the ex- 
 istence of all things depending upon his good pleasure, all things exist every 
 moment that he thinks fit to have them exist. To conclude, expansion 
 and duration do mutually embrace and comprehend each other; every part 
 of space being in every part of duration, and every part of duration in every 
 part of expansion. Such a combination of two distinct ideas is, I suppose, 
 scarce to be found in all that great variety we do or can conceive, and may 
 afford matter to farther speculation. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 OF NUMBER. 
 
 Sect. 1. Number the simplest and most universal idea. — Amongallthe 
 ideas we have, as there is none suggested to the mind by more ways, so 
 there is none more simple than that of unity, or one. It has no shadow of 
 variety or composition in it : every object our senses are employed about, 
 every idea in our understandings, every thought of our minds, bring this 
 idea along with it; and therefore it is the most intimate to our thoughts, 
 as well as it is, in its agreement to all other things, the most universal idea 
 we have. For number applies itself to men, angels, actions, thoughts, 
 every thing that either doth exist or can be imagined. 
 
 Sect. 2. Its modes made by addition. — By repeating this idea in our 
 minds, and adding the repetitions together, we come by the complex ideas 
 of the modes of it. Thus by adding one to one, we have the complex idea 
 of a couple ; by putting twelve units together, we have the complex idea 
 of a dozen ; and so of a score, or a million, or any other number. 
 
 Sect. 3. Each mode distinct. — The simple modes of numbers are of all 
 other the most distinct : every the least variation, which is an unit, making 
 each combination as clearly different from that which approacheth nearest 
 to it, as the most remote : two being as distinct from one as two hundred ; 
 and the idea of two as distinct from the idea of three as the magnitude of the 
 whole earth is from that of a mite. This is not so in other simple modes, 
 in which it is not so easy, nor perhaps possible, for us to distinguish, betwixt 
 two approaching ideas, which yet are really different. For who will under- 
 take to find a difference between the white of this paper, and that of the next 
 degree to it ; or can form distinct ideas of every the least excess in extension. 
 
 Sect. 4. Therefore demonstration in numbers the most precise. — The 
 clearness and distinctness of each mode of number from all others, even those 
 that approach nearest, makes me apt to think that demonstrations in num- 
 bers, if they are not more evident and exact than in extension, yet they are 
 more general in their use, and more determinate in their application ; be- 
 cause the ideas of numbers are more precise and distinguishable than in exten- 
 sion, where every equality and excess are not so easy to be observed or measur- 
 ed ; because our thoughts cannot in space arrive at any determined small- 
 ness, beyond which it cannot go, as an unit; and therefore the quantity or 
 proportion of any the least excess cannot be discovered: which is clear 
 
Ch. 16. 
 
 NUMBER. 
 
 135 
 
 otherwise in number, where, as has been said, ninety-one is as distinguish- 
 able from ninety as from nine thousand, though ninety-one be the next im- 
 mediate excess to ninety. But it is not so in extension, where whatsoever 
 is more than just a foot or an inch, is not distinguishable from the standard 
 of a foot or an inch: and in lines which appear of an equal length, one may 
 be longer than the other by innumerable parts ; nor can any one assign an 
 angle which shall be the next biggest to a right one. 
 
 Sect. 5. Names necessary to numbers. — By the repeating, as has been 
 said, the idea of an unit, and joining it to another unit, we make thereof 
 one collective idea, marked by the name two. And whosoever can do this, 
 and proceed on still, adding one more to the collective idea which he had 
 of any number, and give a name to it, may count or have ideas for several 
 collection of units, distinguished one from another, as far as he hath a se- 
 ries of names for following numbers, and a memory to retain that series, 
 with their several names ; all numeration being but still the adding of one unit 
 to more, and giving to the whole together, as comprehended in one idea, a 
 new or distinct name or sign, whereby to know it from those before and after, 
 and distinguish it from every smaller or greater multitude of units. So that 
 he can add one to one, and so to two, and so go on with his tale, taking 
 still with him the distinct names belonging to every progression ; and so 
 again, by subtracting an unit from each collection, retreat and lessen them; 
 is capable of all the ideas of numbers within the compass of his language, 
 or for which he hath names, though not perhaps of more. For the several 
 simple modes of numbers, being in our minds but so many combinations 
 of units, which have no variety, nor are capable of any other difference but 
 more or less, names or marks lor each distinct combination seem more ne- 
 cessary than in any other sort of ideas. For without such names or marks 
 we can hardly well make use of numbers in reckoning, especially where the 
 combination is made up of any great multitude of units ; which put to- 
 gether without a name or mark, to distinguish that precise collection, will 
 hardly be kept from being a heap in confusion. 
 
 Sect. 6. This I think to be the reason why some Americans I have 
 Epoken with, (who were otherwise of quick and rational parts enough,) could 
 not, as we do, by any means count to one thousand, nor had any distinct 
 idea of that number, though they could reckon very well to twenty ; because 
 their language being scanty, and accommodated only to the few necessaries 
 of a needy simple life, unacquainted either with trade or mathematics, had 
 no words in it to stand for one thousand ; so that when they were discours- 
 ed with of those great numbers, they would show the hairs of their head 
 to express a great multitude which they could not number ; which inability, 
 I suppose, proceeded from their want of names. The Tououpinambos had 
 no names for numbers above five ; any number beyond that they made out 
 by showing their fingers, and the fingers of others who were present(6). And 
 I doubt not but we ourselves might distinctly number in words a great deal 
 farther than we usually do, would we find out but some fit denomination to 
 signify them by ; whereas in the \vay we take now to name them by millions 
 of millions of millions, &c. it is hard to go beyond eighteen, or at most four 
 and twenty decimal progressions, without confusion. But to show how 
 much distinct names conduce to our well reckoning, or having useful ideas 
 of numbers, let us set all these following figures in one continued line, as 
 the marks of one number: v. g. 
 
 O 
 
 Nonillions. 
 
 857324 
 
 Quatrillions. 
 
 248108 
 
 Octillions. 
 
 162486 
 
 Trillions. 
 
 235421 
 
 Septillions. 
 
 345896 
 
 Billions. 
 
 281734 
 
 Sextillions. 
 
 437918 
 
 Millions. 
 
 368149 
 
 Quintilliom. 
 
 423147 
 
 Units. 
 
 623137 
 
 ( b ) Hlstoire d’un voyage, fait en la terre du Brasil, par Jean deLery, c. 20. 4° 1 
 
136 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2, 
 
 The ordinary way of naming this number in English will be the often re- 
 peating of millions, of millions, of millions, of millions, of millions, of mil- 
 lions, of millions, of millions (which is the denomination of the second six 
 figures.) In which way it will be very hard to have any distinguishing no- 
 tions of this number ; but whether, by giving every six figures a new and or- 
 derly denomination, these, and perhaps a great many more figures in pro- 
 gression, might not easily be counted distinctly, and ideas of them both got 
 more easily to ourselves, and more plainly signified to others, I leave it to 
 be considered. This I mention only to show how necessary distinct names 
 are to numbering, without pretending to introduce new ones of my inven- 
 tion. 
 
 Sect. 7. Why children number not earlier . — Thus children, either for 
 want of names to mark the several progressions of numbers, or not having 
 yet the faculty to collect scattered ideas into complex ones, and range them 
 m a regular order, and so retain them in their memories, as is necessary to 
 reckoning ; do not begin to number very early, nor proceed in it very far 
 or steadily, till a good while after they are well furnished with good store 
 of other ideas ; and one may often observe them discourse and reason pret- 
 ty well, and have very clear conceptions of several other things, before they 
 can tell twenty. And some, through the default of their memories, who 
 cannot retain the several combinations of numbers, with their names annex- 
 ed in their distinct orders, and the dependence of so long a train of numeral 
 progressions, and their relation one to another, are not able all their lifetime 
 to reckon or regularly go over any moderate series of numbers. For he 
 that will count twenty, or have any idea of that number, must know that 
 nineteen went before, with the distinct name or sign of every one of them, 
 as they stand marked in their order ; for wherever this fails, a gap is made, 
 the chain breaks, and the progress in numbering can go no farther. So 
 that to reckon right, it is required, 1. That the mind distinguish carefully 
 two ideas, which are different one from another only by the addition 
 or subtraction of one unit. 2. That it retain in memory the names or 
 marks of the several combinations, from an unit to that number ; and that 
 not confusedly, and at random, but in that exact order that the numbers fol- 
 low one another; in either of which, if it trips, the whole business of number- 
 ing will be disturbed, and there will remain only the confused idea of multi- 
 tude, but the ideas necessary to distinct numeration will not be attained to. 
 
 Sect. 8. Number measures all measurables . — This farther is observa- 
 ble in number, that it is that which the mind makes use of in measuring 
 all things that by us are measurable, which principally are expansion and 
 duration ; and our idea of infinity, even when applied to those, seems to 
 be nothing but the infinity of number. For what else are our ideas of eter- 
 nity and immensity, but the repeated additions of certain ideas of imagined 
 parts of duration and expansion, with the infinity of number, in which we 
 can come to no end of addition] For such an inexhaustible stock, number 
 (of all other our ideas) most clearly furnishes us with, as is obvious to every 
 one. For let a man collect into one sum as great a number as he pleases, 
 this multitude, how great soever, lessens not one jot the power of adding 
 to it, or brings him any nearer the end of the inexhaustible stock of number, 
 where still there remains as much to be added as if none were ‘aken out. 
 And this endless addition or audibility (if any one like the word better) of 
 numbers, so apparent to the mind, is that, I think, which gives us the clear- 
 est and most distinct idea of infinity : of which more in the following chap- 
 ter. 
 
CL 17. 
 
 INFINITY 
 
 137 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 OF INFINITY. 
 
 Sect. 1. Infinity, in its original intention, attributed to space, dura- 
 tion, and number. — He that would know what kind of idea it is to which 
 we give the name of infinity, cannot do it better than by considering to 
 what infinity is by the mind more immediately attributed, and then how 
 the mind comes to frame it. 
 
 Finite and infinite seem to me to be looked upon by the mind as the 
 modes of quantity, and to be attributed primarily in their first designation 
 only to those things wliich have parts, and are capable of increase or dimi- 
 nution, by the addition or subtraction of any the least part; and such are 
 the ideas of space, duration, and number, which we have considered m the 
 foregoing chapters. It is true, that we cannot but be assured, that the 
 great God, of whom and from whom are all things, is incomprehensibly 
 infinite : but yet, when we apply to that first and supreme Being, our idea 
 of infinite, in our weak and narrow thoughts, we do it primarily in respect 
 of his duration and ubiquity; and, I think, more figuratively to his power 
 wisdom, and goodness, and other attributes, which are properly inexhaus- 
 tible and incomprehensible, &c. For, when we call them infinite, we have 
 no other idea of this infinity, but what carries with it some reflection on, 
 and intimation of, that number or extent of the acts or objects of God’s pow- 
 er, wisdom, and goodness, which can never be supposed so great or so 
 many, which these attributes will not always surmount and exceed, let us 
 multiply them in our thoughts as far as we can ; with all the infinity of 
 endless number. I do not pretend to say how these attributes are in God, 
 who is infinitely beyond the reach of our narrow capacities. They do, 
 without doubt, contain in them all possible perfection : but this, I say, is 
 our way of conceiving them, and these our ideas of their infinity. 
 
 Sect.-?. The ideafffiTme~e'crsilyfomtd. — Finite, then, and infinite, being 
 by the mind looked on as modifications of expansion and duration, the next 
 thing to be considered is, how the mind comes by them. As for the idea 
 of finite, there is no great difficulty. The obvious portions of extension, 
 that affect our senses, carry with them into the mind the idea of finite ; and 
 the ordinary periods of succession, whereby we measure time and duration, 
 as hours, days, and years, are bounded lengths. The difficulty is, how 
 we come by those boundless ideas of eternity and immensity, since the ob- 
 jects we converse with come so much short of any approach or proportion 
 to that largeness. 
 
 Sect. 3. How we come by the idea of infinity. — Every one that has any 
 idearof-any-stated. lengths of space, as a foot, finds that he can repeat that 
 idea ; and, joining it to the former, make the idea of two feet ; and by the ad- 
 dition of a third, three feet; and so on, without ever coming to an end of 
 his addition, whether of the same idea of a foot, or if he pleases of doubling 
 it, or any other idea he has of any length, as a mile, or diameter of the earth, 
 or of the orbus magnus ; for whichsoever of these he takes, and how often 
 soever he doubles, or any otherwise multiplies it, he finds that after 
 he has continued this doubling in his thoughts, and enlarged his idea as much 
 as he pleases, he has no more reason to stop, nor is one jot nearer the end 
 of such addition, than he was at first setting out. The power of enlarging 
 his idea of space by farther additions, remaining still the same, he hence 
 takes the idea of infinite space. 
 
 Sect. 4. Our idea of space boundless. — This, I think, is the way where- 
 by tne mind gets the idea of infinite space. It is a quite different considera 
 S 
 
139 
 
 OP HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 tion to examine whether the mind has the idea of such a boundless space 
 actually existing, since our ideas are not always proofs of the existence of 
 things ; but yet, since this comes here in our way, I suppose I may say, 
 that we are apt to think- that space in itself is actually boundless : to which 
 imagination, the idea of space or expansion of itself naturally leads us. For 
 it being considered by us either as the extension of body, or as existing by 
 itself, without any solid matter, taking it up (for of such a void space we 
 have not only the idea, but I have proved, as 1 think, from the motion of 
 body, its necessary existence), it is impossible the mind should be ever 
 able to find or suppose any end of it, or be stopped any where in its pro- 
 gress in this space, how far soever it extends its thoughts. Any bounds 
 made with body, even adamantine walls, are so far from putting a stop to 
 the mind in its farther progress in space and extension, that it rather fa- 
 cilitates and enlarges it ; for so far as that body reaches, so far no one can 
 doubt of extension : and when we are come to the utmost extremity of 
 body, what is there that can there put a stop and satisfy the mind that it 
 is at the end of space, when it perceives that it is not ; nay, when it is 
 satisfied that body itself can move into it 1 For if it be necessary 
 for the motion of body, that there should be an empty space, though ever 
 so little, here among bodies; and if it be possible for body to move in or 
 through that empty space (nay, it is impossible for any particle of matter 
 to move but into an empty space,) the same possibility of a body’s moving 
 into a void space, beyond the utmost bounds of body, as well as into a void 
 space interspersed among bodies, will always remain clear and evident: 
 the idea of empty pure space, whether within or beyond the confines of 
 all bodies, being exactly the same, differing not in nature, though in bulk; 
 and there being nothing to hinder body from moving into it. So that 
 wherever the mind places itself by any thought, either among or remote 
 from all bodies, it can in this uniform idea of space nowhere find any bounds, 
 any end ; and so must necessarily conclude it, by the very nature and idea 
 of each part of it, to be actually infinite. 
 
 Sect. 5. And so of duration . — As by the power we find in ourselves of 
 repeating, as often as we will, any idea of space, we get the idea of 
 immensity, so, by being able to repeat the idea of any length of duration 
 we have in our minds, with all the endless addition of number, we come 
 by the idea of eternity. For we find in ourselves, we can no more come 
 to an end of such repeated ideas, than we can come to the end of number, 
 which every one perceives he cannot. But here again it is another ques- 
 tion, quite different from our having an idea of eternity, to know wheth- 
 er there were any real being, whose duration has been eternal. And as 
 to this, I say, he that considers something now existing, must necessarily 
 come to something eternal. But having spoke of this in another place, I 
 shall here say no more of it, but proceed on to some other considerations 
 of our idea of infinity. 
 
 Sect. 6. Why other ideas are not capable of infinity . — If it be so, that 
 -our idea of infinity be got from the power we observe in ourselves of re- 
 peating without end our own ideas ; it may be demanded, “ why we do not 
 attribute infinite to other ideas, as well as those of space and duration; ” 
 since they may be as easily and as often repeated in our minds as the other ; 
 and yet nobody ever thinks of infinite sweetness, or infinite whiteness, 
 though he can repeat the idea of sweet or white as frequently as those of a 
 yard,’ or a day 1 To which I answer, all the ideas that are considered as 
 having parts, and are capable of increase hy the addition of any equal or 
 less parts, afford us by their repetition the idea of infinity ; because with 
 this endless repetition there is continued an enlargement, of which there 
 can be no end. But in other ideas it is not so : for to the largest idea of 
 extension or duration that I at present have, the addition of any the least 
 part makes an increase; but to the perfectest idea I have of the whitest 
 
Ch. 17. 
 
 INFINITY. 
 
 139 
 
 whiteness, if I add another of a less or equal whiteness (and of a whiter 
 than I have I cannot add the idea,) it makes no increase, and enlarges not 
 my idea at all ; and therefore the different ideas of whiteness, &c. are called 
 degrees. For those ideas that consist of parts are capable of being aug- 
 mented by every addition of the least part ; but if you take the idea of 
 white, which one parcel of snow yielded yesterday to your sight, and another 
 idea of white from another parcel of snow you see to-day, and put them to- 
 gether in your mind, they embody, as it were, and run into one, and the 
 idea of whiteness is not at all increased ; and if we add a less degree of 
 whiteness to a greater, we are so far from increasing that we diminish it. 
 Those ideas that consist not of parts cannot be augmented to what pro- 
 portion men please, or be stretched beyond, what they have received by 
 their senses, but space, duration, and number, being capable of increase 
 by repetition, leave in the mind an idea of endless room for more : nor can 
 we conceive any where a stop to a farther addition or progression, and so 
 those ideas alone lead our minds towards the thought of infinity. 
 
 Sect. 7._ Difference between infinity of space, and space infinite . — 
 
 ' Thoupfour idea of infinity arise from the contemplation of quantity, and 
 the endless increase the mind is able to make in quantity, by the repeated 
 additions of what portions thereof it pleases ; yet I guess we cause great 
 confusion in our thoughts, when we join infinity to any supposed idea of 
 quantity the mind can be thought to have, and so discourse or reason about 
 an infinite quantity, viz. an infinite space, or an infinite duration. For 
 our idea of infinity being, as I think, an endless growing idea; but the 
 idea of any quantity the mind has, being at that time terminated in that 
 idea (for be it as great as it will, it can be no greater than it is,) to join infinity 
 to it, is to adjust a standing measure to a growing bulk ; and therefore I 
 think it is not an insignificant subtlety, if I say that we are carefully to 
 distinguish between the idea of the infinity of space, and the idea of a space 
 infinite : the first is nothing but a supposed endless progression of the 
 mind, over what repeated ideas of space it pleases ; but to have actually 
 in the mind the idea of a space infinite, is to suppose the mind already 
 passed over, and actually to have a view of all those repeated ideas of space, 
 which an endless repetition can never totally represent to it ; which carries 
 in it a plain contradiction. . 
 
 Sect. 8. W^H uuie no idea of infinite space. — This, perhaps, will be a 
 little plainer, if we consider^ it in numbers. The infinity of numbers, to 
 the end of whose addition every one perceives there is no approach, easily 
 appears to any one that reflects on it ; but how clear soever this idea of 
 the infinity of number be, there is nothing yet more evident, than the ab- 
 surdity of the actual idea of an infinite number. Whatsoever positive ideas 
 we have in our minds of any space, duration, or number, let them be ever 
 so great, they are still finite ; but when we suppose an inexhaustible re- 
 mainder, from which we remove all bounds, and wherein we allow the 
 mind an endless progression of thought, without ever completing the 
 idea, there we have our idea of infinity ; which, though it seems to be pretty 
 clear when we consider nothing else in it but the negation of an end, yet 
 when we would frame in our minds the idea of an infinite space or duration, 
 that idea is very obscure and confused, because it is made up of two parts, 
 very different, if not inconsistent. For let a man frame in his mind an idea 
 of any space or number as great as he will, it is plain the mind rests and 
 terminates in that idea, which is contrary to the idea of infinity, which 
 consists in a supposed endless progression. And therefore I think it is, that 
 we are so easily confounded, when we come to argue and reason about infinite 
 space or duration, &c. : because the parts of such an idea not being per- 
 ceived to be, as they are, inconsistent, the one side or the other always 
 perplexes, whatever consequences we draw from the other ; as an idea of 
 motion not passing on would perplex any one, who should argue from 
 
140 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 such m idea, which is not better than an idea of motion at rest : and such 
 anotuer seems to me to be the idea of a space, or (which is the same thing) 
 a number infinite, i- e. of a space or number which the mind actually has, 
 and so views and terminates in; and of a space or number which in a constant 
 and endless enlarging and progression, it can in thought never attain to. 
 For how large soever an idea of space I have in my mind, it is no larger 
 than it is that instant that I have it, though I be capable the next instant 
 to double it, and so on in infinitum : for that alone is infinite which has no 
 bounds ; and that the idea of infinity, in which our thoughts can find none. 
 
 Sect. 9. Number affords us the clearest idea of infinity. — But of all 
 other ideas, it is number, as I have said, which, I think, furnishes us with 
 the clearest and most distinct idea of infinity we are capable of. For even 
 in space and duration, when the mind pursues the idea of infinity, it there 
 makes use of the ideas and repetitions of numbers, as of millions and mil- 
 lions of miles, or years, which are so many distinct ideas, kept best by 
 number from running into a confused heap, wherein the mind loses itself ; 
 and when it has added together as many millions, &c. as it pleases, of 
 known lengths of space or duration, the clearest idea it can get of infinity 
 is the confused incomprehensible remainder of endless addible numbers which 
 affords no prospect of stop or boundary. 
 
 Sect. 10. Our different conception of the infinity of number, duration, 
 and expansion. — It will, perhaps, give us a little farther light into the idea 
 we have of infinity, and discover to us that it is nothing but the infinity of 
 number applied to determinate parts, of which we have in our minds the 
 distinct ideas, if we consider that number is not generally thought by us 
 infinite, whereas duration and extension are apt to be so ; which arises 
 from hence, that in number we are at one end as it were : for there being 
 in number nothing less than a unit, we there stop, and are at an end; but 
 in addition or increase of number, we can set no bounds. And so it is 
 like a line, whereof one end terminating with us, the other is extended 
 still forward beyond all that we can conceive; but in space and duration it 
 is otherwise. For in duration we consider it, as if this line of number 
 were extended both ways, to an unconceivable, undeterminate, and infinite 
 length: which is evident to any one that will but reflect on what considera- 
 tion he hath of eternity; which, I suppose, he will find to be nothing else 
 but the turning this infinity of number both ways a parte ante and a parte 
 post, as they speak. For when we would consider eternity, a parte ante, 
 what do we but, beginning from ourselves and the present time we are in, 
 repeat in our minds the idea of years, or ages, or any other assignable 
 portion of duration past, with a prospect of proceeding in such addition with 
 all the the infinity of number 1 and when we would consider eternity, a parte 
 poste, we just after the same rate begin from ourselves, and reckon by mul- 
 tiplied periods yet to come, still extending that line of number, as before. 
 And these two being put together, are that infinite duration we call eternity ; 
 which, as we turn our view either way, forward or backward, appears in- 
 finite, because we still turn that way the infinite end of number, i. e. the 
 power still of adding more. 
 
 Sect. 11. The same happens also in space, wherein conceiving ourselves 
 to be as it were in the centre, we do on all sides pursue those indetermina- 
 ble lines of number: and reckoning any way from ourselves, a yard, mile, 
 diameter of the earth, or orbis magnus, by the infinity of number, we add 
 others to them as often as we will ; and having no more reason to set bounds 
 to those repeated ideas than we have to set bounds to number, we have 
 that indeterminable idea of immensity. 
 
 Sect. 12. Infinite divisibility. — And since in any bulk of matter our 
 thoughts can never arrive at the utmost divisibility, therefore there is an ap- 
 parent infin'tv to us also in that, which has the infinity also of number ; but 
 with this difference, that, in the former considerations of the infinity of 
 
Ch. 17. 
 
 INFINITY. 
 
 Ill 
 
 space and duration, we only use addition of numbers ; whereas this is liko 
 the division of an unit into its fractions, wherein the mind also can proceed 
 in infinitum, as well as in the former additions ; it being indeed but the ad- 
 dition still of new numbers : though in the addition of the one we can have 
 no more the positive idea of a space infinitely great, than, in the division 
 of the other, we can have the idea of a body infinitely little ; our idea of 
 infinity being, as I may say, a growing or fugitive idea, still in a boundless 
 progression, that can stop nowhere. 
 
 S ect. 13. .If&jSQsitive.- idea of infinity. — Though it be hard, I think, to 
 find any one so absurd as to say he has the positive idea of an actual infinite 
 number ; the infinity whereof lies only in a power still of adding any combi- 
 nation of units to any former number, and that as long and as much as 
 one will ; the like also being in the infinity of space and duration, which 
 power leaves always to the mind room for endless additions ; yet there be 
 those who imagine they have positive ideas of infinite duration and space. 
 It would, I think, be enough to destroy any such positive idea of infinite, to 
 ask him that has it, whether he could add to it or no ; which would easily 
 show the mistake of such a positive idea. We can, I think, have no posi- 
 tive idea of any space or duration which is not made up of, and commensurate 
 to, repeated numbers of feet or yards, or days and years, which are the com- 
 mon measures, whereof we have the ideas in our minds, and whereby we 
 judge of the greatness of this sort of quantities. And therefore, since an 
 infinite idea of space or duration must needs be made up of infinite parts, it 
 can have no o|her infinity than that of number, capable still of farther addi- 
 tion; but not an actual positive idea of a number infinite. For, I think, 
 it is evident that the addition of finite things together (as are all lengths, 
 whereof we have the positive ideas) can never otherwise produce the idea 
 of infinite, than as number does ; which, consisting of additions of infinite 
 units one to another, suggests the idea of infinite, only by a power we find 
 we have of still increasing the sum, and adding more of the same kind, 
 without coming one jot nearer the end of such progression. 
 
 Sect. 14. They who would prove their idea of infinite to be positive, 
 seem to me to do it by a pleasant argument, taken from the negation of an 
 end; which being negative, the negation of it is positive. He that consi- 
 ders that the end is, in body, but the extremity or superficies of that body, 
 will not perhaps be forward to grant that the end is a bare negative : and 
 he that perceives the end of his pen is black or white, will be apt to think 
 that the end is something more than a pure negation. Nor is it, when ap- 
 plied to duration, the bare negation of existence, but more properly the 
 last moment of it. But if they will have the end to be nothing but the bare 
 negation of existence, I am sure they cannot deny but the beginning is the 
 first instant of being, and is not by any body conceived to be a bare nega- 
 tion: and, therefore, by their own argument, the idea of eternal, a parte 
 ante, or of a duration without a beginning, is but a negative idea. 
 
 Sect. 15. What is positive, what negative, in our idea of infinite. — The 
 idea of infinite liasyl confess-,- something of positive in all those things we 
 apply to it. When we would think of infinite space or duration, we at 
 first step usually make some very large idea, as perhaps of millions of ages, 
 or miles, which possibly we double and multiply several times. All that 
 we thus amass together in our thoughts, is positive, and the assemblage of 
 a great number of positive ideas of space or duration. But what still re- 
 mains beyond this, we have no more a positive distinct notion of, than a 
 mariner has of the depth of the sea ; where, having let down a large portion 
 of his sounding-line, he reaches no bottom: whereby he knows the depth 
 to be so many fathoms and more ; but how much that more is he hath no 
 distinct notion at all : and could he always supply new line, and find the 
 plummet always sink, without ever stopping, he would be something in the 
 posture of the mind reaching after a complete and positive idea of infinity. 
 
142 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 In which case Jet this line be ten, or ten thousand fathoms long, it equally 
 discovers what is beyond it; and gives only this confused and comparative 
 idea, that this is not all, but one may yet go farther. So much as the mind 
 comprehends of any space, it has a positive idea of; but in endeavouring to 
 make it infinite, it being always enlarging, always advancing, the idea is 
 still imperfect and incomplete. So much space as the mind takes a view 
 of in its contemplation of greatness, is a clear picture, and positive in the 
 understanding: but infinite is still greate r. 1. Th en the idea of so much 
 is positive and clear. 2. The idea of greater is also clear, but it is but a 
 comparative idea, .yiz- the idea of so much greater as cannot be compre- 
 hended; and is plainly negative, not positive. For he has no positive clear 
 idea of the largeness of any extension (which is that sought for in the idea 
 of infinite,) that has not a comprehensive idea of the dimensions of it ; and 
 such nobody, I think, pretends to in what is infinite. For to say a man 
 has a positive clear idea of any quantity, without knowing how great it is, 
 is as reasonable as to say, he has the positive clear idea of the number of 
 the sands on the sea-shore, who knows not how many there be, but only 
 that they are more than twenty. For just such a perfect and positive idea has 
 he of an infinite space or duration, who says it is larger than the extent or 
 duration of ten, one hundred, one thousand, or any other number of miles, 
 or years, whereof he has, or can have, a positive idea; which is all the 
 idea, I think, we have of infinite. So that what lies beyond our positive 
 idea towards infinity, lies in obscurity; and has the indeterminate corilu-' ’ 
 sion of a negative idea, wherein I know I neither do nor can comprehend 
 all I would, it being too large for a finite and narrow capacity : and that 
 cannot but be very far from a positive complete idea, wherein the greatest 
 part of what I would comprehend is left out, under the undeterminate in- 
 timation of being still greater : for to say, that having in any quantity 
 measured so much, or gone so far, you are not yet at the end, is only to 
 say, that that quantity is greater. So that the negation of an end, in any 
 quantity is, in other words, only to say that it is bigger : and a total negation 
 of an end is but carrying this bigger still with you, in all the progressions 
 your thoughts shall make in quantity, and adding this idea of still greater 
 to all the ideas you have, or can be supposed to have, of quantity. Now, 
 whether such an idea as that be positive, I leave any one to consider. 
 
 Sect. 10. We have no positive idea of an injiiiite duration . — I ask those 
 who say they have a positive idea of eternity, whether their idea of duration 
 includes in it succession, or not 1 If it does not, they ought to show the 
 difference of their notion of duration, when applied to an eternal being and 
 to a finite; since perhaps, there may be others, as well as I, who will own 
 to them their weakness of understanding in this point; and acknowledge 
 that the notion they have of duration forces them to conceive, that what- 
 ever has duration, is of a longer continuance to-day than it was yesterday. 
 If, to avoid succession in external existence they recur to the punctum 
 stans of the schools, I suppose they will thereby very little mend the matter, 
 or help us to a more clear and positive idea of infinite duration, there being 
 nothing more inconceivable to me than duration without succession. Be- 
 sides, that punctum stans, if it signify any thing, being non quantum, finite 
 or infinite, cannot belong to it. But if our weak apprehensions cannot 
 separate succession from any duration whatsoever, our idea of eternity can 
 be nothing but of infinite succession of moments of duration, wherein any- 
 thing docs exist ; and whether any one has, or can have a positive idea of 
 an actual infinite number, I leave him to consider, till his infinite number 
 be so great that he himself can add no more to it; and as long as he can 
 increase it, I doubt he himself will think the idea he hath of it a little too 
 scanty for positive infinity. 
 
 Sect. 17. I think it unavoidable for every considering rational creature, 
 that will but examine his own or any other existence, to have the notion 
 
Ch. 17. 
 
 INFINITY. 
 
 143 
 
 of an eternal wise Being, who frail no beginning; and such an idea of infi. 
 nite duration I am sure I have. But this negation of a beginning being but 
 the negation of a positive thing, scarce gives me a positive idea of infinity; 
 which, whenever I endeavour to extend my thoughts to, I confess myself 
 at a loss, and I find I cannot attain any clear comprehension of it. 
 
 Sect. 18. No positive idea of infinite space. — He that thinks he has a 
 positive idea of infinite space, will, when he considers it, find that he can 
 no more have a positive idea of the greatest, than he has of the .east space. 
 For in this latter, which seems the easier of the two, and more within our 
 comprehension, we are capable only of a comparative idea of smallness, 
 which will always be less than any one whereof we have the positive idea. 
 All our positive ideas of any quantity, whether great or little, have always 
 bounds ; though our comparative idea, whereby we can always add to the 
 one and take from the other, hath no bounds; for that which remains either 
 great or little, not being comprehended in that positive idea which we have, 
 lies in obscurity; and we have no other idea of it, but of the power of en- 
 larging the one, and diminishing the other, without ceasing. A pestle and 
 mortar will as soon bring any particle of matter to indivisibility as the 
 acutest thought of a mathematician ; and a surveyor may as soon with his 
 chain measure out infinite space as a philosopher by the quickest flight of 
 mind reach it, or by thinking comprehend it; which is to have a positive 
 idea of it. He that thinks on a cube of an inch diameter, has a clear and 
 positive idea of it in his mind, and so can frame one of a half, a quarter, 
 and an eighth, and so on till he has the idea in his thoughts of something 
 very little ; but yet reaches not the idea of incomprehensible littleness which 
 division can produce. What remains of smallness is as far from his thoughts 
 as when he first began ; and therefore he never comes at all to have a clear 
 and positive idea of that smallness which is consequent to infinite divisibility. 
 
 Sect. 19. Wluit is positive, what negative, in our idea of infinite . — 
 E-very-one that loots towards infinity does, as I have said, at first glance 
 make some very large idea of that which he applies it to, let it be space or 
 duration ; and possibly he wearies his thoughts, by multiplying in his mind 
 that first large idea: but yet by that he comes no nearer to the having a 
 positive clear idea of what remains to make up a positive infinite, than the 
 country-fellow had of the water, which was yet to come and pass the chan- 
 nel of the river where he stood : 
 
 Kusticus cxpectat dum transeat amnis, at ille 
 
 Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis tevum. 
 
 Sect. 20. Some think theij have a positive idea of eternitr /, and not of 
 ~fnfitiite.space. — There. are some I have metwith, that-put so much difference 
 between infinite duration and infinite space, that they persuade themselves 
 that they have a positive idea of eternity ; but that they have not, nor can 
 have, any idea of infinite space. The reason of which mistake I suppose to 
 be this, that finding by a due contemplation of causes and effects, that it is 
 necessary to admit some eternal being, and so to consider the real existence 
 of that being, as taken up and commensurate to their idea of eternity; but, 
 on the other side, not finding it necessary, but, on the contrary, apparently 
 absurd, that body should be infinite; they forwardly conclude, that they 
 have no idpa of infinite space, because they can have no idea of infinite 
 matter. Which consequence, I conceive, is very ill collected; because 
 the existence of matter is noways necessary to the existence of space, no 
 more than the existence of motion, or the sun, is necessary to duration, 
 though duration use to be measured by it: and 1 doubt not but that a man 
 may have the idea of ten thousand miles square, without any body so big, 
 as well as the idea of ten thousand years, without any body so old. It 
 seems as easy to me to have the idea of space empty of body, as to 
 
144 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 think of the capacity of a bushel without corn, or the hollow of a nut- 
 shell without a kernel in it: it being no more necessary that there should 
 be existing a solid body infinitely extended, because we have an idea of 
 the infinity of space, than it is necessary that the world should be eter- 
 nal, because we have an idea of infinite duration. And why should we 
 think our idea of infinite space requires the real existence of matter 
 to support it, when we find that we have as clear an idea of an infinite 
 duration to come, as we have of infinite duration past! Though, I 
 suppose, nobody thinks it conceivable, that any thing does or has existed 
 in that future duration. Nor is it possible to join our idea of future dura- 
 tion with present or past existence, any more than it is possible to make 
 the ideas of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow to be the same ; or bring ages 
 past and future together, and make them contemporary. But if these 
 men are of the mind, that they have clearer ideas of infinite duration than 
 of infinite space, because it is past doubt that God has existed from all 
 eternity, but there is no real matter coextended with infinite space; yet 
 those philosophers who are of opinion that infinite space is possessed by 
 God’s infinite omnipresence, as well as infinite duration by his eternal ex- 
 istence, must be allowed to have as clear an idea of infinite space as of in- 
 finite duration ; though neither of them, I think, has any positive idea of in- 
 finity in either case. For whatsoever idea a man has in his mind of any 
 quantity, he can repeat it, and add it to the former as easily as he can add 
 together the ideas of two days, or two paces, which are positive ideas of 
 lengths he has in his mind, and so on as long as he pleases; whereby if a 
 man had a positive idea of infinite, either duration or space, he could add 
 two infinites together ; nay, make one infinite infinitely bigger than another : 
 absurdities too gross to be confuted. 
 
 Sect. 21. Supposed positive ideas of infinity, cause of mistakes. — But yet, 
 if after all this, there being men who persuade themselves that they have 
 clear positive comprehensive ideas of infinity, it is fit they enjoy their 
 privilege : and I should be very glad (with some others that I know, who 
 acknowledge they have none such) to be better informed by their commu- 
 nication. For I have been hitherto apt to think that the great and inex- 
 tricable difficulties which perpetually involve all discourses concerning 
 infinity, whether of space, duration, or divisibility, have been the certain 
 marks of a defect in our ideas of infinity, and the disproportion the nature 
 thereof has to the comprehension of our narrow capacities. For whilst 
 men talk and dispute of infinite space or duration, as if they had as com- 
 plete and positive ideas of them as they have of the names they use for 
 them, or as they have of a yard, or an hour, or any other determinate 
 quantity; it is no wonder if the incomprehensible nature of the thing they 
 discourse of, or reason about, leads them into perplexities and contradic- 
 tions ; and their minds be overlaid by an object too large and mighty to 
 be surveyed and managed by them. 
 
 Sect. 22. All these ideas from sensation and reflection. — If I have 
 dwelt pretty long on the consideration of duration, space, and number, and 
 what arises from the contemplation of them, infinity; it is possibly no more 
 than the matter requires ; there being few simple ideas whose modes give 
 more exercise to the thoughts of men than these do. I pretend not to 
 treat of them in their full latitude; it suffices to my design to show how 
 the mind receives them, such as they are, from sensation and reflection; 
 and how even the idea we have of infinity, how remote soever it may seem 
 to be from any object of sense or operation of our mind, has nevertheless, 
 as all our other ideas, its original there. Some mathematicians perhaps, 
 of advanced speculations, may have other ways to introduce into their 
 minds ideas of infinity; but this hinders not, but that they themselves, as 
 well as all other men, got the first ideas which they had of infinity from 
 sensation and reflection, in the method we have here set down. 
 
:h. 18. 
 
 OP OTHER SIMPLE MODES. 
 
 145 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 OF OTHER SIMPLE MODES. 
 
 Sect. 1. Modes of motion. — Though I have in the foregoing chapters 
 shown how from simple ide as, t aken in by sensation, the mind comes to extend 
 itself even to infinity ; which however it may, of all others, seem most re- 
 mote from any sensible perception, yet at last hath nothing in it but what 
 is made out of simple ideas, received into the mind by the senses, and after- 
 ward there put together by the faculty the mind has to repeat its own ideas : 
 though, I say, these might be instances enough of simple modes of the sim- 
 ple ideas of sensation, and suffice to show how the mind comes by them ; 
 yet I shall, for method’s sake, though briefly, give an account of some few 
 more, and then proceed to more complex ideas. 
 
 Sect. 2. To slide, roll, tumble, walk, creep, run, dance, leap, skip, and 
 abundance of others that might be named, are words which are no sooner 
 heard but every one, who understands English, has presently in his mind 
 distinct ideas, which are all but the differentmodifications of motion. Modes 
 of motion answer those of extension : swift and slow are two different ideas 
 of motion, the measures whereof are made of the distances of time and space 
 put together ; so they are complex ideas comprehending time and space 
 with motion. 
 
 Sect. 3. Modes of sounds. — The like variety have we in sounds. Every 
 articulate word is a different modification of sound : by which we see, that 
 from the sense of hearing, by such modifications, the mind may be furnish- 
 ed with distinct ideas to almost an infinite number. Sounds also, besides 
 the distinct cries of birds and beasts, are modified by diversity of different 
 notes of different length put together, which make that complex idea called 
 a tune, which a musician may have in his mind when he hears or makes 
 no sound at all, by reflecting on the ideas of those sounds so put together 
 silently in his own fancy. 
 
 Sect. 4. Modes of colours. — Those of colours are also very various: some 
 we take notiee_of as the-diffe'rent degrees, or, as they are termed, shades 
 of the same colour. But since we very seldom make assemblages of colours 
 either for use or delight, but figure is taken in also, and has its part in 
 it, as in painting, weaving, needleworks, &c. those which are taken notice 
 of do most commonly belong to mixed modes, as being made up of ideas 
 of divers kinds, viz. figure and colour, such as beauty, rainbow, &c. 
 
 Sect. 5. Modes of taste. — All compounded tastes and smells are also 
 modes made up of the simple ideas of those senses. But they being such 
 as generally we have no names for, are less taken notice of, and cannot be 
 set down in writing ; and therefore must be left without enumeration to the 
 thoughts and experience of my reader. 
 
 Sect. 6. Some simple modes have no names. — In general it may be ob- 
 served that those simple modes which are considered but as different degrees 
 of the same simple idea, though they are in themselves many of them very 
 distinct ideas, yet have ordinarily no distinct names, nor are much taken 
 notice of as distinct ideas, where the difference is but very small between 
 them. Whether men have neglected these modes, and given no names 
 to them, as wanting measures nicely to distinguish them ; or because, when 
 they were so distinguished, that knowledge would not be of general or neces- 
 sary use, I leave it to the thoughts of others: it is sufficient to my purpose to 
 show that all our simple ideas come to our minds only by sensation and 
 reflection ; and that when the mind has them, it can variously repeat and 
 T 
 
.46 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 compound them, and so make new complex ideas. But though white, red, 
 or sweet, &c. have not been modified or made into complex ideas, by sev- 
 eral combinations, so as to be named, and thereby ranked into species ; yet 
 some'others of the simple ideas, viz. those of unity, duration, motion, &c. 
 above instanced in, as also power and thinking, have been thus modified to 
 a great variety of complex ideas, with names belonging to them. 
 
 Sect. 7. Why - some modes have, and others have not, names. — The rea- 
 son whereof, I suppose, has Beettthis ; that, the great concernment of men 
 Deing with men one among another, the knowledge of men and their actions, 
 and the signifying of them to one another, was most necessary; and there- 
 fore they made ideas of actions very nicely modified, and gave those com- 
 plex ideas names, that they might the more easily record and discourse of 
 those things they were daily conversant in, without long ambages and cir- 
 cumlocutions ; and that the things they were continually to give and receive 
 information about might be the easier and quicker understood. That this 
 is so, and that men in framing different complex ideas, and giving them 
 names, have been much governed by the end of speech in general (which 
 is a very short and expedite way of conveying their thoughts one to another,) 
 is evident in the names which in several arts have been found out and ap- 
 plied to several complex ideas of modified actions belonging to their several 
 trades, for despatch sake, in their direction or discourses about them ; which 
 ideas are not generally framed in the minds of men not conversant about 
 these operations. And thence the words that stand for them, by the great- 
 est part of men of the same language, are not understood : v. g. colshire, 
 drilling, filtration, cohobation, are words standing for certain complex ideas, 
 which being seldom in the minds of any but those few whose particular em- 
 ployments do at every turn suggest them to their thoughts, those names ot 
 them are not generally understood but by smiths and chymists ; who having 
 framed the complex ideas which these words stand for, and having given 
 names to them, or received them from others, upon hearing of these names 
 in communication, readily conceive those ideas in their minds ; as by co- 
 hobation all the simple ideas of distilling, and the pouring the liquor distilled 
 from any thing back upon the remaining matter, and distilling it again. 
 Thus we see that there are great varieties of simple ideas, as of tastes and 
 smells, which have no names, and of modes many more; which either not hav-j 
 ing been generally enough observed, or else not being of any great use to be 
 taken notice of in the affairs and converse of men, they have not had names 
 given to them, and so pass not for species. This we shall have occasion 
 hereafter to consider more at large, when we come to speak of words. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 OF THE MODES OF THINKING. 
 
 Sect. 1. Sensation, remembrance, contemplation, dye. When the mind 
 turns its view inwards upon itself, and contemplates itsewn actions, think- 
 ing is the first that occurs. In it the mind observes a great variety 
 of modifications, and from thence receives distinct ideas. ThusJhejjer- 
 ception which actually accompanies, and is annexed to any impression on 
 the body, made by an external object, being distinct from all other mo dificati ons 
 of thinking, furnishes the mind with a distinct idea, which we call sensa- 
 tion ; which is, as it were, the actual entrance of any idea into the under- 
 standing by the senses. The same idea, when it agairy recurs without' the 
 operation of the like object on the external sensory, is remembrance,; if it 
 be sought after by the mind, and with pain and endeavour found and 
 
Cm 19. 
 
 OF THE MODES OF THINKING. 
 
 147 
 
 brought again in view, it is recolle ction ; if it be held there long under at- 
 tentive consideration, it is contemplation. When ideas float in our mind, 
 without any reflection oFrt^gard-trf the understanding, it is that which the 
 French call reverie ; our language has scarce a name for it. When the 
 ideas that offer themselves (for, as 1 have observed in another place, whilst 
 we are awake there will always be a train of ideas succeeding one anothei 
 in our minds) are taken notice of, and, as it were, registered in the memo- 
 ry, kog. attention. When the mind, withgreat earnestness, and of choice, 
 fixes its view on any idea, considers it on all sides, and will not be called 
 off by the ordinary solicitation of other ideas, it is that we call -intention, 
 or study..- Sleep, without dreaming, is rest from all these: and-djeftining 
 itself is the having of ideas (whilst the outward senses are stopped, so 
 that they receive not outward objects with their usual quickness) in the 
 mind, not suggested by any external objects or known occasion, nor under 
 any choice or conduct of the understanding at all. And whether that, 
 which we call ecstasy, be not dreaming with the eyes open, I leave to be 
 examined. 
 
 Sect. 2. These are some few instances of those various modes of think- 
 ing which the mind may observe in itself, and so have as distinct ideas of, 
 as it hath of white and red, a square or a circle. I do not pretend to enu- 
 merate them all, nor to treat at large of this set of ideas which are got 
 from reflection : that would be to make a volume. It suffices to my present 
 purpose to have shown here, by some few examples, of what sort these 
 ideas are, and how the mind comes by them ; especially since I shall have 
 occasion hereafter to treat more at large of reasoning, judging, volition, 
 and knowledge, which are some of the most considerable operations of 
 the mind and modes of thinking. 
 
 Sect. 3. The various attention of the mind in thinking. — But perhaps 
 it may not be "an unpardonable digression', nor 'wholly impertinent to our 
 present design, if we reflect here upon the different state of the mind in 
 thinking, which those instances of attention, reverie, and dreaming, &c. 
 Defore mentioned, naturally enough suggest. That there are ideas, some 
 or other, always present in the mind of awaking man, everyone’s experi- 
 ence convinces him, though the mind employs itself about them with seve- 
 ral degrees of attention. Sometimes the mind fixes itself with so much 
 earnestness on the contemplation of some objects, that it turns their ideas 
 on all sides, remarks their relations and circumstances, and views every 
 part so nicely, and with such intention, that it shuts out all other thoughts, 
 and takes no notice of the ordinary impressions made then on the senses 
 which at another season would produce very sensible perceptions : at 
 other times it barely observes the train of ideas that succeed in the under- 
 standing, without directing and pursuing any of them ; and at other times 
 it lets them pass almost quite unregarded, as faint shadows that, make no 
 impression. 
 
 S ect. 4. H enee-itis probable that thinking is the action, not essence of 
 the soul. — This difference of intention and remissionof thtrm4fldin.Diin.king, 
 withu-great variety of degrees between earnest study and very near minding 
 nothing at all, every one, I think, has experimented in himself. Trace it 
 a little farther, and you find the mind in sleep retired as it were from the 
 senses, and out of the reach of those motions made on the organs of sense, 
 which at other times produce veiy vivid and sensible ideas. I need not 
 for this, instance in those who sleep out whole stormy nights, without hear- 
 mgthe thunder, or seeing the lightning, or feeling the shaking of the house, 
 which are sensible enough to those who are waking : but in this retirement 
 of the mind from the senses, it often retains a yet more loose and incohe- 
 rent manner of thinking, which we call dreaming; and, iast of all, sound 
 sleep closes the scene quite, and puts an end to all appearances. This, 1 think, 
 almost every one has experience of in himself, and his own observation with- 
 
148 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 out difficulty leads him thus far. That which I would farther conclude from 
 hence is, that since the mind can sensibly put on, at several times, several 
 degrees of thinking, and be sometimes even in a waking man so remiss, as 
 to have thoughts dim and obscure to that degree, that they are very little 
 removed from none at all ; and at last, in the dark retirements of sound 
 sleep, loses the sight perfectly of all ideas whatsoever: since, I say, this is 
 evidently so in matter of fact and constant experience, I ask whether it be 
 not probable that thinking is the action, and not the essence, of the goal! since 
 the operations of agents will easily admit of intention and remission, 
 but the essences of things are not conceived capable of any such variation. 
 But this by the by. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 OF MODES OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. 
 
 Sect. 1. Pleasure and pain simple ideas. — Among the simple ideas 
 which we receive both from sensation and reflection, pain and pleasure are 
 two very considerable ones. For as in the body there is sensation barely in 
 itself, or accompanied with pain or pleasure ; so the thought or perception 
 of the mind is simply so, or else accompanied also with pleasure or pain, delight 
 or trouble, call it how you please. These, like other simple ideas, cannot 
 be described, nor their names defined ; the way of knowing them is, as of 
 the simple ideas of the senses, only by experience. For to define them by 
 the presence of good or evil, is no otherwise to make them known to us, 
 than by making us reflect on what we feel in ourselves, upon the several 
 and various operations of good and evil upon our minds, as they are differ- 
 ently applied to or considered by us. 
 
 Sect. 2. Good and evil, what. — Things then are good or evil only in re- 
 ference to pleasure or pain. That we call good, which is apt to cause or 
 increase pleasure or diminish pain in us ; or else to procure or preserve us 
 the possession of any other good, or absence of any evil. And, on the 
 contrary, we name that evil, which is apt to produce or increase any pain, 
 or diminish any pleasure in us ; or else to procure us any evil, or deprive 
 us of any good. By pleasure and pain, I must be understood to mean of 
 body or mind, as they are commonly distinguished; though, in truth, they 
 be only different constitutions of the mind, sometimes occasioned by disor- 
 der in the body, sometimes by thoughts of the mind. 
 
 Sect. 3. Our passions moved by good and evil. — Pleasure and pain, and 
 that which causes them, good and evil, are the hinges on which our pas- 
 sions turn : and if we reflect on ourselves, and observe how these, under 
 various considerations, operate in us, what modifications or tempers of 
 mind, what internal sensations (if I may so call them) they produce in us, 
 we may thence form to ourselves the ideas of our passions. 
 
 Sect. 4. Love. — Thus any one reflecting upon the thought he has of the 
 delight which any present or absent thing is apt to produce in him, has the 
 idea we call love. For when a man declares in autumn, when he is eating 
 them, or in spring, when there are none, that he loves grapes, it is no more 
 but that the taste of grapes delights him : let an alteration of health or con- 
 stitution destroy the delight of their taste, and he then can be said to love 
 grapes no longer. 
 
 Sect. 5. Hatred. — On the contrary, the thought of the pain which any 
 thing present or absent is apt to produce in us, is what we call hatred. 
 Were it my business here to inquire any farther than into the bare ideas of 
 our passions, as they depend on different modifications of pleasure and pain, 
 I should remark, that our love and hatred of inanimate insensible beings, 
 
Ch. 20. 
 
 MODES OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. 
 
 149 
 
 is commonly founded on that pleasure and pain which we receive from their 
 use and application any way to our senses, though with their destruction : 
 but hatred or love, to beings capable of happiness or misery, is often the 
 uneasiness or delight which we find in ourselves, arising from a considera- 
 tion of their very being or happiness. Thus the being and welfare of a 
 man’s children or friends, producing constant delight in him, he is said con- 
 stantly to love them. But it suffices to note, that our ideas of love and 
 hatred are but the dispositions of the mind, in respect of pleasure and pain 
 in general, however caused in us. 
 
 Sect. 6. Desire. — The uneasiness a man finds in himself upon the ab- 
 sence of any thing, whose present enjoyment carries the idea of delight 
 with it, is that we call desire ; which is greater or less as that uneasiness , 
 is more oV less vehement. Where, by the by, it may perhaps be of some 
 use to remark, that the chief, if not only spur to human industry and 
 action, is uneasiness. For whatsoever good is proposed, if its absence 
 carries no displeasure or pain with it, if a man be easy and content with- 
 out it, there is no desire of it, nor endeavour after it ; there is no more but 
 a bare velleity, the term used to signify the lowest degree of desire, and 
 that which is next to none at all, when there is so little uneasiness in 
 the absence of any thing, that it carries a man no farther than some faint 
 wishes for it, without any more effectual or vigorous use of the means to 
 attain it. Desire also is stopped or abated by the opinion of the impos- 
 sibility or unattainableness of the good proposed, as far as the uneasiness 
 is cured or allayed by that consideration. This might carry our thoughts 
 farther, were it seasonable in this place. 
 
 Sect. 7. Joy. — Joy is a delight of the mind from the consideration of the 
 present or assured approaching possession of a good ; and we are then pos- 
 sessed of any good when we have it so in our power that we can use it 
 when we please. Thus a man almost starved has joy at the arrival of 
 relief, even before he has the pleasure of using it : and a farther, in whom 
 the very well-being of his children causes delight, is always, as long as 
 his children are in such a state, in the possession of that good ; for he needs 
 but to reflect on it to have that pleasure. 
 
 Sect. 8. Sorrow. — Sorrow is uneasiness in the mind upon the thought 
 of a good lost, which might have been enjoyed longer, or the sense of a 
 present evil. 
 
 Sect. 9. Hope. — Hope is that pleasure in the mind, which every one 
 finds in himself upon the thought of a profitable future enjoyment of a thing 
 which is apt to delight him. 
 
 Sect. 10. Fear. — Fear is an uneasiness of the mind upon the thought 
 of future evil likely to befall us. 
 
 Sect. 11. Despair. — Despair is the thought of the unattainableness of 
 any good, which works differently in men’s minds, sometimes producing 
 uneasiness or pain, sometimes rest and indolency. 
 
 Sect. 12. Anger. — Anger is uneasiness or discomposure of the mind 
 upon the receipt of any injury, with a present purpose of revenge. 
 
 Sect. 13. Envy. — Envy is an uneasiness of the mind, caused by the 
 consideration of a good we desire, obtained by one we think should not 
 have had it before us. 
 
 Sect. 14. What passions all men have. — These two last, envy and 
 anger, not being caused by pain and pleasure, simply in themselves, but 
 havftrg in them some mixed considerations of ourselves and others, are not 
 therefore to be found in all men, because those other parts of valuing their 
 merits, or intending revenge, are wanting in them : but all the rest termina- 
 ting purely in pain and pleasure, are, I think, to be found in all men. For 
 we love, desire, rejoice, and hope, only in respect of pleasure ; we hate, 
 fear, and grieve, only in respect of pain ultimately : in fine, all these pas- 
 sions are moved by things, only as they appear to be the causes of pleasure 
 
y'50 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 and pain, or to have pleasure or pain some way or other annexed to them. 
 Thus we extend our hatred usually to the subject (at least if a sensible 
 or voluntary agent) which has produced pain in us, because the fear u 
 leaves is a constant pain : but we do not so constantly love what has done 
 us good; because pleasure operates not so strongly on us as pain, and because 
 we are not so ready to have hope it will do so again. But this by the by. 
 , Sect. 15. Pleasure and pain, what. — By pleasure ana pain, delight and un- 
 easiness, I must all along be understood (as I have above intimated) to 
 mean, not only bodily pain and pleasure, but whatsoever delight or uneasi- 
 ness is felt by us, whether arising from any grateful or unacceptable sen- 
 sation or reflection. 
 
 Sect. 16. It is farther to be considered, that in reference to the passions, 
 the removal or lessening of a pain is considered and operates *as a plea- 
 sure ; and the loss or diminishing of a pleasure as a pain. 
 
 Sect. 17. Shame. The passions, too, have most of them in most per- 
 sons operations on the body, and cause various changes in it; which not 
 being always sensible, do not make a necessary part of the idea of each 
 passion. For shame, which is an uneasiness of the mind upon the thought 
 of having done something which is indecent, or will lessen the valued esteem 
 vvhich others have for us, has not always blushing accompanying it. 
 
 Sect. 18. These instances to show how our ideas of the passions are got 
 from sensation and reflection. — I would not be mistaken here, as if I 
 meant this as a discourse of the passions ; they are many more than those 
 I have here named ; and those I have taken notice of would each of them 
 require a much larger and more accurate discourse. I have only mentioned 
 these here as so many instances of modes of pleasure and pain resulting'in our 
 minds from various considerations of good and evil. I might perhaps have 
 instanced in other modes of pleasure and pain more simple than these, as 
 the pain of hunger and thirst, and the pleasure of eating and drinking to re- 
 move them : the pain of tender eyes, and the pleasure of music ; pain from 
 captious nninstruetive wrangling, and the pleasure of rational conversation 
 with a friend, or of well-directed study in the search and discovery of truth. 
 But the passions being of much more concernment to us, I rather made 
 choice to instance in them, and show how the ideas we have of them are 
 derived from sensation and reflection. 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 OF POWER. 
 
 Sect. 1. This idea how got . — The mind being every day informed, by 
 the senses, of the alteration of those simple ideas it observes in things with- 
 out, and taking notice how one comes to an end, and ceases to be, and 
 another begins to exist which was not before: reflecting also on what 
 passes within itself, and observing a constant change of its ideas, some- 
 times by the impression of outward objects on the senses, and sometimes 
 by the determination of its own choice; and concluding from what it has so 
 constantly observed to have been, that the like changes will for the future be 
 made in the same things by like agents, and by the like ways ; considers 
 in one thing the possibility of having any of its simple ideas changed, and 
 in another the possibility of making that change ; and so comes by that idea 
 which we call power. Thus we say fire has a power to melt gold, i. e. to 
 destroy the consistency of its insensible parts, and consequently its hard- 
 ness, and make it fluid; and gold has a power to be melted; that the sun 
 has a power to blanch wax, and wax a power to be blanched by the sun, 
 whereby the yellowness is destroyed, and whiteness made to exist in its 
 
Ch. 21. 
 
 OF POWER. 
 
 151 
 
 room. In which and the like cases, the power we consider is in reference 
 to the change of perceivable ideas; for we cannot observe any alteration to 
 be made in,, or operation upon, any thing, but by the observable change of 
 its sensible ideas; nor conceive any alteration to be made, but by conceiv- 
 ing a change of some of its ideas. 
 
 Sect. 2. Power active and passive. — Power, thus considered, is twofold, 
 viz. as able to make, or able to receive, any change ; the one may be called 
 active, and the other passive power. Whether matter be not wholly des- 
 titute of active power, as its author, God, is truly above all passive power, 
 and whether the intermediate state of created spirits be not that alone which 
 is capable of both active and passive power, may be worth consideration. 
 I shall not now enter into that inquiry ; my present business being not to 
 search into the original of power, but how we come by the idea of it. But 
 since active powers make so great a part of our complex ideas of natural 
 substances (as we shall see hereafter,) and I mention them as such, accord- 
 ing to common apprehension ; yet they being not perhaps so truly active 
 powers, as our hasty thoughts are apt to represent them, I judge it not 
 amiss, by this intimation, to direct our minds to the consideration of God 
 and spirits, for the clearest idea of active powers. 
 
 Sect. 3. Power includes relation. — I confess power includes in it some 
 kind of relation (a relation to action or change,) as indeed which of our 
 ideas, of what kind soever, when attentively considered, does not! For 
 our ideas of extension, duration, and number, do they not all contain in 
 them a sec ret relat ion of the parts 1 Figure and motion have something 
 relative in them much more visibly : and sensible qualities, as colours and 
 smells, &lc. what are they but the powers of different bodies, in relation to 
 our perception i &c. And if considered in the things themselves, do they 
 not depend on the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of the parts'! all which in- 
 clude some kind of relation in them. Our idea, therefore, of power, I think, 
 may well have a place among other simple ideas, and be considered as one 
 of them, being one of those that make a principal ingredient in our complex 
 ideas of substances, as we shall hereafter have occasion to observe. 
 
 Sect. 4. The clearest idea of active power had from spirit. — We are 
 abundantly furnished with the idea of passive power by almost all sorts of 
 sensible things. In most of them we cannot avoid observing their sensi- 
 ble qualities, nay, their very substances, to be in a continual flux : and there- 
 fore with reason we look on them as liable still to the same change. Nor 
 have we of active power (which is the more proper signification of the 
 word power) fewer instances: since whatever change is observed, the mind 
 must collect a power somewhere able to make that change, as well as a 
 possibility in the thing itself to receive it. But yet, if we will consider 
 it attentively, bodies, by our senses, do not afford us so clear and distinct 
 an idea of active power as we have from reflection on the operations of 
 our minds. For all power relating to action, — and there being but two 
 sorts of action whereof we have any idea, viz. thinking and motion, — let 
 us consider whence we have the clearest ideas of the powers which produce 
 these actions. 1. Of thinking, body affords us no idea at all: it is only from 
 reflection that we have that. 2. Neither have we fro m body any idea of the 
 beginning of motion. A bodylft’TFgraffords us no idea of any active power 
 to move ; and when it is set in motion itself, that motion is rather a passion 
 than an action in it. For when the ball obeys the stroke of a billiard-stick, 
 it is not any action of the ball, but bare passion : also, when by impulse it 
 sets another ball in motion that lay in its way, it only communicates tho 
 motion it had received from another, and loses in itself so much as the other 
 received : which gives us but a very obscure idea of an active power of 
 moving in body, whilst we observe it only to tranfer, but not produce, any 
 motion. For it is but a very obscure idea of power, which reaches not 
 the production of the action, but the continuation of the passion. For so 
 
152 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 is motion in a body impelled by another; the continuation of the alteration 
 made in it from rest to motion being little more an action than the continua- 
 tion of the alteration of its figure by the same blow, is an action. The idea 
 of the beginning of motion we have only from reflection on what passes 
 in ourselves, where we find by experience, that barely by willing it, barely 
 Dy a thought of the mind, we can move the parts of our bodies which were 
 before at rest.. So that it seems to me, we have, from the observation of 
 the operation of bodies by our senses, but a very imperfett obscure idea of 
 active power, since they afford us not any idea in themselves of the power 
 to begin any action, either motion or thought. But if, from the impulse 
 bodies are observed to make one upon another, any one thinks he has a 
 clear idea of power, it serves as well to my purpose, sensation being one 
 of those ways whereby the mind comes by its ideas : only I thought it worth 
 while to consider here, by the way, whether the mind doth not receive its 
 idea of active power clearer from reflection on its own operations than it 
 doth from any external sensation. 
 
 Sect. 5. Will and understanding two powers. — This at least I think 
 evident, that we find in ourselves a power to begin or forbear, continue or end 
 several actions of our minds, and motions of our bodies, barely by a thought 
 or preference of the mind ordering, or, as it were, commanding the doing 
 or not doing such or such a particular action. This power which the mind 
 has thus to order the consideration of any idea, or the forbearing to consi- 
 der it: or to prefer the motion of any part of the body to its rest, and vice 
 versa, in any particular instance: is that which we call the will. The actual 
 exercise of that power, by directing any particular action, or its forbearance, 
 is that which we call volition or willing. The forbearance of that action, 
 consequent to such order or command of the mind," is called voluntary. 
 And whatsoever action is performed without such a thought of the mind, is 
 called involuntary. The power of perception is that which we call the un- 
 derstanding. Perception, which we make the act of the understanding, is 
 of three sorts : 1. The perception of ideas in our minds. 2. The percep- 
 tion of the signification of signs. 3. The perception of the connexion or 
 repugnancy, agreement or disagreement, that there is between any of our 
 ideas. All these are attributed to the understanding, or perceptive power, 
 though it be the two latter only that use allows us to say we understand. 
 
 Sect. 6. Faculty. — These powers of the mind, viz. of perceiving, and 
 of preferring, are usually called by another name : and the ordinary way of 
 speaking is, that the understanding and will are two faculties of the mind; 
 a word proper enough, if it be used as all words should be, so as not to 
 breed any confusion in men’s thoughts, by being supposed (as I suspect 
 it has been) to stand for some real beings in the soul, that performed those 
 actions of understanding and volition. For when we say the will is the 
 commanding and superior faculty of the soul ; that it is, or is not free ; that it 
 determines the inferior faculties ; that it follows the dictates of the under- 
 standing, &c. ; though these, and the like expressions, by those that care- 
 fully attend to their own ideas, and conduct their thoughts more by the 
 evidence of things than the sound of words, may be understood in a clear 
 and distinct sense ; yet I suspect, I say, that this way of speaking of facul- 
 ties has misled many into a confused notion of so many distinct agents in 
 us, which had their several provinces and authorities, and did command, 
 obey, and perform several actions, as so many distinct beings : which has 
 been no small occasion of wrangling, obscurity, and uncertainty in ques- 
 tions relating to them. 
 
 Sect. 7. Whence the ideas of liberty and necessity. — Every one, I think, 
 finds in himself a power to begin or forbear, continue or put an end to seve- 
 ral actions in himself. From the consideration of the extent of this power 
 of the mind over the actions of the man, which every one finds in himself 
 arise the ideas of liberty and necessity. 
 
Ch. 21. 
 
 OF POWER. 
 
 153 
 
 Sect. 8. Liberty, what.— All the actions that we have any idea of re- 
 ducing themselves, as has been said, to these two, viz. thinking and motion ; 
 so far as a man has power to think, or not to think, to move, or not to 
 move, according to the preference or direction of his own mind : so far is 
 a man free. Wherever any performance or forbearance are not equally 
 in a man’s power ; wherever doing or not doing will equally follow upon 
 the preference of his mind directing it ; there he is not free, though per- 
 haps the action may be voluntary. So that the idea of liberty is the idea 
 of a power in any agent to do or forbear any particular action, according 
 to the determination or thought of the mind, whereby either of them is pre- 
 ferred to the other : where either of them is not in the power of the 
 agent to be produced by him, according to his volition, there he is not at 
 liberty ; that agent is under necessity. So that liherty cannot be where 
 there is no thought, no volition, no will ; but there may be thought, there 
 may be will, there may be volition, where there is no liberty. A little 
 consideration of an obvious instance or two may make this clear. 
 
 Sect. 9. Supposes the understanding and will. — A tennis-ball, whether 
 m motion by the stroke of a. racket, or lying still at rest, is not by any one 
 taken to be a free agent. If we inquire into the reason, we shall find it is 
 because we conceive not a tennis-ball to think, and consequently not to 
 have any volition, or preference of motion to rest, or vice versa ; and there- 
 fore has not liberty, is not a free agent ; but all its both motion and rest 
 come under our idea of necessary, and are so called. Likewise, a man 
 falling into the water, (a bridge breaking under him) has not herein liberty, 
 is not a free agent. For though lie has volition, though he prefers his not 
 falling to falling, yet the forbearance of that motion not being in his power, 
 the stop or cessation of that motion follows not upon his volition ; and 
 therefore therein he is not free. So a man striking himself or his friend, 
 by a convulsive motion of his arm, which it is not in his power, by volition, 
 or the direction of his mind, to stop, or forbear, nobody thinks he has in 
 this liberty; every one pities him, as acting by necessity and constraint. 
 
 Sect. 10. Belongs not to volition. — Again, suppose a man be carried, 
 while fast asleep, into a room, where is a person he longs to see and speak 
 with, and be there locked fast in, beyond his power to get out, he awakes, 
 and is glad to find himself in so desirable company, which he stays willing- 
 ly in, i. e. prefers his stay to going away; I ask, is not this stay voluntary 1 
 1 think nobody will doubt it; and yet, being locked fast in, it is evident he 
 is not at liberty not to stay, he has not freedom to be gone. So that lib- 
 erty is not an idea belonging to volition, or preferring ; but to the person 
 having the power of doing, or forbearing to do, according as the mind shall 
 choose or direct. Our idea of liberty reaches as far as that power, and no 
 farther. For wherever restraint comes to check that power, or compulsion 
 takes away that indifferency of ability on either side to act, or to forbear ac- 
 ting, there liberty, and our notion of it, presently ceases. 
 
 Sect. 11. Voluntary opposed to involuntary, not to necessary. — We 
 have instances enough, and often more than enough, in our own bodies. 
 A man’s heart beats, and the blood circulates, which it is not in his power, 
 by any thought or volition to stop ; and therefore in respect to these mo- 
 tions, where rest depends not on his choice, nor would follow the determina- 
 tion of his mind, if it should prefer it, he is not a free agent. Convulsive 
 motions agitate his legs, so that, though he wills it ever so much, he can- 
 not, by any power of his mind, stop their motion, (as in that odd disease 
 called Chorea. Sancti viti ,) but he is perpetually dancing: he is not at 
 liberty in this action, but under as much necessity of moving as a stone 
 that falls, or a tennis-ball struck with a racket. On the other side, a palsy 
 or the stocks hinder his legs from obeying the determination of his mind, 
 if it would thereby transfer his body to another place. In all these there 
 is want of freedom ; though the sitting still even of a paralytic, whilst he 
 
154 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 prefers jt to a removal, is truly voluntary. Voluntary then is not opposed to_ 
 necessar y, but to involuntary. For a man may prefer what he can do to what 
 he cannot do ; the state' he is into its absence or change, though necessity 
 has made it in itself unalterable. 
 
 Sect. 12. Liberty, what . — As it is in the motions of the body, so it is 
 in the thoughts of our minds : where any one is such that we have power 
 to take it up, or lay it by, according to the preference of the mind, there 
 we are at liberty. A waking man being under the necessity of having some 
 ideas constantly in his mind, is not at liberty to think or not to think, no 
 more than he is at liberty, whether his body shall touch any other or no ; 
 but whether he will remove his contemplation from one idea to another is 
 many times in his choice ; and then he is, in respect of his ideas, as much 
 at liberty as he is in respect of bodies he rests on : he can at pleasure re- 
 move himself from one to another. But yet some ideas to the mind, like 
 some motions to the body, are such as in certain circumstances it cannot 
 avoid, nor obtain their absence by the utmost effort it can use. A man on 
 the rack is not at liberty to lay by the idea of pain, and divert himself with 
 other contemplations : and sometimes a boisterous passion hurries our 
 thoughts, as a hurricane does our bodies, without leaving us the liberty of 
 thinking on other things, which we would rather choose. But as soon as 
 the mind regains the power to stop or continue, begin or forbear, any of these 
 motions of the body without, or thoughts within, according as it thinks fit to 
 prefer either to the other, we then consider the man as a free agent again. 
 
 Sect. 13. Necessity, what . — Wherever thought is wholly jv&Bting, or 
 the power to act or forbear according to the direction of thought ; there 
 necessity takes place. This in an agent capable of volition, when the be- 
 ginning or continuation oT any action is contrary to that preference of his mind, 
 is called compulsion ; when the hindering or stopping any action is con- 
 trary to his volition, it is called restraint. Agents that have no thought, 
 no volition at all, are in every thing necessary agents. 
 
 Sect. 14. Liberty belongs not to the will . — If this be so (as I imagine 
 it is) I leave it to be considered whether it may not help to put an end to 
 that long agitated, and I think unreasonable, because unintelligible, ques- 
 tion, viz. whether man’s will be free or no! For, if I mistake not, it 
 follows, from what I have said, that the question itself is altogether improper; 
 and it is as insignificant to ask, whether man’s will be free, as to ask whether 
 his sleep he swift, or his virtue square ; liberty being as little applicable 
 to the will as swiftness of motion is to sleep, or squareness to virtue. 
 Every one would laugh at the absurdity of such a question as either of these ; 
 because it is obvious that the modifications of motion belong not to sleep, nor 
 the difference of figure to virtue ; and when any one well considers it, I think 
 he will as plainly perceive that liberty, which is but a power, belongs only to 
 agents, and cannot be an attribute or modification of the will, which is also 
 but a power. 
 
 Sect. \b.J£olition,— Such is the difficulty of explaining and giving 
 clear notions of internal actions, by sounds, that I must here warn my 
 reader that ordering, directing, choosing, preferring, &c. which I have made 
 use of, will not distinctly enough express volition, unless he will reflect on 
 what he himself does when he wills. For example, preferring, which seems 
 perhaps best to express the act of volition, does it not precisely. For 
 though a man would prefer flying to walking, yet who can say he ever 
 wills it ! Volition, it is plain, is an act of the mind knowingly exerting 
 that dominion it takes itself to have over any part of the man, by employ- 
 ing it in, or witholding it from, any particular action. And what is the 
 will, but the faculty to do this! And is that faculty any thing more in 
 effect than power, the power of the mind to determine its thoughts, to 
 the producing, continuing, or stopping any action, as far as it depends on 
 us ! For can it be denied, that whatever agent has a power to think on 
 
Ch. 21. 
 
 OF POWER. 
 
 155 
 
 its own actions, and to prefer their doing or omission, either to other, has 
 that faculty called will? Will then is nothing but such a power. Liberty, 
 on the other side, is the power a man has to do or forbear doing any par- 
 ticular action, according as its doing or forbearance has the actual preference 
 in the mind ; which is the same thing as to say, according as he himself 
 willsdt. 
 
 Sect. 16. Powers belonging to agents . — It is plain, then, that the will 
 is nothing but one power or ability, and freedom another power or ability; 
 so that to ask, whether the will has freedom, is to ask whether one power 
 has another power, one ability another ability"! a question at first sight too 
 grossly absurd to make a dispute, or need an answer. For who is it that 
 sees not that powers belong only to agents, and are attributes only of sub- 
 stances, and not of powers themselves"! So that this way of putting the 
 question, viz. whether the will be free"! is in effect to ask, whether 
 the will be a substance, an agent! or at least to suppose it, since freedom 
 can properly be attributed to nothing else. If freedom can with any pro- 
 priety of speech be applied to power, it may be attributed to the power 
 that is in a man to produce or forbear producing motion in parts of his 
 body, by choice or preference; which is that which denominates him free, 
 and is freedom itself. But if any one should ask whether freedom were free, 
 he would be suspected not to understand well what he said ; and he would 
 be thought to deserve Midas’s ears, who, knowing that rich was a denomi- 
 nation for the possession of riches, should demand whether riches themselves 
 were rich. 
 
 Sect. 17. However, the name faculty, which men have given to this 
 power called the will, and whereby they have been led into a way of talking 
 of the will as acting, may, by an appropriation that disguises its true sense, 
 serve a little to palliate the absurdity ; yet the will in truth signifies nothing 
 but a power, or ability, to prefer or choose : and when the will, under the 
 name of a faculty, is considered, as it is, barely as an ability to do some- 
 thing, the absurdity in saying it is free, or not free, will easily discover 
 itself. For if it be reasonable to suppose and talk of faculties as distinct 
 beings that can act (as we do, when we say the will orders, and the will 
 is free,) it is fit that we should make a speaking faculty, and a walking 
 faculty, and a dancing faculty, by which those actions are produced which 
 are but several modes of motion ; as well as we make the will and under- 
 standing to be faculties, by which the actions of choosing and perceiving 
 are produced, which are but several modes of thinking ; and we may as 
 properly say, that it is the singing faculty sings, and the dancing faculty 
 dances ; as that the will chooses, or that the understanding conceives ; or 
 as is usual, that the will directs the understanding, or the understanding 
 obeys or obeys not the will : it being altogether as proper and intelligible 
 to say, that the power of speaking directs the power of singing, or the 
 power of singing obeys or disobeys the power of speaking. 
 
 Sect. 18. This way of talking, nevertheless, has prevailed, and, as I 
 guess, produced great confusion. For these being all different powers in 
 the mind, or in the man, to do several actions, he exerts them as he thinks 
 fit: but the power to do one action is not operated on by the power of 
 doing another action. For the power of thinking operates not on the 
 power of choosing, nor the power of choosing on the power of thinking; 
 no more than the power of dancing operates on the power of singing, or 
 the power of singing on the power of dancing; as any one, who reflects 
 on it, will easily perceive : and yet this is it which we say, when we thus 
 speak, that the will operates on the understanding, or the understanding on the 
 will. 
 
 Sect. 19. I grant, that this or that actual thought may be the occasion 
 of volition, or exercising the power a man has to choose ; or the actual 
 choice of the mind, the cause of actual thinking on this or that thing: 
 
156 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 as the actual singing of such a tune may be the cause of dancing such a 
 dance ; and the actual dancing of such a dance, the occasion of singing such 
 a tune. But in all these it is not one power that operates on another; but 
 it is the mind that operates, and exerts these powers ; it is the man that 
 does the action ; it is the agent that has power, or is able to do. For pow- 
 ers are relations, not agents: and that which has the power or not the 
 power to operate, is that alone which is or is not free, and not the power 
 Itself. For freedom, or not freedom, can belong to nothing but what has 
 or has not a power to act. 
 
 Sect. 20. Liberty belongs not to the will. — The attributing to faculties 
 that which belonged not to them, has given occasion to this way of talking: 
 but the introducing into discourses concerning the mind, with the name 
 of faculties, a notion of their operating, has, I suppose, as little advanced 
 our knowledge in that part of ourselves, as the great use and mention of 
 the like invention of faculties, in the operations of the body, has helped 
 us in the knowledge of physic. Not that I deny there are faculties, both in 
 the body and mind : they both of them have their powers of operating, else 
 neither the one nor the other could operate. For nothing can operate that 
 is not able to operate ; and that is not able to operate that has no power to 
 operate. Nor do I deny, that those words, and the like, are to have their 
 place in the common use of languages, that have made them current. It f 
 looks like too much affectation wholly to lay them by: and philosophy itself, ] 
 though it likes not a gaudy dress, yet when it appears in public, must have 
 so much complacency as to be clothed in the ordinary fashion and language 
 of the country, so far as it can consist with truth and perspicuity. But ther 
 fault has been, that faculties have been spoken of and represented as so many 
 distinct agents. For it being asked, what it was that digested the meat in 
 our stomachs l it was a ready and very satisfactory answer, to say, that 
 it was the digestive faculty. What was it that made any thing come out 
 of the body! the expulsive faculty. What moved! the motive faculty. 
 And so in the mind the intellectual faculty, or the understanding, understood; 
 and the elective faculty, or the will, willed or commanded. This is, in 
 short, to say, that the ability to digest, digested ; and the ability to move, 
 moved; and the ability to understand, understood. For faculty, ability, 
 and power, I think, are but different names of the same things : which 
 ways of speaking, when put into more intelligible words, will, I think, 
 amount to this much; that digestion is performed by something that is 
 able to digest, motion by something able to move, and understanding by 
 something able to understand. And in truth it would be very strange if 
 it should be otherwise ; as strange as it would be for a man to be free 
 without being able to be free. 
 
 Sect. 21. But to the agent or man. — To return then to the inquiry 
 about liberty, I think the question is not proper, whether the will be free, 
 but whether a man be free. Thus, I think, 
 
 1. That so far as any one can, by the direction or choice of his mind, 
 preferring the existence of any action to the nonexistence of that action, 
 and vice versa, make it to exist, or not exist; so far he is free. For if 1 
 can, by a thought directing the motion of my finger, make it move when 
 it was at rest, or vice versa, it is evident, that in respect of that I am free : 
 and if I can, by a like thought of my mind, preferring one to the other, 
 produce either words or silence, I am at liberty to speak or hold my peace ; 
 and as far as this power reaches, of acting, or not acting, by the determi ■ 
 nation of his own thoughts preferring either, so far a man is free. For how 
 can we think any one freer than to have the power to do what he will 1 And 
 so far as any one can, by preferring any action to its not being, or rest to any 
 action, produce that action or rest, so far can he do what he will. For 
 such a preferring of action to its absence is the willing of it ; and we can 
 scarce tell how to imagine any being freer than to be able to do What he 
 
Ch. 21. 
 
 OF POWER. 
 
 157 
 
 wills. So that in respect of actions within the reach of such a power in 
 him, a man seems as free as it is possible for freedom to make him. 
 
 Sect. 22. In respect of willing a man is not free. — But the inquisitive 
 mind of man, willing to shift off from himself, as far he can, all thoughts of 
 guilt, though it be by putting himself into a worse state than that of fatal neces- 
 sity, is not content with this : freedom, unless it reaches farther than this, 
 will not serve the turn : and it passes for a good plea, that a man is not 
 free at all, if he be not as free to will as he is to act what he wills. Con- 
 cerning a man’s liberty, there yet therefore is raised this farther question, 
 whether a man be free to will 1 which I think is what is meant, when it 
 is disputed whether the will be free. And as to that I imagine, 
 
 Sect. 23. — 2. That willing, or volition, being an action, and freedom con- 
 sisting in a power of acting or not acting, a man in respect of willing, or 
 the act of volition, when any action in his power is once proposed to his 
 thoughts as presently to be done, cannot be free. The reason whereof is 
 very manifest: for it being unavoidable that the action depending on his 
 will should exist or not exist ; and its existence or not existence, following 
 perfectly the determination and preference of his will ; he cannot avoid 
 willing the existence or not existence of that action ; it is absolutely neces- 
 sary that he will the one or the other ; i. e. prefer the one to the other : 
 since one of them must necessarily follow : and that which does follow, 
 follows by the choice and determination of his mind, that is, by his willing 
 it : for if he did not will it, it would not be. So that in respect of the act 
 of willing, a man in such a case is not free : liberty consisting in a power 
 to act, or not to act ; which in regard of volition, a man, upon such a pro- 
 posal, has not. For it is unavoidably necessary to prefer the doing or for- 
 bearance of an action in a man’s power, which is once so proposed to his 
 thoughts ; a man must necessarily will the one or the other of them, upon 
 which preference or volition the action o r its forbearance certainly follows, and 
 is truly voluntary. But the act of volition, or preferring one of the two, being 
 that which he canpot avoid, a man in respect of that act of willing is under 
 a necessity, and so cannot be free ; unless necessity and freedom can con- 
 sist together, and a man can be free and bound at once. 
 
 Sect. 24. This then is evident, that in all proposals of present action, 
 a man is not at liberty to will or not to will, because he cannot forbear will- 
 ing : liberty consisting in a power to act or to forbear acting, and in that 
 only. For a man that sits still is said yet to be at liberty, because he can 
 walk if he wills it. But if a man sitting still has not a power to remove him- 
 self, he is not at liberty ; so likewise a man falling down a precipice, though 
 in motion, is not at liberty, because he cannot stop that motion if he would. 
 This being so, it is plain that a man that is walking, to whom it is proposed 
 to give off walking, is not at liberty whether he will determine himself to walk, 
 or give off walking, or no : he must necessarily prefer one or the other of 
 them, walking or not walking ; and so it is in regard of all other actions in 
 our power so proposed, which are the far greater number. For consider- 
 ing the vast number of voluntary actions that succeed one another every 
 moment that we are awake in the course of our lives, there are but few of 
 them that are thought on, or proposed to the will till the time they are to be 
 done ; and in all such actions, as I have shown, the mind, iri respect of will- 
 ing, has not a power to act, or not to act, wherein consist liberty. The mind 
 in that case has not a power to forbear willing ; it cannot avoid some deter- 
 mination concerning them, let the consideration be as short, the thought 
 as quick, as it will ; it either leaves the man in the state he was before 
 thinking, or changes it ; continues the action, or puts an end to it. Where- 
 by it is manifest, that it orders and directs one, in preference to or with 
 neglect of the other, and thereby either the continuation or change be- 
 comes unavoidably voluntary. 
 
158 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 Sect. 25. The will determined by something without it. — Since then it 
 is plain, that in most-cases a man is not at liberty, whether he will will or 
 no ; the next thing demanded, is, whether a man be at liberty to will which 
 of the two he pleases, motion or rest! This question carries the absurdity 
 of it so manifestly in itself, that one might thereby sufficiently be convinced 
 that liberty concerns not the will. For to ask, whether a man be at liberty 
 to will either motion or rest, speaking or silence, which he pleases, is to 
 ask, whether a man can will what he wills, or be pleased with what he ia 
 pleased with! A question which, I think, needs no answer; and they who 
 can make a question of it, must suppose one will to determine the acts of 
 another, and another to determine that; and so on in infinitum. 
 
 Sect. 26. To avoid these and the like absurdities, nothing can be of 
 greater use, than to establish in our minds determined ideas of the things 
 under consideration. If the ideas of liberty and volition were well fixed 
 iu our understandings, and carried along with us in our minds, as they 
 ought, through all the questions that are raised about them, I suppose a 
 great part of the difficulties that perplex men’s thoughts, and entangle their 
 understandings, would be much easier resolved, and we should perceive 
 where the confused signification of terms, or where the nature of the tiling- 
 caused the obscurity. 
 
 Sect. 27. Freedom. — First, then, it is carefully to be remembered, that 
 freedom consists in the dependence of the existence, or not existence of 
 any action, upon our volition of it; and not in the dependence of any action, 
 or its contrary, on our preference. A man standing on a cliff is at liberty 
 to leap twenty yards downward into the sea, not because he has a power 
 to do the contrary action, which is to leap twenty yards upwards, for that 
 he cannot do ; but he is therefore free, because he had a power to leap or 
 not to leap. But if a greater force than his either holds him fast or tumbles 
 liim down, he is no longer free in that case ; because the doing or forbear- 
 ance of that particular action is no longer in his power. He that is a close 
 prisoner in a room twenty feet square, being at the north side of his cham- 
 ber, is at liberty to walk twenty feet southward, because he can walk or 
 not walk it ; but is not, at the same time, at liberty to do the contrary, i. e. 
 -0 walk twenty feet northward. 
 
 In this then consists freedom, viz. in our being able to act or not to act, 
 according as we shall choose or will. 
 
 Sect. 28. Volition, what. — Secondly, we must remember, that volition 
 or willing is an act of the mind directing its thought to the production of 
 any action,, and thereby exerting its power to produce it. To avoid multi, 
 plying of words, I would crave leave here, under the word action, to com- 
 prehend the forbearance too of any action proposed ; sitting still, or holding 
 one’s peace, when walking or speaking are proposed, though mere forbear- 
 ances, requiring as much the determination of the will, and being as often 
 weighty in their consequences as the contrary actions, may, on that con- 
 sideration, well enough pass for actions too : but this I say, that I may not 
 be mistaken, if for brevity sake I speak thus. 
 
 Sect. 29. What determines the will. — Thirdly, the will being no- 
 thing put a power in the mind to direct the operative faculties of a man to 
 motion or rest, as far as they depend on such direction ; to the question, 
 what is it determines the will! the true and proper answer is, the mind. 
 For that which determines the general power of directing to this or that par- 
 ticular direction, is nothing but the agent itself exercising the power it has 
 that particular way. If this answer satisfies not, it is plain the meaning 
 of the question, what determines the will! is this, what moves the mind, 
 in every particular instance, to determine its general power of directing to 
 this or that particular motion or rest! And to this I answer, the motive 
 for continuing in the same state or action, is only the present satisfaction 
 
-Oh. 21. 
 
 OF POWER. 
 
 159 
 
 in it; the motive to change is always some uneasiness: nothing setting us 
 upon the change of state, or upon any new action, but some uneasiness. 
 This is the great motive that works on the mind to put it upon action, which 
 for shortness sake we will call determining of the will ; which I shall more at 
 large explain. 
 
 Sect. 30. Will and desire must not be confounded . — But in the way to 
 it, it will be necessary to premise, that though I have above endeavoured to 
 express the act of volition by choosing, preferring, and the like terms, that 
 signify desire as well as volition, for want of other words to mark that ac- 
 tion of the mind, whose proper name is willing or volition ; yet it being a 
 very simple act, whosoever desires to understand what it is, will better find 
 it by reflecting on his own mind, and observing what it does when it wills, 
 than by any variety of articulate sounds whatsoever. This caution of being 
 careful not to be misled by expressions that do not enough keep up the dif- 
 ference between the will and several acts of the mind that are quite distinct 
 from it, I think the more necessary ; because I find the will often confounded 
 with several of the affections, especially desire, and one put for the other; 
 and that Dy men who would not willingly be thought not to have had very 
 distinct notions of things, and not to have writ very clearly about them. 
 This, I imagine, has been no small occasion of obscurity and mistake in this 
 matter; and therefore is, as much as may be, to be avoided. For he that 
 shall turn his thoughts inwards upon what passes in his mind when he wills, 
 shall see that the will or power of volition is conversant about nothing but 
 that particular determination of the mind, whereby barely by a thought the 
 mind endeavours to give rise, continuation, or stop, to any action which it 
 takes to be in its power. This, well considered, plainly shows that the 
 will is perfectly distinguished from desire ; which in the very same action 
 may have a quite contrary tendency from that which our will sets us upon. 
 A man whom I cannot deny, may oblige me to use persuasions to another, 
 which, at the same time I am speaking, I may wish may not prevail on 
 him. In this case, it is plain the will and desire run counter. I will the 
 action that tends one way, whilst my desire tends another, and that the di- 
 rect contrary way. A man who by a violent fit of the gout in his limbs finds 
 a doziness in his head, or a want of appetite in his stomach removed, de- 
 sires to he eased too of the pain of his feet or hands (for wherever there is 
 pain there is a desire to be rid of it) though yet, whilst he apprehends that 
 the removal of the pain may translate the noxious humour to a more vital 
 part, his will is never determined to any one action that may serve to re- 
 move this pain. Whence it is evident that desiring and willing are two 
 distinct acts of the mind ; and consequently that the will, which is but the 
 power of volition, is much more distinct from desire. 
 
 Sect. 31. Uneasiness determines the will . — To return then to the in- 
 quiry, what is it that determines the' will in regard to our actions 1 And 
 that, upon second thoughts, I am apt to imagine is not, as is gene- 
 rally supposed, the greater good in view, but some (and for the most part 
 the most pressing) uneasiness a man is at present under. This is that 
 which successively determines the will, and sets us upon those actions we 
 perform. This uneasiness we may call, as it is, desire; which is an un- 
 easiness of the mind for the want of some absent good. All pain of the 
 body, of what sort soever, and disquiet of the mind, is uneasiness : and 
 with this is always joined desire, equal to the pain or uneasiness felt, and 
 is scarce distinguishable from it. For desire being nothing but an uneasi- 
 ness in the want of an absent good, in reference to any pain felt, ease is 
 that absent good; and till that ease be attained, we may call it desire, no- 
 body feeling pain that he wishes not to be eased of, with a desire equal 
 to that pain, and inseparable from it. Besides this desire of ease from pain 
 there is another of absent positive good ; and here also the desire and un- 
 easiness are equal. As much as we desire any absent good, so much are 
 
160 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 we in pain for it. But here all absent good does not, according to the 
 greatness it has, or is acknowledged to have, cause pain equal to that 
 greatness ; as all pain causes desire equal to itself : because the absence of 
 good is not alway a pain, as the presence of pain is. And therefore absent 
 good may be looked on and considered without desire; but so much as there 
 is any where of desire, so much there is of uneasiness. 
 
 Sect. 32. Desire is uneasiness. — That desire is a state of uneasiness, 
 every one who reflects on himself will quickly find. Who is there that 
 has not felt in desire what the wise man says of hope (which is not much 
 different from it,) that “ it being deferred, makes the heart sick!” and that 
 still proportionable to the greatness of the desire; which sometimes raises 
 the uneasiness to that pitch, that it makes people cry out, give me children, 
 give me the thing desired, or I die ! Life itself, and all its enjoyments, is a 
 burden that cannot be borne under the lasting and unremoved pressure of such 
 an uneasiness. 
 
 Sect. 33. The uneasiness of desire determines the will. — Good and 
 evil, present and absent, it is true, work upon the mind : but that which 
 immediately determines the will, from time to time, to every voluntary 
 action, is the uneasiness of desire, fixed on ^ome absent good : either 
 negative, as indolence to one in pain ; or positive, as enjoyment of pleasure. 
 That it is this uneasiness that determines the will to the sucessive volun- 
 tary actions, whereof the greatest part of our lives is made up, and by 
 which we are conducted through different courses to different ends, I 
 shall endeavour to show, both from experience and the reason of the 
 thing. 
 
 Sect. 34. This is the spring of action. — When a man is perfectly con- 
 tent with the state he is in, which is, when he is perfectly without any 
 uneasiness, what industry, what action, what will is there left, but to con- 
 tinue in it! of this every man’s observation will satisfy him. And thus we 
 see our All-wise Maker, suitably to our constitution and frame, and know- 
 ing what it is that determines the will, has put into man the uneasiness of 
 hunger and thirst, and other natural desires, that return at their seasons 
 to move and determine their wills, for the preservation of themselves, and 
 the continuation of their species. For I think we may conclude, that if 
 the bare contemplation of these good ends, to which we are carried by 
 these several uneasinesses, had been sufficient to determine the will, and 
 set us on work, we should have had none of these natural pains, and per- 
 haps in this world little or no pain at all. “ It is better to marry than to 
 burn,” says St Paul ; where we may see what it is that chiefly drives men 
 into the enjoyments of conjugal life. A little burning felt pushes us more 
 powerfully than greater pleasures in prospect draw or allure. 
 
 Sect. 35. The greatest positive good determines not the will, hut un~ 
 easiness. — It seems so established and settled a maxim by the general con- 
 sent of all mankind, that good, the greater good, determines the will, that I 
 do not at all wonder, that when I first published my thoughts on this sub- 
 ject, I took it for granted ; and I imagine that by a great many I shall be 
 thought more excusable for having then done so, than that now I have 
 ventured to recede from so received an opinion. But yet, upon a stricter 
 inquiry, I am forced to conclude, that good, the greater good, though ap- 
 prehended, and acknowledged to be so, does not determine the will, until 
 our desire, raised proportionably to if, makes us uneasy in the want of it. 
 Convince a man ever so much that plenty has its advantages over poverty ; 
 make him see and own, that the handsome conveniences of life are better 
 than nasty penury ; yet as long as he is content with the latter, and finds 
 no uneasiness in it, he moves not ; his will never is determined to any ac- 
 tion that shall bring him out of it. Let a man be ever so well persuaded 
 of the advantages of virtue, that it is as necessary to a man who has any 
 great aims in tins world, or hopes in the next, as food to life; yet, till he 
 
Ch. 21. 
 
 OF POWER. 
 
 161 
 
 auncrers and thirsts after righteousness, till he feels an uneasiness in the 
 want of it, his will will not be determined to any action in pursuit of this 
 confessed greater good ; but any other uneasiness he feels in himself shall 
 take place, and carry his will to other actions. On the other side, let a 
 drunkard see that his health decays, his estate wastes ; discredit and dis- 
 eases, and the want of all things, even of his beloved drink, attends him 
 in the course he follows ; yet the returns of uneasiness to miss his com- 
 panions, the habitual thirst after his cups at the usual time, drives him to 
 the tavern, though he has in his view the loss of health and plenty, and 
 perhaps of the joys of another life : the least of which is no inconsiderable 
 good, but such as he confesses is far greater than the tickling of his palate 
 with a glass of wine, or the idle chat of a soaking club. It is not want 
 of viewing the greater good ; for he sees and acknowledges it, and, in the 
 intervals of his drinking hours, will take resolutions to pursue the greater 
 good ; but when the uneasiness to miss his accustomed delight returns, the 
 greater acknowledged good loses its hold, and the present uneasiness de- 
 termines the will to the accustomed action ; which thereby gets stronger 
 footing to prevail against the next occasion, though he at the same time 
 makes secret promises to himself, that he will do so no more: this is the 
 last time he will act against the attainment of those greater goods. And 
 thus he is from time to time in the state of that unhappy complainer, 
 video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor: which sentence, allowed for true, 
 and madegoodby constant experience, may this, and possibly no other way, 
 be easily made intelligible. 
 
 Sect 36. Because the removal of uneasiness is the first step to happi- 
 ness. — If we inquire into the reason of what experience makes so evident 
 in fact, and examine why it is uneasiness alone op’erates on the will, and 
 determines it in its choice: we shall find that we being capable but of one 
 determination of the will to one action at once, the present uneasiness that 
 we are under does naturally determine the will, in order to that happiness 
 which we all aim at in all our actions ; forasmuch as whilst we are under 
 any uneasiness, we cannot apprehend ourselves happy, or in the way to it: 
 pain and uneasiness being, by ever}' one, concluded and felt to be inconsist- 
 ent with happiness, spoiling the relish even of those good things which we 
 have ; a little pain serving to mar all the pleasure we rejoiced in. And 
 therefore that which of course determines the choice of our will to the next 
 action, will always be the removing of pain, as long as we have any left, 
 as the first and necessary step towards happiness. 
 
 Sect. 37. Because uneasiness alone is present. — Another reason why 
 it is uneasiness alone determines the will, may be this : because that alone 
 is present, and it is against the nature of things, that what is absent should 
 operate where it is not. It may be said, that absent good may by contem- 
 plation be brought home to the mind, and made present. The idea of it 
 indeed may he in the mind, and viewed as present there ; but nothing will 
 be in the mind as a present good, able to counterbalance the removal of any 
 uneasiness which we are under, till it raises our desire ; and the uneasiness 
 of that has prevalency in determining the will. Till then, the idea in the 
 mind of whatever good, is there only, like other ideas, the object of bare 
 inactive speculation, hut operates not on the will, nor sets us on work ; 
 the reason whereof I shall show by and by. How many are to be found, 
 that have had lively representations set before their minds of the unspeak- 
 able joys of heaven, which they acknowledge both possible and probable 
 too, who yet would be content to take up with their happiness here! 
 And so the prevailing uneasinesses of their desires, let loose after the en- 
 joyments of this life, take their turns in the determining their wills ; and 
 all that while they take not one step, are not one jot moved towards the 
 good things of another life, considered as ever so great. 
 
162 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book. 2 
 
 Sect. 38. Because all who alloio the joys of heaven possible, pursue 
 them not. — Were the will determined by the views of good, as it appears 
 in contemplation greater or less to the understanding, which is the state 
 of all absent good, and that which in the received opinion the will is sup- 
 posed to move to, and to be moved by, I do not see how it could ever get 
 loose from the infinite eternal joys of heaven, once proposed and considered 
 as possible. For all absent good, by which alone, barely proposed and 
 coming in view, the will is thought to be determined, and so to set us on 
 action, being only possible, but not infallibly certain ; it is unavoidable, 
 that the infinitely greater possible good should regularly and constantly de- 
 termine the will in all the successive actions it directs : and then we should 
 keep constantly and steadily in our course towards heaven, without ever 
 standing still, or directing our actions to any other end ; the eternal condi- 
 tion of a future state infinitely outweighing the expectation i of riches or 
 honour, or any other worldly pleasure which we can propose to ourselves, 
 though we should grant these the more probable to be obtained : for noth- 
 ing future is yet in possession, and so the expectation even of these 
 may deceive us. If it were so, that the greater good in view determines 
 the will, so great a good once proposed could not but seize the will, and 
 hold it fast to the pursuit of this infinitely greatest good, without ever let- 
 ting it go again ; foi - the will having a. power over and directing the thoughts 
 as well as other actions, would, if it were so, hold the contemplation of the 
 mind fixed, te-that good.. 
 
 But any great uneasiness is never neglected. — This would be the state 
 of the mind and regular tendency of the will in all its determinations, were 
 it determined by that which is considered and in view the greater good ; 
 but that it is not so is visible in experience : the infinitely greatest confess- 
 ed good being often neglected to satisfy the successive uneasiness of our 
 desires pursuing trifles. But though the greatest allowed, even everlast- 
 ing unspeakable good, which has sometimes moved and affected the mind, 
 does not steadfastly hold the will, yet we see any very great and prevail- 
 ing uneasiness, having once laid hold on the will, lets it not go ; by which 
 we may be convinced what it is that determines the will. Thus any ve- 
 hement pain of the body, the ungovernable passion of a man violently in 
 love,, or the impatient desire of revenge, keeps the will steady and in- 
 tent; and the will, thus determined, never lets the understanding lay by 
 the object, but all the thoughts of the mind and powers of the body are un- 
 interruptedly employed that way, by the determination of the will, influ- 
 enced by that toppingimeasiness as long a.s it lasts ; whereby it seems to 
 me evident, that the will or power of setting us upon one action in prefer- 
 ence to all other, is determined in us by uneasiness. And whether this be 
 not so, I desire every one to observe in himself. 
 
 Sect. 39. Desire accompanies all uneasiness. — I have hitherto chiefly 
 instanced in the uneasiness of desire, as that which determines the will, 
 because that is the chief and most sensible, and the will seldom orders any 
 action, nor is there any voluntary action performed, without some desire 
 accompanying it; which I think is the reason why the will and desire are 
 so often confounded. But yet we are not to look upon the uneasiness 
 which makes up, or at least accompanies, most of the other passions, as 
 wholly excluded in the case. Aversion, fear, anger, envy, shame, &c. 
 have each their uneasiness too, and thereby influence the will. These 
 passions are scarce any of them in life and practice simple and alone, and 
 wholly unmixed with others ; though usually in discourse and contemplation, 
 that carries the name which operates strongest, and appears most in the 
 present state of the mind : nay, there is, I think, scarce any of the passions 
 to be found without desire joined with it. I am sure, wherever there is un 
 easiness, there is desire : for we constantly desire happiness ; and whatever 
 we feel of uneasiness, so much it is certain we want of happiness, even in 
 
Ch. 21. 
 
 OF POWER. 
 
 163 
 
 our own opinion, let our state and condition otherwise be what it will. 
 Besides, the present, moment not being our eternity, wiiatever our enjoy- 
 ment be, we look beyobd the present and desire goes with our foresight, 
 and that still carries the will with it. So that even in joy itself, that which 
 keeps up the action, whereon the enjoyment depends, is the desire to con- 
 tinue it, and fear to lose it: and whenever a greater uneasiness than that 
 takes place in the mind, the will presently is by that determined to some 
 new action, and the present delight neglected. 
 
 Sect. 40. The most pressing uneasiness naturally determines the will. 
 — But we being in this world beset with sundry uneasinesses, distracted with 
 different desires, the next inquiry naturally will be, which of them has the 
 precedency in determining the will to the next action ! and to that the an- 
 swer is, that ordinarily which is the most pressing of those that are judged 
 ca nabie off'b'eihgfffen removed. . For the will being the power of directing 
 our^peiritiveffaoukies^ -to-^ime. action, for some end, cannot at any time 
 be moved towards what is judged at that time unattainable: that would be 
 to suppose an intelligent being designedly to act for an end only to loose 
 its labour, for so it is to act for what is judged not attainable : and there- 
 fore very great uneasinesses move .not the will, when they are judged not 
 capable of a cure : they, in that case, put us not upon endeavours. But, 
 these set apart, the most important and urgent uneasiness we at that time 
 feel, is that which ordinarily determines the will successively in that train 
 of voluntary actions which make up our lives. The greatest present un- 
 easiness is the spur to action that is constantly felt, and for the most part 
 determines the will in its choice of the next action. For this we must 
 carry along with us, that the proper and only object of the will is some 
 action of ours, and nothing else : for we produce nothing by our willing it but 
 some action in our power, it is there the will terminates, and reaches no 
 farther. 
 
 Sect. 41. -All desire happiness. — If it be farther asked what it is moves 
 desire 1 I answer, happiness, and that alone. Happiness and misery are 
 the names of two extremes, the utmost bounds whereof we know not ; it 
 is what “eye hath not seen, ear not heard, nor hath it entered into the 
 heart of man to conceive.” But of some degrees of both we have very 
 lively impressions, made by several instances of delight and joy on the one 
 side, and torment and sorrow on the other; which, for shortness sake, I 
 shall comprehend under the names of pleasure and pain, there being plea- 
 sure and pain of the mind as well as the body : “ with him is fulness of 
 joy, and pleasure for evermore.” Or, to speak truly, they are all of the 
 mind ; though some have their rise in the mind from thought, others in the 
 body from certain modifications of motion. 
 
 Sect. 42. Happiness, what. Happiness, then, in its full extent, is the 
 utmost pleasure we are capable of, and misery the utmost pain: and the 
 lowest degree of what can be called happiness is so much ease from all pain, 
 and so much present pleasure, as without which any one cannot be content. 
 Now because pleasure and pain are produced in us by the operation of 
 certain objects, either on our minds or our bodies, and in different de- 
 grees, therefore what has an aptness to produce pleasure m us is that we 
 call good, and what is apt to j rodu ce pain in us we call evil, for no other 
 reason but for its^aptliess to produce pleasure and pain in us, wherein 
 consists! our happin ess and misery- Farther, though "what is apt to pro- 
 duce any degree of pTeasnre-be in itself good, and what is apt to produce 
 any degree of pain be evil, yet it often happens that we do not call it so 
 when it comes in competition with a greater of its sort ; because when they 
 come in competition, the degrees also of pleasure and pain have justly a 
 preference. So that if we will rightly estimate what we call good and evil, 
 we shall find it lies much in comparison: for the cause of .every less de- 
 gree of pain, as well as every greater degree of pleasure, has. the nature of 
 gooff and vTce versa. 
 
64 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Boo* 2 
 
 Sect 43. What good is desired, what not . — Though this be that which 
 is called good and evil, and all good be the proper object of desire in gene- 
 ral, yet all good, even seen, and confessed to be so, does not necessarily 
 move every particular man’s desire, but only that part, or so much of it as 
 is considered and taken to make a necessary part of his happiness. All 
 other good, however great in reality or appearance, excites not a man’s 
 desires, who looks not on it to make a part of that happiness wherewith 
 he, in his present thoughts, can satisfy himself. Happiness, under this 
 view, every one constantly pursues, and desires what makes any part of 
 it : other things, acknowledged to be good, he can look upon without de- 
 sire, pass by, and be content without. There is nobody, I think, so senseless 
 as to deny that there is pleasure in knowledge: and for the pleasures of 
 sense, they have too many followers to let it be questioned whether men 
 are taken with them or no. Now let one man place his satisfaction in sen- 
 sual pleasures, another in the delight of knowledge : though each of them 
 cannot but confess there is great pleasure in what the other pursues, yet 
 neither of them making the other’s delight a part of his happiness, their 
 desires are not moved, but each is satisfied without what the other enjoys, 
 and so his will is not determined to the pursuit of it. But yet as soon as 
 the studious man’s hunger and thirst make him uneasy, he, whose will was 
 never determined to any pursuit of good cheer, poignant sauces, delicious 
 wines, by the pleasant taste he has found in them, is, by the uneasiness of 
 hunger and thirst, presently determined to eating and drinking, though 
 possibly with great indifferency, what wholesome food comes in his way. 
 And on the other side, the epicure buckles to study when shame, or the 
 desire to recommend himself to his mistress, shall make him uneasy in the 
 want of any sort of knowledge. Thus, how much soever men are in ear- 
 nest, and constant in pursuit of happiness, yet they may have a clear view 
 of good, great and confessed good, without being concerned for it, or moved 
 by it, if they think they can make up their happiness without it. Though 
 as to pain, that they are always concerned for; they can feel no uneasiness 
 without being moved. And therefore being uneasy in the want of 
 whatever is judged necessary to their happiness, as soon as any good ap- 
 pears to make a part of their portion of happiness, they begin to de- 
 sire it. 
 
 Sect. 44. Why the greatest good is not always desired. — This, I 
 think, any one may observe in himself and others, that the greater visible 
 good does not always raise men’s desires in proportion to the greatness 
 it appears and is acknowledged to have ; though every little trouble moves 
 us, and sets us on work to get rid of it. The reason whereof is evident 
 from the nature of our happiness and misery itself. All present pain, 
 whatever it be, makes a part of our present misery : but all absent good 
 does not at any time make a necessary part of our present happiness, 
 nor the absence of it make a part of our misery. If it did, we should 
 be constantly and infinitely miserable ; there being infinite degrees of 
 happiness which are not in our possession. All uneasiness therefore being 
 removed, a moderate portion of good serves at present to^ontent men ; 
 and some few degrees of pleasure, in a succession of ordinary enjoyments, 
 make up a happiness wherein they can be satisfied. If this were not so, 
 there could be no room for those indifferent and visible trifling actions, to 
 which our wills are so often determined, and wherein we voluntarily waste 
 so much of our lives ; which remissness could by no means consist with a 
 constant determination of will or desire to the greatest apparent good. 
 That this is so, I think few people need go far from home to be convinced. 
 And indeed in this life there are not many whose happiness reaches so far as 
 to afford them a constant train of moderate mean pleasures without any 
 mixture of uneasiness ; and yet they could be content to stay here for ever: 
 though they cannot deny, but that it is possible there may be a state of 
 
Ch. 21 
 
 OF POWER. 
 
 105 
 
 eternal durable joys after this life, far surpassing all the good that is to be 
 found here. Nay, they cannot but see that it is more possible than the 
 attainment and continuation of that pittance of honour, riches, or pleasure 
 which they pursue, and for which they neglect that eternal state : but yet 
 in full view of this difference, satisfied of the possibility of a perfect, secure 
 and lasting happiness in a future state, and under a clear conviction that 
 it is not to be had here, whilst they bound their happiness within some 
 little enjoyment or aim of this life, and exclude the joys of heaven from 
 making any necessary part of it, their desires are not moved by this great- 
 er apparent good, nor their wills determined to any action or endeavour 
 for its attainment. 
 
 Sect. 45. Why not_ being -desired, it moves not the will. — The ordi- 
 nary necessities of our lives fill a great part of them with the uneasiness 
 of hunger, thirst, heat, cold, weariness of labour, and sleepiness, in their 
 constant returns, &c. To which if, besides accidental harms, we add the 
 fantastical uneasiness (as itch after honour, power, or riches, &c.) which 
 acquired habits by fashion, example, and education, have settled in us, and 
 a thousand other irregular desires, which custom has made natural to us ; 
 we shall find, that a very little part of our life is so vacant from these un- 
 easinesses, as to leave us free to the attraction of remoter absent good. 
 We are seldom at ease, and free enough from the solicitation of our natu- 
 ral" or adopted desires, but a constant succession of uneasinesses out of 
 that stock, which natural wants or acquired habits have heaped up, take 
 the will in their turns : and no sooner is one action despatched, which by 
 such a determination of the will we are set upon, but another uneasiness 
 is ready to set us on work. For the removing of the pains we feel, and are 
 at present pressed with, being the getting out of misery, and consequently 
 the first thing to be done in order to happiness, absent good, though thought 
 on, confessed, and appearing to be good, not making any part of this un- 
 happiness in its absence, is jostled out to make way for the removal of those 
 uneasinesses we feel ; till due and repeated contemplation has brought it 
 nearer to our mind, given some relish of it, and raised in us some desire : 
 which then beginning to make a part of our present uneasiness, stands upon 
 fair terms with the rest to be satisfied : and so, according to its greatness 
 and pressure, comes in its turn to determine the will. 
 
 Sect. 46. Due consideration raises desire. — And thus, by a due con- 
 sideration, and examining any good proposed, it is in our power to 
 raise our desires in a due proportion to the value of that good, whereby in 
 its turn and place it may come to work upon the will and be pursued. For 
 good, though appearing, and allowed ever so great, yet till it has raised 
 desires in our minds, and thereby made us uneasy in its want, it reaches 
 not our wills; we are not within the sphere of its activity; our wills being 
 under the determination only of those uneasinesses which are present to 
 us, which (whilst we have any) are always soliciting, and ready at hand 
 to give the will its next determination ; the balancing, when there is any 
 in the mind, being only which desires shall be next satisfied, which uneasi- 
 ness first removed. Whereby it comes to pass, that as long as any 
 uneasiness, any desire remains in our mind, there is no room for good, 
 barely as such, to come at the will, or at all to determine it. Because, as 
 has been said, the first step in our endeavours after happiness being to get 
 wholly out of the confines of misery, and to feel no part of it, the will 
 can be at leisure for nothing else, till every uneasiness we feel be perfectly 
 removed ; which, in the multitude of wants and desires we are beset with 
 in this imperfect state, we are not like to be ever freed from in this world. 
 
 Sect. 47. The power to suspend the prosecution on any desire makes 
 way for consideration. — There being in us a great many uneasinesses al- 
 ways soliciting and ready to determine the will, it is natural, as I have 
 said, that the greated - and moy f pressing should determine the will to the 
 
IOG 
 
 OF Jit) MAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 next action; and so it does for the most part, but not always. For the 
 mind having in most cases, as is evident in experience, a power to suspend 
 the execution and satisfaction of any of its disires, and so all, one after an- 
 other, is at liberty to consider the objects of them, examine them on all sides, 
 and weigh them with others. In this lies the liberty man has ; and from 
 ihe not using of it right comes all that variety of mistakes, errors, and faults 
 which we run into in the conduct of our lives, and our endeavours after hap- 
 piness : whilst we precipitate tlm determination of our wills, and engage 
 too soon before due examination. To prevent this, we have a powei to sus- 
 pend the prosecution of this or that desire, as every one daily may experi- 
 ment in himself. This seems to me the source of all liberty; in this seems 
 to consist that which is (as I think improperly) called free-will. For dur- 
 ing this suspension of any desire, before the will be determined to action, 
 and the action (which follows that determination) done, we have opportu- 
 nity to examine, view, and judge of the good or evil of what we are going 
 to do: and when, upon due examination, we have judged, we have done our 
 duty, all that we can or ought to do in pursuit of our happiness ; and it is 
 not a fault, but a perfection of our nature to desire, will and act according 
 to the last result of a fair examination. 
 
 Sect. 48. To he determined by our own judgment, is no restraint to 
 liberty. — This is so far from being a restraint or diminution of freedom, 
 that it is the very improvement and benefit of it; it is not an abridgment, 
 it is the end and use of our liberty ; and the farther we are removed from 
 such a determination, the nearer we are to misery and slavery. A perfect 
 indifferency in the mind, not determinable by its last judgment of the good 
 or evil that is thought to attend its choice, would be so far from being an 
 advantage and excellency of any intellectual nature, that it would be as 
 great an imperfection as the want of indifferency to act or not to act 
 till determined by the will, would be an imperfection on the other side. A 
 man is at liberty to lift up his hand to his head, or let it rest cjuiet; he is 
 perfectly indifferent in either; and it would be an imperfection in him if 
 he wanted that power, if he were deprived of that indifferency. But it 
 would be as great an imperfection if he had the same indifferency whether 
 he would prefer the lifting up his hand, or its remaining in rest, when it 
 would save his head or eyes from a blow he sees coming: it is as much a 
 perfection that desire, or the power of preferring, should be determined by 
 good, as that the power of acting should be determined by the will; and 
 the more certain such determination is, the greater is the perfection. Nay„ 
 were we determined by any thing but the last result of our own minds, 
 judging of the good or evil of any action, we were not free ; the very end 
 of our freedom being, that we may attain the good we choose. And there- 
 fore every man is put under a necessity by his constitution, as an intelli- 
 gent being, to be determined in willing by his own thought and judgment 
 what is best for him to do : else he would be under the determination of 
 some other than himself, which is want of liberty. And to deny that a 
 man’s will, in every derermination, follows his own judgment, is to say, 
 that a man wills and acts for an end that he would not have, at the time 
 that he wills and acts for it. For if he prefers it in bis present thoughts 
 before any other, it is plain he then thinks better of it, and would have it 
 before any other; unless he can have and not have it, will and not will it, 
 at the same time ; a contradiction too manifest to be admitted. 
 
 Sect. 49. The freest agents are so determined. — If we look upon those 
 superior beings above us, who enjoy perfect happiness, we shall have rea- 
 son to judge that they are more steadily determined in their choice of good 
 than we; and yet we have no reason to think they are less happy or less 
 free than we are. And if it were fit for such poor finite creatures as we 
 are to pronounce what infinite wisdom and goodness could do, I think we 
 might say, that God himself cannot choose what is not good; the freedom 
 of the Almighty hinders not his being determined by what is best 
 
Ch. 21. 
 
 OF POWER. 
 
 167 
 
 Sect. 60. A constant determination to a •pursuit of happiness no 
 abridgment of liberty. — But to give a right view of this mistaken part of 
 liberty, let me ask, “ would any one be a changeling, because he is less 
 determined by wise considerations than a wise man 1 Is it worth the name 
 of freedom to be at liberty to play the fool and draw shame and misery up- 
 on a man’s self!” If to break loose from the conduct of reason, and to 
 want that restraint of examination and judgment, which keeps us from 
 choosing or dcing the worse, be liberty, true liberty, madmen and fools are 
 the only freemen : but yet, I think, nobody would choose to be mad for the 
 sake of such liberty, but he that is mad already. The constant desire of 
 happiness, and the constraint it puts upon us to act for it, nobody, I think, 
 accounts an abridgment of liberty, or at least an abridgment of liberty to be 
 complained of. God Almighty himself is under the necessity of being hap- 
 py ; and the more any intelligent being is so, the nearer is its approach to 
 infinite perfection and happiness. That in this stake of ignorance we short- 
 sighted creatures might not mistake true felicity, we are endowed with a 
 power to suspend any particular desire, and keep it from determining the 
 will, and engaging us in action. This is standing still, where we are not 
 sufficiently assured of the way : examination is consulting a guide. The 
 determination of the will upon inquiry is followingthe direction of that guide : 
 and he that has a power to act or not to act, according as such determina- 
 tion directs, is a free agent; such determination abridges not that power 
 wherein liberty consists. He that has his chains knocked off, and the pri- 
 son doors set open to him, is perfectly at liberty, because he may either 
 go or stay, as he best likes : though his preference be determined to stay, by 
 the darkness of the night, or illness of the weather, or want of other lodging. 
 He ceases not to be free, though the desire of some convenience to be had 
 there absolutely determines his preference, and makes him stay in his prison. 
 
 Sect. 51. The necessity of pursuing true happiness the foundation of 
 liber ty ■— A s th e r e fo re the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a 
 careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness, so the care of our- 
 selves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary 
 foundation of our liberty. The stronger ties we have to an unalterable 
 pursuit of happiness in general, which is our greatest good, and which, as 
 such, our desires always follow, the more are we free from any necessary 
 determination of our will to any particular action, and from a necessary 
 compliance with our desire, set upon any particular and then appearing 
 preferable good, till we have duly examined whether it has a tendency to, 
 or be inconsistent with, our real happiness : and therefore till we are so 
 much informed upon this inquiry as the weight of the matter and the nature 
 of the case demands, we are, by the necessity of preferring and pursuing 
 true happiness as our greatest good, obliged to suspend the satisfaction of 
 our desires in particular cases. 
 
 Sect. 52. The reason of it. — This is the hinge on which turns the liberty 
 of intellectual beings, in their constant endeavours after, and a steady pro- 
 secution of true felicity, that they can suspend this prosecution in particu- 
 lar cases, till they had looked before them, and informed themselves whether 
 that particular thing, which is then proposed or desired, lie in the way to 
 their main end, and make a real part of that which is their greatest good ; 
 for the inclination and tendency of their nature to happiness is an obliga- 
 tion and motive to them to take care not to mistake or miss it : and so ne- 
 cessarily puts them upon caution, deliberation, and wariness, in the direc- 
 tion of their particular actions, which are the means to obtain it. What- 
 ever necessity determines to the pursuit of real bliss, the same necessitv 
 with the same force establishes suspense, deliberation, and scrutiny of each 
 successive desire, whether the satisfaction of it does not interfere with our 
 true happiness, and mislead us from it. This, as seems to me, is the 
 great privilege of finite intellectual beings ; and I desire it may be well con- 
 
168 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 sidered, whether the great inlet and exercise of all the liberty men have, 
 are capable of, or can be useful to them, and that whereon depends the turn 
 of their actions, does not lie in this, that they can suspend their desires, 
 and stop them from determining their wills to any action, till they have 
 duly and fairly examined the good and evil of it, as far forth as the weight 
 of the thing requires. This we are able to do; and when we have done it, 
 we have done our duty, and all that is in our power, and indeed all that 
 needs. For since the will supposes knowledge to guide its choice, -tdk. 
 that we can do is to hold our wills undetermined till we have examined : 
 the good and evil of what we desire, what follows after that, follows in a 
 chain of consequences linked one to another, all depending on the last de- 1 
 termination of the judgment ; which, whether it shall be upon a hasty and 
 precipitate view, or upon a due and mature examination, is in our power: 
 experience showing us, that in most cases we are able to suspend the pre- 
 sent satisfaction of any desire. 
 
 Sect. 53. Government of our passions the right improvement of liberty. 
 — But if any extreme disturbance (as sometimes it happens) possesses our — 
 whole mind, as when the pain of the rack, an impetuous uneasiness, as of 
 love, anger, or any other violent passion, running away with us, allows us 
 not the liberty of thought, and we are not masters enough of our own minds 
 to consider thoroughly and examine fairly ; God, who knows our frailty, 
 pities our weakness, and requires of us no more than we are able to do, and 
 sees what was and what was not in our power, will judge as a kind and 
 merciful father. But the forbearance of a too hasty compliance with our 
 desires, the moderation and restraint of our passions, so that our under, 
 standings may be free to examine, and reason unbiassed gives its judgment, 
 being that whereon a right direction of our conduct to true happiness de- 
 pends ; it is in this we should employ our chief care and endeavours. In 
 this we should take pains to suit the relish of our minds to the true intrinsic 
 good or ill that is in things, and not permit an allowed or supposed possi- 
 ble great and weighty good to slip out of our thoughts, without leaving any 
 relish, any desire of itself there, till, by a due consideration of its true worth, 
 we have formed appetites in our minds suitable to it, and made ourselves 
 uneasy in the want of it, or in the fear of losing it. And how much this 
 is in every one’s power, by making resolutions to himself such as he may 
 keep, is easy for every one to try. Nor let any one say he cannot govern 
 his passions, nor hinder them from breaking out, and carrying him into ac- 
 tion ; for what he can do before a prince, or a great man, he can do alone, 
 or in the presence of God, if lie will. 
 
 Sect. 54. How men come to pursue different courses. — From what has 
 been said, it is easy to give an account how it comes to pass, that though 
 all men desire happiness, yet their wills carry them so contrarily, and yet 
 consequently some of them do what is evil. And to this 1 say, that the va- 
 rious and contrary choices that men make in the world do not argue that 
 they do not all pursue good : but that the same thing is not good to every 
 man alike. This varietyof pursuits shows that every one does not place his 
 happiness in the same thing, or choose the same way to it. Were all 
 the concerns of man terminated in this life, why one followed study and 
 knowledge, and another hawking and hunting; why one chose luxury and 
 debauchery, and another sobriety and riches, would not be, because every one 
 of these did not aim at his own happiness, but because their happiness was 
 placed in different things. And therefore it was a right answer of the phy- 
 sician to his patient that had sore eyes: if you have more pleasure in the taste 
 of wine than in the use of your sight, wine is good for you ; but if the pleasure 
 of seeing be greater to you than that of drinking, wine is naught. 
 
 Sect. 55. The mind has a different relish, as well as the palate; and you 
 will as fruitlessly endeavour to delight all men with riches or giory (which 
 yet some men place their happiness in) as you would to satisfy all men’s 
 
Ch. 21. 
 
 OF POWER. 
 
 169 
 
 hunger with cheese or lobsters : which though very agTeeable and delicious 
 fare to some, are to others extremely nauseous and offensive : and many 
 people would with reason prefer the griping of an hungry belly to those dishes 
 which are a feast to others. Hence it was, I think, that the philosophers 
 of old did in vain inquire, whether summum bonum consisted in riches, or 
 bodily delights, or virtue, or contemplation : and they might have as rea- 
 sonably disputed whether the best relish were to be found in apples, plums, 
 or nuts, and have divided themselves into sects upon it. For as pleasant 
 tastes depend not on the things themselves, but their agreeableness to tliis 
 or that particular palate, wherein there is great variety ; so the greatest 
 happiness consists in the having those things which produce the greatest 
 pleasure, and in the absence of those which cause any disturbance, any 
 pain. Now these, to different men, are very different things. If therefore 
 men in this life only have hope, if in this life they can only enjoy, it is not 
 strange nor unreasonable that they should seek their happiness by avoid- 
 ing all things that disease them here, and by pursuing all that delight them ; 
 wherein it will be no wonder to find variety and difference. For if there 
 be no prospect beyond the grave, the inference is certainly right, “ let us 
 eat and drink, ” let us enjoy what we delight in, “rior tomorrow we shall 
 die.” This, I think, may serve to show us the reason why, though all 
 men’s desires tend io-happiness, yet they are not moved . by the same ob- 
 ject. Menjnay choose different things, and.yet all choose right ; suppos- 
 ing them onlyTIEe" a company of poor insects, whereof some are bees, de- 
 lighted with flowers and their sweetness ; others beetles, delighted with 
 other kinds of viands, which having enjoyed for a season, they would cease 
 to be, and exist no more for ever. 
 
 will give us, as I think, a clear view into the state of human liberty. Li- 
 berty, it is plain, consists in a power to do r or notto-doq-to do-, or forbear 
 doing, as we .will. This cannot be denied. But this seeming to compre- 
 hend only the actions of a man consecutive to volition, it is farther inqui- 
 red, “whether he be at liberty to will, or no.” And to this it has been 
 answered, that in most cases a man is not at liberty to forbear the act of 
 volition : he must exert an act of his will, whereby the action proposed is 
 made to exist, or not to exist. But yet there is a case wherein a man is 
 at liberty in- respect of willing, and^that-fs-^the-ehoosh-ig-af- a- remote good 
 as aiyend to be~^>urgrredT~-Here_a t .marLjiiay_euspend the act of his choice 
 from b§nrgT}eternmfe~d~ for or against the thing proposed, tffl he has ex- 
 amined whether it be really of a nature in itself, and consequences to make 
 hire happy, or no. For when he has once chosen it, and thereby it is be- 
 come a part of his happiness, it raises desire, and that proportion- 
 aDly gives him uneasiness, which determines his will, and sets him at 
 work in pursuit of his choice on all occasions that offer. And here we 
 may see how it comes to pass, that a man may justly incur punishment, 
 though it be certain that in all the particular action's that he wills, he does, 
 and necessarily does will that which he then judges to be good. For, 
 though his will be always determined by that which is judged good by his 
 understanding, yet it excuses him not : because, by a too hasty choice of his 
 own making, he has imposed on himself wrong measures of good and 
 evil; which, however false and fallacious, have the same influence on ail 
 his future conduct as if they were true and right. He has vitiated his 
 own palate, and must be answerable to himself for the sickness and death 
 that follows from it. The eternal law and nature ofTfrings must not be 
 altered to comply with his ill-ordered choice. If the neglect or abuse of 
 the liberty he had to examine what would really and truly make for his 
 happiness misleads him, the miscarriages that follow on it must be imputed 
 to its own election. He had a power to suspend his determination: it 
 was given him that lie might examine and take care of his own happiness 
 
 ill . — These things, duly weighed, 
 
 W 
 
4.70 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 and look that he were not deceived. And he could never judge that it 
 was better to be deceived than not, in a matter of so great and near con- 
 cernment. 
 
 What has been said may also discover to us the reason why men in 
 .his world prefer different things, and pursue happiness by contrary courses. 
 But yet, since men are always constant, and in earnest, in matters of hap- 
 piness and misery, the question still remains, how men come often to 
 prefer the worse to the better ; and to choose that which, by their own 
 confession, has made them miserable 1 
 
 Sect. 57. To account for the various and contrary ways men take, 
 though all aim at being happy, we must consider whence the various un- 
 easinesses, that determine the will in the preference of each voluntary 
 action, have their rise. 
 
 From bodily pains.— -1. Some of them come from causes not in our power: 
 such W'-are.-ofteiT'TFie pains of the body from want, disease, or outward 
 injuries, as the rack, &c. w-hich when present and violent, operate for the 
 most part forcibly on the will, and turn the courses of men’s lives from 
 virtue, piety, and religion, and what before they judged to lead to happi- 
 ness ; every one not endeavouring, or through disuse not being able, by 
 the contemplation of remote and future good, to raise in himself desires of 
 them strong enough to counterbalance the uneasiness he feels in those 
 bodily torments, and to keep his will steady in the choice of those actions 
 which lead to future happiness. A neighbour country has been of late a 
 tragical theatre, from which we might fetch instances, if there needed any, 
 and the world did not in all countries and ages furnish examples enough to 
 confirm that received observation, “ necessitas cogit ad turpia;” and there- 
 fore there is great reason for us to pray, “ lead us not into temptation.” 
 
 From wrong desires arising from wrong judgment. — Other uneasi- 
 nesses arise from our desires of absent good ; which desires always bear 
 proportion to, and depend on, the judgment we make, and the relish we 
 have of any absent good : in both which we are apt to be variously misled, 
 and that by our own fault. • 
 
 Sect. 58. Our judgment of present good or evil always right. — 2. In 
 the first place I shall consider the wrong judgments men make of future 
 good and evil, whereby their desires are misled. For, as to present hap- 
 piness a.nd misery, when that alone comes into consideration, and the 
 consequences are quite removed, a man never chooses amiss ; he knows 
 what best pleases him, and that he actually prefers. Things in their 
 present enjoyment are what they seem ; the apparent and real good are, 
 in this case, always the same: for the pain or pleasure being just so great, 
 and no greater than it is felt, the present good or evil is really so much as 
 it appears. And, therefore, were every action of ours concluded within 
 itself, and drew no consequences after it, we should undoubtedly never err 
 in our choice of good ; we should always infallibly prefer the best. Were 
 the pains of honest industry and of starving with hunger and cold, set 
 together before us, nobody would be in doubt which to choose : were 
 the satisfaction of a lust, and the joys of heaven, offered at once to any 
 one’s present possession, he would not balance or err in the determination 
 of his choice. 
 
 Sect. 59. But since our voluntary actions carry not all the happiness 
 and misery that depend on them along with them in their present perfor- 
 mance, but are the precedent causes of good and evil, which they draw 
 after them, and bring upon us, when they themselves are passed and cease 
 to be ; our desires look beyond our present enjoyments, and carry the mind 
 cut to absent good, according to the necessity which we think there is of 
 it to the making or increase of our happiness. .It is our opinion of such a 
 necessity that gifyes it its attraction: without that we are not moved by 
 absent good. For in thi3 narrow scantling of capacity, which' we are ac . 
 
Ch. 21 
 
 OF POWER. 
 
 171 
 
 customed to and sensible of here, wherein we enjoy but one pleasure at 
 once, which, when all uneasiness is away, is, whilst it lasts, sufficient to 
 make us think ourselves happy, it is not all remote, and even apparent 
 good, that affects us. Because the indolency and enjoyment we have 
 sufficing for our present happiness, we desire not to venture the change ; 
 since we judge that we are happy already, being content, and that is 
 enough. For who is content, is happy. But as soon as any new unea- 
 siness comes in, this happiness is disturbed, and we are set afresh on work 
 in the pursuit of happiness. 
 
 Sect. 60. From a wrong- judgment. of what makes a necessarij part of 
 their happiness . — Their aptness therefore to conclude that they can be hap- 
 py withojit it, is one great occasion that men often are not raised to the 
 desire of the greatest absent good. For— whilst such thoughts possess 
 them, the joys of a fut ure sta.tp_.‘.mo.ve them not; they have little concern 
 or uneasiness about them ; and the will, free from the determination of 
 such desires, is left to the pursuit of nearer satisfactions, and to the re- 
 moval of those uneasinesses which it then feels, in its want of and longings 
 after them. Change but a man’s view of these things ; let him see that 
 virtue and religion are necessary to his happiness, let him look into the 
 future state of bliss or misery, and see there God, the righteous judge, 
 ready to “ render to every man according to his deeds ; to them who by 
 patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, and honour, and immor- 
 tality, eternal life ; but unto every soul that doth evil, indignation and 
 wrath, tribulation and anguish;” to him, I say, who hath a prospect 
 of the different state of perfect happiness or misery that attends all mer> 
 after this life, depending on their behaviour here, the measures of good and 
 evil, that govern his choice, are mightily changed. For since nothing of 
 pleasure and pain in this life can bear any proportion to the endless hap. 
 piness, or exquisite misery, of an immortal soul hereafter, actions in his 
 power will have their preference, not according to the transient pleasure 
 or pain that accompanies or follows them here, but as they serve to secure 
 that perfect durable happiness hereafter. 
 
 Sect, -6] A more-particular account of wrong judgments . — But to ac- 
 
 count more particularly for the misery that men often bring on themselves, 
 notwithstanding that they do all in earnest pursue happiness, we must 
 consider how things come to be represented to our desires, under deceit- 
 ful appearances ; and that is by the judgment pronouncing wrongly con- 
 cerning them. To see how far this reaches, and what are the causes of 
 wrong judgment, we must remember that things are judged good or bad in a 
 douBle~senae— - - — 
 
 First, That which is properly good or bad, is nothing but barely pleasure 
 or pain. 
 
 Secondly, But because not only present pleasure and pain, but that also 
 which is apt by its efficacy or consequences to bring it upon us at a dis- 
 tance, is a proper object of our desires, and apt to move a creature that 
 has foresight: therefore things also that draw after them pleasure and pain 
 are considered as good and evil. 
 
 Sect. 62. The wrong judgment that misleads us, and makes the will 
 often fasten on the worse side, lies in misreporting upon the various com- 
 parisons of these. The wrong judgment I am here speaking of, is not what 
 one man may think of the determination of another, but what every man 
 himself must confess to be wrong. For since I lay it for a certain ground 
 that every intelligent being really seeks happiness, which consists in the 
 enjoyment of pleasure, without any considerable mixture of uneasiness ; 
 it is impossible any one should willingly put into his own draught any 
 bitter ingredient, or leave out any thing in his power that would tend to 
 his satisfaction, and the completing of his happiness, but only by wrong judg- 
 ment. I shall not here speak of that mistake, which is the consequence 
 
172 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book. 2. 
 
 of invincible error, which scarce deserves the name of wrong 1 judgment; 
 but of that wrong judgment which every man himself must confess to 
 he so. 
 
 Sect. 63. In comparing present and future. — If, therefore, as to present 
 pleasure and pain, the mind, as has been said, never mistakes that 
 which is really good or evil ; that which is the greater pleasure, or the 
 greater pain, is really just as it appears. But though present pleasure and 
 pain show their dilference and degrees so plainly as not to leave room for 
 mistake, yet when we compare present pleasure or pain with future (which 
 is usually the case in the most important determinations of the will,) we 
 often make wrong judgments of them, taking our measures of them in dif- 
 ferent positions of distance. Objects near our view are apt to be thought 
 greater than those of a larger size that are more remote : and so it is with 
 pleasures and pains, the present is apt to carry it, and those at a distance 
 have the disadvantage in the comparison. Thus most men, like spendthrift 
 heirs, are apt to judge a little in hand better than a great deal to come : and 
 so, for small matters in possession, part with greater ones in reversion. 
 But that this is a wrong judgment every one must allow, let his pleasure 
 consist in whatever it will : since that which is future will certainly come 
 to be present ; and then, having the same advantage of nearness, will show 
 itself in its full dimensions, and discover his wilful mistake, who judged of it 
 by unequal measures. Were the pleasure of drinking accompanied, the very 
 moment a man takes off his glass, with that sick stomach and aching head, 
 which, in some men, are sure to follow not many hours after, I think no- 
 body, whatever pleasure he had in his cups, would, on these conditions, 
 ever let wine touch his lips ; which yet he daily swallows, and the evil side 
 comes to be chosen only by the fallacy of a little difference in time. But if 
 pleasure or pain can be so lessened only by a few hours’ removal, how 
 much more will it be so by a farther distance, to a man that will not by a 
 right judgment do what time will, i. e. bring it home upon himself, and 
 consider it as present, and there take its true dimensions ! This is the 
 way we usually impose on ourselves, in respect of bare pleasure and pain, 
 or the true degrees of happiness or misery: the future loses its just propor- 
 tion, and what is present obtains the preference as the greater. I mention 
 not here the wrong judgment, whereby the absent are not only lessened, 
 but reduced to perfect nothing ; when men enjoy what they can in present, 
 and make sure of that, concluding amiss that no evil will thence follow. 
 For that lies not in comparing the greatness of future good and evil, which 
 is that we are here speaking of, but in another sort of wrong judgment, 
 which is concerning good or evil, as it is considered to be the cause and 
 procurement of pleasure or pain, that will follow from it. 
 
 Sect. 64. Cause of this. — The cause of our judging amiss, when we 
 compare our present pleasure or pain with future, seems to me to be the 
 weak and narrow constitution of our minds. We cannot well enjoy two 
 pleasures at once, much less any pleasure almost whilst pain possesses 
 us. The present pleasure, if it be not very languid, and almost none 
 at all, fills our narrow souls, and so takes up the whole mind that it scarce 
 leaves any thought of things absent ; or if, among our pleasures, there are ~ 
 some which are not strong enough to exclude the consideration of things 
 at a distance ; yet we have so great an abhorrence of pain, that a little of 
 it extinguishes all our pleasure ; a little bitter mingled in our cup leaves no 
 relish of the sweet. Hence it comes that at any rate we desire to be rid 
 of the present evil, which we are apt to think nothing absent can equal ; 
 because, under the present pain, we find not ourselves capable of any the 
 least degree of happiness. Men’s daily complaints are a loud proof of this : 
 the pain that any actually feels is still of all other the worst ; and it is 
 with anguish they cry out, “ Any rather than this ; nothing can be so in- 
 tolerable as what I now suffer.” And therefore our whole endeavours and 
 
Ch. 21. 
 
 OF POWER. 
 
 173 
 
 thoughts are intent to get rid of the present evil, before an things, as the 
 first necessary condition to our happiness, let what will follow. Nothing, 
 as we passionately think, can exceed, or almost equal, the uneasiness that 
 sits so heavy upon us. And because the abstinence from a present plea- 
 sure that offers itself is a pain, nay oftentimes a very great one, the desire 
 being inflamed by a near and tempting object, it is no wonder that that 
 operates after the same manner pain does, and lessens in our thoughts 
 what is future ; and so forces us, as it were, blindfold into its embraces. 
 
 Sect. 65. Add to this, that absent good, or which is the same thing, 
 future pleasure, especially if of a sort we are unacquainted with, seldom is 
 able to counterbalance any uneasiness, either of pain or desire, which is 
 present. For its greatness being no more than what shall be really tasted 
 when enjoyed, men are apt enough to lessen that, to make it give place to 
 any present desire ; and conclude with themselves, that when it comes to 
 trial, it may possibly not answer the report or opinion that generally passes 
 of it ; they having often found, that not only what others have magnified, 
 but even what they themselves have enjoyed with great pleasure and de- 
 light at one time, has proved insipid or nauseous at another ; and therefore 
 they see nothing in it for which they should forego a present enjoyment. 
 But that this is a false way of judging, when applied to the happiness of 
 another life, they must confess ; unless they will say, “ God cannot make 
 those happy he designs to be so.” For that being intended for a state of 
 happiness, it must certainly be agreeable to every one’s wish and desire : 
 could we suppose their relishes as different there, as they are here, yet the 
 manna in heaven will suit every one’s palate. Thus much of the wrong 
 judgment we make of present and future pleasure and pain, when they are 
 compared together, and so the absent considered as future. 
 
 Sect. 66. In considering consequences of actions. — As to things good 
 or bad in their consequences, and by the aptness that is in them to procure 
 us good or evil in the future, we judge amiss several ways. 
 
 1. When we judge that so much evil does not really depend on them, 
 as in truth there does. 
 
 2. When we judge, that though the consequence be of that moment, yet 
 it is not of that certainty but that it may -otherwise fall out, or else by some 
 means be avoided, as by industry, address, change, repentance, &c. That 
 these are wrong ways of judging, were easy to show in every particular, if 
 I would examine them at large singly : but I shall only mention this in ge- 
 neral, viz. that it is a very wrong and irrational way of proceeding, to ven- 
 ture a greater good for a less, upon uncertain guesses, and before a due ex- 
 amination be made proportionable to the weightiness of the matter, and the 
 concernment it is to us not to mistake. This, I think, every one must 
 confess, especially if he considers the usual causes of this wrong judgment, 
 whereof these following are some : 
 
 Sect. 67. Causes of this.- — 1. Ignorance : he that judges without inform- 
 ing himself to the utmost that he is capable, cannot acquit himself of judg- 
 ing amiss. 
 
 2. Inadvertency: when a man overlooks even that which he does know. 
 This is an affected and present ignorance, which misleads our judgments 
 as much as the other. Judging is, as it were, balancing an account, and 
 determining on which side the odds lie. If therefore either side be huddled 
 up in haste, and several of the sums that should have gone into the reck- 
 oning be overlooked and left out, this precipitancy causes as wrong a 
 judgment as if it were a perfect ignorance. That which most commonly 
 causes this is the prevalency of some present pleasure or pain, heightened 
 by our feeble passionate nature, most strongly wrought on by what is pre- 
 sent. To check this precipitancy, our understanding and reason was given 
 us, if we will make a right use of it, to search and see, and then judge there- 
 upon. Without liberty, the understanding would be to no purpose : and with- 
 
OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book. 2. 
 
 174 
 
 out understanding, liberty (if it could be) would signify nothing. If a marl 
 sees what would do him good or harm, what would make him happy or mis- 
 erable, without being able to move himself one step towards or from it, 
 what is he the better for seeing ? And he that is at liberty to ramble in per- 
 fect darkness, what is his liberty better than if he were driven up and down 
 as a bubble by the force of the wind? The being acted by a blind impulse 
 from without, or from within, is little odds. The first, therefore, and great 
 use of liberty, is to hinder blind precipitancy ; the principal exercise of free- 
 dom is to stand still, open the eyes, look about, and take a view of the con- 
 sequence of what we are going to do, as much as the weight of the matter 
 requires. How much sloth and negligence, heat and passion, the preva- 
 lency of fashion, or acquired indispositions, do severally contribute on oc- 
 casion to these wrong judgments, I shall not here farther inquire. I shall 
 only add one other false judgment, which I think necessary to mention, be- 
 cause, perhaps, it is little taken notice of, though of great influence. 
 
 Sect. 68. Wrong judgment of what is necessary to our happiness . — 
 All men desire happiness, that is past doubt; but, as has been already ob- 
 served, when they are rid of pain, they are apt to take up with any pleasure 
 at hand, or that custom has endeared to them, to rest satisfied in that ; and 
 so being happy, till some new desire, by making tliem'uneasy, disturbs that 
 happiness, and shows them that they are not so, they look no farther ; nor 
 is the will determined to any action, in pursuit of any other known or ap- 
 parent good. For since we find, that we cannot enjoy all sorts of good, 
 but one excludes another, we do not fix our desires on every apparent great- 
 er good, unless it be judged to be necessary to our happiness ; if we think 
 we can be happy without it, it moves us not. This is another occasion to 
 men of judging wrong, when they take not that to be necessary to their 
 happiness which really is so. This mistake misleads us both irrthe choice 
 of the good we aim at, and very often in the means to it, when it is a re- 
 mote good : but which way ever it be, either by placing it where really 
 it is not, or by neglecting the means as not necessary to it ; when a man 
 misses his great end, happiness, he will acknowledge he judged not right. 
 That which contributes to this mistake, is the real or supposed unpleasant- 
 ness of the actions which are the -way to this end; it seeming so preposter- 
 ous a thing to men to make themselves unhappy in order to happiness, that 
 they do not easily bring themselves to it. 
 
 Sect. 69. We can change the agreeableness or disagreeableness in 
 things . — The last inquiry therefore concerning this matter is, “ whether 
 it be in a man’s power to change the pleasantness and unpleasantness that 
 accompanies any sort of action ? ” And as to that, it is plain in many 
 cases he can. Men may and should correct their palates, and give relish 
 to what either has, or they suppose has, none. The relish of the mind is 
 as various as that of the body, and like that too may be altered ; and it is a 
 mistake to think that men cannot change the displeasingness or indifferency 
 that is in actions into pleasure and desire, if they will do but what is in their 
 power. A due consideration will do it in some cases ; and practice, applica- 
 tion, and custom in most. Bread or tobacco may be neglected, where they 
 are shown to be useful to health, because of an indifferency or disrelish to 
 them; reason and consideration at first recommend, and begin their trial, 
 and use finds or custom makes them pleasant. That this is so in virtue too 
 is very certain. Actions are pleasing or displeasing, either in themselves, 
 or considered as a means to a greater and more desirable end. The eating 
 of a well-seasoned dish, suited to a man’s palate, may move the mind by the 
 delight itself that accompanies the eating, without reference to any other 
 end : to which the consideration of the pleasure there is in health and 
 strength, (to which that meat is subservient) may add a new gusto, able 
 to make us swallow an ill-relished potion. In the latter of these, any action 
 is rendered more or less pleasing only by the contemplation of the end, and 
 
Ch. 21. 
 
 OP POWER. 
 
 175 
 
 the being more or less persuaded of its tendency to it, or necessary con- 
 nexion with it : but the pleasure of the action itself is best acquired or in- 
 creased by use and practice. Trials often reconcile us to that which at a 
 distance we looked on with aversion, and by repetitions wear us into a 
 liking- of what possibly, in the first essay displeased us. Habits have 
 powerful charms, and put so strong attractions of easiness and pleasure 
 into what we accustom ourselves to, that we cannot forbear to do, or at 
 least be easy in the omission of actions, which habitual practice has suited, 
 and thereby recommends to us. Though this be very visible, and every 
 one’s experience shows him he can do so ; yet it is a part in the conduct 
 of men towards their happiness, neglected to a degree, that it will be pos- 
 sibly entertained as a paradox, if it be said, that men can make things or 
 actions more or less pleasing to themselves ; and thereby remedy that, to 
 which one may justly impute a great deal of their wandering. Fashion 
 and the common opinion having settled wrong notions, and education and 
 custom ill habits, the just values of things are misplaced, and the pa- 
 lates of men corrupted. Pains should be taken to rectify these ; and con- 
 trary habits change our pleasure, and give a relish to that which is neces- 
 sary or conducive to our happiness. This every one must confess he can 
 do ; and when happiness is lost, and misery overtakes him, he will confess 
 he did amiss in neglecting it; and condemn himself for it: and I ask every 
 one, whether he has not often done so 1 
 
 Sect. 70. Preference of vi<:e tQjuriMej-a- -m<intfes'tTirro-ng judgment '. — 
 I shall not~noivlfnlargS - arT^ on the wrong judgments and neglect 
 
 of what is in their power, whereby men mislead themselves. This would 
 make a volume, and is not my business. But whatever false notions, or 
 shameful neglect of what is in their power, may put men out of their way to 
 happiness, and distract them, as we see, into so different courses of life, 
 this yet is certain, that morality, established upon its true foundations, can- 
 not but determine tire choice in any one that will but consider : and he that 
 will not he so far a rational creature as to reflect seriously upon infinite 
 happiness and misery, must needs condemn himself as not making that 
 use of his understanding he should. The rewards and punishments of 
 another life, which the Almighty has established as the enforcements of 
 his law, are of weight enough to determine the choice, against whatever 
 pleasure or pain this life can show, when the eternal state is considered 
 but in its bare possibility, which nobody can make any doubt of. He that 
 will allow exquisite and endless happiness to be but the possible conse- 
 quence of a good life here, and the contrary state the possible reward of a 
 bad one, must own himself to judge very much amiss if he does not con- 
 clude, that a virtuous life, with the certain expectation of everlasting bliss, 
 which may come, is to be preferred to a vicious one, with the fear of that 
 dreadful state of misery, which it is very possible may overtake the guilty ; 
 or at best the terrible uncertain hope of annihilation. This is evidently 
 so, though the virtuous life here had nothing but pain, and the vicious con- 
 tinual pleasure : which yet is, for the most part, quite otherwise, and 
 wicked men have not much the odds to brag of, even in their present pos- 
 session ; nay, all things rightly considered, have, I think, even the worst 
 part here. But when infinite happiness is put in one scale against infinite 
 misery in the other, if the worst that comes to the pious man, if he mis 
 takes, be the best that the wicked can attain to, if he be in the right, who 
 can without madness run the venture! Who in his wits would choose to 
 come within a possibility of infinite misery, which, if he miss, there is yet 
 nothing to be got by the hazard ? Whereas, on the other side, the sober 
 man ventures nothing against infinite happiness to be got, if his expecta- 
 tion comes to pass. If the good man be in the right, he is eternally happy ; 
 if he mistakes, he is not miserable ; he feels nothing. On the other 
 side, if the wicked man be in the right, he is not happy ; if he mistakes, he is 
 
 L 
 
176 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 infinitely miserable. Must it not be a most manifest wrong judgment that 
 does not presently see to which side, in this case, the preference is to be 
 given 1 I have forborne to mention any thing of the certainty or probability of 
 a future state, designing here to show the wrong judgment that any one 
 must allow he makes upon his own principles, laid how he pleases, who 
 prefers the short pleasures of a vicious life upon any consideration, whilst 
 lie knows, and cannot but be certain, that a future life is at least possible. 
 
 Sect. 71. Recapitulation. — To conclude this inquiry into human liberty, 
 which, as it stood before, I myself from the beginning fearing, and a very 
 judicious friend of mine, since the publication, suspecting to have some 
 mistake in it, though he could not particularly show it me, I was put 
 upon a stricter review of this chapter; wherein lighting upon a very easy 
 and scarce observable slip I had made, in putting one seemingly indif- 
 ferent word for another, that discovery opened to me this present view, 
 which here, in this second edition, I submit to the learned world, and which 
 in short is this : “ Liberty is a power to act or not to act, according as the 
 mind directs.” A power to direct the operative faculties to^motion or 
 rest in particular instances, is that which we call the will. That which 
 in the train of our voluntary actions determines the will to any change of 
 operation, is some present uneasiness ; which is, or at least is always ac- 
 companied with, that of desire. Desire is always moved by evil, to fly it ; 
 because a total freedom from pain always makes a necessary part of our 
 happiness : but every good, nay, every greater good, does not constantly 
 move desire, because -it may not make, or jmay not be taken~To ’make, any 
 necessary part of our happiness: for all that we 3esTre'is only to BeTiappy. 
 But though this general desire of happiness operates constantly and inva- 
 riably, yet the satisfaction of any particular desire can be suspended from 
 determining the will to any subservient action till we have maturely ex- 
 amined, whether the particular apparent good, which we then desire, 
 makes a part of our real happiness, or be consistent or inconsistent with it. 
 The result of ourjudgment upon that examination is what ultimately de- 
 termines the man, who could not be free if his will were determined by 
 any thing but his own desire, guided by his own judgment. I know that 
 liberty by some is placed in an indifferency of the man antecedent to the 
 determination of his will. I wish they, who lay so much stress on such an 
 antecedent indifferency, as they call it, had told us plainly, whether this 
 supposed indifferency be antecedent to the thought and judgment of 
 the understanding, as well as to the decree of the will. For it is pretty 
 hard to state it between them ; i. e. immediately after the judgment of the 
 understanding, and before the determination of the will, because the de- 
 termination of the will immediately follows the judgment of the understand- 
 ing: and to place liberty in an indifferency, antecedent to the thought 
 and judgment of the understanding, seems to me to place liberty in a state 
 of darkness, wherein we can neither see nor say any thing of it; at Last 
 it places it in a subject incapable of it, no agent being allowed capable of 
 liberty but in consequence of thought and judgment. I am not nice about 
 phrases, and therefore consent to say, with those that love to speak so, that 
 liberty is placed in indifferency; but it is an indifferency which remains 
 after the judgment of the understanding; yea, even after the determination 
 of the will : and that is an indifferency not of the man (for after he has 
 once judged which is best, viz. to do or forbear, he is no longer indif- 
 ferent,) but an indifferency of the operative powers of the man, which, 
 remaining equally able to operate, or to forbear operating, after, as before, 
 the decree of the will, are in a state which, if one pleases, may be called 
 indifferency ; and as far as this indifferency reaches, a man is free, and no 
 farther : v. g. I have the ability to move my hand, or to let it rest ; that 
 operative power is indifferent to move, or not to move my hand: I am 
 then in that respect perfectly free. My will determines that operative 
 
Ch. 21. 
 
 OF POWER. 
 
 177 
 
 power to rest, I am yet free, because the indifferency of that my ope- 
 rative power to act, or not to act, still remains ; the _power of moving my 
 hand is not at all impaired by the determination of my will, which at pre- 
 sent orders resty the indifferency of that power to act, or not to act, is just as 
 it was before, as will appear, if the will puts it to the trial, by ordering the 
 contrary. But if during the rest of my hand it be seized by a sudden palsy, 
 the indifferency of that operative power is gone ; and with it my liberty ; 
 I have no longer freedom in that respect, but am under a necessity of let- 
 ting my hand rest. On the other side, if my hand be put into motion by a 
 convulsion, the indifferency of that operative faculty is taken away by that 
 motion, and my liberty in that case is lost: for I am under a necessity of 
 having my hand move. I have added this to show in what sort of in- 
 differency liberty seems to me to consist, and not in any other, real or 
 imaginary. 
 
 Sect. 72. True notions concerning the nature and extent of liberty 
 are of so great importance, that I hope I shall be pardoned this digression, 
 which my attempt to explain it has led me into. The ideas of will, volition, 
 liberty, and necessity, in this chapter of power, came naturally in my way. 
 In a former edition of this treatise I gave an account of my thoughts con- 
 cerning them, according to the light I then had : and now, as a lover of 
 truth, and not a worshipper of my own doctrines, I own some change of 
 my opinion, which I think I have discovered ground for. In what I first 
 writ, I with an unbiassed indifferency followed truth, whither I thought she 
 led me. But neither being so vain as to fancy infallibility, nor so disin- 
 genuous as to dissemble my mistakes for fear of blemishing my reputation, 
 I have, with the same sincere design for truth only, not been ashamed to 
 publish what a severer inquiry has suggested. It is not impossible but that 
 6ome may think my former notions right, and some (as I have already 
 found) these latter, and some neither. I shall not at all wonder at this 
 variety in men’s opinions ; impartial deductions of reason in controverted 
 points being so rare, and exact ones in abstract notions not so very easy, 
 especially if of any length. And therefore I should think myself not a little 
 beholden to any one, who would upon these, or any other grounds, 
 fairly clear this subject of liberty from any difficulties that may yet 
 remain. 
 
 Before I close this chapter, it may perhaps be to our purpose, and help 
 to give us clearer conceptions about power, if we make our thoughts take 
 a little more exact survey of action. I have said above, that'tvejiave ideas 
 but of two sorts of action, viz. motion and thinking. These, in truth,, 
 though called anff XTmnted' actions, yet, if nearly" considered, will not be 
 found to be always perfectly so. For, if I mistake not, there are instan- 
 ces of both lands, which, upon due consideration, will be found rather 
 passions than actions, and consequently so far the effects barely of passive 
 powers in those subjects, which yet on their accounts are thought agents. 
 For in these instances, the substance that has motion or thought receives 
 the impression, where it is put into that action purely from without, and 
 so acts merely by the capacity it has to receive such an impression from 
 some external agent; and such a power is not properly an active power, 
 but a mere passive capacity in the subject. Sometimes the substance or 
 agent puts itself into action by its own power, and this is properly active 
 power. Whatsoever modification a substance has, whereby it produces 
 any effect, that is called action : v. g. a solid substance by motion operates 
 on or alters the sensible ideas of another substance, and therefore this modi- 
 fication of motion we call action. But yet this motion in that solid substance 
 is, when rightly considered, but a passion, if it received it only from some ex- 
 ternal agent. So that the active power of motion is in no substance which 
 cannot begin motion in itself, O’ in another substance, when at rest. So 
 X 
 
178 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book <J 
 
 likewise in thinking 1 , a power to receive ideas or thoughts, from the opera 
 tion of any external substance, is called a power of thinking: but this is 
 but a passive power, or capacity. But to be able to bring into view ideas 
 out of sight at one’s own choice, and to compare which of them one thinks 
 fit, this is an active power. This reflection may be of some use to pre- 
 serve us from mistakes about powers and actions, which grammar and the 
 common frame of languages may be apt to lead us into; since what is sig- 
 nified by verbs that grammarians call active, does not always signify ac- 
 tion : v. g. this proposition, I see the moon, or a star, or I feel the heat of 
 the sun, though expressed by a verb active, does not signify any action in 
 me, whereby I operate on those substances ; but the reception of the ideas 
 of light, roundness, and heat, wherein I am not active, but barely passive, 
 and cannot in that position of my eyes or body avoid receiving them. But 
 when I turn my eyes another way, or remove my body our of the sunbeams, 
 I am properly active, because of my own choice, by a power within my- 
 self, I put myself into that motion. Such an action is the product of active 
 power. 
 
 Sect. 73. And thus I have, in a short draught, given a view of our ori- 
 ginal ideas, fro m whence all the rest are derived, and of which they are 
 made up; which if I would consider as a philosopher, and examine on what 
 causes they depend, and of what they are made, I believe they all might be 
 reduced to these very few primary and original ones, viz. extension, solidi- 
 ty, mobility, or the power of being-moved, -which by our senses we receive 
 from body-^perceptivity, or the power of perception or thinking: motivit v. 
 or the poweroFhmdng ; which by reflection we receive from our minds. 
 I crave leave to make use of these two new words, to avoid the danger of 
 being mistaken in the use of those which are equivocal. To which if we 
 add existence, duration, number, — which belong both to the one and the 
 other, — we have, perhaps, all -the original ideas, on which the rest depend. 
 For, by these, 1 imagine, might be explained the nature of colours, sounds, 
 tastes, smells, and all other ideas we have, if we had but faculties acute 
 enough to perceive the severally modified extensions and motions of these 
 minute bodies, which produce those several sensations in us. But my pre- 
 sent purpose being only to inquire into the knowledge the mind has of 
 things, by those ideas and appearances which God has fitted it to receive 
 from them, and how the mind comes by that knowledge, rather than into 
 their causes or manner of production ; I shall not, contrary to the design of 
 this essay, set myself to inquire philosophically into the peculiar constitu- 
 tion of bodies, and the configuration of parts, whereby they have the power 
 to produce in us the ideas of their sensible qualities : I shall not enter any 
 farther into that disquisition, it sufficing to my purpose to observe, that gold 
 or saffron has a power to produce in us the idea of yellow-, and snow 
 or milk the idea of white, which we can only have by our sight, without exam- 
 ining the texture of the parts of those bodies, or the particular figures or mo- 
 tion of the particles which rebound from them, to cause in us that particular 
 sensation : though when we go beyond the bare 'deas in our minds, and would 
 inquire into their causes, we cannot conceive any thing else to be in any 
 sensible object, whereby it produces different ide^s m u^, bn* the different 
 bu.k, figure, number, texture, and motion of its mseruuble Darts. 
 
Ch. 22. 
 
 OF MIXED MODES. 
 
 179 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 OF MIXED MODES. 
 
 Sect. 1. Mixed modes, what. — Having treated of simple modes in the 
 foregoing chapters, and given several instances of some of the most con- 
 siderable of them, to show what they are, and how we come by them, 
 we are now in the next place to consider those we call mixedmodes: such 
 are the complex ideas we mark by the names obligation, drunkenness, a 
 lie, &c. which consisting of several combinations of simple ideas of differ- 
 ent kinds, I have called mixed modes, to distinguish them from the more 
 simple modes- .which consist only of simple ideas of the same kind. These 
 mixed modes being also sucfr^ombmatioti^ as are not looked 
 
 upon to be characterist.ical marks of any real beings that have a steady 
 existence, but scattered and independent ideas put together by th'e mind, 
 are thereby distinguishable from the complex ideas of substances. 
 
 Sect. 2. Made by the mind. — That the mind, in respect of its simple 
 ideas, is wholly passive, and receives them all from the existence and ope- 
 rations of things, such as sensation or reflection offers them, without being 
 able to make any one idea, experience shows us : but if we attentively 
 consider these ideas I call mixed modes, we are now speaking of, w'e shall 
 find their original quite different. The mind often exercises an active 
 power in making these several combinations: for it being once furnished 
 with simple ide'as, It' can put them together in several compositions, and 
 so make variety of complex ideas, without examining whether they exist so 
 together in nature. And hence I think it is that these ideas are called 
 notions, as if they had their original and constant existence more in the 
 thoughts of men than in the reality of things : and to form such ideas, it 
 sufficed that the mind puts the parts of them together, and that they w y ere 
 consistent in the understanding, without considering whether they had 
 any real being: though I do not deny but several of them might be taken 
 from observation, and the existence of several simple ideas so combined, 
 as they are put together in the understanding. For the man who first 
 framed the idea of hypocrisy might have either taken it at first from the 
 observation of one, who made show of good qualities which he had not, 
 or else have framed that idea in his mind, without having any such pattern 
 to fashion it by : for it is evident, that in the beginning of languages and 
 societies of men, several of those complex ideas, which were consequent 
 to the constitutions established among them, must needs have been in the 
 minds of men, before they existed any where else: and that many names 
 that stood for such complex ideas were in use, and so those ideas framed, 
 before the combinations they stood for ever existed. 
 
 Sect. 3._ Sometimes got by the explication of their names. — Indeed, 
 now that languages are made, and abound with words standing for such 
 combinations, a usual way of getting these complex ideas is by the ex- 
 plication of those terms that stand for them : for consisting of a company 
 of simple ideas combined, they may by words, standing for those simple 
 ideas, be represented to the mind of one who understands those words, 
 though that complex combination of simple ideas were never offered to his 
 mind by the real existence of things. Thus a man may come to have the 
 idea of sacrilege or murder, by enumerating to him the simple ideas which 
 these words stand for, without ever seeing either of them committed. 
 
 Sect. 4. The name ties the parts of mixed modes into one idea. — Every 
 mixed mode consisting of many distinct simple ideas, it seems reasonable 
 
180 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 to inquire, “ whence it has its unity, and how such a precise multitude 
 comes to make but one idea, since that combination does not always exist 
 together in nature V’ To which I answer, it is plain it has its unity from an 
 act of the mind combining those several simple ideas together, and con- 
 sideringthem as one complex one, consisting of those parts; and the mark 
 of this union, or that which is looked on generally to complete it, is one name 
 given to that combination. For it is by their names that men commonly 
 regulate their account of their distinct species of mixed modes, seldom 
 allowing or considering any number of simple ideas to make one complex 
 one, but such collections as there be names for. Thus, though the 
 killing of an old man be as fit in nature to be united into one complex idea as 
 the killing a man’s father: yet there being no name standing precisely for 
 the one, as there is the name of parricide to mark the other, it is not 
 taken for a particular complex idea, nor a distinct species ofactions from that 
 of killing a young man, or any other man. 
 
 Sect. 5. The cause of making mixed modes. — If we should inquire a little 
 farther, frr-see what it is that occasions men to make several combinations 
 of simple ideas into distinct, and, as it were, settled modes, and neglect others 
 which in the nature of things themselves have as much aptness to be com 
 billed and make distinct ideas, we shall find the reason of it to be the end of 
 language ; which being to mark or communicate men’s thoughts to one 
 another with all the despatch that may be, they usually made such collec- 
 tions of ideas into complex modes, and affix names to them, as they have 
 frequent use of in their way of living and conversation, leaving others, 
 which they have but seldom an occasion to mention, loose and without 
 names to tie them together; they rather choosing to enumerate (when 
 they have need) such ideas as make them up, by the particular names 
 that stand forthem, than to trouble their memories by multiplying of complex 
 ideas with names to them, which they seldom or never have any occasion 
 to make use of. 
 
 Sect. 6. Why words in one language have none answering in another. 
 — This shows us how it comes to pass, that there are in every language 
 many particular words which cannot be rendered by any one single word 
 of another. For the several fashions, customs, and manners of one nation, 
 making several combinations of ideas familiar and necessary in one, which 
 another people have had never any occasion to make, or perhaps so much 
 as taken notice of; names come of course to be annexed to them, to avoid 
 long periphrases in things of daily conversation, and so they become so many 
 distinct complex ideas in their minds. Thus ia-fj.cn among the Greeks, and 
 proscriptio among the Romans, were words which other languages had no 
 names that exactly answered, because they stood for complex ideas, which 
 were not in the minds of the men of other nations. Where there was no 
 such custom, there was no notion of any such actions ; no use of such com- 
 binations of ideas as were united, and as it were tied together by those terms : 
 and therefore in other countries there were no names forthem. 
 
 Sect. 7. And languages change. — Hence also we may see the reason 
 why languages constantly change, take up new and lay by old terms ; because 
 change of customs and opinions bringing with it new combinations of ideas, 
 which it is necessary frequently to think on, and talk about, new names, 
 to avoid long descriptions, are annexed to them, and so they become new 
 species of complex modes. What a number of different ideas are by this 
 means wrapt up in one short sound, and how much of our time and breath is 
 thereby saved, any one will see, who will but take pains to enumerate all the 
 ideas that either reprieve or appeal stand for; and, instead of either of 
 those names, use a periphrasis, to make any one understand their meaning. 
 
 Sect. 8. Mixed modes, where they exist. — Though I shall have occasion 
 to consider this more at large, when I come to treat of words and their 
 use. yet I could not avoid to take thus much notice here of the names of 
 
Ch. 22. 
 
 OF MIXED MODES. 
 
 181 
 
 mixed modes; which being fleeting and transient combinations of simple 
 ideas, which have but a short existence any where but in the minds of men, 
 and there, too, have no longer any existence than whilst they are thought 
 on, have not so much any where the appearance of a constant and lasting 
 existence as in their names : which are, therefore, in this sort of ideas, very 
 apt to be taken for the ideas themselves. For if we should inquire where the 
 idea of a triumph or apotheosis exists, it is evident they could neither of 
 them exist altogether any where in the things themselves, being actions 
 that required time to their performance, and so could never all exist together : 
 and as to the minds of men, where the ideas of those actions are supposed 
 to be lodged, they have there too a very uncertain existence ; and therefore 
 we are apt to annex them to the names that excite them in us. 
 
 Sect. 9. How we get the ideas of mixed modes. — There are therefore 
 three ways whereby we get the complex ideas of mixed modes. 1. By 
 experience and observation of things themselves. Thus by seeing two men 
 wrestle or fence, we get the idea ofwrestling or fencing. 2. By invention, 
 or voluntarily putting together of several simple ideas in our own minds : 
 so he that first invented printing, or etching, had an idea of it in his mind 
 before it ever existed,__.3. Which is the most usual way, by explaining 
 the names of actions we never saw, or notions we cannot see ; and by 
 enumerating, and thereby, as it were, setting before our imaginations ali 
 those ideas which go to the making them up, and are the constituent parts 
 of them. For having by sensation and reflection stored our minds with 
 simple ideas, and by use got the names that stand for them, we can by 
 those means represent to another any complex idea we would have him 
 conceive ; so that it has in it no simple ideas but what he knows and has 
 with us the same name for. For all our complex ideas are ultimately 
 resolvable into simple ideas, of which they are compounded and originally 
 made up, though perhaps their immediate ingredients, as I may so say, 
 are also complex ideas. Thus the mixed mode, which the word lie stands for, 
 is made up of these simple ideas : 1. Articulate sounds. 2. Certain ideas 
 in the mind of the speaker. 3. Those words the signs of those ideas. 4. 
 Those signs put together by affirmation or negation, otherwise than 
 the ideas they stand for, are in the mind of the speaker. I think I need 
 not go any farther in the analysis of that complex idea we call a lie : what 
 I have said is enough to show, that it is made up of simple ideas ; and 
 it could not be but an offensive tediousness to my reader, to trouble him 
 with a more minute enumeration of every particular simple idea that goes 
 to this complex one ; which, from what has been said, he cannot but be 
 able to make out to himself. The same may be done in all our complex 
 ideas whatsoever; which, however compounded and decompounded, may 
 at last be resolved into simple ideas, which are all the materials of know- 
 ledge or thought we have, or can have. Nor shall we have reason to 
 fear that the mind is hereby stinted to too scanty a number of ideas, 
 if we consider what an inexhaustible stock of simple modes, number 
 and figure alone afford us. How far then mixed modes, which admit of the 
 various combinations of different simple ideas, and their infinite modes, are 
 from being few and scanty, we may easily imagine. So that before we have 
 done, we shall see that nobody need be afraid he shall not have scope and 
 compass enough for his thoughts to range in, though they be, as I pretend, 
 confined only to simple ideas received from sensation or reflection, and 
 their several combinations. 
 
 Sect. 10. Motion, thinking, and •power, have been most modified. — It 
 is worth our observing, which of all our simple ideas have been most modi- 
 fied, and had most mixed ideas made out of them, with names given to 
 them; and those have been these three: thinking and motion (which are 
 the two ideas which comprehend in them all action) and power, from 
 whence these actions are conceived to flow. The simple ideas, I say, of 
 
182 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 thinking, motion, and power, have been those which have been most mo- 
 dified, and out of whose modifications have been made most complex 
 modes with names to them. For action being the great business of man- 
 kind, and the whole matter about which all laws are conversant, it is no 
 wonder that the several modes of thinking and motion should be taken 
 notice of, the ideas of them observed, and laid up in the memory, and have 
 names assigned to them ; without which, laws could be but ill made, or 
 vice and disorder repressed. Nor could any communication be well had 
 among men without such complex ideas with names to them : and there- 
 fore men have settled names, and supposed settled ideas in their minds, 
 of modes of action distinguished by their causes, means, objects, ends, in- 
 struments, time, place, and other circumstances; and also of their powers 
 fitted for those actions : v. g. boldness is the power to speak or do what 
 we intend, before others, without fear or disorder ; and the Greeks call the 
 confidence of speaking by a peculiar name, atria.: which power or 
 ability in man, of doing any thing, when it has been acquired by frequent 
 doing the same thing, is that idea we name habit ; when it is forward, and 
 ready upon every occasion to break into action, we call it disposition. 
 Thus, testiness is a disposition or aptness to be angry. 
 
 To conclude : let us examine any modes of action, v. g. consideration 
 and assent, which are actions of the mind ; running and speaking, which 
 are actions of the body; revenge and murder, which are actions of both to- 
 gether ; and we shall find them but so many collections of simple ideas, 
 which together make up the complex ones signified by those names. 
 
 Sect. 11. Several words seeming to signify action, signify but the 
 effect. — Power being the source from whence all action proceeds, the sub- 
 stances wherein these powers are, when they exert this power into act, 
 are called causes ; and the substances which thereupon are produced, or 
 the simple ideas which are introduced into any subject by the exerting of 
 that power, are called effects. The efficacy whereby the new substance 
 or idea is produced, is called, in the subject exerting that power, action ; 
 but in the subject wherein any simple idea is changed or produced, it is 
 called passion : which efficacy, however various, and the effects almost in- 
 finite, yet we can, I think, conceive it, in intellectual agents, to be nothing 
 else but modes of thinking and willing; in corporeal agents, nothing else 
 but modifications of motion. I say, I think we cannot conceive it to be 
 any other but these two : for whatever sort of action, besides these, pro- 
 duces any effects, I confess myself to have no notion or idea of ; and so it 
 is quite remote from my thoughts, apprehensions and knowledge ; and as 
 much in the dark to me as five other senses, or as the ideas of colours to a 
 blind man : and therefore many words, which seem to express some ac- 
 tion, signify nothing of the action or modus operandi at all, but barely the 
 effect, with some circumstances of the subject wrought on, or cause ope- 
 rating; v. g. creation, annihilation, contain in them no idea of the action 
 or manner whereby they are produced, but barely of the cause and the 
 thing done. And when a countryman says the cold freezes water, though 
 the word freezing seems to import some action, yet truly it signifies no- 
 thing but the effect, viz. that water that was before fluid is become hard 
 and consistent, without containing any idea of the action whereby it is 
 done. 
 
 Sect. 12. Mixed modes made also of other ideas. — I think I shall not 
 need to remark here, that though power and action make the greatest part 
 of mixed inodes, marked by names, and familiar in the minds and mouths 
 of men, yet other simple ideas, and their several combinations, are not ex- 
 cluded : much less, I think, will it be necessary for me to enumerate all 
 the mixed modes which have been settled with names to them. That 
 would be to make a dictionary of the greatest part of the words made use 
 of in divinity, ethics, law, and politics, and several other sciences. All 
 that is requisite to my present design is, to show what sort of ideas thoss 
 
Ch. 22. 
 
 OF MIXED MODES. 
 
 133 
 
 •ire, which I call mixed modes, how the mind comes by them, and that they 
 are compositions made up of simple ideas got from sensation andieflection; 
 which I suppose I have done. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 OF OUR COMPLEX IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 
 
 Sect. 1. Ideas of substances, how made. — The mind being, as I have 
 declared, furnished with a great number of the simple ideas, conveyed in 
 by the senses, as they are found in exterior things, or by reflection on its 
 own operations, takes notice also, that a certain number of these simple ideas 
 go constantly together ; which being presumed to belong to one thing, and 
 words being suited to common apprehensions, and made use of for quick 
 despatch, are called, so united in one subject, by one name ; which, by in- 
 advertency, we are apt afterward to talk of, and consider as one simple idea, 
 which indeed is a complication of many ideas together : because, as I have 
 said, not imagining how these simple ideas can subsist by themselves, we 
 accustom ourselves to suppose some substratum wherein they do subsist, 
 and from which they do result, and which therefore we call substance(S). 
 
 (3) This section, which was intended only to show how the individuals of dis- 
 tinct species of substances came to be looked upon as simple ideas, and so to 
 have simple names, viz. from the supposed substratum or substance, which was 
 looked upon as the thing itself in which inhered, and from which resulted, that 
 complication of ideas, by which it was represented to us, hath been mistaken 
 for an account of the idea of substance in general ; and as such, hath been repre- 
 sented in these words : But how comes the general idea of substance to be framed 
 in our minds ? Is this by abstracting and enlarging simple ideas ? No : But 
 
 “ it is by a complication of many simple ideas together : because, not imagin- 
 ing how these simple ideas can subsist by themselves, we accustom ourselves 
 to suppose some substratum wherein they do subsist, and from whence they do 
 result; which therefore we call substance. ” And is this all, indeed, that is to be 
 said for the being of substance, That we accustom ourselves to suppose a substra- 
 tum ? Is that custom grounded upon true reason, or not ? If not, then accidents or 
 modes must subsist of themselves; and these simple ideas need no tortoise to 
 support them ; for figures and colours, &tc. would do well enough of themselves, 
 but for some fancies men have accustomed themselves to. 
 
 To which objection of the bishop of Worcester, our author 31 answers thus: 
 Herein your lordship seems to charge me with two faults : one, That I make the 
 general idea of substance to be framed, not by abstracting and enlarging simple 
 ideas, but by a complication of many simple ideas together : the other, as if I had 
 said, the being of substance had no other foundation but the fancies of men. 
 
 As to the first of these, I beg leave to remindyour lordship, that I say in more 
 places than one, and particularly Book 3, Chap. 3, Sect. 6, and Book l. Chap. 11, 
 Sect. 9, where, ex professo, I treat of abstraction and general ideas, that they are 
 all made by abstracting, and therefore could not be understood to mean, that that 
 of substance was made any other way ; however my pen might have slipt, or the 
 negligence of expression, where I might have something else than the general idea 
 of substance in view, might make me seem to say so. 
 
 That I was not speaking of the general idea of substance in the passage your 
 lordship quotes, is manifest from the title of that chapter, which is, Of the com- 
 plex ideas of substances ; and the first section of it, which your lordship cites for 
 those words you have set down. 
 
 In which words I do not observe any that deny the general idea of substance to 
 * In his first letter to the Bishop of Worcester. 
 
134 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 Sect. 2. Our idea af substance in general . — So that if any one will ex- 
 amine himself concerning his notion of pure substance in general, he will 
 find he has no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not 
 what support of such qualities, which are capable of producing simple ideas 
 
 be made by abstracting, nor any that say it is made b)' a complication of many 
 simple ideas together. But speaking in that place of the ideas of distinct sub- 
 stances, such as man, horse, gold, he., I say they are made up of certain combi- 
 nations of simple ideas, which combinations are looked upon, each of them, as 
 one simple idea, though they are many ; and we call it by one name of substance, 
 though made up of modes, from the custom of supposing a substratum, wherein 
 that combination does subsist. So that in this paragraph I only give an account 
 of the idea of distinct substances, such as oak, elephant, iron, he. how, though 
 they are made up of distinct complications of modes, yet they are looked on as 
 one idea, called by one name, as making distinct sorts of substance. 
 
 But that my notion of substance in general is quite different from these, and 
 has no such combination of simple ideas in it, is evident from the immediate fol- 
 lowing words, where I say*, “ The idea of pure substance in general is only a 
 supposition of we know not what support of such qualities as are capable of pro- 
 ducing simple ideas in us.” And these two I plainly distinguish all along, par- 
 ticularly where I say, “ whatever therefore be the secret and abstract nature of 
 substance in general, all the ideas we have of particular distinct substances, are 
 nothing but several combinations of simple ideas, co-existing in such, though un- 
 known cause of their union, as makes the whole subsist of itself. ” 
 
 The other thing laid to my charge, is, as if I took the being of substance to be 
 doubtful, or rendered it so by the imperfect and ill-grounded idea I have given 
 of it. To which I beg leave to say, that I ground not the bei ig, but the idea of 
 substance, on our accustoming ourselves to suppose some substratum; for it is of 
 the idea alone I speak there, and not of the being of substance. And having 
 every where affirmed and built upon it, that a man is a substance, I cannot be 
 supposed to question or doubt of the being of substance, till I can question or 
 doubt of my own being. Farther, I sayt, “ Sensation convince us, that there are 
 solid, extended substances ; and reflection, that there are thinking ones.” So 
 that, I think, the being of substance is not shaken by what I have said ; and if 
 the idea of it should be, yet (the being o£ things depending noton our ideas) the 
 being of substance would not be at all shaken by my saying, we had but an ob- 
 scure imperfect idea of it, and that that idea came from our accustoming our- 
 selves to suppose some substratum : or indeed, if I should say, we had no idea of 
 substance at all. For a great many things may be, and are granted to have a 
 being, and be in nature, of which we have no ideas. For example: it cannot be 
 doubted but there are distinct species of separate spirits, of which yet we have no 
 distinct ideas at all : it cannot be questioned but spirits have ways of communi- 
 cating their thoughts, and yet we have no idea of it at all. 
 
 The being then of substance being safe and secure, notwithstanding any thing 
 I have said, let us see whether the idea of it be not so too. Your lordship asks, 
 with concern, and is this all, indeed, that is to be said for the being (if your lord- 
 ship please, let it be the idea) of substance, that we accustom ourselves to sup- 
 pose a substratum ? Is that custom grounded upon true reason or no ? 1 have said 
 that it is grounded upon this):, “That we cannot conceive how simple ideas of 
 sensible qualities should subsist alone ; and therefore we suppose them to exist 
 in, and to be supported by some common subject; which support we denote by 
 the name substance.” Which, I think, is a true reason, because it is the same 
 your lordship grounds the supposition of a substratum on, in this very page; even 
 on the repugnancy to our conceptions, that modes and accidents should subsist by 
 themselves. So that I have the good luck to agree here with your lordship : and 
 consequently conclude, I have your approbation in this, that the substratum to 
 modes or accidents, which is our idea of substance in general, is founded in this, 
 41 that we cannot conceive how modes or accidents can subsist by themselves.” 
 
 * B. 2. C. 23. Sec. 2. 
 
 i lb. Sec. 29. 
 
 } B. 2. C. 23. Sec. 4. 
 
Ch. 23. 
 
 OUR IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 
 
 185 
 
 in us ; which qualities are commonly called accidents. If any ane should 
 be asked, what is the subject wherein colour or weight inheres 1 he would 
 have nothing to say, but the solid extended parts : and if he were demand- 
 ed, what is it that solidity and extension inhere in 1 he would not be in a much 
 better case than the Indian before mentioned, who, saying that the world 
 was supported by a great elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on 1 
 to which his answer was, a great tortoise. But being again pressed to 
 know what gave support to the broad backed tortoise, replied, something, 
 he knew not what. And thus here, as in all other cases where we use words 
 without having clear and distinct ideas, we talk like children ; who being 
 questioned what such a thing is, which they know not, readily give this satis- 
 factory answer, that it is something: which, in truth, signifies no more, 
 when so used, either by children or men, but that they know not what ; and 
 that the thing they pretend to know and talk of, is what they have no dis- 
 tinct idea of at all, and so are perfectly ignorant of it, and in the dark. The 
 idea, then, we have, to which we give the general name substance, being 
 nothing but the supposed, but unknown, support of those qualities we find 
 existing, which we imagine cannot subsist sine re substante, without some- 
 thing to support them, we call that support substantial; which, according 
 to the true import of the word, is, in plain English, standing under, or up- 
 holding (4). 
 
 (4) From this paragraph, there hath been raised an objection by the bishop of 
 Worcester, as if our author’s doctrine here concerning ideas had almost discard- 
 ed substance out of the world : his words in this paragraph being brought to 
 prove, that he is one of the gentlemen of this new way of reasoning, that have 
 almost discarded substance out of the reasonable part of the world. To which 
 our author replies*, This, my lord, is an accusation, which your lordship will 
 pardon me, if I do not readily know what to plead to, because I do not under- 
 stand what it is almost to discard substance out of the reasonable part of the 
 world. If your lordship means by it, that I deny, or doubt, that there is in the 
 world any such thing as substance, that your lordship will acquit me of, when 
 your lordship looks again into this 23d chapter of the second book, which you 
 have cited more than once ; where you will find these words, sect. 4,“ When we 
 talk or think of any particular sort of corporeal substances, as horse, stone, kc. 
 though the idea we have of either of them be hut the complication or collection 
 of those several simple ideas of sensible qualities, which we use to find united in 
 the thing called horse or stone ; yet because we cannot conceive how they should 
 subsist alone, nor one in another, we suppose them existing in, and supported by, 
 some common subject, which support we denote by the name substance ; though 
 it is certain we have no clear or distinct idea of that thing we suppose a support. ” 
 And again, seet. 5, “ The same happens concerning the operations of the mind, viz. 
 thinking, reasoning, fearing, ke. which we considering not to subsist of them- 
 selves, nor apprehending how they can belong to body, or be produced by it, 
 are apt to think these the actions of some other substance, which we call spirit; 
 whereby yet it is evident, that having no other idea or notion of matter, but some- 
 thing wherein those many sensible qualities, which affect our senses, do subsist, 
 by supposing a substance, wherein thinking, knowing, doubting, and a power of 
 moving, kc. do subsist, we have as clear a notion of the nature or substance of 
 spirit, as we have of body ; the one being supposed to be (without knowing what 
 it is) the substratum to those simple ideas we have from without : and the other 
 supposed (with a like ignorance of what it is) to be the substratum to those ope- 
 rations, which we experiment in ourselves within. ” And again, sect. 6, “ Whatever 
 therefore be the secret nature of substance in general, all the ideas we have of 
 particular distinct substances, are nothing but several combinations of simple 
 ideas, coexisting in such, though unknown cause of their union, as makes the 
 whole subsist of itself. ” And I farther say, in the same section, “ that we sup- 
 
 * In his first letter to that bishop. 
 
 y 
 
186 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2, 
 
 Sect. 3. Of the sorts of substances. — An obscure and relative idea of 
 substance in general being thus made, we come to have the ideas of particular 
 sorts of substances, by collecting such combinations of simple ideas, as are, by 
 experience and observation of men’s senses, taken notice of to exist to- 
 
 pose these combinations to rest in, and to be adherent to, that unknown common 
 subject which inheres not in any tiling else.” And, sect. 3, “That our complex 
 ideas of substances, besides all those simple ideas they are made up of, have 
 always the confused idea of something to which they belong, and in which they 
 subsist; and therefore, when we speak of any sort of substance, we say it is a 
 thing having such and such qualities; as body is a thing that is extended, figured, 
 and capable of motion ; spirit, a thing capable of thinking. 
 
 “These, and the like fashions of speaking intimate, that the substance is sup- 
 posed always something besides the extension, figure, solidity, motion, thinking, 
 or other observable idea, though we know not what it is.” 
 
 “Our idea of body, l say*, is an extended, solid substance ; and our idea of soul, 
 is of a substance that thinks. ” So that as long as there is any such thing as body 
 or spirit in the world, I have done nothing towards the discarding substance out 
 of the reasonable part of the world. Nay, as long as there is any simple idea or 
 sensible quality left, according to my way of arguing, substance cannot be discard- 
 ed; because all simple ideas, all sensible qualities, carry with them a supposition of 
 a substratum to exist in, and of a substance wherein they inhere : and of this that 
 whole chapter is so full, that 1 challenge any one who reads it, to think I have 
 almost, or one jot, discarded substance out of the reasonable part of the world. 
 And of this, man, horse, sun, water, iron, diamond, &.c. which 1 have mentioned 
 of distinct sorts of substances, will be my witnesses, as long as any such things 
 remain in being ; of which 1 say t, “ That the ideas of substances are such com- 
 binations of simple ideas as are taken to represent distinct particular things sub- 
 sisting by themselves, in which the opposed or confused idea of substance is 
 always the first and chief.” 
 
 If, by almost discarding substance out of the reasonable part of the world, your 
 lordship means, that I have destroyed, and almost discarded the true idea we have 
 of it, by calling it a substratum]:, a supposition of we know not what suppart of 
 such qualities as are capable of producing simple ideas in us, an obscure and re- 
 lative idea§, That without knowing what it. is, it is that which supports accidents ; 
 so that of substance we have no idea of what it is, but only a confused, obscure 
 one of what it does : I must confess, this and the like I have said of our idea of 
 substance: and should be very glad to be convinced by your lordship, or anybody 
 else, that I have spoken too meanly of it. He that would show me a more clear 
 and distinct idea of substance, would do me a kindness I should thank him for. 
 But this is the best I can hitherto find, either in my own thoughts, or in the books 
 of logicians; for their account or idea of it is that it is ens, or, res per se subsistens, 
 et substans acciclentibus ; which in effect is no more, but that substance is a being 
 or thing; or, in short, something, they know not what, or of which they have no 
 clearer idea, than that it is something which supports accidents, or other simple 
 ideas or modes, and is not supported itself, as a mode or an accident. So that I 
 do not see but Burgersdieius, Sanderson, and the whole tribe of logicians, must 
 be reckoned with the gentlemen of this new way of reasoning, who have almost 
 discarded substance out of the reasonable part of the world. 
 
 But supposing, my lord, that I, or these gentlemen, logicians of note in the 
 schools, should own that we have a very imperfect, obscure, inadequate idea of 
 substance, would it not be a little too hard to charge us with discarding substance 
 out of the world ? For what almost discarding, and reasonable part of the world, 
 signifies, I must confess, I do not clearly comprehend : but let almost and reason- 
 able part signify here what they will, for I dare say your lordship meant some- 
 thing by them ; would not your lordship think you were a little hardly dealt 
 with, if, for acknowledging yourself to have a very imperfect and inadequate 
 
 * B. 2, C. 23, Sec. 22. 
 
 ] B. 2, C. 23, Sec. 1, Sec. 2, Sec. 3. 
 
 + B. 2, C. 12, Sec. 6. 
 
 § B. 2, C. 13, Sec. 19. 
 
Ch. 23. 
 
 OUR IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 
 
 187 
 
 gether, and are therefore supposed to flow from the particular internal 
 constitution, or unknown essence of that substance. Thus we come to 
 have the ideas of a man, horse, gold, water, &c. of which substances, 
 whether any one has any other clear idea, farther than of certain simple 
 
 idea of God, or of several other things, which in this very treatise you confess our 
 understandings come short in, and cannot comprehend, you should be accused to 
 be one of these gentlemen, that have almost discarded God, or those other myste- 
 rious things, whereof you contend we have very imperfect and inadequate ideas, 
 out of the reasonable world ? For I suppose your lordship means, by almost dis- 
 carding out of the reasonable world, something that is blamable, for it seems 
 not to be inserted for a commendation ; and yet I think he deserves no blame 
 who owns the having imperfect, inadequate, obscure ideas, where he has no better; 
 however, if it be inferred from tbcnce, that either he almost excludes these things 
 out of being, or out of rational discourse, if that be meant by the reasonable 
 world ; for tbe first of these will not hold, because the being of things in the 
 world depends not on our ideas : tbe latter indeed is true in some degree, but it is 
 no fault; for it is certain, that where we have imperfect, inadequate, confused, 
 obscure ideas, we cannot discourse and reason about those things so well, fully, 
 and clearly, as if we had perfect, adequate, clear and distinct ideas. 
 
 Other objections are made against the following parts of this paragraph by that 
 reverend prelate, viz. The repetition of the story of the Indian philosopher, and 
 the talking like children about substance : to which our author replies : 
 
 Your lordship, I must own, with great reason, takes notice that I paralleled 
 more than once our idea of substance with the Indian philosopher’s he-Kne - 
 uot-what, which supported the tortoise, &c. 
 
 This repetition is, I confess, a fault in exact writing : but I have acknowledged 
 and excused it in these words in my preface: “ I am not ignorant how little I 
 herein consult my own reputation, when I knowingly let my essay go with a 
 fault so apt to disgust the most judicious, who are always the nicest readers.” 
 And there farther add, “ That I did not publish my essay for such great masters 
 of knowledge as your lordship ; but fitted it to men of my own size, to whom re- 
 petitions might be sometimes useful.” It would not therefore have been beside 
 your lordship’s generosity (who were not intended to be provoked by this repe- 
 tition) to have passed by such a fault as this, in one who pretends not beyond the 
 lower rank of writers. But I see your lordship would have me exact, and with- 
 out any faults ; and I wish I could be so, the better to deserve your lordship’s 
 approbation. 
 
 My saying, “That when we talk of substance, we talk like children ; who 
 being asked a question about something which they know not, readily give this sa- 
 tisfactory answer, That it is something your lordship seems mightily to lay it to 
 heart in these words that follow : “ If this be the truth of the case, we must still 
 talk like children, and I know not how it can be remedied. For if we cannot 
 come at a rational idea of substance, we can have no principle of certainty to go 
 upon in this debate.” 
 
 If your lordship has any better and distincter idea of substance than mine is, 
 which I have given an account of, y our lordship is not at all concerned in what I 
 have there said. But those whose idea of substance, whether a rational or not ra- 
 tional idea, is like mine, something, they know not what, must in that, with me, talk 
 like children, when they speak of something, they know not what. For a philoso- 
 pher that says, that which supports accidents, is something, he knows not what ; 
 and a countryman that says, the foundation of the great church at Haarlem is sup- 
 ported by something, he knows not what ; and a child that stands in tbe dark 
 upon his mother’s muff, and says be stands upon something, he knows not what, 
 in this respect talk all three alike. But if the countryman knows that the foun- 
 dation of the church of Haarlem is supported by a rock, as the houses about Bris- 
 tol are ; or by gravel, as the houses about London are ; or by wooden piles, as 
 the houses in Amsterdam are ; it is plain, that then having a clear and distinct 
 idea of the thing that supports the church, he does not talk of this matter as a 
 child ; not will he of the support of accidents, when he has a clearer and more 
 
188 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 ideas co-existing together, I appeal to every one’s own experience. It ia 
 the ordinary qualities observable in iron, or a diamond, put together, that 
 make the true complex idea of those substances, which a smith or a jewel- 
 ler commonly knows better than a philosopher; who, whatever substantial 
 forms he may talk of, has no other idea of those substances than what is fram- 
 ed by a collection of those simple ideas which are to be found in them : only 
 we must take notice, that our complex ideas of substances, besides all those 
 simple ideas they are made up of, have always the confused idea of some- 
 thing to which they belong, and in which they subsist. And, therefore, 
 when we speak of any sort of substance, we say it is a thing having such 
 or such qualities ; as body is a thing that is extended, figured, and capable 
 
 distinct idea of it, than that it isbarely something. But aslong as we think like 
 children, incases where our idjas are no clearer nor distincterthan theirs, I agree 
 with your lordship, that I know not how it can be remedied, but that we must talk 
 like them. 
 
 Farther, the bishop asks, Whether there be no difference between the bare 
 being of a tiling, and its subsistence by itself ? To which our author answers, 
 Yes*. But what will that do to prove, that upon my principles, we can come to 
 no certainty of reason, that there is any such thing as substance ? You seem by 
 this question to conclude, that the idea of a thing that subsists by itself, is a clear 
 and distinct idea of substance ; but I beg leave to ask, Is the idea of the manner 
 of subsistence of a thing, the idea of the thing itself? If it be not, we may have a 
 clear and distinct idea of the manner, and yet have none but a very obscure and 
 confused one of the thing. For example ; I tell your lordship, that I know a 
 thing that cannot subsist without a support, and I know another thing that does 
 subsist without a support, and say no more of them ; can you, by having the 
 clear and distinct ideas of having a support, and not having a support, say, that 
 you have a clear and distinct idea of the thing that I know which has, and of the 
 thing that I know which has not a support ? If your lordship can, I beseech you to 
 give me the clear and distinct ideas of these, which I only call by the general 
 name, tilings that have or have not supports : for such there are, and such I shall 
 give your lordship clear and distinct ideas of, when you shall please to call upon 
 me for them ; though I think your lordship will scarce find them by the general 
 and confused idea of things, nor in the clearer and more distinct idea of having 
 or not having a support. 
 
 To show a blind man that he has no clear and distinct idea of scarlet, I tell 
 him, that his notion of it, that it is a thing or being, does not prove he has any 
 clear or distinct idea of it * but barely that he takes it to be something, he knows 
 not what — he replies, that he knows more than that, v. g. he knows that it sub- 
 sists, or inheres in anotherthing : and is there no difference, says he, in your lord- 
 ship’s words, between the bare being of a thing, and its subsistence in another ? 
 Yes, say I to him, a great deal, they are very different ideas. But for all that, 
 you have no clear and distinct idea of scarlet, nor such a one as I have, who see 
 and know it, and haveno other kind of idea of it, besides that of inherence. 
 
 Your lordship has the idea of subsisting by itself, and therefore you conclude, 
 you have a clear and distinct idea of the thing that subsits by itself: which, me- 
 thinks, is all one, as if your countryman should say, he hath an idea of the cedar of 
 Lebanon, that it is a tree of a nature to need no prop to lean on for its support; 
 therefore he hath a clear and distinct idea of a cedar of Lebanon : which clear 
 and distinct idea, when he comes to examine, is nothing but a general one of a 
 tree, with which his indetermined idea of a cedar is confounded. Just so is the 
 idea of substance ; which, however called clear and distinct, is confounded with 
 the general indetermined idea of something. But suppose that the manner of 
 subsisting by itself gives us a clear and distinct idea of substance, how does that 
 prove, that upon my principles we can come to no certainty of reason, that 
 there is any such thing as substance in the world ? Which is the proposition ta 
 be proved. 
 
 Mr Lock’s third letter. 
 
Ch. 23. 
 
 OUR IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 
 
 18 
 
 of motion; spirit, a thing capable of thinking; and so hardness, friabil- 
 ity, and power to draw iron, we say, are qualities to be found m a load- 
 stone. These, and the like fashions of speaking, intimate that the sub- 
 stance is supposed always something besides the extension, figure, solidity, 
 motion, thinking, or other observable ideas, though we know not what 
 it is. 
 
 Sect. 4. No clear idea of substance in generals — Hence, when we talk 
 or think of any par'ticular'Fort oFcorporeal substances, as horse, stone, &c. 
 though the idea we have of either of them be but the complication or col- 
 lection of those several simple ideas of sensible qualities, which we use to 
 find united in the thing called horse or stone ; yet because we cannot con- 
 ceive how they should subsist alone, nor one in another, we suppose them 
 existing in, and supported by, some common subject ; which support we 
 denote by the name substance, though it be certain we have no clear or dis- 
 tinct idea of that thing we suppose a support. 
 
 Sect. 5. As clear an idea of spirit as body. — The same happens con- 
 cerning the operations of the nMnd,Aiz.~Unnking, reasoning, fearing, &c. 
 vhich we, concluding not to subsist of themselves, nor apprehending how 
 • they can belong to body, or be produced by it, we are apt to think these the 
 actions of some other substance, which we call spirit : whereby yet it is 
 evident, that having no other idea or notion of matter, but something 
 wherein those many sensible qualities which affect our senses, do subsist ; 
 by supposing a substance, wherein thinking, knowing, doubting, and a 
 power of moving, &c. do subsist, we have as clear a notion of the substance 
 of spirit, as we have of body ; the one being supposed to be (without know- 
 ing what it is) the substratum to those simple ideas we have from without ; 
 and the other supposed (with a like ignorance of what it is) to bethesw&s/ra- 
 tum to those operations we experiment in ourselves within. It is plain, then, 
 that the idea of corporeal substance in matter, is as remote from our con- 
 ceptions and apprehensions, as that of spiritual substance or spirit : and 
 therefore, from our not having any notion of the substance of spirit, we can 
 no more conclude its non-existence, than we can, forthe same reason, deny 
 the existence of body; it being as rational to affirm there is no body, because 
 we have no clear and distinct idea of the substance of matter, as to say 
 there is no spirit, because we have no clear and distinct idea of the substance 
 of a spirit. 
 
 Sect. 6. Of the sorts of substances. — Whatever, therefore, bethe secret 
 abstract nature of substance in. general, all the ideas we have of particular 
 distinct sorts of substances are nothing but several combinaTTo~ns~of simple-' 
 ideas, coexisting in such, though unknown, cause of their union, as makes 
 the whole subsist of itself. It is by such combinations of simple ideas, and 
 nothing else, that we represent particular sorts of substances to ourselves ; 
 such are the ideas we have of their several species in our minds; and such 
 only do we, by their specific names, signify to others, v. g. man, horse, 
 sun, water, iron: upon hearing which words, every one who understands 
 the language, frames in his mind a combination of those several simple 
 ideas which he has usually observed, or fancied to exist together under that 
 denomination ; all which he supposes to rest in, and be, as it were, adherent 
 to that unknown common subject, which inheres not in any thing else. 
 Though, in the mean time, it be manifest, and every one upon inquiry into 
 his own thoughts will find, that he has no other idea of any substance, v.g. 
 let it be gold, horse, iron, man, vitriol, bread, but what he has barely, of 
 those sensible qualities which he supposes to inhere, with a supposition 
 of such a substratum, as gives, as it were, a support to those qualities or 
 simple ideas which he has observed to exist united together. Thus, the 
 idea of the sun, what is it but an aggregate of those several simple ideas, 
 bright, hot, roundish, having a constant regular motion, at a certain dis- 
 tance from us, and perhaps some other 1 as he who thinks and discourses 
 
190 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 of the sun, has been more or less accurate in observing those sensible 
 qualities, ideas, or properties, which are in that thing which he calls the 
 sun. 
 
 Sect. 7. Power a great part of our complex ideas of substance . — For 
 he has the perfectest idea of any of the particular sorts of substances, who 
 has gathered and put together most of those simple ideas which do exist 
 in it, among which are to be reckoned its active powers and passive capa- 
 cities ; which, though not simple ideas, yet, in this respect, for brevity’s sake, 
 may conveniently enough be reckoned among them. Thus, the power of 
 drawing iron is one of the ideas of the complex one of that substance we 
 call a loadstone ; and a power to be so drawn, is a part of the complex 
 one we call iron : which powers pass for inherent qualities in .those subjects. 
 Because every substance, being as apt, by the powers we observe in it, to 
 change some sensible qualities in other subjects, as it is to produce in us 
 those simple ideas which we receive immediately from it, does, by those 
 new sensible qualities introduced into other subjects, discover to us those 
 powers which do thereby mediately atfect our senses, as regularly as its sen- 
 sible qualities do it immediately, v. g. we immediately, by our senses, 
 perceive in fire its heat and colour : which are, if rightly considered, noth- 
 ing but powers in it to produce those ideas in us ; we also, by our senses, 
 perceive the colour and brittleness of charcoal, whereby we come by the 
 knowledge of another power, in fire, which it has to change the colour and 
 consistency of wood. By the former fire immediately, by the latter it 
 modiately discovers to us these several qualities, which therefore we look 
 upon to be a part of the qualities of fire, and so make them a part of the 
 complex idea of it. For all those powers that we take cognizance of, ter- 
 minating only in the alteration of some sensible qualities in those subjects 
 on which they operate, and so making them exhibit to us new sensible 
 ideas : therefore it is that I have reckoned these powers among the simple 
 ideas, which make the complex ones of the sorts of substances ; though 
 these powers, considered in themselves, are truly complex ideas. And 
 in this looser sense I crave leave to be understood, when I name any of 
 these potentialities among the simple ideas, which we recollect in our minds, 
 when we think of particular substances. For the powers that are severally 
 in them are necessary to be considered, if we will have true distinct notions 
 of the several sorts of substances. 
 
 Sect. 8. And why. — Nor are we to wonder, that powers make a great 
 part of our complex ideas of substances; since their secondary qualities are 
 those, which in most of them serve principally to distinguish substances 
 one from another, and commonly make a considerable part of the complex 
 idea of the several sorts of them. For our senses failing us in the discovery 
 of the bulk, texture, and figure of the minute parts of bodies, on which their 
 real constitutions and differences depend, we are fain to make use of their 
 secondary qualities, as the characteristical notes and marks whereby to frame 
 ideas of them in our minds, and distinguish them one from another. All 
 which secondary qualities, as has been shown, are nothing but bare powers 
 For the colour and taste of opium are, as well as its soporific or anodyne 
 virtues, mere powers depending on its primary qualities, whereby it is fitted 
 to produce different operations on different parts of our bodies. 
 
 Sect. 9. Three sorts of ideas make our complex ones of substances .— - 
 The ideas that make our complex ones of corporeal substances are of these 
 three sorts. First, the ideas of the primary qualities of things, which are 
 discovered by our senses, and are in them even when we perceive them not ; 
 such are the bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion of the parts of bodies, 
 which are really in them, whether we take notice of them or no. Secondly, 
 the sensible secondary qualities, which depending on these, are nothing but 
 the powers those. substances have to produce several ideas in us by our 
 senses ; which ideas are not in the things themselves, otherwise than as 
 
Ch. 23. 
 
 OUR IDEAS OP SUBSTANCES. 
 
 191 
 
 any thing is in its cause. Thirdly, the aptness we consider in any substance 
 to give or receive such alterations of primary qualities, as that the substance 
 so altered should produce in us different ideas from what it did before ; these 
 are called active and passive powers; all which powers, as far as we have any 
 notice or notion of them, terminate only in sensible simple ideas. For 
 whatever alteration a loadstone has the power to make in the minute par- 
 ticles of iron, we should have no notion of any power it had at all to operate 
 on iron, did not its sensible motion discover it: and I doubt not but there 
 are a thousand changes, that bodies we daily handle have a power to cause 
 in one another, which we never suspect, because they never appear in sen- 
 sible effects. 
 
 Sect. 10. Powers make a great part of our complex ideas of substances. 
 ■ — Powers therefore justly make a great part of our complex ideas of sub- 
 stances. He that will examine his complex idea of gold, will find several 
 of its ideas that make it up to be only powers, as the power of being melted, 
 but of not spending itself in the fire ; of being dissolved in aqua regia ; are 
 ideas as necessary to make up our complex idea of gold, as its colour and 
 weight : which, if duly considered, are also nothing but different powers. 
 For to speak truly, yellowness is not actually in gold ; but is a power in 
 gold to produce that idea in us by our eyes, when placed in a due light : and 
 the heat which we cannot leave out of our ideas of the sun, is no more real- 
 ly in the sun, than the white colour it introduces into wax. These are both 
 equally powers in the sun, operating, by the motion and figure of its sensi- 
 ble parts, so on a man, as to make him have the idea of heat ; and so on 
 wax, as to make it capable to produce in a man the idea of white. 
 
 Sect. 11. The new secondary qualities of bodies would disappear, if 
 we could discover the primary ones of their minute parts. — Had we senses 
 acute enough to discern the minute particles of bodies, and the real consti- 
 tution on which their sensible qualities depend, I doubt not but they would 
 produce quite different ideas in us ; and that which is now the yellow colour 
 of gold would then disappear, and instead of it we should see an admirable 
 texture of parts of a certain size and figure. This microscopes plainly dis- 
 cover to us ; for what to our naked eyes produces a certain colour, is, by 
 thus augmenting the acuteness of our senses, discovered to be quite a dif- 
 ferent thing ; and the thus altering, as it were, the proportion of the bulk 
 of the minute parts of a coloured object to our usual sight, produces differ- 
 ent ideas from what it did before. Thus sand or pounded glass, which is 
 opaque, and white to the naked eye, is pellucid in a microscope ; and a hair 
 seen this way loses its former colour, and is in a great measure pellucid, 
 with a mixture of some bright sparkling colours, such as appear from the 
 refraction of diamonds, and other pellucid bodies. Blood to the naked eye 
 appears all red ; but by a good microscope, wherein its lesser parts ap- 
 pear, shows only some few globules of red, swimming in a pellucid liquor : 
 and how these red globules would appear, if glasses could be found that 
 could yet magnify them a thousand or ten thousand times more, is uncer- 
 tain. 
 
 Sect. 12. Our faculties of discovery suited to our state. — The infinitely 
 wise contriver of us,. and^allJ^mgs-«borTrus7iiatfrfTtted our senses, facul- 
 ties and organs to the conveniences of life, and the business we have to do 
 here. We are able, by our senses, to know and distinguish things : and 
 to examine them no far, as to apply them to our uses, and several ways to 
 accommodate the exigencies of this life. We have insight enough into 
 their admirable contrivances and wonderful effects, to admire and magnify 
 the wisdom, power, and goodness of their author. Such a knowledge as 
 this, which is suited to our present condition, we want not faculties to at- 
 tain. But it appears not that God intended we should have a perfect, clear, 
 and adequate knowledge of them : that perhaps is not in the comprehension 
 of any finite being. We are furnished with faculties, (dull and weak as they 
 
192 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 are) to discover enough in the creatures, to lead us to the knowledge of the 
 Creator, and the knowledge of our duty; and we are fitted well enough with 
 abilities to provide for the conveniences of living : these are our business 
 in this world. But were our senses altered, and made much quicker and 
 acuter, the appearance and outward scheme of things would have quite 
 another face to us ; and, I am apt to think, would be inconsistent with our 
 being, or at least well-being, in this part of the universe which we inhabit. 
 He that considers how little our constitution is able to bear a remove into 
 parts of this air, not much higher than that we commonly breathe in, will 
 have reason to be satisfied that in this globe ofearth allotted for our mansion 
 the all-wise Architect has suited our organs, and the bodies that are to af- 
 fect them, one to another. If our sense of hearing were but one thousand 
 times quicker than it is, how would a perpetual noise distract us ! And we 
 should m the quietest retirement be less able to sleep or mediate, than in 
 the middle of a sea-fight. Nay, if that most instructive of our senses, 
 seeing, were in any man a thousand or an hundred thousand times more 
 acute than it is by the best microscope, things several millions of times less 
 than the smallest object of his sight now would then be visible to his naked 
 eyes, and so he would come nearer to the discovery of the texture and mo- 
 tion of the minute parts of corporeal things ; and in many of them, probably, 
 get ideas of their internal constitutions. But then he would be in a quite 
 different world from other people ; nothing would appear the same to him 
 and others ; the visible ideas of every thing would be different. So that I 
 doubt whether he and the rest of men could discourse concerning the ob- 
 jects of sight, or have any communication about colours, their appearances 
 being so wholly different. And perhaps such a quickness and tenderness 
 of sight could not endure bright sunshine, or so much as open daylight ; nor 
 take in but a very small part of any object at once, and that too only at a very 
 near distance. And if by the help of such microscopical eyes (if I may so 
 call them) a man could penetrate farther than ordinary into the secret composi- 
 tion and radical texture of bodies, he would not make any great advantage by 
 the change, if such an acute sight would not serve to conduct him to the 
 market and exchange; if he could not see things he was to avoid at a con- 
 venient distance, nor distinguish tilings he had to do with by those sensible 
 qualities others do. He that was sharp-sighted enough to see the configu- 
 ration of the minute particles of the spring of a clock, and observe upon 
 what peculiar structure and impulse its elastic motion depends, would no 
 doubt discover something very admirable ; but if eyes so framed could not 
 view at once the hand and the characters of the hour-plate, and thereby at 
 a distance see what o’clock it was, their owner could not be much benefited 
 by that acuteness ; which, whilst it discovered the secret contrivance of the 
 parts of the machine, made him lose its use. 
 
 Sect. 13. Conjecture about spirits . — And here give me leave to propose 
 an extravagant conjecture of mine, viz. that since we have some reason (if 
 there be any credit to be given to the report of things that our philosophy 
 cannot account for) to imagine that spirits can assume to themselves bodies 
 of different bulk, figure, and conformation of parts ; whether one great ad- 
 vantage some of them have over us may not lie in this, that they can so 
 frame and shape to themselves organs of sensation or perception as to suit 
 them to their present design, and the circumstances of the object they 
 would consider. For how much would that man exceed all others in know- 
 ledge, who had but the faculty so to order the structure of his eyes, that one 
 sense, as to make it capable of all the several degrees of vision which the 
 assistance of glasses (casually at first lighted on) has taught us to conceive ' 
 What wonders would he discover, who could so fit his eyes to all sorts of 
 objects, as to see, when he pleased, the figure and motion of the minute par- 
 ticles in the blood, and other juices of animals, as distinctly as he does, at 
 other times, the shape and motion of the animals themselves! But to us, 
 
Ch. 23. 
 
 OUR IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 
 
 193 
 
 in our present state, unalterable organs so contrived as to discover the figure 
 and motion of the minute parts of bodies, whereon depend those sensible 
 qualities we now observe in them, would perhaps be of no advantage. God 
 has, no doubt, made them so as is best for us in our present condition. He 
 flath fitted us for the neighbourhood of the bodies that surround us, and we 
 have to do with : and though we cannot, by the faculties we have, attain to 
 a perfect knowledge of things, yet they will serve us well enough for those 
 ends above mentioned, which are our great concernment. I beg my reader’s 
 pardon for laying before him so wild a fancy, concerning the ways of percep- 
 tion in beings above us ; but how extravagant soever it be, I doubt whether 
 we can imagine any thing about the knowledge of angels, but after this man- 
 ner, some way or other, in proportion to what we find and observe in our- 
 selves. And though we cannot but allow, that the infinite power- and wisdom 
 of God may frame creatures with a thousand other faculties and ways of 
 perceiving things without them than what we have, yet our thoughts can 
 go no farther than our own ; so impossible it is for us to enlarge our very 
 guesses beyond the ideas received from our own sensation and reflection. 
 The supposition, at least, that angels do sometimes assume bodies, needs 
 not startle us ; since some of the most ancient and most learned fathers of 
 the church seemed to believe that they had bodies : and this is certain, that 
 their state and way of existence is unknown to us. 
 
 Sect. 14. Complex ideas of substances. — But to return to the matter in 
 hand ; the ideas we have of'substances, and the ways we come by them, — 
 I say, our specific ideas of substances are nothing else but a collection of a 
 certain number of simple ideas, considered as united in one thing. These 
 ideas of substances, though they are commonly simple apprehensions, and 
 the names of them simple terms, yet in effect are complex and compounded. 
 Thus the idea which an Englishman signifies by the name swan, is white 
 colour, long neck, red beak, black legs, and whole feet, and all these of a 
 certain size, with a power of swimming in the water, and making a certain 
 kind of noise : and perhaps, to a man who has long observed this kind of 
 birds, some other properties which all terminate in sensible simple ideas, 
 all united in one common subject. 
 
 Sect 15. Idea of spiritual substances as clear as of bodily substances. 
 — Besides the complex ideas we have of material sensible snBsfahces, of 
 which I have last spoken, by the simple ideas we have taken from those 
 operations of our own minds which we experiment daily in ourselves, as 
 thinking, understanding, willing, knowing, and power of beginning mo- 
 tion, &c. co-existing in some substance ; we are able to frame the complex 
 idea of an immaterial spirit. And thus, by putting together the ideas of 
 thinking, perceiving, liberty, and power of moving themselves and other 
 things, we have as clear a perception and notion of immaterial substances as 
 we have of material. For putting together the ideas of thinking and willing, 
 or the power of moving or quieting corporeal motion, joined to substance, ol 
 which we have no distinct idea, we have the idea of an immaterial spirit 
 and by putting together the ideas of coherent solid parts, and a power of 
 being moved, joined with substance, of which likewise we have no positive 
 idea, we have the idea of matter. The one is as clear and distinct an idea 
 as the other : the idea of thinking, and moving a body, being as clear and 
 distinct ideas as the ideas of extension, solidity, and being moved : for our 
 idea of substance is equally obscure, or none at all in both ; it is but a sup- 
 posed I know not what, to support those ideas we call accidents. It is for 
 want of reflection that we are apt to think that our senses show us nothing 
 but material things. Every act of sensation, when duly considered, gives 
 us an equal view o f both parts of natur e, the corp or eal and spiritua l. For 
 whilst I know, by seeing or Rearing, &c. that there is some corporeal being 
 without me, the object of that sensation ; I do more certainly know, that 
 there is some spiritual being within me that sees and hears. This, I must 
 Z 
 
OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 194 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 be convinced, cannot be the action of bare insensible matter; nor ever could 
 be, without an immaterial thinking- being. 
 
 Sect. 16. No idea of abstract substance. — By the complex idea of ex- 
 tended, figured, coloured, and all other sensible qualities, which is all that 
 we know of it, we are as far from the idea of the substance of body as if 
 we knew nothing at all : nor after all the acquaintance and familiarity which 
 we imagine we have with matter, and the many qualities men assure them- 
 selves they perceive and know in bodies, will it perhaps upon examination 
 be found, that they have any more or clearer primary ideas belonging to 
 body, than they have belonging to immaterial spirit. 
 
 Sect. 17. The cohesion of solid parts and impulse of primary ideas of 
 body. — The primary ideas we have peculiar to body, as contradistinguished 
 to spirit, are the 'cohesion of solid, and consequently separable, parts, and 
 a power of communicating motion by impulse. These, I think, are the 
 original ideas proper and peculiar to body ; for figure is but the consequence 
 of finite extension. 
 
 Sect. 18. Thinking and motivity the primary ideas of spirit. — The ideas 
 we have belonging and peculiar to spirit are thinking and will, or a power 
 of puttingbody into motion by thought, and, which is consequent to it, liberty. 
 For as body cannot but communicate its motion by impulse to another body, 
 which it meets with at rest, so the mind can put bodies into motion, or 
 forbear to do so, as it pleases. The ideas of existence, duration, and mo- 
 bility, are common to them both. 
 
 Sect. 19. Spirits capable of motion. — There is no reason why it should 
 be thought strange, that I make mobility belong to spirit : for having no 
 other idea of motion but change of distance with other beings that are con- 
 sidered as at rest, — and finding that spirits, as well as bodies,, cannot ope- 
 rate but where they are, and that spirits do operate at several times in several 
 places, — I cannot but attribute change of place to all finite spirits (for of the 
 infinite spirit I speak not here). For my soul being a real being, as well as 
 my body, is certainly as capable of changing distance with any other body, or 
 being, as body itself, and so is capable of motion. And if a mathematician can 
 consider a certain distance, ora change of that distance between two points, 
 one may certainly conceive a distance and a chdnge of distance between two 
 spirits; and-so conceive their motion, their approach or removal, one from 
 another. 
 
 Sect. 20. Every one finds in himself, that his soul can think, will, and 
 operate on his body in the place where that is ; but cannot operate on a body 
 or in a place an hundred miles distant from it. Nobody can imagine that 
 his soul can think or move a body at Oxford, whilst he is at London ; and 
 cannot but know, that, being united to his body, it constantly changes place 
 all the whole journey between Oxford and London, as the coach or horse 
 does that carries him, and I think may be said to be truly all that while in 
 motion ; or if that will not be allowed to afford us a clear idea enough of 
 its motion, its being separated from the body in death, I think, will ; for to 
 consider it as going out of the body, or leaving it, and yet to have no idea 
 of its motion, seems to me impossible. 
 
 Sect. 21. If it be said by any one that it cannot change place, because 
 it hath none, for spirits are not in loco, but ubi ; I suppose that way of 
 talking will not now be of much weight to many, in an age that is not much 
 disposed to admire or suffer themselves to be deceived by such unintelligible 
 ways of speaking. But if any one thinks there is any sense in that distinc- 
 tion, and that it is applicable to our present purpose, I desire him to put it 
 into intelligible English ; and then from thence draw a reason to show that 
 immaterial spirits are not capable of motion. Indeed motion cannot be attri- 
 buted to God ; not because he is an immaterial, but because he is an infinite 
 spirit. 
 
 Sect. 22. Idea of soul and body compared. — Let us compare then our 
 complex idea of an immaterial spirit with our complex idea of body, and see 
 
Ch. 23. 
 
 OUR IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 
 
 195 
 
 whether there be any more obscurity in one than in the other, and in which 
 most. Our idea of b ody, as I think, is an extended solid substance, ca- 
 pable o'FcOmmunTcating motion by impulse ; and our idea of soul, as an im- 
 material spirit, is of a substance that thinks, and has a power of exciting 
 motion in body, by willing or thought. These, I think, are our complex 
 ideas of soul and body, as contradistinguished ; and now let us examine 
 which has most obscurity in it, and difficulty to be apprehended. I know 
 that people, whose thoughts are immersed in matter, and have so subjected 
 their minds to their senses, that they seldom reflect on any thing beyond 
 them, are apt to say, they cannot comprehend a thinking tiling, which per- 
 haps is true : but I affirm, when they consider it well, they can no more 
 comprehend an extended thing. 
 
 Sect. 23. Cohesion of solid parts in body as hard to be conceived as 
 thinking in a souL — If anyone say, he knows not what it is thinks in him, he 
 means he knows not what the substance is of that thinking thing: no more, 
 say I, knows he what the substance is of that solid thing. Farther, if he 
 says he knows not how he thinks, I answer, neither knows he how he is 
 extended ; how the solid parts of body are united, or cohere together to 
 make extension. For though the pressure of the particles of air may account 
 for the cohesion of several parts of matter, that are grosser than the parti- 
 cles of air, and have pores less than corpuscles of air, — yet the weight or 
 pressure of the air will not explain, nor can be a cause of the coherence 
 of the particles of air themselves. And if the pressures of the ether, or 
 any subtiler matter than the air, may unite, and hold fast together the 
 parts of a particle of air, as well as other bodies ; yet it cannot make 
 bonds for itself, and hold together the parts that make up every the 
 least corpuscle of that materia subtilis. So that the hypothesis, how in- 
 geniously soever explained, by showing that the parts of sensible bodies are 
 held together by the pressure of other external insensible bodies, reaches 
 not the parts of the ether itself ; and by how much the more evident it proves 
 that the parts of other bodies are held together by the external pressure of 
 the ether, and can have no other conceivable cause of their cohesion and 
 union, by so much the more it leaves us in the dark concerning the cohe- 
 sion of the parts of the corpuscles of the ether itself ; which we can neither 
 conceive without parts, they being bodies, and divisible, nor yet how their 
 parts cohere, they wanting that cause of cohesion, which is given of the co- 
 hesion of the parts of all other bodies. 
 
 Sect. 24. But, in truth, the pressure of any ambient fluid, how great so- 
 ever, can be no intelligible cause of the cohesion of the solid parts of mat- 
 ter. For though such a pressure may hinder the avulsion of two polished 
 superficies, one from another, in a line perpendicular to them, as in the ex- 
 periment of two polished marbles ; yet it can never, in the least, hinder the 
 separation by a motion, in a line parallel to those surfaces ; because the 
 ambient fluid, having a full liberty to succeed in each point of space, desert- 
 ed by a laterial motion, resists such a motion of bodies so joined no more 
 than it would resist the motion of that body, were it on all sides environed 
 by that fluid, and touched no other body : and, therefore, if there were no 
 other cause of cohesion, all parts of bodies must be easily separable by such 
 a laterial sliding motion. For if the pressure of the ether be the adequate 
 cause of cohesion, wherever that cause operates not, there can be no cohe- 
 sion. And since it cannot operate against such a lateral separation (as has 
 been shown,) therefore in every imaginary plane, intersecting any mass of 
 matter, there could be no more cohesion than of two polished surfaces, 
 which will always, notwithstanding any imaginable pressure of a fluid, easi- 
 ly slide one from another. So that, perhaps, how clear an idea soever we 
 think we have of the extension of body, which is nothing but the cohesion 
 of solid part^, he that shall well consider it in his mind may have reason to 
 conclude, that it is as easy for him to have a clear idea how the soul 
 thinks, as how body is extended. For since body is no farther nor other- 
 
Z96 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 wise extended than by the union and cohesion of its solid parts, we shaL 
 very ill comprehend the extension of body, without understanding wherein 
 consists the union and cohesion of its parts ; which seems to me as incom- 
 prehensible as the manner of thinking, and how it is performed. 
 
 Sect. 25. I allow it is usual for most people to wonder how any one 
 should find a difficulty in what they think they every day observe. Do we 
 not see, will they be ready to say, the parts of bodies stick firmly together'! 
 Is there any thing more common 1 And what doubt can there be made of 
 it ! And the like, I say, concerning thinking and voluntary motion : do we 
 not every moment experiment it in ourselves ; and therefore can it be doubt- 
 ed 1 The matter of fact is clear, I confess ; but when we would a little nearer 
 look into it, and consider how it is done, there I think we are at a loss, both 
 in the one and the other ; and can as little understand how the parts of body 
 cohere, as how we ourselves perceive, or move. I would have any one in- 
 telligibly explain to me how the parts of gold, or brass (that but now in 
 fusion were as loose from one another as the particles of water or the 
 sands of an hour glass,) come in a few moments to be so united, and 
 adhere so strongly one to another, that the utmost force of men’s arms cannot 
 separate them : a considering man will, I suppose, be here at a loss to satis- 
 fy his own, or another man’s understanding. 
 
 Sect. 26. The little bodies that compose that fluid we call water are so 
 extremely small, that I have never heard of any one, who by a microscope 
 (and yet I have heard of some that have magnified to ten thousand, nay, 
 to much above a hundred thousand times) pretended to perceive their 
 distinct bulk, figure, or motion : and the particles of water are also so per- 
 fectly dosse one from another, that the least force sensibly separates them. 
 Nay, if we consider their perpetual motion, we must allow them to have no 
 cohesion one with another; and yet let but a sharp cold come, they unite, 
 they consolidate, these little atoms cohere, and are not, without great force, 
 separable. He that could find the bonds that tie these heaps of loose little bo- 
 dies together so firmly; he that could make known the cement that makes them 
 stick so fast one to another ; would discover a great and yet unknown 
 secret : and yet, when that was done, would he be far enough from making 
 the extension of body (which is the cohesion of its solid parts) intelligible, 
 till he could show wherein consisted the union or consolidation of the parts 
 of those bonds, or of that cement, or of the least particle of matter that exists. 
 Whereby it appears, that this primary and supposed obvious quality of body 
 will be found, when examined, to be as incomprehensible as any thing belong- 
 ingtoour minds, and a solid extended substance as hard to be conceived as a 
 thinking immaterial one, whatever difficulties some would raise against it. 
 
 Sect. 27. For, to extend our thoughts a little farther, that pressure, which 
 is brought to explain the cohesion of bodies, is as unintelligible as the cohe- 
 sion itself. For if matter be considered, as no doubt it is, finite, let any one 
 send his contemplation to the extremities of the universe, and there see 
 what conceivable hoops, what bond he can imagine to hold this mass of mat- 
 ter in so close a pressure together; from whence steel has its firmness, and 
 the parts of a diamond their hardness and indissolubility. If matter be finite, 
 it must have its extremes; and there must be something to hinder it from scat- 
 tering asunder. If, to avoid this difficulty, any one will throw himself into 
 the supposition and abyss of infinite matter, let him consider what light he 
 thereby brings to the cohesion of body, and whether he be ever the nearer 
 making it intelligible by resolving it into a supposition the most absurd and 
 most incomprehensible of all other: so far is our extension of body (which 
 is nothing but the cohesion of solid parts) from being clearer, or more dis- 
 tinct, when we would inquire into the nature, cause, or manner of it, than 
 the idea of thinking. 
 
 Sect. 28. Communication of motion by impulse, or by thought, equally 
 intelligible . — Another idea we have of body is the power of communication 
 
CL. 23, 
 
 OUR IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 
 
 197 
 
 of motion by impulse ; and of our souls, the power of exciting motion by 
 thought. These ideas, the one of body, the other of our minds, every 
 day’s experience clearly furnishes us with : but if here again we inquire 
 how this is done, we are equally in the dark. For to the communication 
 of motion by impulse, wherein as much motion is lost to one body as is 
 got to the other, which is the most ordinary case, we can have no other 
 conception but of the passing of motion out of one body into another ; which, 
 I think, is as obscure and unconceivable, as how our minds move or 
 stop our bodies by thought : which we every moment find they do. The 
 increase of motion by impulse, which is observed or believed sometimes to 
 happen, is yet harder to be understood. We have by daily experience 
 clear evidence of motion produced both by impulse and by thought ; but 
 the manner, how, hardly comes within our comprehension ; we are equally 
 at a loss in both. So that however we consider motion, and its communica- 
 tion, either from body or spirit, the idea which belongs to spirit is at least as 
 clear as that which belongs to body. And if we consider the active power 
 of moving, or as I may call it, motivity, it is much clearer in spirit than 
 body ; since two bodies, placed by one another at rest, will never afford us 
 the idea of a power in the one to move the other, but by a borrowed mo- 
 tion ; whereas the mind, every day, affords us ideas of an active power of 
 moving of bodies; and therefore it is worth our consideration, whether ac- 
 tive power be not the proper attribute of spirits, and passive power of mat- 
 ter. Hence may be conjectured, that created spirits are not totally sepa- 
 rate from matter, because they are both active and passive. Pure spirit, 
 viz. God, is only active ; pure matter is only passive ; those beings that are 
 both active and passive, we may judge to partake of both. But be that as 
 it will, I think we have as many, and as clear ideas belonging to spirit as 
 we have belonging to body, the substance of each being equally unknown 
 to us ; and the idea of thinking in spirit as clear as of extension in body ; 
 and the communication of motion by thought, which we attribute to spirit, 
 is as evid ent as that by impulse, which we ascribe to body. Constant expe- 
 rience makes us sensible of both these, though our narrow understandings 
 can comprehend neither. For when the mind would look beyond those 
 original ideas we have from sensation on reflection, and penetrate into 
 their causes, and manner of production, we find still it discovers nothing 
 but its own short-sightedness. 
 
 Sect. 29. To conclude — sensation convinces us that there are solid ex- 
 tended sub^nce'Sfand reflection, that there are thinking ones ; experience 
 assures us of the existence of such beings, and that the one hath a power 
 to move body by impulse, the other by thought; this we cannot doubt of. 
 Experience, I say, every moment furnishes us with the clear ideas both of 
 the one and the other. But beyond these ideas, as received from their 
 proper sources, our faculties will not reach. If we would inquire farther 
 into their nature, causes, and manner, we perceive not the nature of ex- 
 tension clearer than we do of thinking. If we would explain them any 
 farther, one is as easy as the other ; and there is no more difficulty to con- 
 ceive how a substance we know not should by thought set body into mo- 
 tion, than how a substance we know not should by impulse set body into, 
 motion. So that we are no more able to discover wherein the ideas be- 
 longing to body consist, than those belonging to spirit. From whence its 
 seems probable to me, that the simple ideas we receive from sensation and 
 reflection are the boundaries of our thoughts ; beyond which the mind, 
 whatever efforts it would make, is not able to advance one jot; nor can it 
 make any discoveries, when it would pry into the nature and hidden causes 
 of those ideas. 
 
 Sect. 30. Idea of spirit druLMo dy compared . — So that, in short, the 
 idea we harve-o£--sp , irit, ■etJmpared with theTdea we have of body, stands 
 thus : the substance of spirit is unknown to us ; and so is the sub- 
 
198 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 stance of body equally unknown to us* — Two primary qualities or proper- 
 ties of body, viz. solid coherent parts and impulse, we have distinct clear 
 ideas of : so likewise we know, and have distinct clear ideas of two primary 
 qualities or properties otspirit, viz. thinking, and a power of action ; i. e. 
 a power of beginning or stopping several thoughts or motions. We have 
 also the ideas of several qualities, inherent in bodies, and have the clear 
 distinct ideas of them ; which qualities are but the various modifications of 
 the extension of cohering solid parts and their motion. We have likewise 
 the ideas of the several modes of thinking, viz. believing, doubting, intending, 
 fearing, hoping; all which are but the several modes of thinking. We have 
 also the ideas of willing, and moving the body consequent to it, and with 
 the body itself too ; for, as has been shown, spirit is capable of motion. 
 
 Sect. 31. The notion of spirit involves no more difficulty in it than 
 that of body. — Lastly, if this notion of immaterial spirit may have per- 
 haps some difficulties in it not easy to be explained, we have therefore no 
 more reason to deny or doubt the existence of such spirits, than we have 
 to deny or doubt the existence of body ; because the notion of body is cum- 
 bered with some difficulties very hard, and perhaps impossible to be ex- 
 plained or understood by us. For I would fain have instanced any thing 
 in our notion of spirit more perplexed, or nearer a contradiction, than the 
 very notion of body includes in it : the divisibility in infinitum of any finite 
 extension involving us, whether we grant or deny it, in consequences im- 
 possible to be explicated or made in our apprehensions consistent : con- 
 sequences that carry greater difficulty, and more apparent absurdity, than 
 any thing that can follow from the notion of an immaterial knowing sub- 
 stance. 
 
 Sect. 32, . We know nothing beyond our simple ideas. — Which we are 
 not at all to wonder at, since we havingffiut some few superficial ideas of 
 things, discovered to us only by the senses from without, or by the mind, 
 reflecting on what it experiments in itself within, have no knowledge be- 
 yond that, much less of the internal constitution and true nature of things, 
 being destitute of faculties to attain it. And therefore experimenting and 
 discovering in ourselves knowledge, and the power of voluntary motion, as 
 certainly as we experiment or discover in things without us the cohesion 
 and separation of solid parts, which is the extension and motion of bodies ; 
 wo have as much reason to be satisfied with our notion of immaterial spirit, 
 as with our notion of body, and the existence of the one as well as the other. 
 For it being no more a contradiction that thinking should exist, separate 
 and independent from solidity, than it is a contradiction that solidity 
 should exist separate and independent from thinking, they being both 
 but simple ideas, independent one from another, — and having as clear 
 and distinct ideas in us of thinking as of solidity, — I know not why 
 we may not as well allow a thinking thing without solidity, i. e. im- 
 material, to exist, as a solid thing without thinking, i. e. matter, to 
 exist ; especially since it is not harder to conceive how thinking should 
 exist without matter, than how matter should think. For whensoever 
 we would proceed beyond these simple ideas we have from sensation and 
 reflection, and dive farther into the nature of things, we fall presently into 
 darkness and obscurity, perplexedness and difficulties ; and can discover 
 nothing farther but our own blindness and ignorance. But whichever of 
 these complex ideas be clearest, that of body or immaterial spirit, this is 
 evident, that the simple ideas that make them up are no other than what 
 we have received from sensation or reflection ; and so is it of all our other 
 ideas of substances, even of God himself. 
 
 Sect. 33. Idea of God. — For if we examine the idea we have of the in- 
 comprehensible Supreme Being, we shall find, that we come by it the same 
 way ; and that the complex ideas we have both of God and separate spirits, 
 are made up of the simple ideas we receive from reflection ; v. g. having. 
 
Cn. 23. 
 
 OUR IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 
 
 19& 
 
 from what we experiment in ourselves, got the ideas of existence and dura- 
 tion ; of knowledge and power ; of pleasure and happiness ; and of several 
 other qualities and powers, which it is better to have than to be without ; 
 when we would frame an idea the most suitable we can to the Supreme Be- 
 ing, we enlarge every one of these with our idea of infinity ; and so putting 
 them together, make our complex idea of God. For that the mind has such 
 a power of enlarging some of its ideas, received from sensation and reflection, 
 has been already shown. 
 
 Sect. 34. If I find that I know some few things, and some of them, or 
 all, perhaps, imperfectly, I can frame an idea of knowing twice as many; 
 which I can double again, as often as I can add to number ; and thus enlarge 
 my idea of knowledge, by extending its comprehension to all things exist- 
 ing or possible. The same also I can do of knowing them more perfectly ; 
 i. e. all their qualities, powers, causes, consequences, and relations, &c. till 
 all be perfectly known that is in them, or can any way relate to them ; and 
 thus frame the idea of infinite or boundless knowledge. The same may al- 
 so be done of power, till we come to that we call infinite : and also of the 
 duration of existence, without beginning or end ; and so frame the idea of 
 an eternal being. The degrees or extent wherein we ascribe existence, 
 power, wisdom, and all other perfections (which we can have any ideas of) 
 to that sovereign being which we call God, being all boundless and infinite, 
 we frame the best idea of him our minds are capable of : all which is done, 
 I say, by enlarging those simple ideas we have taken from the operations of 
 our own minds by reflection, or by our senses from exterior things, to that 
 vastness to which infinity can extend them. 
 
 Sect. 35. Idea of God. — For it is infinity, which joined to our ideas of 
 existence, power, knowledge, &e. makes that complex idea whereby we re- 
 present to ourselves, the best we can, the Supreme Being. For though in 
 His own essence (which certainly we do not know, not knowing the real 
 essence of a pebble, or a fly, or of our own selves) God be simple and un- 
 compounded ; yet, I think, I may say we have no other idea of him but a 
 complex one of existence, knowledge, power, happiness, &c. infinite and 
 eternal ; which are all distinct ideas, and some of them, being relative, are 
 again compounded of others ; all which being, as has been shown, originally 
 got from sensation and reflection, go to make up the idea or notion we have 
 of God. 
 
 Sect. 36. No idea in our complex one of spirits, but those got from 
 sensation or reflection. — This farther is to be observed, that there is no 
 idea we attribute to God, bating infinity, which is not also a part of our com- 
 plex..idea of other spirits. Because, being capable of no other simple ideas, 
 belonging to any thing but body, but those which by reflection we receive 
 from the operation of our minds, we can attribute to spirits no other but what 
 we receive from thence : and all the difference we can put between them in 
 our contemplation of spirits, is only in the several extents and degrees of their 
 knowledgn, pn‘wer,jd.uration, happiness, &c. For that in our ideas, as well 
 of spirits aS'Tffother things, we are restrained to those we receive from 
 sensation and reflection, is evident from hence, that in our ideas of spirits, 
 how much soever advanced in perfection beyond those of bodies, even to 
 that of infinite, we cannot yet have any idea of the manner wherein they 
 discover their thoughts one to another : though we must necessarily con- 
 clude, that separate spirits, which are beings that have perfecter knowledge 
 and greater happiness than we, must needs have also a perfecter way of 
 communicating their thoughts than we have, who are fain to make use of 
 corporeal signs and particular sounds ; which are therefore of most general 
 use, as being the best and quickest we are capable of. But of immediate 
 communication, having no experiment in ourselves, and consequently no 
 notion of it at all, we have no idea how spirits, which use not words, can 
 with quickness, or much less how spirits that have no bodies, can be 
 
200 
 
 OP HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 masters of their own thoughts, and communicate or conceal them at plea- 
 sure, though we cannot but necessarily suppose they have such a power. 
 
 Sect. '37. Recapitulation. — And thus we have seen what kind of ideas 
 we have of substances of all kinds, wherein they consist, and how we came 
 by them. From whence, I think, it is very evident, 
 
 First, that all our ideas of the several sorts of substances are nothing 
 but collections of simple ideas, with a supposition of something to which 
 they belong, and in which they subsist; though of this supposed something 
 we have no clear distinct idea at all. 
 
 Secondly, that all the simple ideas, that thus united in one common sub- 
 stratum make up our complex ideas of several sorts of substances, are no 
 other but such as we have received from sensation or reflection. So that 
 even in those which we think we are most intimately acquainted with, and 
 that come nearest the comprehension of our most enlarged conceptions, we 
 cannot go beyond those simple ideas. And even in those which seem most 
 remote from all we have to do with, and do infinitely surpass any thing we 
 can perceive in ourselves by reflection, or discover by sensation in other 
 things, we can attain to nothing but those simple ideas, which we original- 
 ly received from sensation and reflection ; as is evident in the complex ideas 
 we have of angels, and particularly of God himself. 
 
 Thirdly, that most of the simple ideas that make up our complex ideas 
 of substances, when truly considered, are only powers, however we are apt 
 to take them for positive qualities ; v. g. the greatest part of the ideas that 
 make our complex idea of gold are yellowness, great weight, ductility, fusi- 
 bility, and solubility in aqua regia , &c. all united together in an unknown 
 substratum ; all which ideas are nothing else but so many relations to other 
 substances, and are not really in the gold, considered barely in itself, though 
 they depend on those real and primary qualities ofits internal constitution, 
 whereby it has a fitness differently to operate, and be operated on by several 
 other substances. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 OF COLLECTIVE IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES.' 
 
 SecttT. One idea. — Besides these complex ideas of several single sub- 
 stances, as of man, horse, gold, violet, apple, &c. the mind hath also com- 
 plex collective ideas of substances; which I so call, because such ideas 
 are made up of many particular substances considered together, as united 
 into one idea, and which so joined are looked on as one: v. g. the idea of 
 such a collection of men as make an army, though consisting of a great 
 number of distinct substances, is as much one idea as the idea of a man: 
 and the great collective idea of all bodies whatsoever, signified by the name 
 world, is as much one idea as the idea of any the least particle of matter 
 in it; it sufficing to the unity of any idea that it be considered as one repre- 
 sentation or picture, though made up of ever so many particulars. 
 
 Sect. 2_. ffade'hy the power of composing in the mind. — These collec- 
 tive ideas of substances the mind makes by its power of composition, and 
 uniting severally either simple or complex ideas into one, as' it does by the 
 same faculty make the complex ideas of particular substances, consisting 
 of an aggregate of divers simple ideas, united in one substance ; and as the 
 mind, by putting together the repeated ideas of unity, makes the collective 
 mode, or complex idea of any number, as a score, or a gross, &c. so by 
 putting together several particular substances, it makes collective ideas of 
 substances, as a troop, an army, a swarm, a city, a fleet ; each of which, 
 eve^y one finds, that he represents to his own mind by one idea, in one 
 
Ch. 24. OP COLLECTIVE IDEAS OP SUBSTANCES. 
 
 201 
 
 view ; and so under that notion considers those several things as perfectly 
 one, as one ship, or one atom. Nor is it harder to conceive how an army 
 of ten thousand men should make one idea, than how a man should make 
 one idea : it being as easy to the mind to unite into one the idea of a great 
 number of men, and consider it as one, as it is to unite into one particular 
 all the distinct ideas that make up the composition of a man, and con- 
 sider them all together as one. 
 
 Sec'E-.S. All artificial things are collective ideas . — Among such kind of 
 collective ideas are to be counted most part of artificial things, at least such 
 of them as are made up of distinct substances : and in truth, if we consider 
 all these collective ideas aright, as army, constellation, universe, as they 
 are united into so many single ideas, they are but the artificial draughts of 
 the mind ; bringing things very remote, and independent on one another, 
 into one view, the better to contemplate and discourse of them, united into 
 one conception, and signified by one name. For there are no things so re- 
 mote, nor so contrary, which the mind cannot, by this art of composition, 
 bring into one idea ; as is visible in that signified by the name universe. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV, 
 
 OF RELATION. 
 
 Sect. 1. Relation, what . — Besides the ideas, whether sjjnple or complex, 
 that the mind has of things, as they are in themselves, there are others it 
 gets from their comparison one with another. The understanding, in the 
 consideratioh^£Lauy.thing- f is not confined to that precise object: it can ear- 
 ly any idea as it were beyond itself, or at least look beyond it, to see how 
 it stands in conformity to any other. When the mind so considers one 
 thing, that it does as it were bring it to and set it by another, and carry its 
 view from one to the other : this is, as the words import, relation and res- 
 pect ; and the denominations given to positive things, intimating that res- 
 pect, and serving as marks to lead the thoughts beyond the subject itself 
 denominated to something distinct from it, are what we call relatives ; and 
 the things, so brought together, related. Thus, when the mind considers 
 Caius as such a positive being, it takes nothing into that idea but what 
 really exists in Caius ; v. g. when I consider him as a man, I have nothing 
 in my mind but the complex idea of the species, man. So likewise, when 
 I say Caius is a white man, I have nothing but the bare consideration of a 
 man who hath that white colour. But when I give Caius the name hus- 
 band, I intimate some other person; and when I give him the name 
 whiter, I intimate some other thing : in both cases my thought is led to 
 something beyond Caius, and there are two things brought into considera- 
 tion. And since any idea, whether simple or complex, maybe the occasion 
 why the mind thus brings two things together, and as it were takes a view 
 of them at once, though still considered as distinct ; therefore any of our 
 ideas may be the foundation of relation. As in the above-mentioned in- 
 stance, the contract and ceremony of marriage with Sempronia is the 
 occasion of the denomination or relation of husband; and the colour white 
 the occasion why he is said to be whiter than freestone. 
 
 Sect. 2. Relations without correlative terms not easily perceived.— 
 These, and the like relations, expressed by relative terms, that have others 
 - answering them, with a reciprocal intimation, as father and son, bigger 
 and less, cause and effect, are very obvious to every one, and every body 
 at first s'ght perceives the relation. For father and son, husband and wife, 
 and such other correlative terms, seem so nearly to belong one to another 
 and through custom do so readily chime and answer one another in peo- 
 2 A 
 
202 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 pie’s memories, that, upon the naming- of either of them, the thoughts are 
 presently carried beyond the thing so named; and nobody overlooks or 
 doubts of relation, where it is so plainly intimated. But where languages 
 have failed to give correlative names, there the relation is not always so 
 easily taken notice of. Concubine is, no doubt, a relative name, as weL 
 as wife ; but in languages where this and the like words, have not a corre- 
 lative term, there people are not so apt to take them to be so, as wanting 
 that evident mark of relation which is between correlatives, which seem to 
 explain one another, and not to be able to exist but together. Hence it is, 
 that many of those names which, duly considered, do include evident re- 
 lations, have been called external denominations. But all names, that are 
 more than empty sounds, must signify some idea, which is either in the 
 thing to which the name is applied — and then it is positive, and is looked 
 on as united to, and existing in, the thing to which the denomination is 
 given — or else it arises from the respect the mind finds in it to something 
 distinct from it, with which it considers it; and thqn it concludes a re- 
 lation. 
 
 Sect. 3. Some seemingly absolute terms contain relations. — Another 
 sort -of- relative terms there is which are not looked on to be either relative, 
 or so much as external denominations ; which yet, under the form and ap- 
 pearance of signifying something absolute in the subject, do conceal a tacit, 
 though less observable, relation. Such are the seemingly positive terms of 
 old, great, imperfect, &c. whereof I shall have occasion to speak more at 
 large in the following chapters. 
 
 Sect. 4. Relation different from the things related. — This farther may 
 be observed, that'the ideas of relation may be the same in men, who have 
 far different ideas of the things that are related, or that are thus compared ; 
 v. g. those who have far different ideas of a man, may yet agree in the 
 notion of a father ; which is a notion superinduced to the substance, or 
 man, and refers only to an act of that thing called man, whereby he con- 
 tributes to the generation of one of his own kind, let man be what it will.* 
 
 Sect. 5. Change of relation may be without any change in the subject. 
 — The nature therefore of relation consists in the referring or comparing 
 two things one to another; from which comparison one or both comes to 
 be denominated. And if either of those things be removed, or cease to be, 
 the relation ceases, and the denomination consequent to it, though the 
 other receive in itself no alteration at all ; v. g. Caius, whom I consider 
 to-day as a father, ceases to be so to-morrow, only by the death of his son, 
 without any alteration made in himself. Nay, barely by the mind’s chang- 
 ing the object to which it compares any thing, the same thing is capable 
 of having contrary denominations at the same time: v.g. Caius, compared 
 to several persons, may truly be said to be older and younger, stronger and 
 weaker, &c. 
 
 Sect. 6. Relation only betwixt two things. — Whatsoever doth or can 
 exist , or be Considered as one things is positive; and so not only simple 
 ideas and substances, but modes also, 'arerpOsftive beings; though the parts 
 of which they consist are very often relative one to another ; but the whole 
 together considered as one thing, and producing in us the complex idea of 
 one thing, which idea is in our minds as one picture, though an aggregate 
 of divers parts, and under one name, it is a positive or absolute thing 
 or idea. Thus a triangle, though the parts thereof, compared one to another, 
 be relative, yet the idea of the whole is a positive absolute idea. The same 
 may be said of a family, a tune, &c. for there can be no relation but be- 
 twixt two things considered as two things. There must always be in re- 
 lation two ideas, or things, either in themselves really separate, oi con- 
 sidered as distinct, and then a ground or occasion for their comparison. 
 
 Sect. 7. All things capable of relation — Concerning relation in general, 
 these things may be considered : First, that there is no one thing whether 
 
Ch. 25. 
 
 OF RELATION. 
 
 203 
 
 simple idea, substance, mode, or relation, or name of either of them, which 
 is not capable of almost an infinite number of considerations, in reference 
 to others things ; and therefore this makes no small part of men’s thoughts 
 and words : v. g. one single man may at once be concerned in, and sustain 
 all these following relations, and many more, viz. father, brother, son, 
 grandfather, grandson, father-in-law, son-in-law, husband, friend, enemy, 
 subject, general, judge, patron, client, professor, European, Englishman, 
 islander, servant, master, possessor, captain, superior, inferior, bigger, less, 
 older, younger, contemporary, like, unlike, &c. to an almost infinite num- 
 ber : he being capable of as many relations as there can be occasions of 
 comparing him to other things, in any manner of agreement, disagreement, 
 or respect whatsoever. For, as I said, relation is a way of comparing or 
 considering two things together, and giving one or both of them some 
 appellation from that comparison ; and sometimes giving even the relation 
 itself a name. . 
 
 Sect. 8. The ideas of relations clearer often than of the subjects rela- 
 ted.— Secondly, this farther may be considered concerning relation, that 
 though it be not contained in the real existence of things, but something ex- 
 traneous and superinduced ; yet the ideas which relative words stand for, are 
 often clearer and more distinct than of those substances to which they do 
 belong. The notion we have of a father, or brother, is a great deal clearer 
 and more distinct than that we have of a man ; or, if you will, paternity 
 is a thing whereof it is easier to have a clearer idea than*of humanity : and 
 I can much easier conceive what a friend is, than what God : because 
 the knowledge of one action, or one simple idea, is oftentimes sufficient to 
 give me the notion of a relation : but to the knowing of any substantial 
 being, an accurate collection of sundry ideas is necessary. *A man, if he 
 compares two things together, can hardly be supposed not to know what 
 it is wherein he compares them : so tha-t when he compares any things to- 
 gether, he cannot but have a very clear idea of that relation. The ideas 
 then of relations are capable at least of being more perfect and distinct in 
 our minds than those of substances.* Because it is commonly hard to know 
 all the simple ideas which are really in any substance, but for the most 
 part easy enough to know the simple ideas that make up any relation I think 
 on, or have a name for ; v. g. comparing two men, in reference to one com- 
 mon parent, it is very easy to frame the ideas of brothers, without having 
 yet the perfect idea of a man. For significant relative words, as well as 
 others, standing only for ideas, and those being all either simple, or made 
 up of simple ones, it suffices for the knowing the precise idea the relative 
 term stands for, to have a clear conception of that which is the foundation 
 of the relation ; which may be done without having a perfect and clear idea 
 of the thing it is attributed to. Thus having the notion, that one laid the egg 
 out of which the other was hatched, I have a clear idea of the relation ot 
 dam and chick, between the two cassiowaries in St James’s Park ; though 
 perhaps I have but a very obscure and imperfect idea of those birds 
 themselves. 
 
 Sect. 9. Relations all terminate in simple ideas. — Thirdly, though there 
 be a great number of coo perations, wherein things” may be compared one 
 with another, and so a multitude of relations ; yet they all terminate in, 
 and are concerned about, those simple ideas, either of sensation or reflec- 
 tion : which I think to be the whole materials of all our knowledge. To 
 clear this, I shall show it in the most considerable relations that we have 
 any notion of, in some that seem to be the most remote from sense or re- 
 flection ; which yet will appear to have their ideas from thence, and leave 
 it past doubt, that the notions we have of them are but certain simple 
 ideas, and so originally derived from sense or reflection. 
 
 Sect. 10. Terms leading the mind beyond the subject denominated, 
 are Fourthly, tlTaiTrelation Being the' 'cansidering of -one-thing 
 
204 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 with another, whicli is extrinsical to it, it is evident, that all words that 
 necessarily lead the mind to any other ideas than are supposed really to 
 exist in that thing, to which the words are applied, are relative words : 
 v. g. a man black, merry, thoughtful, thirsty, angry, extended ; these, and 
 the like, are all absolute, because they neither signify nor intimate any 
 thing but what does or is supposed really to exist in the man thus denomi- 
 nated : but father, brother, king, husband, blacker, merrier, &c. are words 
 whicli, together with the thing they denominate, imply also something else 
 separate and exterior to the existence of that thing. 
 
 Sect. 11. Conclusion. — Having laid down these premises concerning 
 relation in general, I shall now proceed to show, in some instances, how 
 all the ideas we have of relation are made up, as the others'tirey only off 
 simple ideas ; and that they all, how refined or remote from sense .soe ver 
 they seem, terminate at last in simple ideas. I shall begin with the most 
 comprehensive relation, wherein all things that do or can exist are con- 
 cerned ; and that is the relation of cause and effect. The idea whereof, 
 how derived from the two fountains of all our knowledge, sensation and 
 reflection, I shall in the next place consider. 
 
 VI 
 
 , CHAPTER XXiV. 
 
 OF CAUSE AND EFFECT, AND OTHER RELATIONS. 
 
 Sect. 1. WJience their ideas got. — In the notice that our senses take 
 of the constant vicissitudes of things, we cannot but observe, that severa. 
 particular, both qualities and substances, begin to exist; and that they re- 
 ceive this their existence from the due application and operation of some 
 other being. From this observation we get our ideas of cause and effect. 
 That which produces any simple or complex idea we -denote by the gene- 
 ral name cause ; and that which is prodflced, effect. Thus, finding, that in 
 that substance which we call wax, fluidity - , which is a simple idea that was 
 not in it before, is constantly produced by the application of a certain de- 
 gree of heat ; we call the simple idea of heat, in relation to fluidity in wax, 
 the cause of it, and fluidity the effect. So also finding that the substance 
 of wood, which is a certain collection of simple ideas so called, by the 
 application of fire is turned into another substance called ashes, i. e. ano- 
 ther complex idea, consisting of a collection of simple ideas, quite different 
 from that complex idea which we call wood ; we consider fire, in relation 
 to ashes, as cause, and the ashes as effect. So that whatever is consi- 
 dered by us to conduce or operate to the producing any particular simple 
 idea, or collection of simple ideas, whether substance or mode, which did 
 not before exist, hath thereby in our minds the relation of a cause, and so 
 is denominated by us. 
 
 Sect. 2. Creation, generation, making alteration. — Having thus, from 
 what our senses 'are' able to discover, in the operations of bodies 
 on one another, got the notion of cause and effect, viz. that a cause is 
 that which makes any other thing, either simple idea, substance or mode, 
 begin to be ; and an effect is that which had its beginning from some other 
 thing, the mind finds no great difficulty to distinguish the several originals 
 of things into two sorts. 
 
 First, when the thing is wholly new, so that no part thereof did ever ex- 
 ist before ; as when a new particle of matter doth begin to exist, in rerum 
 natura, which had before no being, and this we call creation. 
 
 Secondly, when a thing is made up of particles, which did all of them 
 nefore exist, but that very thing so constituted of pre-existing particles, which 
 considered all together make up such a collection of simple ideas as had 
 
 4 
 
CL 26. 
 
 OF CAUSE AND EFFECT, &c. 
 
 205 
 
 not any existence before ; as this man, this egg, rose, or cherry, &,c. And 
 this, when referred to a substance, produced in the ordinary course of nature, 
 by an internal principle, but set on work by, and received from some ex- 
 ternal agent or cause, and working by insensible ways, which we perceive 
 not, we call generation : when the cause is extrinsical, and the effect pro- 
 duced by a sensible separation, or juxta position of discernible parts, we call 
 it making ; and such are all artificial things. When any simple idea is 
 produced which was not in that subject before, we call it alteration. Thus 
 a man is generated, a picture made, and either of them altered, when any 
 new sensible quality or simple idea is produced in either of them, which 
 was not there before ; and the things thus made to exist, which were not 
 there before, are effects ; and those things which operated to the existence, 
 causes. In which, and all other cases, we may observe, that the notion 
 of cause and effect has its rise from ideas, received by sensation or reflec- 
 tion ; and that this relation, how comprehensible soever, terminates at last 
 in them. For to have the idea of cause and effect, it suffices to consider 
 any simple idea, or substance, as beginning to exist by the operation of 
 some other, without knowing the manner of that operation. 
 
 Sect. 3. Relations of time . — Time and place are also the foundations of 
 very large relations, and all finite beings at least are concerned in them. 
 .jJuLhaving already shown, in another place, how we get these ideas, it may 
 suffteefriere to intimate, that most of the denominations of things received 
 from time, are only relations. Thus, when any one says that queen Eliza- 
 beth lived sixty-nine, and reigned forty-five years, these words import only 
 tlfe relation of that duration to some other, and mean no more than this, 
 that the duration of her existence was equal to sixty-nine, and the duration 
 of her government to forty-five annual revolutions of the sUn ; and so are 
 all words, answering, how long. Again, William the Conqueror invaded 
 England about the year 1066, which means this, that taking the duration 
 from our Saviour’s time till now, for one entire great length of time, it shows 
 at what distance this invasion was from the two extremes ; and so do all 
 words of time, answering to the question, when, which show only the dis- 
 tance of any point of time from the period of a longer duration, from which 
 we measure, and to which we thereby consider it as related. 
 
 Sect. 4. There are yet, besides those, other words of time, that ordi- 
 narily are thought to stand for positive ideas, which yet will, when consi- 
 dered, be found to be relative, such as are young, old, &c. which include 
 and -intimate the .relation any thing has to a certain length of duration 
 whereof we have the ideain our minds. Thus having settled in our thoughts 
 the idea of the ordinary duration of a man to be seventy years, when we 
 say a man is young, we mean that his age is yet but a small part of 
 that which usually men attain to: and when we denominate him old, we 
 mean that his duration is run out almost to the end of that which men do 
 not usually exceed. And so it is hut comparing the particular age, or dura- 
 tion of this or that man, to the idea of that duration which we have in our 
 minds, as ordinarily belonging to that sort of animals ; which is plain, in the 
 application of these names to other things ; for a man is called young at 
 twenty, and very young at seven years old : but yet a horse we call 
 old at twenty, and a dog at seven years ; because in each of these we 
 compare their age to different ideas of duration, which are settled in our 
 minds, as belonging to these several sorts of animals, in the ordinary course 
 of nature. But the sun and stars, though they have outlasted several gene- 
 rations of men, we call not old, because we do not know what period God 
 hath set to that sort of beings. This term belonging properly to those 
 things which we can observe in the ordinary course of things, by a natu- 
 ral decay, to come to an end in a certain period of time ; and so have in 
 our minds, as it were, a standard to which we can compare the several 
 parts of their duration ; and, by the relation they bear thereunto, call them 
 
206 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 young or old ; which we cannot therefore do to a ruby or diamond, things 
 whose usual periods we know not. 
 
 Sect. 5. Relations of place and extension. — The relation also that things 
 _ have_t©-ene another in their places and distances, is very obvious to observe ; 
 as above, below, a mile distant from Charing-cross, in England, and in Lon- 
 don. But as in duration, so in extension and bulk, there are some ideas 
 that are relative, which we signify by names that are thought positive ; as 
 ' great and little are truly relations. For here also having, by observation, 
 settled in our minds the ideas of the bigness of several species of things 
 from those we have been most accustomed to, we make them as it were the 
 standards whereby to denominate the bulk of others. Thus we call a great 
 apple, such a one as is bigger than the ordinary sort of those we have been 
 used to : and a little horse, such a one as comes not up to the size of that 
 idea which we have in our minds to belong ordinarily to horses ; and that 
 will be a great horse to a Welchman which is but a little one to a Fleming; 
 they two having, from the different breed of their countries, taken several 
 sized ideas to which they compare, and in relation to which they denomi- 
 nate, their great and their little. 
 
 Sect. 6. Absolute terms often stand for relations. — So likewise weak 
 and strong are but relative denominations of power, compared to some ideas 
 we have at that time of greater or less power. Thus when we say a weak 
 man, we mean one that has not so much strength or power to move, as usual- 
 ly men have, or usually those of his size have : which is a comparing his 
 strength to the idea we have of the usual strength of men, or men of such 
 a size. The like, when we say the creatures are all weak things ; weak, 
 there, is but a relative term, signifying the disproportion there is in the 
 power of God and the creatures. And so abundance of words, in ordinary 
 speech, stand only for relations (and perhaps the greatest part) which at 
 first sight seem to have no such signification : v. g. the ship has necessary 
 stores. Necessary and stores are both relative words ; one having a rela- 
 tion to the accomplishing the voyage intended, and the other to future use. 
 All which relations, how they are confined to and terminate in ideas deri- 
 ved from sensation or reflection, is too obvious to need any explication. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 
 
 Sect. 1. Wherein identity consists. — Another occasion the mind often 
 takes of comparing, is the very being of things : when considering any 
 thing as existing at any determined time and place, we compare it with 
 itself existing at another time, and thereon form the ideas of identity and 
 diversity. When we see any thing to be in any place in any instant of 
 time, we are sure (be it what it will ) that it is that very thing, and not 
 another which at that same time exists in another place, how like and un- 
 distinguishable soever it may be in all other respects : and in this consists 
 identity, when the ideas it is attributed to vary not at all from what they 
 were that moment wherein we consider their former existence, and to which 
 we compare the present. For we never finding nor conceiving it possible 
 that two things of the same kind should exist in the same place at the same 
 time, we rightly conclude, that whatever exists any where at any time, ex- 
 cludes all of the same kind, and is there itself alone. When, therefore, we 
 demand, whether any thing be the same or no, it refers always to some- 
 thing that existed such a time in such a place, which it is certain at that 
 instant was the same with itself, and no other. From whence it follows, 
 that one thing cannot have two beginnings of existence, nor two things 
 
 4 
 
Ch. 27. 
 
 OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 
 
 207 
 
 one beginning; it being impossible for two things of the same kind to be 
 or exist in the same instant, in the very same place, or one and the same 
 thing in different places. That therefore that had one beginning, is the 
 same thing; and that which had a different beginning in time and place 
 from that, is not the same, but diverse. That which has made the difficulty 
 about this relation, has been the little care and attention used in having pre- 
 cise notions of the things to which it is attributed. 
 
 Sect. 2. Identity of substances. — We have the ideas but of three sorts 
 of substances: 1. God. 2. Fin ite intellige n ces. 3-.. Bod ies . First, God 
 is without beginning, eternal, ' unalterable, and every where; and therefore 
 concerning his identity there can be no doubt. Secondly, finite spirits, hav- 
 ing had each its determinate time and place of beginning to exist, the rela- 
 tion tothat time and place will always determine to each of them its identity, 
 as long as it exists. Thirdly, the same will hold of every particle of matter, 
 to~whiclI.no addition or subtraction of matter being made, it is the same. 
 For though these three sorts of substances, as we term them, do not exclude 
 one another out of the same place ; yet we cannot conceive but that they 
 must necessarily each of them exclude any of the same kind out of the 
 same place: or else the notions and names of identity and diversity would 
 be in vain, and there could be no such distinction of substances, or any thing 
 else one from another. For example : could two bodies be in the same 
 place at the same time, then those two parcels of matter must be one and 
 the same, take them great or little ; nay, all bodies must be one and the 
 same. For by the same reason that two particles of matter may be in one 
 place, all bodies may be in one place : which, when it can be supposed, takes 
 away the distinction of identity and diversity of one and more, and renders 
 it ridiculous. But it being a contradiction, that two or more should be one, 
 identity and diversity are relations and ways of comparing well-founded, 
 and of use to the understanding. 
 
 Idea.tiLy.pf modes. — All other things being but modes or relations ulti- 
 mately terminated in substances, the identity and diversity of each particular 
 existence of them too will be by the same way determined : only as to 
 things whose existence is in succession, such as are the actions of finite 
 beings, v. g. motion and thought, both which consist in a continued train 
 of succession ; concerning their diversity, there can be no question : because 
 each perishing the moment it begins, they cannot exist in different times, or 
 in different places, as permanent beings can at different times exist in dis- 
 tanfiplaces ; and therefore no motio mor, thought, considered as at different 
 times,Amn-be-the same, each part thereof Kavungli'dlHerent beginning of 
 existence. 
 
 SVfCTrS: ~Principium individuationis. — From what has been said, it is 
 easy to discover what is so much inquired after, the principium individua- 
 tionis : and that, it is plain, is existence itself, which determines a being 
 of any sort to a particular time and place, incommunicable to two beings of 
 the same kind. This, though it seems easier to conceive in simple sub- 
 stances or modes, yet when reflected on is not more difficult in compound 
 ones, if care be taken to what it is applied : v. g. let us suppose an atom, 
 t. e. a continued body under one immutable superficies, existing in a deter- 
 mined time and place : it is evident that, considered in any instant of its 
 existence, it is in that instant the same with itself. For being at that in- 
 stant what it is, and nothing else, it is the same, and so must continue as 
 long as its existence is continued ; for so long it will be the same, and no 
 other. In like manner, if two or more atoms be joined together into the 
 same mass, every one of those atoms will be the same, by the foregoing rule: 
 and whilst they exist united together, the mass, consisting of the same 
 atoms, must be the same mass, or the same body, let the parts be ever so 
 differently jumbled. But if one of these atoms be taken away, or one new 
 one added, it is no longer the same mass, or the same body. In the state 
 
208 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 of living- creatures, their identity depends not on amass of the same par- 
 ticles, but on something else. For in them the variation of great parcels of 
 matter alters not the identity : an oak growing from a plant to a great tree, 
 and then lopped, is still the same oak; and a colt grown up to a horse, 
 sometimes fat, sometimes lean, is all the while the same horse; though, in 
 both these cases, there may be a manifest change of the parts ; so that truly 
 they are not either of them the same masses of matter, though they be truly 
 one of them the same oak, and the other the same horse. The reason 
 whereof is, that in these two cases, a mass of matter, and a living body, iden- 
 tity is not applied to the same thing. 
 
 Sect. 4. Identity of vegetables . — We must therefore consider wherein 
 an oak differs from a mass of matter, and that seems to me to be in this, 
 that the one is only the cohesion of particles of matter any how united, 
 the other such a disposition of them as constitutes the parts of an oak; and 
 such an organization of those parts as is fit to receive and distribute nour- 
 ishment, so as to continue and frame the wood, bark, and leaves, &c. of 
 an oak, in which consists the vegetable life. That being then one plant 
 which has such an organization of parts in one coherent body partaking of 
 one common life, it continues to be the same plant as long as it partakes 
 of the same life, though that life be communicated to new particles of mat- 
 ter vitally united to the living plant, in a like continued organization con- 
 formable to that sort of plants. For this organization being at any one 
 instant in any one collection of matter, is in that particular concrete, dis- 
 tinguished from all other, and is that individual life which existing con- 
 stantly from that moment both forwards and backwards, in the same continuity 
 of insensibly succeeding parts united to the living body of the plant, it has 
 that identity, which makes the same plant, and all the parts of it, parts of 
 the same plant, during all the time that they exist united in that continued 
 organization, which is tit to convey that common life to all the parts sc 
 united. 
 
 Sect. 5. Identity of animals . — The case is not so much different in 
 brutes, but that any one may hence see what makes an animal, and con- 
 tinues it the same. Something we have like this in machines, and may 
 serve to illustrate it. For example, what is a watch 1 It is plain it is no- 
 thing but a fit organization, or construction of parts, to a certain end, 
 which, when a sufficient force is added to it, it is capable to attain, if 
 we would suppose this machine one continued body, all whose organized 
 parts were repaired, increased, or diminished, by a constant addition 
 or separation of insensible parts, with one common life, we should have 
 something very much like the body of an animal, with this difference, that 
 in an animal the fitness of the organization, and the motion wherein life con- 
 sists, begin together, the motion coming from within ; but in machines, the 
 force coming sensibly from without, is often away when the organ is in or- 
 der, and well fitted to receive it. 
 
 Sect. G. "ldenti/y of man. — This also shows wherein the identity of the 
 same man consists ; viz. in nothing but a participation of the same continued 
 life, by constantly fleeting particles of matter, in succession, vitally united to 
 the same organized body. He that shall place the identity of man in any 
 thing else, but, like that of other animals, in one fitly organized body, taken 
 in any one instant, and from thence continued under one organization of life 
 in several successively fleeting particles of matter united to it, will find it 
 hard to make an embryo, one of years, mad and sober, the same man, by any 
 supposition, that will not make it possible for Seth, Ishmael, Socrates, Pilate. 
 St Austin, and Caesar Borgia, to be the same man. But if the identity of 
 soul alone makes the same man, and there be nothing in the nature of 
 matter why the same individual spirit may not be united to different bodies, 
 it will be possible that those men living in distant ages, and of different tem- 
 pers, may have been the same man : which way of speaking must be, from a 
 
Ch. 27. 
 
 OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 
 
 205 
 
 very strange use of the word man, applied to an idea, out of which body and 
 shape are excluded. And that way of speaking would agree yet worse with 
 the notions of those philosophers who allow of transmigration, and are of 
 opinion that the souls of men may, for their miscarriages, be detruded into the 
 bodies of beasts, as fit habitations, with organs suited to the satisfaction of 
 their brutal inclinations. But yet, I think, nobody, could he be sure that the 
 soul of Heliogabalus were in one of his hogs, would yet say that hog were 
 a man or Heliogabalus. 
 
 "Sectt-T, Mentity suited to the idea . — It is not therefore unity of sub 
 stance that comprehends all sorts of identity, or will determine it in every 
 case: but to conceive and judge of it aright, we must consider what idea 
 the word it is applied to stands for; it being one thing to be the same sub- 
 stance, another the same man, and a third the same person, if person, man, 
 and substance are three names standing for three different ideas; for such 
 as is the idea belonging to that name, such must be the identity; which, if 
 it had been a little more carefully attended to, would possibly have prevent- 
 ed a great deal of that confusion, which often occurs about this matter, 
 with no small seeming difficulties, especially concerning personal identity, 
 which therefore we shall in the next place a little consider. 
 
 Sect. 8. Same man . — An animal is a living organized body; and fre- 
 quently the same animal, as we have observed, is the same continued life 
 communicated to different particles of matter, as they happen successively 
 to be united to that organized living body. And whatever is talked of other 
 definitions, ingenious observation puts it past doubt, that the idea in our' 
 minds, of which the sound man in our mouths is the sign, is nothing else 
 but of an animal of such a certain form : since I think I may be confident, 
 that whoever should see a creature of his own shape and make, though it 
 had no more reason all its life than a cat or a parrot, would call him still a 
 man; or whoever should hear a cat or a parrot discourse, reason, and phi- 
 losophize, would call or think it nothing but a cat or a parrot ; and say, 
 the one was a dull irrational man, and the other a very intelligent ra- 
 tional parrot. A relation we have in an author of great note is sufficient to 
 countenance the supposition of a rational parrot. His words are(c) : 
 
 “ I had a mind to know from Prince Maurice’s own mouth the account 
 of a common, but much credited story, that I heard so often from many 
 others, of an old parrot he had in Brasil during his government there, that 
 spoke, and asked, and answered common questions like a reasonable crea- 
 ture : so that those of his train there generally concluded it to be witchery 
 or possession ; and one of his chaplains, who lived long after in Holland, 
 would never from that time endure a parrot, but said, they all had a devil in 
 them. I had heard many particulars of this story, and assevered by peo- 
 ple hard to be discredited, which made me ask Prince Maurice what there 
 was of it. He said, with his usual plainness and dryness in talk, there 
 was something true, but a great deal false of what had been reported. I 
 desired to know of him what there was of the first 1 He told me short and 
 coldly, that he had heard of such an old parrot when he had been at Brasil; 
 and though he believed nothing of it, and it was a good way off, yet he 
 had so much curiosity as to send for it : that it was a very great and a very 
 old one, and when it came first in the room where the prince was, with a 
 great many Dutchmen about him, it said presently, What a company of 
 white men are here ! They asked it what it thought that man was 1 point- 
 ing to the prince. It answered, some general or other ; when they brought 
 it close to him, he asked it, *D’ou venez vous 1 It answered, De Marinnan. 
 
 (r) Memoirs of what passed in Christendom from 1672 to 1769, p. -jVt 
 
 (*) Whence come ye 1 It answered, From Marinnan. The prince, To whom 
 do you belong ? The parrot, To a Portuguese. Prince, What do you there I 
 Parrot, I look after the chickens. The prince laughed, and said. You look after 
 
 2 B 
 
210 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 The Prince, A qui estes vous 1 The parrot, A un Portugais. Prince, Qne 
 fais tu la '! Parrot, Je gardez les poulles. The prince laughed, and said, 
 Vous gardez les poulles 1 The parrot answered, Oui, moi, et je scai bien 
 faire ; and made the chuck four or five times that people use to make to 
 chickens when they call them. I set down the words of this worthy dia- 
 ogue in French, just as Prince Maurice said them to me. I asked him in 
 what language the parrot spoke, and he said, in Brasilian ; I asked wheth- 
 er lie understood Brasilian ; he said, no, but he had taken care to have two 
 interpreters by him, the one a Dutchman that spoke Brasilian, and the 
 other a Brasilian that spoke Dutch ; that he asked them separately and pri- 
 vately, and both of them agreed in telling him just the same thing that the 
 parrot had said. I could not but tell this odd story, because it is so much 
 out of the way, and from the first hand, and what may pass for a good one ; 
 for I dare say this prince at least believed himself in all he told me, having 
 ever passed for a very honest and pious man : I leave it to naturalists to 
 reason, and to other men to believe, as they please upon it ; however, it is 
 not, perhaps, amiss to relieve or enliven a busy scene sometimes with such 
 digressions, whether to the purpose or no.” 
 
 Same man. — I have taken care thdt the reader should have the story at 
 large in the author’s own words, because he seems to me not to have 
 thought it incredible ; for it cannot be imagined that so able a man as he, 
 who had sufficiency enough to warrant all the testimonies he gives of him- 
 self, should take so much pains in a place where it had nothing to do, to 
 pin so close not only on a man whom he mentions as his friend, but on a 
 prince in whom he acknowledges very great honesty and piety, a story 
 which, if he himself thought incredible, he could not but also think ridiculous 
 The prince, it is plain, who vouches this story, and our author, who re 
 lates it from him, both of them call this talker a parrot ; and I ask any one 
 else, who thinks such a story fit to be told, whether if this parrot, and all 
 of its kind, had always talked, as we have a prince’s word for it this one 
 did, whether, I say, they would not have passed for a race of rational ani- 
 mals : but yet whether for all that they would have been allowed to be 
 men, and not parrots 1 For I presume it is not the idea of a thinking 
 or rational being alone that makes the idea of a man in most people’s 
 sense, but of a body, so and so shaped, joined to it : and if that be the idea 
 of a man, the same successive body not shifted all at once, must, as well as 
 the same immaterial spirit, go to the making of the same man. 
 
 Sect. 9. Personal identity. — This being premised, to find wherein per- 
 sonal identity consists, we must consider what person stands for: which, 
 I think, is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and 
 can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and 
 places ; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from 
 thinking, and as it seems to me essential to it: it being impossible for any 
 one to perceive, without perceiving that he does perceive. When we see, 
 hear, taste, smell, feel, meditate, or will any thing, we know that we do 
 so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations and perceptions : and 
 by this every one is to himself that which he calls self ; it not being consi- 
 dered in this case whether the same self be continued in the same or di- 
 vers substances. For since consciousness always accompanies thinking, 
 and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby 
 distinguishes himself from all other thinking things ; in this alone consists 
 personal identity, i. e. the sameness of a rational being : and asTar as this 
 consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, 
 so far reaches the identity of that person ; it is the same self now it was 
 
 the chickens ? The parrot answered, Yes, I and I know well enough how ti: 
 do it. 
 
Ch. 27. 
 
 OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 
 
 211 
 
 then ; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on 
 it, that that action was done. . 
 
 Sect. 10. Consciousness makes personal identity. — But it is farther 
 inquired, whether it be the same identical substance 1 This few would 
 think they had reason to doubt of, if those perceptions, with their con- 
 sciousness, always remained present in the mind, whereby the same think- 
 ing thing would be always consciously present, and, as would be thought, 
 evidently the same to itself. But that which seems to make the difficulty 
 is this, that this consciousness being interrupted always by forgetfulness, 
 there being no moment of our lives wherein we have the whole train of all 
 our past actions before our eyes in one view, but even the best memories 
 losing the sight of one part whilst they are viewing another ; — and we 
 sometimes, and that the greatest part of our lives, not reflecting on our 
 past selves, being intent on our present thoughts, and in sound sleep having 
 no thoughts at all, or at least none with that consciousness which remarks 
 our walking thoughts ; — I say, in all these cases, our consciousness being 
 interrupted, and we losing the sight of our past selves, doubts are raised 
 whether we are the same thinking thing, i. e. the same substance, or no. 
 Which, however reasonable or unreasonable, concerns not personal iden- 
 tity at all : the question being, what makes the same person, and not whe- 
 ther it be the same identical substance, which always thinks in the same 
 person; which in this case matters not at all: different substances, by the 
 same consciousness (where they do partake in it,) being united into 
 one person, as well as different bodies by the same life are united into one 
 animal, whose identity is preserved, in that change of substances, by the 
 unity of one continued life. For it being the same consciousness that 
 makes a man be himself to himself, personal identity depends on that only, 
 whether it be annexed solely to one individual substance, or can be con- 
 tinued in a succession of several substances. For as far as any intelligent 
 being can repeat the idea of any past action with the same consciousness 
 it had of it at first, and with the same consciousness it has of any present 
 action, so far it is the same personal self. For it is by the consciousness 
 it has of its present thoughts and actions, that it is self to itself now, and 
 so will be the same self, as far as the same consciousness can extend to ac- 
 tions past or to come ; and would be by distance of time, or change of sub- 
 stance, no more two persons, than a man be two men by wearing other 
 clothes to-day than he did yesterday, with a long or a short sleep between : 
 the same consciousness uniting those distant actions into the same person, 
 whatever substances contributed to their production. 
 
 Sect. 11. Personal idejitity. iu change of substances. — Thatthis is so, 
 we have, some kind ofevidence in our very- bodies, all whose particles, 
 whilst vitally united to this same thinking conscious self, so that we feel 
 when they are touched, and are effected by, and conscious of good or harm 
 that happens to them, are a part of ourselves, i. e. of our thinking conscious 
 self. Thus the limbs of his body are to every one a part of himself : he* 
 sympathizes and is concerned for them. Cut off a hand, and thereby separate 
 it from that consciousness he had of its heat, cold, and other affections, and 
 it is then no longer a part of that which is himself, any more than the re- 
 motest part of matter. Thus we see the substance,, whereof personal self 
 consisted at one time, may be varied at another, without the cha ng e of. per- 
 sonal identity; there being no question about the same person, though the 
 limbs, whi&h but now were a part of it, be cut off. 
 
 Sect. 12. But the question is, “ Whether, if the same substance which 
 thinks be changed, it can be the same person ; or, remaining the same, it 
 can be different persons 1” 
 
 Whether in the change of thinking substances. — And to this I answer, 
 first, This can be no question at all to those who place thought in a purely 
 material animal constitution void of an immaterial substance. For whether 
 
212 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 their supposition Le true or no, it is plain they conceive personal identity 
 preserved in something else than identity of substance ; as animal identity 
 is preserved in identity of life, and not of substance. And therefore those 
 who place thinking in an immaterial substanoe only, before they can come 
 to deal with these men, must show why personal identity cannot be pre- 
 served in the change of immaterial substances, or variety of particular im- 
 material substances, as well as animal identity is preserved in the change 
 of material substances, or variety of particular bodies : unless they will say, 
 it is one immaterial spirit that makes the same life in brutes, as it is one 
 immaterial spirit that makes the same person in men ; which the Carte- 
 sians at least will not admit, for fear of making brutes thinking things too. 
 
 Sect. 13. But next, as to the first part of the question, “ Whether if the 
 same thinking substance (supposing immaterial substances only to think) 
 be changed, it can be the same person 1” I answer, that cannot be re- 
 solved, but by those who know what kind of substances they are that do 
 think, and whether the consciousness of past actions can be transferred 
 from one thinking substance to another. I grant, were the same conscious- 
 ness the same individual action, it could not ; but it being but a present re- 
 presentation of a past action, why it may not be possible that that may be 
 represented to the mind to have been, which really never was, will remain 
 to be shown. And therefore how far the consciousness of past actions is 
 annexed to any individual agent, so that another cannot possibly have it, 
 will be hard for us to determine, till we know what kind of action it is that 
 cannot be done without a reflex act of perception accompanying it, and 
 how performed by thinking substances, who cannot think without being 
 conscious of it. But that which we call the same consciousness, not be- 
 ing the same individual act, why one intellectual substance may not have 
 represented to it, as done by itself, what it never did, and was perhaps 
 done by some other agent ; why, I say, such a representation may not pos- 
 sibly be without reality of matter of fact, as well as several representations 
 in dreams are, which yet whilst dreaming we take for true, will be difficult 
 to conclude from the nature of things. And that it never is so, will by us, 
 till we have clearer views of the nature of thinking substances, be best re- 
 solved into the goodness of God, who, as far as the happiness or misery of 
 any of his sensible creatures is concerned in it, will not by a fatal error of 
 theirs transfer from one to another that consciousness which draws re- 
 ward or punishment with it. How far this may be an argument against 
 those who would place thinking in a system of fleeting animal spirits, I 
 leave to be considered. But yet, to return to the question before us, it 
 must be allowed, that if the same consciousness (which, as has been 
 shown, is quite a different thing from the same numerical figure or motion 
 in body) can be transferred from one thinking substance to another, it will 
 ue possible that two thinking substances may make but one person. For 
 the same consciousness being preserved, whether in the same or different 
 ' substances, the personal identity is preserved. 
 
 Sect. 14. As to the second part of the question, “ whether the same im- 
 material substance remaining, there may be two distinct persons 1” which 
 question seems to me to be built on this, whether the same immaterial be- 
 ing, being conscious of the action of its past duration, may be wholly 
 stripped of all the consciousness of its past existence, and lose it beyond 
 the power of ever retrieving it again ; and so as it were beginning a new ac- 
 count from a new period, have a consciousness that cannot reach beyond 
 this new state. All those who hold pre-existence are evidently of this 
 mind, since they allow the soul to have no remaining consciousness of what 
 it did in the pre-existing state, either wholly separate from body, or inform- 
 ing any other body ; and if they should not, it is plain experience would 
 be"a gainst them. So that personal identity reaching no farther than con- 
 sciousness reaches, a pre-existent spirit not having continued so many 
 
Ch. 27. 
 
 OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 
 
 213 
 
 ages in a state of silence, must needs make different persons. Suppose a 
 Christian, Platonist or Pythagorean should, upon God’s having ended all his 
 works of creation the seventh day, think his soul hath existed ever since ; 
 and would imagine it has revolved in several human bodies, as I once met 
 with one who was persuaded his had been the soul of Socrates, how rea- 
 sonably I will not dispute ; this I know, that in the post he filled, which 
 was no inconsiderable one, he passed for a very rational man, and the press 
 * has shown that he wanted not parts or learning ; would any one say, 
 that he being not conscious of any of Socrates’s actions or thoughts, could 
 be the same person with Socrates 1 Let any one reflect upon himself, and 
 conclude that he has in himself an immaterial spirit, which is that which 
 thinks in him, and in the constant change of his body keeps him the 
 same ; and is that which he calls himself : let him also suppose it to be the 
 same soul that was in Nestor or Thersites at the siege of Troy (for souls 
 being, as far as we know any thing of them, in their nature indifferent to 
 any parcel of matter, the supposition has no apparent absurdity in it), 
 which it may have been, as well as it is now the soul of any other man : 
 but he now having no consciousness of any of the actions either of Nes- 
 tor or Thersites, does or can he conceive himself the same person with 
 either of them 1 Can he be concerned in either of their actions 1 attri- 
 bute them to himself, or think them his own, more than the actions of any 
 other man that ever existed 1 So that this consciousness not reaching to 
 any of the actions of either of those men, he is no more one self with ei- 
 ther of them, than if the soul or immaterial spirit that now informs him had 
 been created, and began to exist, when it began to inform his present body; 
 though it were ever so true, that the same spirit that informed Nestor’s 
 or Thersites’s body, were numerically the same that now informs his. 
 For this would no more make him the same person with Nestor, than if 
 some of the particles of matter that were once a part of Nestor, were now 
 a part of this man ; the same immaterial substance, without the same con- 
 sciousness, no more making the same person by being united to any body, 
 than the^ame particle of matter! without consciousness, united to any body, 
 makes the same person. But let him once find himself conscious of anv 
 of the'aetionsof Nestor, he then finds himself the same person with Nes"- 
 tor. 
 
 Sect. 15. And thus we may be able, without any difficulty, to conceive 
 the same person at the resurrection, though in a body not exactly in make 
 or parts the same which he had here, the same consciousness going along 
 with the soul that inhabits it. But yet the soul alone, in the chano-e of 
 bodies, would scarce to any one, but to him that makes the soul the man, 
 be enough to make the same man. For should the soul of a prince, 
 carrying with it the consciousness of the prince’s past life, enter and 
 inform the body of a cobbler, as soon as deserted by his own soul, every 
 one sees he would be the same person with the prince, accountable only 
 for the prince’s actions ; but who would say it was the same-man ] The 
 body, too, goes to the making the man, and would, I guess, to every body 
 determine the man in this case; wffeTeiir tirersonl - with all its- ■princely 
 thoughts about it, would not make another man : but he would be the same 
 cobbler to every one besides himself. I know that, in the ordinary way of 
 speaking, the same person and the same man, stand for one and the same 
 thing. And indeed every one will always have a liberty to speak as he 
 pleases, and to apply what articulate sounds to what ideas he thinks fit, 
 and change them as often as he pleases. But yet when we will inquire what 
 makes the same spirit, man, or person, we must fix the ideas of spirit, man. 
 or person in our minds ; and having resolved with ourselves what we 
 mean by them, it will not be hard to determine in either of them, or the 
 like, when it is the-same,__ and w hgrnnofe- - - 
 
 Bkot. 16. Consciousness makes the same person . — But though the 
 
214 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 6ame immaterial substance or soul does not alone, wherever it be, and in 
 whatsoever state, make the same man ; yet it is plain, consciousness, as 
 far as ever it can be extended, should it be to ages past, unites existences 
 and actions, very remote in time, into the same person, as well as it does 
 the existences and actions of the immediately preceding moment ; so that 
 whatever has the consciousness of present and past actions, is the same 
 person to whom they both belong. Had I the same consciousness that I 
 saw the ark and Noah’s flood, as that I saw an overflowing of the Thames 
 last winter, or as that I write now ; I could no more doubt that I who 
 write this now, that saw the Thames overflowed last winter, and that 
 viewed the flood at the general deluge, was the same self, place that self 
 in what substance you please, than that I who write this am the same my- 
 self now whilst I write (whether I consist of all the same substance, ma- 
 terial or immaterial, or no) that I was yesterday. For as to this point of 
 being the same self, it matters not whether this present self be made up 
 of the same or other substances ; I being as much concerned, and as justly 
 accountable for any action that was done a thousand years since, appro- 
 priated to me now by this self-consciousness, as I am for what I did the 
 last moment. 
 
 Sect. 17. Self depends on consciousness . — Self is that conscious think- 
 ing thing (whatever substance made up of, whether spiritual or material, 
 simple or compounded, it matters not) which is sensible, or conscious of 
 pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for 
 itself, as far as that consciousness extends. Thus every one finds, that 
 whilst comprehended under that consciousness, the little finger is as much 
 a part of himself, as what is most so. Upon separation of this little finger, 
 should this consciousness go along with the little finger, and leave the rest 
 of the body, it is evident the little finger would be the person, the same 
 person ; and self then would have nothing to do with the rest of the body. 
 As in this case it is the consciousness that goes along with the substance, 
 when one part is separate from another, which makes the same person, 
 and constitutes this inseparable self ; so it is in reference to substances 
 remote in time. Tfiat- with which the consciousness of this present, think- 
 ing thing can join itself, makes the same person, and is one self with it, 
 and with nothing else ; and so attributes to itself, and owns all the actions 
 of that^ thing as its own, as far as that consciousness reaches, and no far- 
 ther; as every one who reflects will perceive. 
 
 Sect. 18. Objects of reward and punishment. — In this personal iden- 
 tity is founded all tire right and justice -efTeward'aiid punishment; happi- 
 ness and misery being that for which every one is concerned for himself, 
 and not mattering what becomes of any substance not joined to, or affected 
 with that consciousness. For as it is evident in the instance I gave but 
 now, if the consciousness went along with the little finger when it was 
 cut off, that would be the same self which was concerned for the whole 
 body yesterday, as making part of itself, whose actions then it cannot but 
 admit as its own now. Though if the same body should still live, and im- 
 mediately, from the separation of the little finger, have its own peculiar 
 consciousness, whereof the little finger knew nothing ; it would not at all 
 be concerned for it, as a part of itself, or could own any of its actions, or 
 have any of them imputed to him. 
 
 Sect. 19. This may show us wherein personal identity consists; not in 
 the identity of substance, but, as I have said, in the identity of conscious- 
 ness ; wherein, if Socrates and the present mayor of Queenborough agree, 
 they are the same person : if the same Socrates waking and sleeping do 
 not partake of the same consciousness, Socrates waking and sleeping is 
 not the same person. And to punish Socrates waking for what sleeping 
 Socrates thought, and waking Socrates was never conscious of, would be 
 no more of right, than to punish one twin for what Ins brother twin did 
 
Ch. 27. 
 
 OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 
 
 215 
 
 whereof he knew nothing, because their outsides were so like that they 
 could not be distinguished; for such twins have been seen. 
 
 Sect. 20. But yet possibly it will still be objected, suppose I wholly 
 lose the memory of some parts of my life beyond a possibility of retrieving 
 them, so that perhaps I shall never be conscious of them again ; yet am 1 
 not the same person that did those actions, had those thoughts that I once 
 was conscious of, though I have now forgot them 1 To which I answer, 
 that we must here take notice what the word I is applied to ; which, in 
 this case, is the man only. And the same man being presumed to be the 
 same person, I is easily here supposed to stand also for the same person. 
 But if it be possible for the same man to have distinct incommunicable 
 consciousness at different times, it is past doubt the same man would at 
 different times make different persons ; which, we see, is the sense of 
 mankind in the solemnest declarations of their opinions ; human laws not 
 punishing the mad man for the sober man’s actions, nor the sober man for 
 what the mad man did, thereby making them two persons : which is some- 
 what explained by our way of speaking in English, when we say, such a 
 one is not himself, or is beside himself ; in which phrases, it is insinuated, as 
 if those who now, or at least first used them, thought that self was chang 
 ed, — the self-same person was no longer in that man. 
 
 Sect. ‘J.Vz'Dijferertm bet wee n identity of man and person. — But yet it 
 is hard to conceive that Socrates, the same individual man, should be two 
 persons. To help us a little in this, we must consider what is meant by 
 Socrates or the same individual man. 
 
 First, it must be either the same individual, immaterial, thinking sub- 
 stance ; in short, the same numerical soul, and nothing else. 
 
 Secondly, or the same animal, without any regard to an immaterial 
 soulS-" 
 
 Thirdly, or the same immaterial spirit united to the same animal. 
 
 Now, take which of these suppositions you please, it is impossible to 
 make personal identity to consist in any thing but consciousness, or reach 
 any farther than that does. 
 
 For by the first of them, it must be allowed possible that a man born of 
 different women, and in distant times, may be the same man. A way of 
 speaking, which, whoever admits, must allow it possible for the same man 
 to be two distinct persons as any two that have lived in different ages, 
 without the knowledge of one another’s thoughts. 
 
 By -ihe second and third, Socrates in this life, and after it, cannot be the 
 same mail any way but by the same consciousness ; andrsoTnsMng'hmnan 
 identity to consist in the same thing wherein we place personal identity, 
 there wiil-be no difficulty to allow the same man to be the same person. 
 But then they who placeffininan identity in consciousness only, and not in 
 something else, must consid^IioAV^Iiey^lTrril'atee^edfiBrnt Socrates the 
 same man with Socrates after the resurrection. But whatsoever to some 
 men makes a man, and consequently the same individual man, wherein 
 perhaps few are agreed, personal identity can by us be placed in nothing 
 but consciousness, (which is that alone which makes what we call self) 
 without involving us in great absurdities. 
 
 Sect. 22. But is not man, drunk and sober, the same person, — why 
 else is he punished for the fact he commits when drunk, though he be 
 never afterwards conscious of it 1 ? Just as much the same person as a man 
 that walks, and does other things in his sleep, is the same person, and is 
 answerable for any mischief he shall do in it. Human laws punish both, 
 with a justice suitable to their way of knowledge ; because in these cases 
 they cannot distinguish certainly what is real, what counterfeit : and so 
 the ignorance in drunkenness or sleep is not admitted as a plea. For 
 though punishment be annexed to personality, and personality to conscious- 
 ness, and the drunkard perhaps be not conscious of what he did ; yet 
 
21G 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 human judica.ures justly punish him ; because the fact is proved against 
 him, but want of consciousness cannot be proved for him. But in the great 
 day, wherein the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open, it may be reason- 
 able to think no one shall be made to answer for what he knows nothing 
 of, but shall receive his doom, his conscience accusing or excusing him. 
 
 Sect. 2 Consciousness alone makes self. — Nothing but consciousness 
 can unite remote e x isle n ccs-i n t e4he same person ; the identity of substance 
 will not do it. For whatever substance there is, however framed, without 
 consciousness there is no person : and a carcass may be a person, as well 
 as any sort of substance be so without consciousness. 
 
 Could we suppose two distinct incommunicable consciousnesses acting 
 the same body, the one constantly by day, the other by night ; and, on the 
 other side, the same consciousness acting by intervals, two distinct bodies : 
 I ask, in the first case, whether the day and the night man would not be two 
 as distinct persons as Socrates and Plato ! And, whether, in the second 
 case, there would not be one person in two distinct bodies, as much as one 
 man is the same in two distinct clothings 1 Nor is it at all material to say, 
 that this same, and this distinct consciousness, in the cases above men- 
 tioned, is owing to the same, and distinct immaterial substances, bringing 
 it with them to those bodies ; which, whether true or no, alters not the 
 case ; since it is evident the personal identity would equally be determined 
 by the consciousness, whether that consciousness were annexed to some 
 individual immaterial substance or no. For granting that the thinking 
 substance in man must be necessarily supposed immaterial, it is evident 
 that immaterial thinking thing may sometimes part with its past conscious- 
 ness, and be restored to it again, as appears in the forgetfulness men often 
 have of their past actions : and the mind many times recovers the memory 
 of a past consciousness which it had lost for twenty years together. Make 
 these intervals of memory and forgetfulness to take their turns regularly 
 by day and night, and you have two persons with the same immaterial spirit, 
 as much as in the former instance, two persons with the same body. So that 
 self is not determined by identity or diversity of substance, which it cannot 
 be sure of, but only by identity of consciousness. 
 
 Sect. 24. Indeed it may conceive the substance, whereof it is now made 
 up, to have existed formerly, united in the same conscious being : but con- 
 sciousness removed, that substance is no more itself, or makes no more a 
 pan of it, than any other substance ; as is evident in the instance we have 
 already given of a limb cut off, of whose heat, or cold, or other affections, 
 having no longer any consciousness, it is no more of a man’s self than any 
 other matter of the universe. In like manner it will be in reference to any 
 immaterial substance, which is void of that consciousness whereby I am 
 myself to myself : if there be any part of its existence which I cannot upon 
 recollection join with that present consciousness, whereby I am now my 
 self, it is in that part of its existence no more myself than any other imma- 
 terial being. For whatsoever any substance has thought or done, which I 
 cannot recollect, and by my consciousness make my own thought and action, 
 it will no more belong to me, whether a part of me thought or did it, than 
 if it had been thought or done by any other immaterial being any where 
 existing. 
 
 Sect. 25. I agree, the more probable opinion is, that this conscious- 
 ness is annexed to, and the affection of, one individual immaterial substance. 
 
 But let men, according to their diverse hypotheses, resolve of that as 
 they please: this every intelligent being, sensible of happiness or misery, 
 must grant, that there is something that is himself, that he is concerned 
 for, and would have happy; that this self has existed in a continued dura- 
 tion more than one instant, and therefore it is possible may exist, as it has 
 done, months and years to come, without any certain bounds to be set to 
 its duration ; and may be the same self, by the same consciousness, con- 
 
Ch. 27. 
 
 OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 
 
 217 
 
 tinued on for the future. And thus, by his consciousness, he finds himself 
 to be the same self which did such or such an action some years since, hj 
 which he comes to be happy or miserable now. In all which account of 
 self, the same numerical substance is not considered as making the same 
 self ; but the same continued consciousness, in which several substances 
 may have been united, and again separated from it; which, whilst they 
 continued in a vital union with that wherein this consciousness then re- 
 sided, made a part of that same self. Thus any part of our bodies, vitally 
 united to that which is conscious in us, makes a part of ourselves : but 
 upon separation from the vital union, by which that consciousness is com- 
 municated, that which a moment since was part of ourselves is now no 
 more so than a part of another man’s self is part of me ; and it is not im- 
 possible but in a short time may become a real part of another person. And 
 so we have the same numerical substance become a part of two different 
 persons, and the same person preserved under the change of various sub- 
 stances. Could we suppose any spirit wholly stripped of all its memory or 
 consciousness of past actions, as we find our minds always are of a great 
 part of ours, and sometimes of them all, the union or separation of such a 
 spiritual substance would make no variation of personal identity, any more 
 than that of any particle of matter does. Any substance vitally united to 
 the present thinking being is a part of that very same self which now is : 
 any thing united to it by a consciousness of former actions makes also a 
 part of the same self, which is the same both then and now. 
 
 Sect. 26. Person, a forensic term. — Person, as I take it, is the name 
 for this self._ Wherever a man finds what -he- calls- hkns«l-fV there I think 
 another may say is the same person. It is a forensic term appropriating 
 actions and their merit ; and so belongs only to intelligent agents capable 
 of a law, and happiness and misery. This personality extends itself beyond 
 present existence to what is past only by consciousness, whereby it be- 
 comes concerned and accountable, owns and imputes to itself past actions, 
 iust upon the same ground, and for the same reason that it does the pre- 
 sent ; all which is founded in a concern for happiness, the unavoidable con- 
 comitant of consciousness ; that which is conscious of pleasure and pain 
 desiring that the self that is conscious should be happy. And therefore 
 whatever past actions it cannot reconcile or appropriate to that present self 
 by consciousness, it can be no more concerned in than if they had never 
 been done : and to receive pleasure or pain, i. e. reward or punishment, on 
 the account of any such action, is all one as to be made happy or miserable 
 in its first being, without any demerit at all. For supposing a man pun- 
 ished now for what he had done in another life, whereof he could be made 
 to have no consciousness at all, what difference is there between that punish- 
 ment, and being created miserable 1 And therefore, conformable to this, 
 the apostle tells us, that at the great day, when every one shall “receive 
 according to his doings, the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open.” The 
 sentence shall be justified by the consciousness all persons shall have, that 
 they themselves, in what body soever they appear, or what substances 
 soever that consciousness adheres to, are the same that committed those 
 actions, and deserve that punishment for them. 
 
 Sect. 27. I am apt enough to think I have, in treating of this subject, 
 made some suppositions that will look strange to some readers, and pos- 
 sibly they are so in themselves. But yet, I think, they are such as are 
 pardonable in this ignorance we are in of the nature of that thinking thing 
 that is in us, and which we look on as ourselves. Did we know what it 
 was, or how it was tied to a certain system of fleeting animal spirits ; or 
 whether it could or could not perform its operations of thinking and 
 memory out of a body organized as ours is ; and whether it has pleased 
 God that no one such spirit shall ever be united to any but one such body, 
 anon the right constitution of whose organs its memory should depend ; we 
 2 C 
 
*218 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 might see the absurdity of some of those suppositions I have made. But 
 taking, as we ordinarily now do, (in the dark concerning these matters) 
 the soul of a man for an immaterial substance, independent from matter, 
 and indifferent alike to it all, there can from t'he nature of things be no 
 absurdity at all to suppose, that the same soul may, at different times, be 
 united, to different bodies, and with them make up, for that time, one man : 
 as well as we suppose a part of a sheep’s body yesterday should be a part 
 of a man’s body to-morrow, and in that union make a vital part of Melibreus 
 himself, as well as it did of his ram. 
 
 Sect. 28. The difficul ty from ill use of names . — To conclude : whatever 
 substance begins-ttrexTsf, it must, Muring its existence, necessarily be the 
 same : whatever compositions of substances begin to exist during the union 
 of those substances, the concrete must be the same : whatsoever mode 
 begins to exist, during its existence it is the same : and so if the composi- 
 tion be of distinct substances and different modes, the same rule holds. 
 Whereby it will appear, that the difficulty or obscurity that has been about 
 this matter, rather rises from the names ill used, than from any obscurity in 
 things themselves. For whatever makes the specific idea to which the 
 name is applied, if that idea be steadily kept to, the distinction of any 
 thing into the same, and divers, will easily be conceived, and there can arise 
 no doubt about it. 
 
 Sect. 29. Continued existence makes identity . — For supposing a 
 rational spirit be-theridea of a man, it is easy to know what is the same 
 man, viz. the’same spirit, whether separate or in a body, will be the same 
 man. Supposing a rational spirit vitally united to a body of a certain con- 
 formation of parts to make a man; whilst that rational spirit, with that vital 
 conformation of parts, though continued in a fleeting successive body, 
 remains, it will be the same. But if to any one the idea of jum-afHirr but 
 the vital union of parts in a certain shape: as long as thsUvital union and 
 shape remain, in a concrete no otherwise the same, but by a continued 
 succession of fleeting particles, it will be the same man. For whatever be the 
 composition whereof the complex idea is made, whenever existence makes 
 it one particular thing under any denomination, the same existence, con- 
 tinued, preserves it the same individual under the same denomination(5). 
 
 (5) The doctrine of identity and diversity contained in this chapter the bishop 
 of Worcester pretends to be inconsistent with the doctrines of the Christian faith, 
 concerning the resurrection of the dead. His way of arguing from it is this: he 
 says, the reason of believing the resurrection of the sameMody, upon Mr Locke’s 
 grounds, is from the idea of identity. To which our author answers:* Give me 
 leave, my lord, to say, that the reason of believing any article of the Christian 
 faith (such as your lordship is here speaking of) to me, and upon my grounds, 
 is its being a part of divine revelation: upon this ground I believed it, before I 
 either writ that chapter of identity and diversity, and before 1 ever thought of 
 those propositions which your lordship quotes out of that chapter; and upon the 
 same ground I believe it still; and not from my idea of identity. This saying of 
 your lordship’s, therefore, being a proposition neither self-evident, nor allowed 
 by me to be true, remains to be proved. So that your foundation failing, all 
 your large superstructure built thereon comes to nothing. 
 
 But, my lord, before we go any farther, I crave leave humbly to represent to 
 your lordship, that I thought you undertook to make out that my notion of ideas 
 was inconsistent with the articles of the Christian faith. But that which your 
 lordship instances in here, is not, that I yet know, an article of the Christian faith. 
 The resurrection of the dead I acknowledge to be an article of the Christian faith: 
 but that the resurrection of the same body, in your lordship’s sense of the same 
 body, is an article of the Christian faith, is what, I confess, I do not yet know. 
 
 In the New Testament (wherein, I think, are contained all the articles of the 
 
 * In his third letter to the Bishop of Worcester. 
 
Ch. 27. 
 
 OP IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 
 
 219 
 
 Christian faith) I find our Saviour and the apostles to preach the resurrection of 
 the dead, and the resurrection from the dead, in many places; hut I do not remem- 
 ber any place where the resurrection of the same body is so much as mentioned. 
 Nay, which is very remarkable in the case, I do not remember in any place of 
 the New Testament (where the general resurrection at the last day is spoken of) 
 any such expression as the resurrection of the body, much less of the same body. 
 
 I say the general resurrection at the last day; because, where the resurrection 
 of some particular persons, presently upon our Saviour’s resurrection, is men- 
 tioned, the words are, * The graves were opened, and many bodies of saints, which 
 slept, arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the 
 Holy City, and appeared to many: of which peculiar way of speaking of this re- 
 surrection, the passage itself gives a reason in these words, Appeared to many, 
 i. e. those who slept appeared, so as to be known to he risen. But this could 
 not be known, unless they brought with them the evidence that they were those 
 who had been dead; whereof there were these two proofs, their graves were 
 opened, and their bodies not only gone out of them, but appeared to be the same 
 to those who had known them formerly alive, and knew them to be dead and 
 buried. For if they had been those who had been dead so long, that all who 
 knew them once alive were now gone, those to whom they appeared might have 
 known them to be men, but could not have known they were risen from the dead, 
 because they never knew they had been dead. All that by their appearing they 
 could have known was, they were so many living strangers, of whose resur- 
 rection they knew nothing. It was necessary, therefore, that they should come 
 in such bodies as might in make and size, &c. appear to be the same they had 
 before, that they might be known to those of their acquaintance whom they ap- 
 peared to. And it is probable they were such as were newly dead, whose bo- 
 dies were not yet dissolved and dissipated; and, therefore, it is particularly said 
 here (differently from what is said of the general resurrection,) that their bodies 
 arose; because they were the same that were then lying in their graves the mo- 
 ment before they rose. 
 
 But your lordship endeavours to prove it must be the same body: and let us 
 grant that your lordship, nay, and others too, think you have proved it must be 
 the same body; will you therefore say, that he holds what is inconsistent with an 
 article of faith, who having never seen this your lordship’s interpretation of the 
 Scripture, nor your reasons for the same body, in your sense of same body; or, if 
 he has seen them, yet not understanding them, or not perceiving the force of them, 
 believes what the Scripture proposes to him, viz. that at the last day the dead shall 
 be raised, without determining whether it shall be with the very same bodies or no ? 
 
 I know your lordship pretends not to erect your particular interpretations of 
 Scripture into articles of faith. And if you do not, he that believes the dead 
 shall be raised believes that article of faith which the Scripture proposes; and 
 cannot be accused of holding any thing inconsistent with it, if it should happen 
 that what he holds is inconsistent with another proposition, viz. that the dead 
 shall be raised with the same bodies, in your lordship’s sense, which I do not 
 find proposed in Holy Writ as an article of faith. 
 
 But your lordship argues, it must be the same body; which, as you explain 
 same bodyf, is not the same individual particles of matter which were united at 
 the point of death, nor the same particles of matter that the sinner had at the 
 time of the commission of his sins; but that it must be the same material.sub- 
 stance which was vitally united to the soul here; i. e. as I understand it, the 
 same individual particles of matter which were, some time or other during his 
 life here, vitally united to his soul. 
 
 Your first argument to prove that it must be the same body, in this sense of 
 the same body, is taken from these words of our Saviour):, All that are in the 
 graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth. From whence your lordship 
 argues§, that these words, All that are in their graves, relate to no other substance 
 than what was united to the soul in life: because a different substance cannot be 
 said to be in the graves, and to come out of them. Which words of your lord- 
 
 * Matt, xxvii. 52, 53. t 2d Answer. \ John v. 28, 29. § 2d Answer. 
 
220 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 ship’s, if they prove any thing, prove that the soul too is lodged in the grave, and 
 raised out of it at the last day. For your lordship says, Can a different substance 
 be said to be in the graves, and come out of them? So that, according to this 
 interpretation of these words of our Saviour, no other substance being raised, but 
 ■what hears his voice; and no other substance hearing his voice, but what, being 
 called, comes out of the grave; and no other substance coming out of the grave, 
 but what was in the grave; any one must conclude, that the soul, unless it be in 
 the grave, will make no part of the person that is raised; unless, as your lord- 
 ship argues against me*, you can make it out, that a substance which never was 
 in the grave may come out of it, or that the soul is no substance. 
 
 But setting aside the substance of the soul, another thing that will make any 
 one doubt whether this your interpretation of our Saviour’s words be necessarily 
 to be received as their true sense, is, that it will not be very easily reconciled 
 to your sayingf, you do not mean by the same body the same individual particles 
 which were united at the point of death. And yet, by this interpretation of our 
 Saviour’s words, you can mean no other particles but such as were united at the 
 point of death; because you mean no other substance but what comes out of the 
 grave; and no substance, no particles come out, you say, but what were in the 
 grave; and I think your lordship will not say, that the particles that were separate 
 from the body by perspiration before the point of death were laid up in the grave. 
 
 But your lordship, I find, has an answer to this, viz. jThat by comparing this 
 with other places, you find that the words (of our Saviour above quoted) are to 
 be understood of the substance of the body, to which the soul was united, and 
 not to (I suppose your lordship writ, of) these individual particles, i. e. those 
 individual particles that are in the grave at the resurrection. For so they must 
 be read, to make your lordship’s sense entire, and to the purpose of your answer 
 here: and then, methinks, this last sense of our Saviour’s words given by your 
 lordship, wholly overturns the sense which we have given of them above, where 
 from those words you press the belief of the resurrection of the same body, by 
 this strong argument, that a substance could not, upon hearing the voice of Christ, 
 come out of the grave, which was never in the grave. There (as far as I can 
 understand your words) your lordship argues, that our Saviour’s words are to 
 be understood of the particles in the grave, unless, as your lordship says, one 
 can make out that a substance which never was in the grave may come out of 
 it. And here your lordship expressly says, That our Saviour’s words are to be 
 understood of the substance of that body to which the soul was (at any time) 
 united, and not to those individual particles that are in the grave. Which, put 
 together, seems to me to say, that our Saviour’s words are to be understood ol 
 those particles only which are in the grave, and not of those particles only which 
 are in the grave, but of others also, which have at any time been vitally united 
 to the soul, but never were in the grave. 
 
 The next text your lordship brings to make the resurrection of the same 
 body, in your sense, an article of faith, are these words of St Paul: §For we must 
 all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the 
 things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or 
 bad. To which your lordship subjoins this question! : Can these words be 
 understood of any other material substance but that body in which these things 
 were done? Answer: A man may suspend his determining the meaning of the 
 apostle to be, that a sinner shall suffer for his sins in the very same body 
 wherein he committed them; because St Paul does not say he shall have the 
 very same body when he suffers that he had when he sinned. The apostle says 
 indeed, done in his body. The body he had, and did these things in, at five 
 or fifteen, was, no doubt, his body, as much as that which he did things in at 
 fifty was his body, though his body were not the very same body at those dif- 
 ferent ages; and so will the body which he shall have after the resurrection be 
 his body, though it be not the very same with that which he had at five, or fifteen, 
 or fifty. He that at three score is broke on the wheel for a murder he com- 
 mitted at twenty, is punished for what he did in his body, though the body he 
 
 * 2d Answer. f Ibid. j: Ibid. 5 2 Cor. v. 10. ]| 2d Answer. 
 
Ch. 27, 
 
 OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 
 
 22 ] 
 
 has, i. e. his bcdy at threescore, be not the same, i. e. made up of the same 
 individual particles of matter that that body was which he had forty years before. 
 When your lordship has resolved with yourself what that same immutable he 
 is, which at the last judgment shall receive the things done in his body, your 
 lordship will easily see that the body he had when an embryo in the womb, 
 when a child playing in coats, when a man marrying a wife, and when bed-rid 
 dying of a consumption, and at last, which he shall have after his resurrection, 
 are each of them his body, though neither of them be the same body, the one 
 with the other. 
 
 But farther, to your lordship’s question, Can these words be understood of 
 any other material substance but that body in which these things were done? I 
 answer, These words of St Paul may be understood of another material sub- 
 stance than that body in which these things were done, because your lordship 
 teaches me, and gives me strong reason so to understand them. Your lordship 
 says, *That you do not say the same particles of matter which the sinner had 
 at the very time of the commission of his sins, shall be raised at the last day. 
 And your lordship gives this reason for it: +For then a long sinner must have a 
 vast body, considering the continued spending of particles by perspiration 
 Now, my lord, if the apostle’s words, as your lordship would argue, cannot be 
 understood of any other material substance, but that body in which these things 
 were done ; and no body, upon the removal or change of some of the particles 
 that at any time make it up, is the same material substance or the same body; 
 it will, 1 think, thence follow, that either the sinner must have all the same 
 individual particles vitally united to his soul when he is raised that he had vitally 
 united to his soul when he sinned, or else St Paul’s words here cannot be un- 
 derstood to mean the same body in which the things were done. For if there 
 were other particles of matter in the body, wherein the things were done, than 
 in that which is raised, that which is raised cannot be the same bod)' in which 
 they were done: unless that alone, which has just all the same individual par- 
 ticles when any action is done, being the same bo.dy wherein it was done, that 
 also, which has not the same individual particles wherein that action was done, 
 can be the same body wherein it was done; which is in effect to make the same 
 body sometimes to be the same, and sometimes not the same. 
 
 Your lordship thinks it suffices to make the same body to have not all, but 
 no other particles of matter, but such as were some time or other vitally united 
 to the soul before; but such a body, made up of part of the particles some time 
 or other vitally united to the soul, is no more the same body wherein the 
 actions were done in the distant parts of the long sinner’s life, than that is the 
 same body in which a quarter, or half, or three-quarters of the same particles 
 that made it up are wanting. For example, a sinner has acted here in his body 
 an hundred years; he is raised at the last day, but with what body? The same, 
 says your lordship, that he acted in; because St Paul says, he must receive the 
 things done in his body. What therefore must his body at the resurrection con- , 
 sist of ? Must it consist of all the particies of matter that have ever been vitally 
 united to his soul? for they, in succession, have all of them made up his body 
 wherein he did these things: No, says your lordship, j that would make his body 
 too vast; it suffices to make the same body in which these things were done, 
 that it consists of some of the particles, and no other, but such as were some 
 time during his life vitally united to his soul. But, according to this account, 
 his body at the resurrection being, as your lordship seems to limit it, near the 
 same size it was in some part of his life, it will be no more the same body 
 in which the things were done in the distant parts of his life, than that is the 
 same body in which half, or three quarters, or more of the individual matter 
 that then made it up, is now wanting. For example, let his body at fifty years 
 old consist of a million of parts; five hundred thousand at least of those parts 
 will be different from those which made up his body at ten years, and at an 
 hundred. So that to take the numerical particles that made up his body at fifty, 
 or any other season of his life, or to gather them promiscuously out of those 
 
 * 2d Answer. 
 
 t Ibid. 
 
 | Ibid. 
 
222 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2, 
 
 which at different times have successively been vitally united to his soul, they 
 will no more make the same body which was his, wherein some of his actions 
 were done, than that is the same body which has but half the same particles: 
 and yet all your lordship’s argument here for the same body is, because St Paul 
 says it must be his body in which these things were done; which it could not 
 be if any other substance were joined to it, i. e. if any other particles of matter 
 made up the body which were not vitally united to the soul when the action 
 was done. 
 
 Again, your lordship says,* That you do not say the same individual par- 
 ticles [shall make up the body at the resurrection] which were united at the 
 point of death, for there must be a great alteration in them in a lingering dis- 
 ease, as if a fat man falU into a consumption. Because it is likely your lord- 
 ship thinks these particles of a decrepit, wasted, withered body would be too few, 
 or unfit to make such a plump, strong, vigorous, well-sized body, as it has 
 pleased your lordship to proportion out in your thoughts to men at the resur- 
 rection; and therefore some Small portion of the particles formerly united vitally 
 to that man’s soul shall be resumed, to make up his body to the bulk your lord- 
 ship judges convenient; but the greatest part of them shall be lelt out, to avoid 
 the making his body more vast than your lordship thinks will be lit, as appears 
 by these your lordship’s words immediately following, viz. +That you do not 
 say the same particles the sinner had at the very time of commission of his sins: 
 for then a long sinner must have a vast body. 
 
 But then pray, my lord, what must an embryo do, who, dying within a lew 
 hours after his body was vitally united to his soul, has no particles ot matter 
 which were formerly vitally united to it, to make up his body of that size and 
 proportion which your lordship seems to require in bodies at the resurrection? 
 Or must we believe he shall remain content with that small pittance of matter, 
 and that yet imperfect body to eternity, because it is an article of faith to believe 
 the resurrection of the very same body, i. e. made up of only such particles as 
 have been vitally united to the soul? For if it be so, as your lordship says,]: 
 That life is the result of the union of soul and body, it will follow, that the 
 body of an embryo dying in the womb may be very little, not the thousandth 
 part of any ordinary man. For since from the first conception and beginning 
 of formation it has life, and “ life is the result of the union of the soul with the 
 body,” an embryo, that shall die either by the untimely death of the mother, or 
 by any other accident, presently after it has life, must, according to your lord- 
 ship’s doctrine, remain a man not an inch long to eternity; because there are not 
 particles of matter formerly united to his soul, to make him bigger, and no 
 other can be made use of to that purpose; though what greater congruity the 
 soul hath with any particles of matter which were once vitally united to it, but 
 are now so no longer, than it hath with particles of matter which it was never 
 united to, would be hard to determine, if that should be demanded. 
 
 * By these and not a few other the like consequences, one may see what service 
 they do to religion and the Christian doctrine, who raise questions and make 
 articles of faith about the resurrection of the same body, where the Scripture 
 says nothing of the same body; or if it does, it is with no small reprimand^ to 
 those who make such an inquiry. “But some man will say, How are the dead 
 raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou 
 sowest is not quickened except it die. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest 
 not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some 
 other grain. But God giveth it a body, as it hath pleased him.” Words, I 
 should think, sufficient to deter us from determining any thing for or against 
 the same bodies being raised at the last day. It suffices that all the dead shall 
 be raised, and every one appear and answer for the things done in his life, and 
 receive according to the things he has done in his body, whether good or bad. 
 He that believes this, and has said nothing inconsistent herewith, I presume may 
 and must be acquitted from being guilty of any thing inconsistent with the 
 article of the resurrection of the dead. 
 
 * 2d Answer. 
 
 t Ibid. 
 
 j Ibid. 
 
 § 1 Cor. xv. 35, See. 
 
Ch. 27. 
 
 OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 
 
 223 
 
 But your lordship, to prove the resurrectiou of the same body to he an article 
 of faith, farther asks*, “ How could it be said, if any other substance be joined 
 to the soul at the resurrection, as its body, that they were the things done in 
 or by the body?” Answer. Just as it may be said of a man at an hundred years 
 old, that hath then another substance joined to his soul than he had at twenty, 
 that the murder or drunkenness he was guilty of at twenty were things done in 
 the body: how “ by the body” comes in here I do not see. 
 
 Your lordship adds, “And St Paul’s dispute about the manner of raising the 
 body might soon have ended, if there were no necessity of the same body.” 
 Answer. When I understand what argument there is in these words to prove 
 the resurrection of the same body, without the mixture of one new atom of 
 matter, T shall know what to say to it. In the mean time this I understand, that 
 St Paul would have put as short an end to all disputes about this matter if he 
 had said, that there was a necessity of the same body, or that it should be the 
 same body. 
 
 The next text of Scripture you bring for the same body is, “ If there be no 
 resurrection of the dead, then is not Christ raisedf.” From which your lord- 
 ship argues, It seems then other bodies are to be raised as his was. ” I grant 
 other dead, as certainly raised as Christ was; for else his resurrection would be 
 of no use to mankind. But I do not see how it follows, that they shall be raised 
 with the same body, as Christ was raised with the same body, as your lordship 
 infers in these words annexed: “ And can there he any doubt, whether his bodv 
 wasthesame material substance which was united to his soul before?” I answer, 
 None at all: nor that it had just the same distinguishing lineaments and marks, 
 yea, and the same wounds that it had at the time of his death. If, therefore, your 
 lordship will argue from other bodies being raised as his was, that they must 
 keep proportion with his in sameness; then we must believe that every man 
 shall be raised with the same limeaments and other notes of distinction he had 
 at the time of his death, even with his wounds yet open, if he had any, because 
 our Saviour was so raised; which seems to me scarce reconcilable with what 
 your lordship says, of a fat man falling into a consumption, and dy 7 ing§. 
 
 But whether it will consist or no with your lordship’s meaning in that place, 
 this to me seems a consequence that will need to be better proved, viz. That our 
 bodies must be raised the same, just as our Saviour’s was : because St Paul says, 
 “ if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is not Christ risen.” For it may 
 be a good consequence, Christ is risen, and therefore there shall be a resurrec- 
 tion of the dead; and yet this may not be'a good consequence, Christ was raised 
 with the same body he had at his death, therefore all men shall be raised with 
 the same body they had at their death, contrary to what your lordship says con- 
 cerning a fat man dying of a consumption. But the case I think far different 
 betwixt our Saviour and those to be raised at the last day. 
 
 1. His body saw not corruption, and therefore to give him another body new 
 moulded, mixed with other particles, which were not contained in it as it lay in 
 the grave, whole and entire as it was laid there, had been to destroy his body' to 
 frame him a new one without any need. But why with the remaining particles 
 of a man’s bodv, long since dissolved and mouldered into dust and atoms, 
 (whereof possibly a great part may have undergone variety 7 of changes, and en- 
 tered into other concretions, even in the bodies of other men) other new par 
 tides of matter mixed with them, may not serve to make his body again, as well 
 as the mixture of new and different particles of matter with the old did in the 
 compass of his life make his body, I think no reason can be given. 
 
 This may serve to show why, though the materials of our Saviour’s body 7 were 
 not changed at his resurrection, y r et it does not follow, but that the body of a 
 man dead and rotten in his grave, or burnt, may at the last day have several new 
 particles in it, and that without any inconvenience: since whatever matter is 
 vitally united to his soul is his body 7 , as much as is that which was united to it 
 when he was born, or in any other part of his life. 
 
 2. In the next place, the size, shape, figure, and lineaments of our Saviour’s 
 
 * 2d Answer. + 1 Cor. xv. 16. j: 2d Answer. 5- Ibid. 
 
224 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 body, eveD to his wounds, into which doubting Thomas put his fingers and his 
 hand, were to be kept in the raised body of our Saviour, the same they were at 
 his death, to be a conviction to his disciples, to whom he showed himself, and 
 who were to be witnesses of his resurrection, that their master, the very same 
 man, was crucified, dead, and buried, and raised again; and therefore lie wa9 
 handled by them, and eat before them after he was risen, to give them in all 
 points full satisfaction that it was really he, the same, and not another, nor a 
 spectre or apparition of him: though I do not think your lordship will thence 
 argue, that because others are to be raised as he was, therefore it is necessary to 
 believe, that because he eat after his resurrection, others at the last day shall eat 
 and drink after they are raised from the dead; which seems to me as good an 
 argument as because his undissolved body was raised out of the grave, just as it 
 there lay entire, without the mixture of any new particles; therefore the cor- 
 rupted and consumed bodies of the dead, at the resurrection, shall be newly 
 framed only out of those scattered particles which were once vitally united to 
 their souls, without the least mixture of any one single atom of new matter. But 
 at the last day, when all men are raised, there will be no need to be assured of 
 any one particular man’s resurrection. It is enough that every one shall appear 
 before the judgment-seat of Christ, to receive according to what he had done in 
 his former life: but in what sort of body he shall appear, or of what particles 
 made up, the Scripture having said nothing, but that it shall be a spiritual body 
 raised in incorruption, it is not for me to determine. 
 
 Your lordship asks*, “ Were they [who saw our Saviour after his resurrection] 
 witnesses only of some material substance then united to his soul ?” In answer, 
 I beg your lordship to consider, whether you suppose our Saviour was to be 
 known to be the same man (to the witnesses that were to see him, and testify his 
 resurrection) by his soul, that could be neither seen nor known to be the same; 
 or by his body, that could be seen, and by the discernible structure and marks 
 of it, be known to be the same ? When your lordship has resolved that, all that 
 you say in that page will answer itself. But because one man cannot know 
 another to be the same, but by the outward visible lineaments and sensible marks 
 he has been want to be known and distinguished by, will your lordship therefore 
 argue, that the Great Judge, at the last day, who gives to each man, whom he 
 raises, his new body, shall not be able to know who is who, unless he give to 
 every one of them a body just of the same figure, size, and features, and made 
 up of the very same individual particles he had in his former life < Whether 
 such a way of arguing for the resurrection of the same body, to be an article of 
 faith, contributes much to the strengthening of the credulity of the article of the 
 resurrection of the dead, I shall leave to the judgment of others. 
 
 Farther, for the proving the resurrection of the same body to be an article of 
 faith, your lordship saysf, “ But the apostle insists upon the resurrection of 
 Christ, not merely as an argument of the possibility of ours, but of the certainty 
 of it : because he rose as the first-fruits; Christ the first-fruits, afterward they 
 that are Christ’s at his comingj.” Answer. No doubt, the resurrection of Christ 
 is a proof of the certainty of our resurrection. But is it therefore a proof of the 
 resurrection of the same body, consisting of the same individual particles which 
 concurred to the making up of our body here, without the mixture of any one 
 other particle of matter ? I confess I see no such consequence. 
 
 But your lordship goes on§; “St Paul was aware of the objections in men’s 
 minds about the resurrection of the same body; and it is of great consequence 
 as to this article, to show upon what grounds he proceeds. ‘But some men 
 will say, How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come 
 First, he shows, that the seminal parts of plants are wonderfully improved by 
 the ordinary providence of God, in the manner of their vegetation.” Answer. 
 
 I do not perfectly understand what it is “for the seminal parts of plants to be 
 wonderfully improved by the ordinary providence of God, in the manner of their 
 vegetation:” or else, perhaps, 1 should better see how this here tends to the 
 proof of the resurrection of the same body, in your lordship’s sense. 
 
 * 2d Answer. 
 
 I Ibid. 
 
 % 1 Cor. xv. 20, 23. 
 
 § 2d Answer. 
 
Ch. 27. 
 
 ’ OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 
 
 225 
 
 It continues*, “They sow bare grain of wheat, or of some other grain, but 
 God giveth it a body, as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body. 
 Here,” says your lordship, “ is an identity of the material substance supposed.” 
 It may be so. But to me a diversity of the material substance, i. e. of the com- 
 ponent particles, is here supposed, or in direct words said. For the words of 
 St Paul, taken all together, run thusf, “That which thou sowest, thou sowest 
 not that body which shall be, but bare grain;” and so on, as your lordship has 
 set down in the remainder of them. From which words of St Paul, the na- 
 tural argument seems to me to stand thus: if the body that is put in the earth in 
 sowing is not that body whieh shall be, then the body that is put in the grave is 
 not that, i. e. the same body, that shall be. 
 
 But your lordship proves it to be the same body by these three Greek words 
 of the text, to i'Jiov crupta., which your lordship interprets thus$, “That proper 
 body which belongs to it.” Answer. Indeed by those Greek words to ijicv 
 tras/ud, whether our translators have rightly rendered them “his own body,” 
 or your lordship more rightly “that proper body which belongs to it,” I for- 
 merly' understood no more but this, that in the production of wheat, and other 
 grain from seed, God continued every species distinct; so that from grains of 
 wheat sown, root, stalk, blade, ear, grains of wheat were produced, and not 
 those of barley; and so of the rest, which I took to be the meaning of “to every'" 
 seed bis own body.” No, says your lordship, these words prove, that to every 
 plant of wheat, and to every grain of wheat produced in it, is given the proper 
 body that belongs to it, which is the same body with the grain that was sown. 
 Answer. This, I confess, I do not understand; because I do not understand how 
 one individual grain can be the same with twenty', fifty', or an hundred individual 
 grains; for such sometimes is the increase. 
 
 But your lordship proves it. “ For,” says your lordship§, “Every seed having 
 that body in little, which is afterward so much enlarged; and in grain the seed is 
 corrupted before its germination; but it hath its proper organical parts, which 
 make it the same body with that which it grows up to. For although grain be 
 not divided into lobes, as other seeds are, yet it hath been found, by the most 
 accurate observations, that upon separating the membranes, these seminal parts 
 are discerned in them; which afterwards grow up to that body which we call corn.” 
 In which words I crave leave to observe, that your lordship supposes, that a 
 body may be enlarged by the addition of an hundred or a thousand times as much 
 in bulk as its own matter, and yet continue the same body; which, I confess, l 
 cannot understand. 
 
 But in the next place, if that could be so, and that the plant, in its full growth 
 at uarvest, increased by a thousand or a million of times as much new matter 
 added to it, as it had when it lay a little concealed in the grain that was sown, 
 was the very same body; yet I do not think that your lordship will say, that 
 every minute, insensible, and inconceivably small grain of the hundred grains, 
 contained in that little organized seminal plant, is every one of them the % try 
 same with that grain which contains that whole seminal plant and all those in- 
 visible grains in it. For then it will follow, that one grain is the same with an 
 hundred, and an hundred distinct grains the same with one: which I shall be 
 able to assent to, when I can conceive, that all the wheat in the world is hut one 
 grain. 
 
 For I beseech you, my lord, consider what it is St Paul here speaks of: it ia 
 plain he speaks of that which is sown and dies, i. e. the grain that the husband- 
 man takes out of his barn to sow in his field. And of this grain St Paul says, 
 “that it is not that body that shall be.” These two, viz. “that which is sown 
 and that body that shall be,” are all the bodies that St Paul here speaks of to 
 represent the agreement or difference of men’s bodies after the resurrection 
 with those they had before they' died. Now, I crave leave to ask your lordship, 
 which of these two is that little invisible seminal plant, which your lordship 
 here speaks of? Does your lordship mean by it the grain that is sown ? But 
 that is not what St Paul speaks of; he could not mean this embryonated little 
 
 * 2d Answer. 
 
 2 D 
 
 t Y. 37. 
 
 | 2d Answer. 
 
 § Ibid. 
 
226 
 
 UF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2, 
 
 plant, for he could not denote it by these words, “that which thou sowest,”for 
 that lie says must die: but this little embryonated plant, contained in the seed 
 that is sown, dies not; or does your lordship mean by it, “the body that shall 
 be?” But neither by these words, “the body that shall be,” can St Paul be 
 supposed to denote this insensible little embryonated plant; for that is already 
 in being, contained in the seed that is sown, and therefore could not be spoken 
 of under the name of the body that shall be. And, therefore, I confess I cannot 
 see of what use it is to your lordship to introduce here this third body, which 
 St Paul mentions not, and to make that the same, or not the same with any 
 other, when those which St Paul speaks of are, as I humbly conceive, these 
 two visible sensible bodies, the grain sown, and the corn grown up to ear: with 
 neither of which this insensible embryonated plant can be the same body, unless 
 an insensible body can be the same body with a sensible body, and a little body 
 can be the same body with one ten thousand, or an hundred thousand times as 
 big as itself. So that yet, I confess, I see not the resurrection of the same body 
 proved, from these words of St Paul, to be an article of faith. 
 
 Your lordship goes on*: “St Paul indeed saith, that we sow not that body 
 that shall be; but he speaks not of the identity', but the perfection of it.” Here 
 my understanding fails me again: for I cannot understand St Paul to say, that 
 the same identical sensible grain of wheat, which was sown at seed-time, is the 
 very same with every grain of wheat in the ear at harvest that sprang from it: 
 yet so I must understand it, to make it prove, that the same sensible body that 
 Is laid in the grave, shall be the very same with that which shall be raised at the 
 resurrection. For I do not know of any seminal body in little, contained in the 
 dead carcass of any man or woman, which, as your lordship says, in seeds, 
 having its proper organical parts, shall afterwards be enlarged, and at the resur- 
 rection grow up into the same man. For I never thought of any seed, or seminal 
 parts, either of plant or animal, “so wonderfully improved by the providence 
 of God,” whereby the same plant or animal should beget itself; nor ever heard 
 that it was by divine Providence designed to produce the same individual, but 
 for the producing of future and distinct individuals for the continuation of the 
 same species. 
 
 Your lordship’s next words aref; “and although there be such a difference 
 from the grain itself, when it comes up to be perfect corn, with root, stalk, blade, 
 and ear, that it may be said to outward appearance not to be the same body; 
 yet with regard to the seminal and organical parts, it is as much the same, as a 
 man grown up is the same with the embryo in the womb. Answer. It does 
 not appear by any thing I can find in the text, that St Paul here compared the 
 body produced, with the seminal and organical parts contained in the grain it 
 sprang from, but with the whole sensible grain that was grown. Microscopes 
 had not then discovered the little embryo plant in the seed: and supposing it 
 should have been revealed to St Paul, (though in the Scripture we find little 
 revelation of natural philosophy,) yet an argument taken from a thing perfectly 
 unknown to the Corinthians, whom he writ to, could be of no manner of use to 
 them: nor serve at all either to instruct or to convince them. But granting that 
 those St Paul writ to knew it as well as Mr Lewenhoek; yet your lordship 
 thereby proves not the rising of the same body; your lordship says, it is as much 
 the same [I crave leave to add body] “as a man grown up is the same” (same 
 what, 1 beseech your lordship?) “with the embryo ir. the womb.” For that the 
 body of the embryo in the womb, and body of the man grown up, is the same 
 body, I think no one will say'; unless he can persuade himself that a body that 
 is not the hundredth part of another, is the same with that other; which 1 think 
 no one will do, till having renounced this dangerous way by ideas of thinking 
 and reasoning, he has learnt to say, that a part and the whole are the same. 
 
 Your lordship goes oni, “ And although many arguments are used to prove 
 that a man is not the same, because life, which depends upon the course of the 
 blood, and the manner of respiration, and nutrition, is so different in both 
 states; yet that man would be thought ridiculous that should seriously affirm 
 
 * 2d Answer. 
 
 t Ibid. 
 
 t Ibid. 
 
Ch. 27. 
 
 OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 
 
 227 
 
 that it was not the same man.” And your lordship says, “I grant that the 
 variation of great parcels of matter in plants, alters not the identity; and that the 
 organization of the parts in one coherent body, partaking of one common life, 
 makes the identity of a plant.” Answer. My lord, I think the question is not 
 about the same man, but the same body. For though I do say*, (somewhat dif- 
 ferently from what your lordship sets down as my words here) “ that that which 
 has such an organization, as is fit to receive and distribute nourishment, so as to 
 continue and frame the wood, bark, and leaves, he. of a plant, in which consists 
 the vegetable life, continues to be the same plant, as long as it partakes ot the 
 same life, though that life be communicated to new particles of matter, vitally 
 united to the living plant;” yet I do not remember that I any where say, that a 
 plant, which was once no bigger than an oaten straw, and afterward grows to be 
 above a fathom about, is the same body, though it be still the same plant. 
 
 The well-known tree in Epping Forest, called the King’s Oak, which, from 
 not weighing an ounce at first, grew to have many tons of timber in it, was all 
 along the same oak, the very same plant; but nobody, I think, will say that it 
 was the same body when it weighed a ton, as it was when it weighed but an 
 ounce, unless he has a mind to signalize himself by saying, that that is the 
 same body, which has a thousand different particles of matter in it, for one par- 
 ticle that is the same; which is no better than to say, that a thousand different 
 particles are but one and the same particle, and one and the same particle is a 
 thousand different particles; a thousand times a greater absurdity, than to say half 
 is the whole, or the whole is the same with the half; which will be improved ten 
 thousand times yet farther, if a man shall say (as your lordship seems to me to 
 argue here) that that great oak is the very same body with the acorn it sprang 
 from, because there was in that acorn an oak in little, which was afterward (as 
 your lordship expresses it) so much enlarged, as to make that mighty tree. 
 For this embryo, if I may so call it, or oak in little, being not the hundredth, or 
 perhaps the thousandth part of the acorn, and the acorn being not the thousandth 
 part of the grown oak, it will be very extraordinary to prove the acorn and the 
 grown oak to be the same body, by a way wherein it cannot be pretended that 
 above one particle of an hundred thousand, or a million, is the same in the one 
 body that it was in the other. From which way of reasoning, it will follow, 
 that a nurse and her sucking child have the same body, and be past doubt, that 
 a mother and her infant have the same “body. But this is a way of certainty 
 found out to establish the articles of faith, and to overturn the new method of 
 certainty that your lordship says 1 have started, which is apt to leave men’s 
 minds more doubtful than before. 
 
 And now I desire your lordship to consider of what use it is to } r ou in the 
 present case, to quote out of my essay these words, “that partaking of one 
 common life, makes the identity of a plant;” since the question is not about the 
 identity of a plant, but about the identity of a body; it being a very different 
 thing to be the same plant, and to be the same body. For that which makes the 
 same plant, does not make the same body; the one being the partaking in the 
 same continued vegetable life, the other the consisting of the same numerical par- 
 ticles of matter. And therefore your lordship’s inference from my words above 
 quoted, in these which you subjoinf, seems to me a very strangle one, viz. “ sc 
 that in things capable of any sort of life, the identity is consistent with a con- 
 tinued succession of parts; and so the wheat grown up is the same body with the 
 grain that was sown.” For I believe, if my words, from which you infer, “and 
 so the wheat grown up is the same body with the grain that was sown ” were 
 put into a syllogism, this would hardly be brought to he the conclusion. 
 
 But your lordship goes on with consequence upon consequence, though I have 
 not eyes acute enough every where to see the connexion, till you bring it to the 
 resurrection of the same body. The connexion of your lordship’s words): is as 
 followeth, “and thus the alteration of the parts of the body at the resurrection, 
 is consistent with its identity, if its organization and life be the same; and this 
 is a real identity of the body, which depends not upon consciousness. From 
 
 Essay, b. 2. c. 27, sect. 4. 
 
 f 2d Answer. 
 
 $ Ibid. 
 
228 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 whence it follows, that to make the same body, no more is required, but restor- 
 ing life to the organized parts of it.” If the question were about raising the 
 same plant, I do not say but there might be some appearance fur making such 
 an inference from my words as this. “ Whence it follows, that to make the 
 same plant, no more is required, but to restore life to the organized parts of it.” 
 But this deduction; wherein, from those words of mine that speak only of the 
 identity of a plant, your lordship infers, there is no more required to make the 
 same body, than to make the same plant; being too subtle for me, I leave to my 
 reader to find out. 
 
 Your lordship goes on and says*, “That I grant likewise, that the identity 
 of the same man consists in a participation of the same continued life, by con- 
 stantly fleeting particles of matter in succession, vitally united to the same or- 
 ganized body.” Answer. I speak in these words of the identity of the same 
 man, and your lordship thence roundly concludes; “ so that there is no diffi- 
 culty of the sameness of the body.” But your lordship knows, that I do not 
 take these two sounds, man and body, to stand for the same thing, nor the iden- 
 tity of the man to be the same with the identity of the body. 
 
 But let us read out your lordship’s wordsf. “ So that there is no difficulty 
 as to the sameness of the body, if life were continued; and if, by divine power, 
 life be restored to that material substance which was before united, by a reunion 
 of the soul to it, there is no reason to deny the identity of the body, not from 
 the consciousness of the soul, but from that life which is the result of the union 
 of the soul and body.” 
 
 If I understand your lordship right, you in these words, from the passages 
 above quoted out of my book, argue, that from those words of mine it will fol- 
 low, that it is or may be the same body, that is raised at the resurrection. If so, 
 my lord, your lordship has then proved, that my book is not inconsistent with, 
 but conformable to this article of the resurrection of the same body, which your 
 lordship contends for, and will have to be an article of farith; for though I do by 
 no means deny that the same bodies shall be raised at the last day, yet I see 
 nothing your lordship has said to prove it to be an article of faith. 
 
 But your lordship got ' on with your proofs, and says:):, “But St Paul still 
 supposes, that it must be that material substance to which the soul was before 
 united. For, saith he, ‘ it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption: it 
 is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness, it is raised in 
 power: it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.’ Can such a ma- 
 terial substance, which was never united to the body, be said to be sown in cor- 
 ruption, and weakness and dishonour? either, therefore, he must speak of the 
 body, or his meaning cannot be comprehended.” I answer, “Can such a 
 material substance, which was never laid in the grave, be said to be sown,” &c, ? 
 For your lordship says§, “You do not say the same individual particles, which 
 were united at the point of death, shall be raised on the last day;” and no other 
 particles are laid in the grave, but such as are united at the point of death; either 
 therefore your lordship must speak of another body, different from that which 
 was sown, which shall be raised, or else your meaning, I think, cannot be com- 
 prehended. 
 
 But whatever*be your meaning, your lordship proves it to be St Paul’s mean- 
 ing, that the same body shall be raised which was sown, in these following 
 words||, “For what does all this relate to a conscious principle?” Answer. 
 The Scripture being express, that the same person should be raised and appear 
 before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive according to what 
 he had done in his body; it was very well suited to common comprehensions 
 (which refined not about “particles that had been vitally united to the soul”) 
 to speak of the body which each one was to have after the resurrection, as he 
 would be apt to speak of it himself. For it being his body both before and after 
 the resurrection, every one ordinarily speaks of his body as the same, though, in 
 a strict and philosophical sense, as your lordship speaks, it be not the very same. 
 Thus it is no impropriety of speech to say, “This body of mine, which was 
 
 2d Answer. 
 
 t Ibid. 
 
 i Ibid. 
 
 § Ibid. 
 
 J Ibid. 
 
Ch. 27. 
 
 OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 
 
 229 
 
 formerly strong and plump, is now weak and wasted,” though in such a sense as 
 vou are speaking here, it be not the same body. Revelation declares nothing 
 any where concerning the same body in your lordship’s sense of the same body, 
 which appears not to have been thought of. The apostle directly proposes no- 
 thing for or against the same body, as necessary to be believed: that which he is 
 plain and direct in, is opposing and condemning such curious questions about 
 the body, which could serve only to perplex, not to confirm what was material 
 . and necessary for them to believe, viz. a day of judgment and retribution to men 
 in a future state; and therefore it is no wonder, that mentioning their bodies, he 
 should use a way of speaking suited to vulgar notions, (from which it would be 
 hard positively to conclude any thing for the determining of this question espe- 
 cially against expressions in the same discourse that plainly incline to the other 
 side,) in a matter which, as it appears, the apostle though not necessary to de- 
 termine, and the spirit of God thought not fit to gratify any one’s curiosity in. 
 
 But your lordship says*, “ The apostle speaks plainly of that body which was 
 once quickened, and afterwards falls to corruption, and is to be restored with 
 more noble qualities.” I wish your lordship had quoted the words of St Paul, 
 wherein he speaks plainly of that numerical body that was once quickened; they 
 would presently decide this question. But your lordship proves it by these 
 following words of St Paul: “ For this corruption must put on incorruption, and 
 this mortal must put on immortality;” to which your lordship adds, “ that you 
 do not see how he could more expressly affirm the identity of this corruptible 
 body, with that after the resurrection.” How expressly it is affirmed by the 
 apostle, shall be considered by and by. In the mean time, it is past doubt, that 
 your lordship best knows what you do or do not see. But this 1 would be bold 
 to say, that if St Paul had any where in this chapter (where there are so many 
 'wcasions for it, if it had been necessary to have been believed) but said in express 
 vords that the same bodies should be raised, every one else, who thinks of it, 
 will see he had more expressly affirmed the identity of the bodies which men now 
 lave, with those they shall have after the resurrection. 
 
 The remainder of your lordship’s period isf; “And that without any respect 
 to the principle of self-consciousness. ” Ans. These words, I doubt not, have 
 some meaning, but I must own I know not what; either towards the proof of 
 the resurrection of the same body, or to show, that any thing I have said concern- 
 ing self-consciousness, is inconsistent: for I do not remember that I have any 
 where said, that the identity of body consisted in self-consciousness. 
 
 From your preceding words, your lordship concludes thus(: “And so if the 
 Scripture be the sole foundation of our faith, this is an article of it.” My lord, 
 to make the conclusion unquestionable, I humbly conceive the words must run 
 thus: “And so if the Scripture, and your lordship’s interpretation of it be the 
 sole foundation of our faith, the resurrection of the same body is an article of it. ” 
 For, with submission, your lordship has neither produced express words of Scrip- 
 ture for it, nor so proved that to be the meaning of any of those words of Scrip- 
 ture which you have produced for it, that a man who reads and sincerely endea- 
 vours to understand the Scripture, cannot but find himself obliged to believe, as 
 expressly, “ that the same bodies of the dead,” in your lordship’s sense, shall be 
 raised, as “ that the dead shall be raised.” And 1 crave leave to give your lord- 
 ship this one reason for it. He who reads with attention this discourse of St 
 Paul§, where he discourses of the resurrection, will see, that he plainly distin- 
 guishes between the dead that shall be raised, and the bodies of the dead. For it is 
 tsc, o'i, are the nominative cases to|| tyti^orrca, £a)Owoi«0»VovT«i, \y egSa- 
 trorr±i, all along, and not tra [ axt*, bodies; which one may with reason think would 
 some where or other have been expressed, if all this had been said to propose it as 
 an article offaith, that the very same bodies should be raised. The same manner of 
 speaking the spirit of God observes all through the New Testament, where it is 
 said's, “ raise the dead, quicken or make alive the dead, the resurrection cf the 
 
 * 2d Answer, f Ibid, j Ibid. § 1 Cor. xv. |] V. 15, 22, 23, 29, 32, 35, 52. 
 
 •5 Matt. xxii. 31. Markxii.26. John v. 21. Acts xvi. 7. Rom. iv. 17. 
 
 2 Cor. i. 9. 1 Thess. iv. li, 16. 
 
230 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2, 
 
 dead.” Nay, these very words of our Saviour*, urged by your lordship for the 
 resurrection of the same body, run thus, n * vt;c oi ev tg/c f xvn/oieioi ; a.x.ouo-ovrou th? 
 ffiaiij c etirou xai saTGgst/o-oVTat, oi tcc ayudd TrotntraLV'rts eis avarotriv ^aoif, oi J"e ra 
 orgiZxrre; sic avois-ucrtv KgiVe&it. Would not a well-meaning searcher of the 
 Scriptures be apt to think, that if the tiling here intended by our Saviour were to 
 teach, and propose it as an article of faith, necessary to be believed by every one, 
 that the very same bodies of the dead should be raised; would not, I say, any one 
 be apt to think, that if our Saviour meant so, the words should rather have been, 
 a-xvTat ts TrtfjLcLTa. a. sv fo7c ^cv« /jLUoi; , z. e. “ all the bodies that are in the graves,” 
 rather than “all who are in the graves;” which must denote persons, and not 
 precisely bodies? 
 
 Another evidence, that St Paul makes a distinction between the dead and the 
 bodies of the dead, so that the dead cannot be taken in this, 1 Cor. xv. to stand 
 precisely for the bodies of the dead, are these words of the apostlef, “ but some 
 -men will sav, how are the dead raised? And with what body do they come?” 
 Which words, “ dead” and “ they,” if supposed to stand precisely for the bodies 
 of the dead, the question will run thus: “ How are the dead bodies raised? And 
 with what bodies do the dead bodies come?” Which seems to have no very 
 agreeable, sense. 
 
 This therefore being so, that the spirit of God keeps so expressly to this phrase, 
 or form of speaking in the New Testament, “of raising, quickening, rising, 
 resurrection, &c. of the dead,” where the resurrection of the last day is spoken 
 of; and that the body is not mentioned, but in answer to this question, “ With 
 what bodies shall those dead, who are raised, come?” so that by the dead cannot 
 precisely be meant the dead bodies: I do not see but a good Christian, who reads 
 the Scripture with an intention to believe all that is there revealed to him concern- 
 ing the resurrection, may acquit himself of his duty therein, without entering 
 into the inquiry, whether the dead shall have the very same bodies or no? Which 
 sort of inquiry the apostle, by the appellation he bestows here on him that makes 
 it, seems not much to encourage. Nor, if he shall think himself bound to deter- 
 mine concerning the identity of the bodies of the dead raised at the last day, will 
 he, by the remainder of St Paul’s answer, find the determination of the Apostle 
 to be much in favour of the very same body; unless the being told, that the body 
 sown, is not that body that shall be; that the body raised is as different from that 
 which was laid down, as the flesh of man is from the flesh of beasts, fishes, and 
 birds; or as the sun, moon, and stars are different one from another; or as different 
 as a corruptible, weak, natural, mortal body, is from an incorruptible, powerful, 
 spiritual, immortal body; and lastly, as different as a body that is flesh and blood, 
 is from a body that is not flesh and blood: “ for flesh and blood cannot,” says St 
 Paul, in this very placed, “inherit the kingdom of God:” unless, I say, all this 
 which is contained in St Paul’s words, can be supposed to be the way to deliver 
 this as an article of faith, which is required to be believed by every one, viz. 
 “ That the dead should be raised with the very same bodies that they had before 
 in this life;” which article proposed in these or the like plain and express words, 
 could have left no room for doubt in the meanest capacities, nor for contest in the 
 most perverse minds. 
 
 Your lordship adds in the next words§, “And so it hath been always under- 
 stood by the Christian church, viz. That the resurrection of the same body, in 
 your lordship’s sense of the same body, is an article of faith.” Answer. What 
 the Christian church has always understood, is beyond my knowledge. But for 
 those- who coming short of your lordship’s great learning cannot gather their arti- 
 cles of faith from the understanding of all the whole Christian church, ever since 
 the preaching of the gospel, (who make the far greater part of Christians, I think 
 I may say nine hundred ninety and nine of a thousamd) but are forced to have re- 
 course to the Scripture to find them there, I do not see, that they will easily find 
 there this proposed as an article of faith, that there shall be a resurrection of the 
 same body; but that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, without explicitly 
 determining, that they shall be raised with bodies made up wholly of the same 
 
 * John v. 28, 29. 
 
 + V. 35. 
 
 \ y. 5a. 
 
 § 2d Answer 
 
Ch. 27. 
 
 OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 
 
 231 
 
 particles, which were once vitally united to their souls in their former life, with- 
 out the mixture of any one other particle of matter, which is that which your 
 lordship means by the same body. 
 
 But supposing your lordship to have demonstrated this to be an article of faith, 
 though I crave leave to own, that I do not see that all that your lordship has said 
 here makes it so much as probable ; what is all this to me ? Yes, says your lord- 
 ship in the following words,* “ My idea of personal identity is inconsistent with 
 it, for it makes the same body which was here united to the soul, not to be ne- 
 cessary to the doctrine of the resurrection. But any material substanee united 
 to the same principle of consciousness, makes the same body.” 
 
 This is an argument of your lordship’s which I am obliged to answer to. But 
 is it not fit that i should first understand it before I answer it ? Now here 1 do not 
 Well know what it is “to make a thing not to be necessary to the doctrine of the 
 resurrection.” But to help myself out the best I can, with a guess, I will con- 
 jecture (which, in disputing with learned men, is not very safe) your lordship’s 
 meaning is, that “ my idea of personal identity makes it not necessary” that for 
 the raising the same person the body should be the same. 
 
 Your lordship’s next word is “ but ;” to which I am ready to reply, but what? 
 What does my idea of personal identity do ? For something of that kind the 
 adversative particle “ but” should, in the ordinary construction of our language, 
 introduce, to make the proposition dear and intelligible : but here is no such 
 thing. “ But” is one of your lordship’s privileged particles, which I must not 
 meddle with, for fear your lordship complain of me again, “ as so severe a critic, 
 that for the least ambiguity in any particle, fill up pages in my answer, to make 
 my book look considerable for the bulk of it.” But since this proposition here, 
 “my idea of personal identity makes the same body which was here united to 
 the soul, not necessary to the doctrine of the resurrection, but any material sub- 
 stance being united to the same principle of consciousness, makes the same body,” 
 is brought to prove my idea of personal identity inconsistent with the article of 
 the resurrection ; I must make it out in some direct sense or other, that I may 
 see whether it be both true and conclusive. I therefore venture to read it thus: 
 “My idea of personal identity makes the same body which was here united to 
 the soul, not to be necessary at the resurrection ; but allows, that any material 
 substance being united to the same principle of consciousness, makes the same 
 body. Ergo, my idea of personal identity is inconsistent with the article of the 
 resurrection of tire same body.” 
 
 If this be your lordship’s sense in this passage, as I here have guessed it to be. 
 or else I know not what It is, I answer, 
 
 1. That my idea of personal identity does not allow that any material sub- 
 stance, being united to the same principle of consciousness, makes the same 
 body. 1 say no such thing in my book, nor any thing from whence it may be 
 inferred ; and your lordship would have done me a favour to have set down the 
 words where I say so, or those from which you infer so, and showed how it fol- 
 lows from any thing I have said. 
 
 2. Granting, that it were a consequence from my idea of personal identity, that 
 “any material substance, being united to the same principle of consciousness, 
 makes the same body;” this would not prove that my idea of personal identity was 
 inconsistent with this proposition, “ that the same body shall be raised,” but, on 
 the contrary, affirms it: since, if I affirm, as I do, that the same person shall be 
 raised, and it be a consequence of my idea of personal identity, that “ any mate- 
 rial substance being united to the same principle of consciousness, makes the same 
 body;” it follows, that if the same person be raised, the same body must be raised, 
 and so I have herein not only said nothing inconsistent with the resurrection of the 
 same body, but have said more for it than your lordship. For there can be nothing 
 plainer, than that in the Scripture it is revealed, that the same persons shall be 
 raised, and appear before the judgment seat of Christ, to answer for what they 
 have done in their bodies. If, therefore, whatever matter be joined to the same 
 
 * 2d Answer. 
 
232 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 principle of consciousness makes the same body, it is demonstration, that if the 
 same persons are raised, they have the same bodies. 
 
 How, then, your lordship makes this an inconsistency with the resurrection is 
 beyond my conception. “ Yes,” saysyour lordship,* “ it is inconsistent with it, for 
 it makes the same body which was here united to the soul not to be necessary.” 
 
 3. I answer, therefore, thirdly, that this is the first time I ever learnt that 
 “ not necessary” was the same with “ inconsistent. ” I say, that a body made up 
 of the same numerical parts of matter is not necessary to the making of the same 
 person ; from whence it will indeed follow, that to the resurrection of the same 
 yierson, the same numerical particles of matter are not required. What doesyour 
 lordship infer from hence f to wit, this: therefore, he who thinks that the same 
 particles of matter are not necessary to the making of the same person, cannot 
 believe that the same persons shall be raised with bodies made of the very same 
 particles of matter, if God should reveal that it shall be so, viz. that the same 
 persons shall be raised with the same bodies they had before. Which is all one 
 as to say, that he who thought the blowing of rams’ horns was not necessary in 
 itself to the falling down of the walls of Jericho, could not believe that they 
 should fall upon the blow'ing of rams’ horns, when God had declared it should 
 be so. 
 
 Your lordship says, “ my idea of personal identity is inconsistent with the article 
 of the resurrection:” the reason you ground it on is this, because it makes not the 
 same body necessary to the making the same person. Let us grant your lordship’s 
 consequence to be good, what will follow from it? No less than this, that your 
 lordship’s notion (for I dare not say your lordship has any so dangerous things as 
 ideas) of personal identity, is inconsistent with the article of the resurrection. The 
 demonstration of it is thus: your lordship savs,+ “ It is not necessary that the 
 body, to be raised at the last day, should consist of the same particles of matter 
 which were united at the point of death, for there must be a great alteration in 
 them in a lingering disease, as if a fat man falls into a consumption: you do not 
 say the same particles which the sinner had at the very time of commission of his 
 sins, for then a long sinner must have a vast body, considering the continual 
 spending of particles by perspiration.” And again, here your lordship says,): 
 ‘ You allow the notion of personal identity to belong to the same man under 
 several changes of matter.” From which words it is evident, that your lordship 
 supposes a person in this world may be continued and preserved the same in a 
 body not consisting of the same individual particles of matter ; and hence, it de- 
 monstratively follows, that let. your lordship’s notion of personal identity be 
 what it will, it makes “ the same body not to be necessary to the same person;” 
 and therefore it is by your lordship’s rule inconsistent with the article of the 
 resurrection. When your lordship shall think fit to clear your own notion of 
 personal identity from this inconsistency with the article of the resurrection, I 
 do not doubt but my idea of personal identity will be thereby cleared too. Till 
 then, all inconsistency with that article, which your lordship has here charged 
 on mine, will unavoidably fall upon your lordship’s too. 
 
 But for the clearing of both, give me leave to say, my lord, that whatsoever is 
 not necessary', does not thereby become inconsistent. It is not necessary to the 
 same person that his body should always consist of the same numerical particles; 
 this is demonstration, because the particles of the bodies of the same persons in 
 this life change every moment, anil your lordship cannot deny it: and yet this 
 makes it not inconsistent with God’s preserving, if he thinks fit, to the same per- 
 sons, bodies consisting of the same numerical particles always from the resur- 
 rection to eternity. And so likewise though I say anything that supposes it not 
 necessary, that the same numerical particles which were vitally united to the soul 
 in this life should be reunited to it at the resurrection, and constitute the body 
 it shall then have; yet it is not inconsistent with this, that God may, if he pleases, 
 give to every one a body consisting only of such particles as were before vitally 
 united to his soul. And thus, I think, I have cleared my book from all that in- 
 
 * 2d Answer. 
 
 i Ibid. 
 
 * Ibid. 
 
Ch. 27. 
 
 OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 
 
 2.3.,' 
 
 consistency which your lordship charges on it, and would persuade the world it 
 has with the article of the resurrection of the dead. 
 
 Only before I leave it, I will set down the remainder of what your lordship 
 says upon this head, that though I see not the coherence nor tendency of it, nor 
 the force of any argument in it against me; yet that nothing may be omitted that 
 your lordship has thought fit to entertain your reader with on this new point, nor 
 any one have reason to suspect, that I have passed by" any word of your lordship’s 
 (on this now first introduced subject) wherein he might find your lordship had 
 proved what you had promised in your title page. Your remaining words are 
 these*: “The dispute is not how far personal identity in itself may consist in 
 the very same material substance ; for we allow the notion of personal identity 
 to belong to the same man under several changes of matter; but whether it doth 
 not depend upon a vital union between the soul and body, and the life which is 
 consequent upon it ; and therefore in the resurrection, the same material sub- 
 stance must be reunited, or else it cannot be called a resurrection, but a reno- 
 vation, i. e. it may be a new life, but not a raising the body from the dead.” I 
 confess, I do not see how what is here ushered in by the words “ and there- 
 fore,” is a consequence from the preceding words: but as to the propriety" of the 
 name, I think it will not much be questioned, that if the same man rise who was 
 dead, it may very properly be called the resurrection of the dead, which is the 
 language of the Scripture. 
 
 I must not part with this article of the resurrection without returning my 
 thanks to your lordship for making met take notice of a fault in my" essay". When 
 I wrote that hook, I took it for granted, as I doubt not but many" others have done, 
 that the Scripture had mentioned, in express terms, “ the resurrection of the 
 body".” But upon the occasion your lordship has given me in your last letter, 
 to look a little more narrowly into what revelation has declared concerning the 
 resurrection, and finding no such express words in the Scripture as that “the 
 body shall rise or be raised, or the resurrection of the body.” I shall in the 
 next edition of it change these words of my bookf, “ the dead bodies of men 
 shall rise,” into these of the Scriptures, “the dead shall rise.” Not that I 
 question that the dead shall be raised with bodies; but in matters of revelation, 
 I think it not only safest, but our duty, as far as any one delivers it for revela- 
 tion, to keep close to the words of the Scripture, unless he will assume to him- 
 self the authority of one inspired, or make himself wiser than the Holy Spirit 
 himself. If I had spoke of the resurrection in precisely Scripture terms, I had 
 avoided giving y"our lordship the occasion of making^ here such a verbal reflec- 
 tion on my words; “ what! not if there be an idea of identity as to the body?” 
 
 * 2d Answer. t Ibid. j: 1 Essay, B. 4. C. 18. sect. 7. § 2d Answer. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 OF OTHER RELATIONS. 
 
 ^JSect. 1. Proportional . — Besides the before-mentioned occasions of 
 time,~phI£Bran4 casuality of comparing, or referring things one to another, 
 there are, as I have' said, infinite others, some whereof I shall mention. 
 
 First, The first I shall name, is some one simple idea; which being 
 capable of parts or degrees, affords an occasion of comparing the subjects 
 wherein it is to one another, in respect of that simple idea, v. g. whiter, 
 Bweeter, bigger, equal, more, &c. These relations depending on the equality 
 and excess of the same simple idea, in several subjects, may be called, if 
 one will, proportional; and that these are only conversant about those 
 simple ideas received from sensation or reflection, is so evident, that nothing 
 need be said to evince it. 
 
 Sect. 2. Natural. — Secondly, Another occasion of comparing things 
 
 2'E -• 
 
234 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 together, or considering one thing, so as to include in that consideration 
 some other thing, is the circumstance of their origin or beginning-, pwhich 
 being not afterwards to be altered, make the relations depending thereon 
 as lasting as the subjects to which they belong; v. g. father and son, 
 brothers, cousin-germans, &c. which have their relations by one commu- 
 nity of blood, wherein they partake in several degrees; countrymen, i. e 
 those who were born in the same country, or tract of ground ; and these I 
 call natural relations ; wherein we may observe, that mankind have fitted 
 their notions and words to the use of common life, and not to the truth 
 and extent of things. For it is certain, that in reality the relation is the 
 same betwixt the begetter and the begotten, in the several races of other 
 animals as well as men : but yet it is seldom said, this bull is the grand- 
 father of such a calf; or that two pigeons are cousin-germans. It is very 
 convenient, that by distinct names these relations should be observed, and 
 marked out in mankind ; there being occasion, both in laws, and other 
 communications one with another, to mention and take notice of men un- 
 der these relations : from whence also arise the obligations of several du- 
 ties among men. Whereas in brutes, men having very little or no cause 
 to mind these relations, they have not thought fit to give them distinct and 
 peculiar names. This, by the way, may give us some light into the -differ- 
 ent state and growth of languages ; which, being suited only to the con- 
 venience of communication, are proportioned to the notions men have, 
 and the commerce of thoughts familiar among them ; and not to the reality 
 or extent of things, nor to the various respects might be found among 
 them, nor the different abstract considerations might be framed about them. 
 Where they had no philosophical notions, there they had no terms to ex- 
 press them : and it is no wonder men should have framed no names for 
 those things they found no occasion to discourse of. From whence it is 
 easy to imagine, why, as in some countries, they may not have so much 
 as the name for a horse; and in others, where they are more careful of the 
 pedigrees of their horses than of their own, that there they may have not 
 only names for particular horses, but also of their several relations of 
 kindred one to another. 
 
 Sect. 3. Instituted. — Thirdly, Sometimes the foundation of considering 
 things, wfttTrefergTree-to one another, is some act whereby any one comes 
 by a moral right, power, or obligation to do something. Thus a general is 
 one that hath power to command an army— and an army under a general 
 is a collection of armed men obliged to obey one man. A citizen, or a 
 burgher, is one who has a right to certain privileges in this or that place. 
 All this sort, depending upon men’s wills, or agreement in society, I call 
 instituted, or voluntary ; and may be distinguished from the natural, in that 
 they are most, if not all of them, some way or other alterable, and separa- 
 ble from the persons to whom they have sometimes belonged, though 
 neither of the substances, So related, be destroyed. Now, though these 
 are all reciprocal, as well as the rest, and contain in them a reference ot 
 two things one to the other ; yet, because one of the- two things often 
 wants a relative name, importing that reference, men usually take no no- 
 ice of it, and the relation is commonly overlooked : v. g. a patron and 
 client are easily allowed to be relations, but a constable or dictator are not 
 so readily, at first hearing, considered as such ; because there is no pecu- 
 liar name for those who are under the command of a dictator, or constable, 
 expressing a relation to either of them ; though it be certain, that either of 
 them hath a certain power over some others ; and so is so far related to 
 them, as well as a patron is to his client, or general to his army. 
 
 Sect. 4. Moral. — Fourthly, There is another sort of relation, which is the 
 conformity, or disagreement, men’s voluntary actions have to a rule to which 
 they are referred, and by which they are judged of; which, I think, may be 
 called moral relation, as being that which denominates our moral actions, 
 and deserves well to be examined ; there being no part of knowledge 
 
Ch. 29. 
 
 OP MORAL RELATIONS. 
 
 2o5 
 
 wherein we should be more careful to get determined ideas, and avoid, as 
 much as may be, obscurity and confusion. Human actions, when with 
 their various ends, objects, manners, and circumstances, they are framed 
 into distinct complex ideas, are, as has been shown, so many mixed modes, 
 a great part whereof have names annexed to them. Thus, supposing 
 gratitude to be a readiness to acknowledge and return kindness received ; 
 polygamy to be the having more wives than one at once; when we frame 
 these notions thus in our minds, we have there so many determined ideas 
 of mixed modes. But this is not all that concerns our actions ; it is not 
 enough to have determined ideas of them, and to know what names be- 
 long to such and such combinations of ideas. We have a farther and 
 greater concernment, and that is, to know whether such actions, so made 
 up, are morally good or bad. 
 
 Sect. 5. Moral good and evil. — Good and evil, as hath been shown, 
 B. ILjGbr20rSect: 27~lmd Ch. 21, Sect. 42, are nothing but pleasure or 
 pain, or that which occasions or procures pleasure or pain_to_us, . .-.Moral 
 good and evil then is only the conformity, or disagreement of our volun- 
 tary actions to some law, whereby good or evil is drawn on. us by the will 
 -an d, power o f the law-maker; which good and evil, pleasure or pain, at- 
 tending our observance, or breach of the law, by the decree of the law- 
 maker, is that we call reward and punishment. 
 
 Sect. 6. Moral rul&s-? — Of these morqj rules, or laws, to which men 
 generally refer7'ttmL by which they judge of the rectitude or pravity of 
 their actons, there seem to me to be three sorts, with their three different 
 enforcements, or rewards and punishments. For since it would be utterly 
 in vain to suppose a rule set to the free actions of man, without annexing 
 to it some enforcement of good and evil to determine his will, we must, 
 wherever we suppose a law, suppose also some reward or punishment an- 
 nexnd-to-that~Iaw-,- -it would be in vain for one intelligent being to set a 
 rule to the actions of another, if he had it not in his power to reward the 
 compliance with, and punish deviation from his rule, by some good and 
 evil, that is not the natural product and consequence of the action itself. 
 For that being a natural convenience, or inconvenience, would operate of 
 itself without a law. This, if I mistake not, is the true nature of all law, 
 properly so called. 
 
 Sect. 7. Laws.-^rThe laws that men generally refer their actions to, to 
 judge of their rectitude, or obliquity, seem to me to be these three. •F.~The 
 divine law. 2. The eivillaw- 3. The law of opinion or reputation, if I may 
 so call it. By the relation they bear to Ehe'frfsrdF'fhesei ■ men- judge, whe- 
 ther their actions are sins or duties ; by the second, whether they be crimi- 
 nal or innocent ; and by the third, whether they be virtues or vices. 
 
 Sect. &T~-Hivine law, the measure of sin artd duty. — First, The divine 
 law, whereby I mean that law which God has set to the actions of men, whe- 
 ther promulgated to them by the light of nature, or the voice of revelation. 
 That God has given a rule whereby men should goverirthenrselveij I think 
 there is nobody so brutish as to deny. He has a right to do it ; we are his 
 creatures : he has goodness and wisdom to direct our actions to that which 
 is best; and he has power to enforce it by rewards and punishments, of in- 
 finite weight and duration, in another life ; for nobody can take us out of 
 his hands. This is the only true touchstone of moral rectitude, and by 
 comparing them to this law it is that men judge of the most considerable 
 moral good or evil of their actions; that is, whether as duties or sins, they are 
 like to procure them happiness or misery from the hand of the Almighty. 
 
 Sect. 9. Givil law^ ihemeasure-off crimes and innocence. — Secondly, 
 the civil law, the rule set by the commonwealth to the actions of those 
 who belong to it, is another rule, to which men refer their actions, to judge 
 whether they be criminal or no. This law nobody overlooks ; the rewards 
 and punishments that enforce it being ready at hand, and suitable to the 
 
236 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 power that makes it ; which is the force of the commonwealth, engaged to 
 protect the lives, liberties, and possessions of those who live according to 
 its laws, and has power to take away life, liberty, or goods, from him who 
 disobeys : which is the punishment of offences committed against this law. 
 
 Sect. 10. Philosophical law, the measure of virtue and vice. — Thirdly, 
 the law of opinion orjreputation-. Virtue and vice are names pretended and 
 supposed every where to stand for actions in their own nature right and 
 wrong; and as far as they really are so applied, they so far are coincident 
 with the divine law above mentioned. But yet, whatever is pretended, this is 
 visible, that these names, virtue and vice, in the particular instances of 
 their application, through the several nations and societies of men in the 
 world, are constantly attributed only to such actions, as in each country 
 and society are in reputation or discredit. Nor is it to be thought strange, 
 that men every where should give the name of virtue to those actions, 
 which among them are judged praise-worthy ; and call that vice, which 
 they account blameable ; since otherwise they would condemn themselves 
 if they should think any thing right, to which they allowed not commen- 
 dation : any thing wrong which they let pass without blame. Thus the 
 measure of what is everywhere called and esteemed virtue and vice, is the 
 approbation or dislike, praise or blame, which by a secret and tacit consent 
 establishes itself in the several societies, tribes, and clubs of men in the 
 world ; whereby several actions come to find credit or disgrace among 
 them according to the judgment, maxims, or fashion of that place. For 
 though men, uniting into politic societies, have resigned up to the public the 
 disposing of all their force, so that they cannot employ it against any fel- 
 low-citizens any farther than the law of the country directs ; yet they retain 
 still the power of thinking well or ill, approving or disapproving of the 
 actions of those whom they live among, and converse with: and by this 
 approbation and dislike, they establish among themselves what they will 
 call virtue and vice. 
 
 Sect. 11. — That this is the common measure of virtue and vice, will ap- 
 pear to any one who considers, that though that passes for vice in one country 
 which is counted a virtue, or at least not vice in another, yet, every where, 
 virtue and praise, vice and blame, go together. Virtue is every where that 
 which is thought praise-worthy ; and nothing else but that which has the 
 allowance of public esteem, is called virtue (6). Virtue and praise are so 
 
 (6) Our author, in his preface to the fourth edition, taking notice how apt men 
 have been to mistake him, added what here follows : Of this the ingenious 
 author of the discourse concerning the nature of man has given me a late 
 instance, to mention no other. For the civility of his expressions, and the can- 
 dour that belongs to his order, forbid me to think that he would have closed his 
 preface with an insinuation, as if in what I had said, book ii. chap. 28, concern- 
 ing the third rule which men refer their actions to, I went about to make virtue 
 vice, and vice virtue, unless he had mistaken my meaning ; which he could not 
 have done, if he had but given himself the trouble to consider what the argu- 
 ment was I was then upon, and what was the chief design of that chapter, 
 plainly enough set down in the fourth section, and those following. For I 
 was there not laying down moral rules, but showing the original and nature of 
 moral ideas, and enumerating the rules men make use of in moral relations, 
 whether those rules were true or false : and, pursuant thereunto, 1 tell what 
 has every where that denomination, which in the language of that place answers 
 to virtue and vice in ours; which alters not the nature of things, though men do 
 generally judge of, and denominate their actions according to the esteem and 
 fashion of the place or sect they are of. 
 
 If he had been at the pains to reflect on what I had said, h. i. c. 3. sect. 18, and in 
 this present chapter, sect. 13, 14, 15, and 20, he would have known what 1 think 
 of the eternal and unalterable nature of right and wrong, and what I call virtue 
 
Ch. 28. 
 
 OF OTHER RELATIONS. 
 
 237 
 
 ^■United, that they are often called by the same name. Sunt sua prcemia 
 laudti' seLjsYiTgil ; and so Cicero, Nihil habet natura priestantius, quam 
 honestatem, quam laudem, quam dignitatem, quam decus; which, he tells 
 us, are all names for the same thing, Tusc. lib. ii. This is the language of 
 
 and vice: and if be had observed, that in the place he quotes, I only report as 
 matter of fact what others call virtue and vice, he would not have found it 
 liable to any great exception. For, I think, I am not much out in saying, that 
 one of the rules made use of in the world, for a ground or measure of a moral 
 relation, is that esteem and reputation which several sorts of actions find variously 
 in the several societies of men, according to which they are there called virtues or 
 vices: and whatever authority the learned Mr Lowde places in his old English 
 Dictionary, I dare say it no where tells him (if I should appeal to it) that the 
 same action is not in credit, called and counted a virtue in one place, which being 
 in disrepute, passes for and under the name of vice in another. The taking 
 notice that men bestow the names of virtue and vice according to this rule of 
 reputation, is all 1 have done, or can be laid to my charge to have done, towards 
 the making vice virtue, and virtue vice. But the good man does well, and as 
 becomes his calling, to be watchful in such points, and to take the alarm, even 
 at expressions, which standing alone by themselves might sound ill, and be 
 suspected. 
 
 It is to this zeal, allowable in his function, that I forgive his citing, as he does, 
 these words of mine in sect. 11 of this chapter: “ The exhortations of inspired 
 teachers have not feared to appeal to common repute : ‘ whatsoever things are 
 lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be 
 any praise,’ &rc. Phil. iv. 8.” without taking notice of those immediately pre- 
 ceding, which introduce them, and run thus: “ whereby in the corruption of man- 
 ners, the true boundaries of the law of nature, which ought to be the rule of virtue 
 and vice, were pretty well preserved, so that even the exhortations of inspired 
 teachers,” &c. by which words, and the rest of that section, it is plain that I 
 brought this passage of St Paul, not to prove that the general measure of what 
 men call virtue and vice, throughout the world, was the reputation and fashion 
 of each particular society within itself; but to show, that though it were so, yet, 
 for reasons I there give men, in that way of denominating their actions, did not 
 for the most part, much vary from the law of nature; which is that standing and 
 unalterable rule by which they ought to judge of the moral rectitude and pravity 
 of their actions, and accordingly denominate them virtues or vices. Had Mr 
 Lowde considered this, he would have found it little to his purpose to have 
 quoted that passage in a sense I used it not; and would, I imagine, have spared 
 the explication he subjoins to it as not very necessary. But I hope this second 
 edition will give him satisfaction in the point, and that this matter is now so 
 expressed as to show him there was no cause of scruple. 
 
 Though I am forced to differ from him in those apprehensions he has expressed 
 in the latter end of his preface, concerning what I had said about virtue and vice, 
 yet we are better agreed than he thinks, in what he says in his third chapter, p. 
 78, concerning natural inscription and innate notions. I shall not deny him the 
 privilege he claims, p. 52, to state the question as he pleases, especially when he 
 states it so, as to leave nothing in it contrary to what I have said; for, according 
 to him, innate notions being conditional things, depending upon the concurrence 
 of several other circumstances, in order to the soul’s exerting them; all that he 
 says for innate, imprinted, impressed notions (for of innate ideas he says nothing 
 at all) amounts at last only to this: that there are certain propositions, which 
 though the soul from the beginning, or when a man is born, does not know, yet 
 by assistance from the outward senses, and the help of some previous cultivation, 
 it may afterwards come certainly to know the truth of ; which is no more than 
 what I have affirmed in my first book. For I suppose, by the soul’s exerting 
 them, he means its beginning to know them, or else the soul’s exerting of notions 
 will be to me a very unintelligible expression; and I think at best is a very unfit 
 one in this case, it misleading men’s thoughts by an insinuation, as if these no- 
 tions we-« in the mind before the soul exerts them; t. e. before they are knovn; 
 
338 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 the heathen philosophers, who well understood wherein their notions of 
 virtue and vice consisted, and though perhaps by the different temper, edu- 
 cation, fashion, maxims, or interests of different sorts of men, it fell out 
 that what was thought praise-worthy in one place, escaped not censure in 
 another; andsoin different societies, virtues and vices were changed; yet, as 
 to the main, they for the most part kept the same every where. For since 
 nothing can be more natural than to encourage with esteem and reputation 
 that wherein every one finds his advantage, and to blame and discountenance 
 the contrary ; it is no wonder that esteem and discredit, virtue -.and vice, 
 should in a great measure every where correspond with the unchangeable 
 rule of right and wrong, which the law of God hath establifdTrrdT-^tieTe 
 being nothing that so directly and visibly secures and advances the general 
 good of mankind in this world, as obedience to the laws he has set them; 
 and nothing that breeds such mischiefs and confusion, as the neglect of 
 them. And, therefore, men, without renouncing all sense and reason, and 
 their own interest, which they are so constantly true to, could not generally 
 mistake in placing their commendation and blame on that side that really 
 deserved it not. Nay, even those men whose practice was otherwise, 
 failed not to give their approbation right ; few being depraved to that de- 
 gree, as not to condemn, at least in others, the faults they themselves were 
 guilty of : whereby, even in the corruption of manners, the true bounda- 
 ries of the law of nature, which ought to be the rule of virtue and vice, 
 were pretty well preferred. So that even the exhortations of inspired 
 teachers have not feared to appeal to common repute : “ Whatsoever is 
 lovely, whatsoever is of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any 
 praise,” &c. Phil. iv. 8. 
 
 Sect. 12. Its enforcements, commendation, and discredij.^-lf any one 
 shall imagine that I have forgot my own notion of a law, when I make the 
 law whereby men judge of virtue and vice, to be nothing else but the consent 
 of private men, who have not authority enough to make a law; especially 
 wanting that which is so necessary and essential to a law, a power to enforce 
 it: I think I may say, that he who imagines commendation and disgrace not to 
 be strong motives to men, to accommodate themselves to the opinions and 
 rules of those with whom they converse, seems little skilled in the nature 
 or history of mankind: the greatest part whereof he shall find to govern 
 themselves chiefly, if not solely, by this law of fashion ; and so they do 
 that which keeps them in reputation with their company, little regard the 
 laws of God, or the magistrate. The penalties that attend the breach of 
 God’s laws, some, nay perhaps most men, seldom seriously reflect on ; 
 
 whereas truly before they are known, there is nothing of them in the mind but 
 a capacity to know them, when the concurrence of those circumstances, which 
 this ingenious author thinks necessary, in order to the soul’s exerting them, 
 brings them into our knowledge. 
 
 P. 52, I find him express it thus: “ these natural notions are not so imprinted 
 upon the soul, as that they naturally and necessarily exert themselves (even in 
 children and idiots) without any assistance from the outward senses, or without 
 the help of some previous cultivation.” Here, he says, they exert themselves, 
 as p. 78, that the soul exerts them. When he has explained to himself or others 
 what he means by the soul’s exerting innate notions, or their exerting themselves, 
 and what that previous cultivation and circumstances, in order to their being ex- 
 erted, are; he will, I suppose, find there is so little of controversy between him 
 and me in the point, hating that he calls that exerting of notions which I in a 
 more vulgar style call knowing, that I have reason to think he brought in my 
 name upon this occasion only out of the pleasure he has to speak civilly of me, 
 which I must gratefully acknowledge he has done wherever he mentions me, 
 not without conferring on me, as some others have done, a title I have no 
 right to. 
 
Ch. 23. 
 
 OF OTHER RELATIONS. 
 
 239 
 
 and' among' those that do, many, whilst they break that law, entertain 
 thoughts of future reconciliation, and making their peace for such breaches. 
 And as to the punishments due from the laws of the commonwealth, they 
 frequently flatter themselves with the hopes of impunity. But no man 
 escapes the punishment of their censure and dislike, who offends against 
 the fashion and opinion of the company he keeps, and would recommend 
 himself to. Nor is there one of ten thousand, who is stiff and insensible 
 enough to bear up under the constant dislike and condemnation of his own 
 club. He must be of a strange and unusual constitution, who can con- 
 tent himself to live in constant disgrace and disrepute with his own par- 
 ticular society. Solitude many men have sought, and been reconciled to : 
 but nobody, that has the least thought or sense of a man about him, can 
 live in society under the constant dislike and ill opinion of his familiars, 
 and those he converses with. This is a burden too heavy for human suf- 
 ferance ; and he must be made of irreconcilable contradictions, who can 
 take pleasure in company, and yet be insensible of contempt and disgrace 
 from his companions. 
 
 Sect. 13. These three laws, the rules of moral good and evil. — These 
 three then, Firety Thela-w of Gml rSieocmdfy, The law of politic societies ; 
 Thirdly, The law of fashion, or private censure, are those to which men 
 variously compare their actions ; and it is by their conformity to one of 
 these laws that they take their measures, when they would judge of their 
 moral rectitude, and denominate their actions good or bad. 
 
 Sect. 14. Morality is the relation of actions to these rules . —Whether 
 the rule, to which, as to a touchstone, 'we bring our voluntary actions, to 
 examine them by, and try their goodness, and accordingly to name them ; 
 which is, as it were, the mark of the value we set upon them : whether, I 
 say, we take that rule from the fashion of the country, or the will of a law- 
 maker, the mind is easily able to observe the relation any action hath 'to 
 it, and to judge whether the action agrees or disagrees with the rule ; and 
 so hath a notion of moral goodness or evil, which is either conformity or 
 not conformity of any action to that rule : and therefore is often called 
 moral rectitude. This rule being nothing but a collection of several sim- 
 ple ideas, the conform ity fRe'ret(r iy’'lniTTb ordering the action, that the 
 simple ideas belonging to it may correspond to thoseNvliich the law re- 
 ^’"rp hrcg. - .And thus we see how moral beings and notions are founded on, 
 and terminated - in, these simple ideas we have received from sensation or 
 reflection. For example, let us consider the complex idea we signify by 
 the word murder ; and when we have taken it asunder, and examined all 
 the particulars, we shall find them to amount to a collection of simple ideas 
 derived from reflection or sensation, viz. First, from reflection on the ope- 
 rations of our own minds, we have the ideas of willing, considering, pur- 
 posing before hand, malice, or wishing ill to another ; and also of life, or 
 perception, and self-motion. Secondly, from sensation we have the col- 
 lection of those simple sensible ideas which are to be found in a man, and 
 of some action, whereby we put an end to perception and motion in a 
 man ; all which simple ideas are comprehended in the word murder. This 
 collection of simple ideas being found by me to agree or disagree with the 
 esteem of the country I have been bred in, and to be held by most men 
 there worthy praise or blame, I call the action virtuous or vicious : if I 
 have the will of a supreme invisible Law-maker for my rule ; then, as I sup- 
 pose the action commanded or forbidden by God, I call it good or evil, sin 
 or duty ; and if I compare it to the civil law, the rule made by the legis- 
 lative power of the country, I call it lawful or unlawful, a crime or no 
 crime. So that whencesoever we take the rule of moral actions, or by 
 what standard soever we frame in our minds the ideas of virtues or vices, 
 they consist only and are made up of collections of simple ideas, which we 
 originally received from sense or reflection, and their rectitude or obliquity 
 
240 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 consists in the agreement or disagreement with those patterns prescribed 
 by some law. 
 
 Sect. 15. To conceive rightly of moral actions, we must take notice 
 of them under this twofold consideration. -First, as they are in themselves 
 each made up of such a collection of simple ideas. Thus drunkenness, 
 or lying, signify such or such a collection of simple ideas, which I call 
 mixed modes : and in this sense they are as much positive absolute ideas 
 as the drinking of a horse, or speaking of a parrot. Secondly, our actions 
 are considered as good, bad, or indifferent ; and in this respect they are 
 relative, it being their conformity to, or disagreement with, some rule that 
 makes them to be regular or irregular, good or bad, and so as far as they 
 are compared with a rule, and thereupon denominated, they come under 
 relation. Thus, the challenging and fighting with a man, as it is a certain 
 positive mode, or particular sort of action, by particular ideas, distinguish- 
 ed from all others, is called duelling, which when considered in relation 
 to the law of God, will deserve the name sin ; to the law of fashion, in 
 some countries, valour and virtue ; and to the municipal laws of some go- 
 vernments, a capital crime. In this case, when the positive mode has one 
 name, and another name as it stands in relation to the law, the distinction 
 may as easily be observed as it is in substances, where one name, v. g. 
 man, is used to signify the thing; another, v. g. father, to signify the 
 relation. 
 
 Sect. 16. The denominations of actions often mislead us . — But because 
 very frequently the positive idea of the action, and its moral relation, are 
 comprehended together under one name, and the same word made use of 
 to express both the mode or action, and its moral rectitude or obliquity ; 
 therefore the relation itself is less taken notice of, and there is often no 
 distinction made between the positive idea of the action, and the reference 
 it has to a rale. By which confusion of these two distinct considerations 
 under one term, those who yield too easily to the impressions of sounds, 
 and are forward to take names for things, are often misled in their judg- 
 ment of actions. Thus the taking from another what is his, without his 
 knowledge or allowance, is properly called stealing; but that name being 
 commonly understood to signify also the moral pravity of the action, and 
 to denote its contrariety to the law, men are apt to condemn whatever 
 they hear called stealing as an ill action, disagreeing with the rule of right. 
 And yet the private taking away his sword from a madman, to prevent his 
 doing mischief, though it be properly denominated stealing, as the name 
 of such a mixed mode ; yet when compared to the law of God, and con- 
 sidered in its relation to that supreme rale, it is no sin or transgression, 
 though the name stealing ordinarily carries such an intimation with it. 
 
 Sect. 17. Relations innumerable . — And thus much for the. relation of 
 human actions to a law, which therefore I call moral relation. 
 
 It would make a volume to go over all sorts of relations ; it is not there- 
 fore to be expected that I should here mention them all. It suffices to our 
 present purpose to show by these what the ideas are we have of this com- 
 prehensive consideration, called relation : which is so various, and the oc- 
 casions of it so many (as many as there can be of comparing things one to 
 another,) that it is not very easy to reduce it to rules, or under just heads. 
 Those I have mentioned, I think, are some of the most considerable, and 
 such as may serve to let us see from whence we get our ideas of re- 
 lations, and wherein they are founded. But before I quit this argument, 
 fiom what has been said, give me leave to observe, 
 
 Sect. 18. All relations terminate in simple ideas. — First, that it is 
 evident that all relation terminates in, and is ultimately founded on, those 
 simple ideas we have got from sensation or reflection : so that all that we 
 have in our thoughts ourselves (if we think of any thing, or have any 
 meaning) or would signify to others, when we use words standing for re- 
 
Ch. 28. 
 
 OF OTHER RELATIONS. 
 
 241 
 
 lations, is nothing but some simple ideas, or collections of simple ideas, 
 compared one with another. This is so manifest in that sort called pro- 
 portional, that nothing can be more : for when a man says honey is 
 sweeter than wax, it is plain that his thoughts, in this relation, terminate 
 in this simple idea, sweetness, which. is equally true of all the rest; though, 
 where they are compounded or decompounded, the simple ideas they are 
 made up of are, perhaps, seldom taken notice of. V. g. when the word 
 father is mentioned : First, there is meant that particular species, or col- 
 lective idea, signified by the word man. Secondly, those sens Die simple 
 ideas, signified by the word generation ; and, thirdly, the effects of it, and 
 all the simple ideas signified by the word child. So the word friend being 
 taken for a man who loves, and is ready to do good to another, has all 
 these following ideas to the making of it up; first, all the simple ideas, 
 comprehended in the word man, or intelligent being. Secondly, the idea 
 of love. Thirdly, the idea of readiness or disposition. Fourthly, the idea 
 of action, which is any kind of thought or motion. Fifthly, the idea of 
 good, which signifies any thing that may advance his happiness, and ter- 
 minates at last, if examined, in particular simple ideas, of which the word 
 good in genera] signifies any one; but, if removed from all simple ideas 
 quite, it signifies nothing at all. And thus also all moral words termi- 
 nate at last, though perhaps more remotely, in a collection of simple ideas : 
 the immediate signification of relative words being very often other sup- 
 posed known relations, which, if traced one to another, still end in simple 
 ideas. 
 
 Sect. 19. We have ordinarily as clear (or clearer ) a notion of the 
 relation, as of its foundation. — Secondly, that in relations we have for the 
 most'parLJf juxt-always r as clear a notion of the relation, as we have of 
 those simple ideas wherein it is founded. Agreement or disagreement, 
 whereon relation depends, being things whereof we have commonly as 
 clear ideas as of any other whatsoever; it being but the distinguishing 
 simple ideas, or their degrees one from another, without which we could 
 have no distinct knowledge at all. For if I have a clear idea of sweetness, 
 light, or extension, I have too of equal, or more or less, of each of these : 
 if I know what it is for one man to be born of a woman, viz. Sempronia, 
 I know what it is for another man to be born of the same woman, Sem- 
 pronia; and so have as clear a notion of brothers as of births, and perhaps 
 clearer. For if I believed that Sempronia dug Titus out of the parsley- 
 bed (as they used to tell children), and thereby became his mother; and 
 that afterward, in the same manner, she dug Caius out of the parsley-bed ; 
 I had as clear a notion of the relation of brothers between them, as if I 
 had all the skill of a midwife : the notion that the same woman contri- 
 buted, as mother, equally to their births, (though I were ignorant or mis- 
 taken in the manner of it,) being that on which I grounded the relation, 
 and that they agreed in that circumstance of birth, let it be what it will. 
 The comparing them then, in their descent from the same person, without 
 knowing the particular circumstances of that descent, is enough to found 
 my notion of their having or not having the relation of brothers. But 
 though the ideas of particular relations are capable of being as clear and 
 distinct in the minds of those who will duly consider them as those of 
 mixed modes, and more determinate than those of substances ; yet the 
 names belonging to relation are often of as doubtful and uncertain signifi- 
 cation as those of substances or mixed modes, and much more than those 
 of simple ideas ; because relative words being the marks of this compari- 
 son, which is made only by men’s thoughts, and is an idea only in men’s 
 minds, men frequently apply them to different comparisons of things, ac- 
 cording to their own imaginations, which do not always correspond with 
 ‘hose of others using the same name. 
 
 Sect. 20. The notion of the relation is the same, whether the rule and 
 
242 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 action to be compared is true or false. — Thirdly, that in these I call mora. 
 relations I have a true notion of relation, by comparing' the action with 
 the rule, whether the rule be true or false. For if I measure any thing by 
 a yard, I know whether the thing I measure be longer or shorter than that 
 supposed yard, though perhaps the yard I measure by be not exactly the 
 standard, which indeed is another inquiry : for though the rule be errone- 
 ous, and I mistaken in it, yet the agreement or disagreement observable in 
 .that which I compare with makes me perceive the relation. Though 
 measuring by a wrong rule, I shall thereby be brought to judge amiss of its 
 moral rectitude, because I have tried it by that which is not the true rule, 
 yet I am not mistaken in the relation which that action bears to that rule 
 I compare it to, which is agreement or disagreement. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 OF CLEAR AND OBSCURE, DISTINCT AND CONFUSED IDEAS. 
 
 Sect. 1. Ideas, some clear and distinct, others obscure and confused . — 
 Having shown the original of our ideas, and taken a view of their several 
 sorts, considered the difference between the simple and the complex, and 
 observed how the complex ones are divided into those of modes, substances, 
 and relations; all which, I think, is necessary to be done by any one who 
 would acquaint himself thoroughly with the progress of the mind in its 
 apprehension and knowledge of things ; it will, perhaps, be thought I have 
 dwelt long enough upon the examination of ideas. I must, nevertheless, 
 crave leave to offer some few other considerations concerning them. The 
 first is, that some are clear, and others obscure ; some distinct, and others 
 confused. 
 
 Sect. 2. Clear and obscure explained by sight. — The perception of 
 the mind being most aptly explained by words relating to the sight, we 
 shall best understand what is meant by clear and obscure in our ideas by 
 reflecting on what we call clear and obscure in the objects of sight. Light 
 being that which discovers to us visible objects, we give the name of 
 obscure to that which is not placed in a light sufficient to discover minute- 
 ly to us the figure and colours which are observable in it, and which, in a 
 better light, would be discernible. In like manner our simple ideas are 
 clear when they are such as the objects themselves, from whence they 
 were taken, did or might, in a well-ordered sensation or perception, present 
 them. Whilst the memory retains them thus, and can produce them to 
 the mind, whenever it has occasion to consider them, they are clear ideas. 
 So far as they either want any thing of the original exactness, or have lost 
 any of their first freshness, and are, as it were, faded or tarnished ByTilne, - 
 so far are they obscure. Complex ideas, as they are made up of simple 
 ones, so they are clear when the ideas that go to their composition are 
 clear; and the number and order of those simple ideas, that are the in-' 
 gradients of any complex one, is determinate and certain. 
 
 Sect. 3. Causes of obscurity. — The causes of obscurity in simple ideas 
 seem to be either dull organs, or very slight and transient impressions 
 made by the objects, or else a weakness in the memory not able to retain 
 them as received. For to return again to visible objects, to help us to ap- 
 prehend this matter : if the organs or faculties of perception, like wax 
 over-hardened with cold, will not receive the impression of the seal, from 
 the usual impulse wont to imprint it ; or, like wax, of a temper too soft, 
 will not hold it well when well imprinted; or else supoosing the wax of a 
 temper fit, but the seal not applied with a sufficient force to make a clear 
 
Cfc. 29. 
 
 OF CLEAR AND OBSCURE IDEAS. 
 
 243 
 
 impression : in any of these cases, the print left by the seal will be ob . 
 scure. This, I suppose, needs no application to make it plainer. 
 
 Sect. 4. Distinct and confused, .what. — As a clear idea is that where- 
 of the mind has such a full and evident perception, as it does receive from 
 an outward object operating duly on a well-disposed organ j-so. a distinct 
 idea is,.that wherein the mind perceives a difference from all other; and a 
 eonfused idea is such a one as is nof sufficiently distinguishable from ano- 
 ther, from which it ought to be different. 
 
 Snor. -5. OAjecfforr.— If'-no idca be confused but such as is not sufficient- 
 ly distinguishable from another, from which it should be different, it will 
 be hard, may any one say, to find any where a confused idea. For let any 
 idea be as it will, it can be no other but such as the mind perceives it to 
 be; and that very perception sufficiently distinguishes it from all other 
 ideas, which cannot be other, i. e. different, without being perceived to be 
 so. No idea therefore can be undistinguishable from another, from which 
 it ought to be different, unless you would have it different from itself : for 
 from all other it is evidently different. 
 
 Sect. 6. Confusion of ideas is in. reference to their names. — To remove 
 Jhis-difficulty, and to help us to conceive aright what it is that makes the 
 confusion ideas are at any time chargeable with, we must consider, that 
 tilings ranked under distinct names are supposed different enough to be 
 distinguished, that so each sort by its peculiar name may be marked, and 
 discoursed of apart upon any occasion : and there is nothing more evident 
 than that the greatest part of different names are supposed to stand for 
 different things. Now every idea a man has being visibly what it is, and 
 distinct from all other ideas but itself, that which makes it confused is, 
 when it is such, that it may as well be called by another name as that 
 which it is expressed by: the difference which keeps the things (to be 
 ranked under those two different names) distinct, and makes some of them 
 belong rather to the one, and some of them to the other of those names, 
 being left out ; and so the distinction, which was intended to be kept up 
 by those different names is quite lost. 
 
 Sect. 7. Defaults whichmake confusion. — The defaults which usually 
 occasion this' confusion, I think, are chiefly these following: 
 
 First, complex ideas made up of too few simple ones. — First, when any 
 complex idea (for it is complex ideas that are most liable to confusion) is 
 made up of too small a number of simple ideas, and such only as are com- 
 mon to other things, whereby the differences that make it deserve a diffe- 
 rent name are left out. Thus, he that has an idea made up of barely the 
 simple ones of a beast with spots, has but a confused idea of a leopard, it 
 not being thereby sufficiently distinguished from a lynx, and several other 
 sorts of beasts that are spotted. So that, such an idea, though it hath the 
 peculiar name leopard, is not distinguishable from those designed by the 
 names lynx, or panther, and may as well come under the name lynx as 
 leopard. How much the custom of defining of words by general terms 
 contributes to make the ideas we would express by them confused and 
 undetermined, I leave others to consider. This is evident, that confused 
 ideas are such as render the use of words uncertain, and take away the 
 benefit of distinct names. When the ideas, for which we use different 
 terms, have not a difference answerable to their distinct names, and so 
 cannot be distinguished by them, there it is that they are truly confused. 
 
 Sect. 8. Secondly, or its simple ones jumbled disorderly together . — 
 Secondly, another fault which makes our ideas confused is when, though 
 the particulars that make up any idea are in numberenough, yet they are so 
 jumbled together, that it is not easily discernible whether it more belongs 
 to the name that is given it than to any other. There is nothing more 
 proper to make us conceive this confusion, than a sort of pictures usually 
 shown as surprising pieces of art, wherein the colours, as they are laid by 
 
244 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 the pencil on the table itself, mark out very odd and unusual figures, and 
 have no discernible order in their position. This draught, thus made up 
 of parts wherein no symmetry nor order appears, is in itself no more a con- 
 tused thing than the picture of a cloudy sky ; wherein, though there be as 
 little order of colours or figures to be found, yet nobody thinks it a con- 
 fused picture. What is it then that makes it be thought confused, since 
 the want of symmetry does not] as it is plain it does not, for another 
 draught made, barely in imitation of this, could not be called confused. I 
 answer, that which makes it be thought confused is the applying it to 
 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, or Csesar, then any 
 one with reason counts it confused : because it is not discernible in that 
 state to belong more to the name man, or Caesar, than to the name baboon, 
 orPompey; which are supposed to stand for different ideas from those 
 signified by man or Csesar. But when a cylindrical mirror, placed right, 
 hath reduced those irregular lines on the table into their due order and 
 proportion, then the confusion ceases, and the eye presently sees that it 
 is a man, or Csesar, i. e. that it belongs to those names, and that it is suf- 
 ficiently distinguishable from a baboon, or Pompey, i. e. from the ideas 
 signified by those names. Just thus it is with our ideas, which are as it 
 were the pictures of things. No one of these mental draughts, however 
 the parts are put together, can be called confused (for they are plainly 
 discernible as they are,) till it be ranked under some ordinary name, to 
 which it cannot be discerned to belong, any more than it does to some 
 other name of an allowed different signification. 
 
 Sect. 9. Thirdly, or are mutable -and undetermined. — Thirdly, a 
 third defect that frequently gives the name of confused to our ideas, is 
 when any one of them is uncertain and undetermined. Thus we may ob- 
 serve men, who, not forbearing to use the ordinary words of their lan- 
 guage till they have learned their precise signification, change the idea 
 they make this or that term stand for, almost as often as they use it. He 
 that does this, out of uncertainty of what he should leave out, or put into 
 his idea of church or idolatry, every time he thinks of either, and holds 
 not steady to any one precise combination of ideas that makes it up, is 
 said to have a confused idea of idolatry, or the church; though this be 
 still for the same reason as the former, viz. because a mutable idea, (if we 
 will allow it to be one idea,) cannot belong to one name rather than ano- 
 ther ; and so loses the distinction that distinct names are designed for. 
 
 Sect. 10. Confusion, without reference to names, hardly conceivable . — ■ 
 By what has been said, we may observe how much names, as supposed 
 steady signs of things, and by their difference to stand for and keep things 
 distinct that in themselves are different, are the occasion of denominating 
 ideas distinct or confused, by a secret and unobserved reference the mind 
 makes of its ideas to such names. This perhaps will be fuller understood 
 after what I say of words, in the third book, has been read and considered. 
 But without taking notice of such a reference of ideas to distinct names, 
 as the signs of distinct things, it will be hard to say what a confused idea 
 is. And therefore when a man designs, by any name, a sort of things, or 
 any one particular thing, distinct from all others; the complex idea he an- 
 nexes to that name is the more distinct, the more particular the ideas are, 
 and the greater and more determinate the number and order of them are, 
 whereof it is made up. For the more it has of these, the more it has still 
 of the perceivable differences, whereby it is kept separate and distinct from 
 all ideas belonging to other names, even those that approach nearest to 
 it ; and thereby all confusion with them is avoided. 
 
 Sect. 11. Confusion concerns always two ideas. — Confusion, making 
 it a difficulty to separate two things^ that 'should be separated, concern? 
 always two ideas ; and those most which most approach one another 
 
Ch. 29. 
 
 OF CLEAR AND OBSCURE IDEAS. 
 
 245 
 
 Whenever therefore we suspect any idea to be confused, we must examine 
 what other it is in danger to be confounded with, or which it cannot easily 
 be separated from; and that will always be found an idea belonging to 
 another name, and so should be a different thing, from which yet it is 
 not sufficiently distinct ; being either the same with it, or making a part 
 of it, or at least, as properly called by that name as the other it is ranked 
 under; and so keeps not that difference from that other idea, which the 
 different names import. 
 
 -Sect- 12. Causesof confusion. — This, I think, is the confusion pro- 
 per to ideas, which still carries with it a secret reference to names. At 
 least, if there be any other confusion of ideas, this is that which most of 
 all disorders men’s thoughts and discourses : ideas, as ranked under names, 
 being those that for the most part men reason of within themselves, and 
 always those which they commune about with others. And therefore 
 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 ; and where any ideas are distinct, as the 
 ideas of those two sounds they are marked by, there can be between them 
 no confusion. — The way to prevent it is to collect and unite into one com- 
 plex idea, as precisely as is possible, 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. But this neither accommodating 
 men’s ease or vanity, or serving any design but that of naked truth, which 
 is not always the thing aimed at, such exactness is rather to be wished 
 than hoped for. And since the loose application of names to undetermin- 
 ed, variable, and almost no ideas, serves both to cover our own ignorance, 
 as well as to perplex and confound others, which goes for learning and 
 superiority in knowledge, it is no wonder that most men should use it 
 themselves, whilst they complain of it in others. Though, I think, no 
 small part of the confusion to be found in the notions of men might by 
 care and ingenuity be avoided, yet I am far from concluding it every where 
 wilful. Some ideas are so complex, and made up of so many parts, that 
 the memory does not easily retain the very same precise combination of 
 simple ideas under one name ; much less are we able constantly to divine 
 for what precise complex idea such a name stands in another man’s use of 
 it. From the first of these, follows confusion in a man’s own reasonings 
 and opinions within himself; from the latter, frequent confusion in dis- 
 coursing and arguing with others. But having more at large treated of 
 words, their defects and abuses, in the following book, I shall here say nc 
 more of it. 
 
 Sect. 13. Complex ideas may be distinct in one part, and confused in 
 another. — Our complex ideas being made up of collections, and so variety 
 *)f simple ones, may accordingly be very clear and distinct in one part, 
 arid' very obscure and confused in another. In a man who speaks of a chi- 
 liaedron, or a body of a thousand sides, the ideas of the figure may be very 
 confused, though that of the number be very distinct ; so that he being able 
 to discourse and demonstrate concerning that part of his complex idea 
 which depends upon the number of a thousand, he is apt to think 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 by that, from one that has but 999 sides ; 
 the not observing whereof causes no small error in men’s thoughts, and 
 confusion in their discourses. 
 
 Sect. 14. This, if not heeded, causes confusion in our arguings. — 
 He that thinks he has a distinct idea of the figure of a chiliaedron, let him 
 for trial sak"e~take-arrother parcel of the same uniform matter, viz. gold or 
 wax,. of an equal bulk, and make it into a figure of 999 sides: he will, I 
 doubt not, be able to distinguish these two ideas one from another by the 
 number of sides, and reason and argue distinctly about them, whilst he 
 
246 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 keeps his thoughts and reasoning to that part only of these ideas which is 
 contained in their numbers ; as that the sides of the one could be divided 
 into two equal numbers, and of the others not, &c. But when he goes 
 about to distinguish them by their figure, he will there be presently at a loss, 
 and not be able, I think, to frame in his mind two ideas, one of them 
 distinct from the other, by the bare figure of these two pieces of gold, as 
 he could, if the same parcels of gold were made one into a cube, the other 
 a figure of five sides. In which incomplete ideas we are very apt to 
 impose on ourselves, and wrangle with others, especially where they have 
 particular and familiar names. For being satisfied in that part of the idea, 
 which wfe have clear, — and the name which is familiar to us being applied 
 to the whole, containing that part also which is imperfect and obscure, — 
 we are apt to use it for that confused part, and draw deductions from it, 
 in the obscure part of its signification, as confidently as we do from the 
 other. 
 
 Sect. 15. Instance in eternity . — Having frequently in our mouths the 
 name eternity, we are apt to think we have a positive comprehensive 
 idea of it, which is as much as to say that there is no part of that duration 
 which is not clearly contained in our idea. It is true, that he who thinks 
 so may have a clear idea of duration ; he may also have a very clear idea 
 of a very great length of duration ; he may also have a clear idea of the 
 comparison of that great one with still a greater : but it not being possible 
 for him to include in his idea of any duration, let it be as great as it will, 
 the whole extent together of a duration, where he supposes no end, that 
 part of his idea, which is still beyond the bounds of that large duration he 
 represents to his own thoughts, is very obscure and undetermined. And 
 hence it is, that in disputes and reasonings concerning eternity, or any 
 other infinity, we are apt to blunder, and involve ourselves in manifest 
 absurdities. 
 
 Sect. 16. Divisibility of matter . — In matter we have no clear ideas of 
 the smallness of parts much beyond the smallest that occur to any of our 
 senses ; and therefore when we talk of the divisibility of matter in infinitum, 
 though we have clear ideas of division and divisibility, and have also 
 clear ideas of parts made out of a whole by division, yet we have but very 
 obscure and confused ideas of corpuscles, or minute bodies so to be divided, 
 when by former divisions they are reduced to a smallness much exceeding 
 the perception of any of our senses; and so all that we have clear and distinct 
 ideas of, is of what division in general or abstractedly is, and the relation 
 of totum and parts ; but 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 I ask any one, whether taking the smallest atom of dust he ever 
 saw, he has any distinct idea (bating still the number, which concerns not 
 extension) betwixt the 100,000th, and the 1,000,000th part of it. Or if he 
 thinks he can refine his ideas to that degree, without losing sight of them, 
 let him add ten cyphers to each of those numbers. Such a degree of small- 
 ness is not unreasonable to be supposed, since a division carried on so far 
 brings it no nearer the end of infinite division than the first division into 
 two halves does. I must confess, for my part, I have no clear distinct ideas 
 of the different bulk or extension of those bodies, having but a very obscure 
 one of either of them. So that, I think, when we talk of the division of 
 bodies in infinitum, our idea of their distinct bulks, which is the subject 
 and foundation of division, comes, after a little progression, to be con- 
 founded and almost lost in obscurity. For that idea which is to represent 
 only bigness, must be very obscure and confused, which we cannot distin- 
 guish from one ten times as big, but only by number; so that we have clear, dis- 
 tinct ideas, we may say, of ten and one, but no distinct ideas of two such ex- 
 tensions. It is plain from hence, that when we talk of infinite divisibility of 
 hodv or extension our distinct and clear ideas are only of' numbers ; 
 
Ch. 29. 
 
 OF CLEAR AND OBSCURE IDEAS. 
 
 247 
 
 but the clear distinct ideas of extension, after some progress of division, 
 are quite lost: and of such minute parts we have no distinct ideas at all; 
 but it returns, as all our ideas of infinite do, at last to that of number 
 always to be added, but thereby never amounts to any distinct idea of ac- 
 tual infinite parts. We have, it is true, a clear idea of division, as often 
 as we think of it ; but thereby we have no more a clear idea of infinite parts 
 in matter, than we have a clear idea of an infinite number, by being able 
 still to add new numbers to any assigned numbers we have ; •endless divisi- 
 bility giving us no more a clear and distinct idea of actually infinite parts, 
 than endless addibility (if I may so speak) gives us a clear and distinct 
 idea of an actually infinite number, they both being only in a power still of 
 increasing the number, be it already as great as it will. So that of what 
 remains to be added (wherein consists the infinity,) we have but an obscure, 
 imperfect, and confused idea ; from or about which we can argue or reason 
 with no certainty or clearness, no more than we can in arithmetic about 
 a number of which we have no such distinct idea, as we have of four or 
 one hundred ; but only this relative obscure one, that compared to any 
 other, it is still bigger ; and we have no more a clear positive idea of it 
 when we say or conceive it is bigger, or more than 400,000,000, than if we 
 should say it is bigger than forty or four; 400,000,000 having no nearer a 
 proportion to the end of addition or number than four. For he that adds 
 only four to four, and so proceeds, shall as soon come to the end of all 
 addition, as he that adds 400,000,000 to 400,000,000. And so likewise in 
 eternity, he that has an idea of but four years has as much a positive com- 
 plete idea of eternity as he that has one of 400,000,000 of years : for what 
 remains of eternity beyond either of these two numbers of years is as clear 
 to the one as the other, i. e. neither of them has any clear positive idea of 
 it at all. For he that adds only four years to four, and so on, shall as soon 
 reach eternity as he that adds 400,000,000 of years, and so on ; or, if he 
 please, doubles the increase as often as he will ; the remaining abyss being 
 still as far beyond the end of all these progressions as it is from the length 
 of a day or an hour. For nothing finite bears any proportion to infinite ; 
 and therefore our ideas, which are all finite, cannot bear any. Thus it is 
 also in our ideas of extension, when we increase it by addition, as well as 
 when we diminish it by division, and would enlarge our thoughts to infinite 
 space. After a few doublings of those ideas of extension, which are the 
 largest we are accustomed to have, we lose the clear distinct idea of that 
 space ; it becomes a confusedly great one, with a surplus of still greater ; 
 about which, when we would argue or reason, we shall always find our- 
 selves at a loss ; confused ideas in our arguings and deductions from that 
 part of them which is confused always leading us into confusion. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 OF REAL AND FANTASTICAL IDEAS. 
 
 Sect. 1. Real ideas are conformable to their archetypes . — Besides 
 what we have already mentioned concerning ideas, other considerations 
 belong to them, in reference to things from whence they are taken, or 
 which they may be supposed to represent : and thus, I think, they may 
 come under a threefold distinction ; and are, 
 
 First, either real or fantastical. 
 
 Secondly, adequate or inadequate. 
 
 Thirdly, true or false, 
 
 First, by real ideas, I mean such as have a foundation in nature ; such as 
 
243 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 have a conformity with the real being and existence of tilings, or with their 
 archetypes. Fantastical or chimerical I call such as have no foundation 
 in nature, nor have any conformity to that reality of being to which they 
 are tacitly referred as to their archetypes. If we examine the several sorts 
 of ideas before mentioned, we shall hnd, that, 
 
 Sect. 2. Simple ideas all real. — First, our simple ideas are all real, all 
 agree to the reality of things, not ' that they are all of them the images or 
 representations of what does exist ; the contrary whereof, in all but the 
 primary qualities of bodies, hath been already shown. But though white- 
 ness and coldness are no more in snow than pain is, yet those ideas of 
 whiteness and coldness, pain, &c. being in us the effects of powers in 
 things without us, ordained by our Maker, to produce in us such sensations, 
 they are real ideas in us, whereby we distinguish the qualities that are really in 
 things themselves. For these several appearances being designed to be 
 the marks whereby we are to know and distinguish things which we have 
 to do with, our ideas do as well serve us to that purpose, and are as real 
 distinguishing characters, whether they be only constant effects, or else 
 exact resemblances of something in the things themselves ; the reality lying 
 in that steady correspondence they have with the distinct constitutions of 
 real beings. But whether they answer to those constitutions, as to causes 
 or patterns, it matters not ; it suffices that they are constantly produced by 
 them. And thus our simple ideas are all real and true, because they an- 
 swer 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 (as has been shown) the mind is wholly 
 confined to the operation of things upon it, and can make to itself no simple 
 idea more than what it has received. 
 
 Sect. 3. Complex ideas are voluntary combinations. — Though the 
 mind be wholly passive in respect of its simple ideas, yet I think we may 
 say, it is not so in respect of its complex ideas : for those being combina- 
 tions of simple ideas put together, and united under one general name, it is 
 plain that the mind of man uses some kind of liberty in forming those com- 
 plex ideas; how else comes it to pass that one man’s idea of gold, or justice, 
 is different from another’s 1 but because he has put in, or left out of his, 
 some simple idea which the other has not. The question then is, which of 
 these are real, and which barely imaginary combinations] What collec- 
 tions agree to the reality cf things, and what not; and to this I say, that, 
 
 Sect. 4. Mixed modes, made of consistent ideas, are real. — Secondly, 
 mixed modes and relations having no other reality but what they have in 
 the minds of men, there is nothing more required to this kind of ideas to 
 make them real, but that they be so framed, that there be a possibility of 
 existing conformable to them. These ideas themselves being archetypes, 
 cannot differ from their archetypes, and so cannot be chimerical, unless 
 any one will jumble together in them inconsistent ideas. Indeed, as any 
 of them have the names of a known language assigned to them, by which 
 he that has them in his mind would signify them to others, so bare possi- 
 bility of existing is not enough ; they must have a conformity to the ordi- 
 nary signification of the name that is given them, that they may not be 
 thought fantastical ; as if a man would give the name of justice to that idea 
 which common use calls liberality. But this fantasticalness relates more 
 to propriety of speech than reality of ideas ; for a man to be undisturbed 
 in danger, sedately to consider what is fittest to be done, and to execute 
 it steadily, is a mixed mode, or a complex idea of an action which may 
 exist. But to be undisturbed in danger, without using one’s reason or in- 
 dustry, is what is also possible to be, and so is as real an idea as the other. 
 Though the first of these, having the name courage given to it, may, in 
 respect of that name, be a right or wrong idea : but the other, whilst it has 
 not a common received name of any known language assigned to it, is 
 
Oh. 30. OF E EAL AND FANTASTICAL IDEAS. 249 
 
 not capable of any deformity, being made with no reference to any tiling 
 but itself. 
 
 Sect. 5. Ideas of substances are real, when they agree with the exist- 
 ence of things. — Thirdly, our complex ideas of substances being made all 
 of them in reference to things existing without us, and intended to be re- 
 presentations of substances, as they really are, are no farther real than as 
 they are such combinations of simple ideas as are really united, and co- 
 exist in things without us. On the contrary, those are fantastical, which 
 are made up of such collections of simple ideas as were really never united, 
 never were found together in any substance ; v.g. a rational creature, con- 
 sisting of a horse’s head, joined to a body of human shape, or such as the 
 centaurs are described : or, a body yellow, very malleable, fusible, and 
 fixed, but lighter than common water : or a uniform, unorganized body, 
 consisting, as to sense, all of similar parts, with perception and voluntary 
 motion joined to it. Whether such substances as these can possibly exist 
 or no, it is probable we do not know : but be that as it will, these ideas of 
 substances being made conformable to no pattern existing that we know, 
 and consisting of such collections of ideas as no substance ever showed us 
 united together, they ought to pass with us for barely imaginary: but much 
 more are those complex ideas so, which contain in them any inconsistency 
 or contradiction of their parts. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 OF ADEQUATE AND INADEQUATE IDEAS. 
 
 Sect. 1. Adequate ideas are such as perfectly represent their arche- 
 types. — Of our real ideas, some are adequate and some are inadequate. 
 Those I call .adequate, which perfectly represent those archetypes which 
 the mind supposSrthem taken from ; which it intends them to stand for, 
 and to which it refers them. Inadequate ideas are such which are but a 
 partial' or incomplete representation of those archetypes to which they are 
 referred:-- Upon which account it is -plain, 
 
 Sect. 2. Simple ideas all adequate.— First, that all our simple ideas are 
 adequate: because, being nothing but the effects of certain powers in 
 things, fitted and ordained by God to produce such sensations in us, they' 
 cannot but be correspondent and adequate to those powers; and we are. 
 sure they agree to the reality of things. For if sugar produce in us the 
 ideas which we call whiteness and sweetness, we are sure there is a power 
 in sugar to produce those ideas in our minds, or else they could not have 
 been produced by it. And so each sensation answering the power that 
 operates on any of our senses, the idea so produced is a real idea (and not 
 a fiction of the mind, which has no power to produce any simple idea), and 
 cannot but be adequate, since it ought only to answer that power ; and so 
 all simple ideas are adequate. It is true, the things producing in us these 
 simple ideas, are but few of them denominated by us as if they were only 
 the causes of them, but as if those ideas were real beings in them. For 
 though fire be called painful to the touch, whereby is signified the power 
 of producing in us the idea of pain, yet it is denominated also light and 
 heat ; as if light and heat were really something in the fire more than a 
 power to excite these ideas in us, and therefore are called qualities in, or 
 of the fire. But these being nothing, in truth, but powers to excite such 
 ideas in us, I must in that sense be understood when I speak of secondary 
 qualities, as being in things ; or of their ideas, as being the objects that 
 excite them in us. Such ways of speaking, though accommodated to the 
 vulgar notions, without which one cannot be well understood, yet truly 
 2 G 
 
250 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 signify nothing but those powers which are in things to excite certain 
 sensations or ideas in us : since were there no fit organs to receive the 
 impressions fire makes on the sight and touch, nor a mind joined to those 
 organs to receive the ideas of fig-lit and heat by those impressions from the 
 fire or sun, there would yet be no more light or heat in the world than 
 there would be pain, if there were no sensible creature to feel it, though 
 the sun should continue just as it is now, and mount Etna flame higher 
 than ever it did. Solidity and extension, and the termination of it, figure, 
 with motion and rest, whereof we have the ideas, would be really in the 
 world as they are, whether there were any sensible being to perceive them 
 or no ; and therefore we have reason to look on those as the real modifi- 
 cations of matter, and such are the exciting causes of all our various sen- 
 sations from bodies. But this being an inquiry not belonging to this place, 
 I shall enter no farther into it, but proceed to show what complex ideas 
 are adequate, and what not. 
 
 Sect. 3. Modes are all adequate. — Secondly, our complex ideas of 
 modes being voluntary collections of simple ideas, which the mind puts to- 
 gether without reference to any real archetypes or standing patterns exist- 
 ing any where, are and cannot but be adequate ideas. ' Because they not 
 being intended for copies of things really existing, but for archetypes made 
 by the mind to rank and denominate things by, cannot want any thing; 
 they having each of them that combination of ideas, and thereby that per- 
 fection which the mind intended they should, so that the mind acquiesces 
 in them, and can find nothing wanting. Thus, by having the idea of a 
 figure, with three sides meeting at three angles, I have a complete idea, 
 wherein I require nothing else to make it perfect. That the mind is satis- 
 fied with the perfection of this its idea, is plain in that it does not con- 
 ceive that any understanding hath, or can have, a more complete or per- 
 fect idea of that thing it signifies by the word triangle, supposing it to 
 exist, than itself has in that complex idea of three sides and three angles , 
 in which is contained all that is or can be essential to it, or necessary to 
 complete it, wherever or however it exists. But in our ideas of substances 
 it is otherwise. For there desiring to copy things as they really do exist, 
 and to represent to ourselves that constitution on which all their properties 
 depend, we perceive our ideas attain not that perfection we intend ; we 
 find they still want something we should be glad were in them, and so are 
 all inadequate. But mixed modes and relations, being archetypes without 
 •patterns, and so having nothing to represent but themselves, cannot but 
 ■be adequate, every thing being so to itself. He that at first put together 
 ^the idea of danger, perceived absence of disorder from fear, sedate con- 
 sideration of what was justly to be done, and executing that without dis- 
 turbance, or being deterred by the danger of it, had certainly in his mind 
 that complex idea made up of that combination ; and intending it to be no- 
 thing else but what it is, nor to have in it any other simple ideas but what it 
 hath, it could not also but be an adequate idea: and laying this up in his 
 memory, with the name courage annexed to it, to signify to others, and 
 denominate from thence any action he should observe to agree with it, had 
 thereby a standard to measure and denominate actions by, as they agreed 
 to it. This idea thus made, and laid up for a pattern, must necessarily be 
 adequate, being referred to nothing else but itself, nor made by any other ori- 
 ginal, but the good liking and will of him that first made this combination. 
 
 Sect. 4. Modes, in reference to settled names, may be inadequate . — 
 Indeed another coming after, and in conversation learning from him the 
 word courage, may make an idea to which he gives the name courage, dif- 
 ferent from what the first author applied it to, and has in his mind when 
 he uses it. And in this case, if he designs that his idea in thinking should 
 be conformable to the other’s idea, as the name he uses in speaking is con- 
 formable in sound to his, from whom he learned it, his idea may be very 
 
Ch. 31. OF ADEQUATE AND INADEQUATE IDEAS. 
 
 251 
 
 wrong and inadequate : because, in this case, making the other man’s idea 
 the pattern of his idea in thinking, as the other man’s word or sound is the 
 pattern of his in speaking, his idea is so far defective and inadequate, as 
 it is distant from the archetype and pattern he refers it to, and intends to 
 express and signify by the name he uses for it ; which name he would have 
 to be a sign of the other man’s idea (to which, in its proper use, it is pri- 
 marily annexed) and of his own, as agreeing to it: to which, if his own 
 does not exactly correspond, it is faulty and inadequate. 
 
 Sect. 5. Therefore these complex ideas of modes, when they are re- 
 ferred by the mind, and intended to correspond to the ideas in the mind of 
 some other intelligent being, expressed by the names we apply to them, 
 they may be very deficient, wrong, and inadequate ; because they agree 
 not to that which the mind designs to be their archetype and pattern ; in 
 which respect only, any idea of modes can be wrong, imperfect, or inade- 
 quate. And on this account our ideas of mixed modes are the most liable 
 to be faulty of any other; but this refers more to proper speaking than 
 knowing right. 
 
 Sect. 6. Ideas of substances, as referred to real essences, not ade- 
 quate. — Thi rdly, what ideas we have of substances, I have above shown. 
 Now, those ideas have in the mind a double reference : 1. Sometimes they 
 are referred to a supposed real essence of each species of things. 2. Some- 
 times they are only designed to be pictures and representations in the 
 mind, of things that do exist by ideas of those qualities that are discover- 
 able in them. In both which ways these copies of those originals and 
 archetypes are imperfect and inadequate. 
 
 First, it is usual for men to make the names of substances stand for 
 things, as supposed to have certain real essences, whereby they are of this 
 or that species : and names standing for nothing but the ideas that are in 
 men’s minds, they must consequently refer their ideas to such real essen- 
 ces as to their archetypes. That men (especially such as have been bred 
 up in the learning taught in this part of the world) do suppose certain specih"; 
 essences of substances, which each individual, in its several kinds, is made 
 conformable to, and partakes of, is so far from needing proof, that it will 
 be thought strange if any one should do otherwise. And thus they ordi- 
 narily apply the specific names they rank particular substances under to 
 things as distinguished by such specific real essences. Who is there almost, 
 who would not take it amiss, if it should be doubted, whether he called 
 himself a man, with any other meaning, than as having the real essence 
 of a man 1 And yet if you demand what those real essences are, it is plain^ 
 men are ignorant, and know them not. From whence it follows, that the# 
 ideas they have in their minds, being referred to real essences, as to arche- 
 types which are unknown, must be so far from being adequate, that they 
 cannot he supposed to be any representation of them at all. The com- 
 plex ideas we have of substances are, as it has been shown, certain collec- 
 tions of simple ideas that have been observed or supposed constantly to 
 exist together. But such a complex idea cannot be the real essence of any 
 substance ; for then the properties we discover in that body would depend 
 on that complex idea, and be deducible from it, and their necessary con- 
 nexion with it be known: as all properties of a triangle depend on, and as 
 far as they are discoverable, are deducible from, the complex idea of three 
 lines, including a space. But it is plain, that in our complex ideas of sub- 
 stances, are not contained such ideas, on which all the other qualities 
 that are to be found in them do depend. The common idea men have 
 of iron, is a body of a certain colour, weight and hardness ; and a property 
 that they look on as belonging to it, is malleableness. But yet this pro- 
 perty has no necessary connexion with that complex idea, or any part of 
 it; and there is no more reason to think that malleableness depends on that 
 colour, weight and hardness, than that that colour, or that weight depends 
 
252 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 on its malleableness. And yet, though vve know nothing of these rea» 
 essences, there is nothing more ordinary, than that men should attribute 
 the sorts of things to such essences. The particular parcel of matter, 
 which makes the ring I have on my finger, is forwardly, by most men, sup- 
 posed to have a real essence, whereby it is gold, and from whence those 
 qualities flow which I find in it, viz. its peculiar colour, weight, hardness, 
 fhsibility, fixedness, and change of colour upon a slight touch of mercury, 
 &c. This essence, from which all these properties flow, when I inquire 
 into it, and search after it, I plainly perceive I cannot discover ; the far- 
 thest I can go, is only to presume, that it being nothing but body, its real 
 essence, or internal constitution, on which these qualities depend, can be 
 nothing but the figure, size, and connexion of its solid parts ; of neither of 
 which having any distinct perception at all, can I have any idea of its es- 
 sence, which is the cause that it has that particular shining yellowness, a 
 greater weight than any thing I know of the same bulk, and a fitness to 
 have its colour changed by the touch of quicksilver. If any one will say, 
 that the real essence and internal constitution, on which these properties 
 depend, is not the figure, size and arrangement or connexion of its solid 
 parts, but something else, called its particular form, I am farther from hav- 
 ing any idea of its real essence than I was before : for I have an idea of 
 figure, size, and situation of solid parts in general, though I have none of 
 the particular figure, size, or putting together of parts, whereby the quali- 
 ties above mentioned are produced ; which qualities I find in that parti- 
 cular parcel of matter that is on my finger, and not in another parcel of 
 matter, with which I cut the pen I write with. But when I am told that some- 
 thing besides the figure, size and posture of the solid parts of that body is 
 its essence, something called substantial form : of that I confess I have no 
 idea at all, but only of the sound form, which is far enough from an idea 
 of its real essence or constitution. The like ignorance as I have of the 
 real essence of this particular substance, I have also of the real essence 
 of all other natural ones ; of which essences, I confess, I have no distinct 
 ideas at all : and I am apt to suppose others, when they examine their 
 own knowledge, will find in themselves, in this one point, the same sort 
 of ignorance. 
 
 Sect. 7. Now, then, when men apply to this particular parcel of mat- 
 ter on my finger, a general name already in use, and denominate it gold, 
 do they not ordinarily, or are they not understood to give it that name as 
 belonging to a particular species of bodies, having a real internal essence ; 
 by having of which essence, this particular substance comes to be of that 
 species, and to be called by that name! If it be so, as it is plain it is, 
 the name, by which things are marked, as having that essence, must be 
 referred primarily to that essence; and consequently the idea to which 
 that name is given must be referred also to the essence, and be intended 
 to represent it. Which essence, since they, who so use the names, know 
 not their ideas of substances, must be all inadequate in that respect, as not 
 containing in them that real essence which the mind intends they should. 
 
 Sect. 8 . Ideas of substances, as collections of their qualities ^-are all 
 inadequate. — Secondly, those who, neglecting that useless supposition of 
 unknown real essences, whereby they are distinguished, endeavour to copy 
 the substances that exist in the world, by putting together the ideas of 
 those sensible qualities that are found co-existing in them, though they 
 come much nearer a likeness of them than those who imagine they know 
 not what real specific essences ; yet they arrive not at perfectly adequate 
 ideas of those substances they would thus copy into their minds ; nor do 
 those copies exactly and fully contain all that is to be found in their arche- 
 types. Because those qualities and powers of substances, whereof we 
 make their complex ideas, are so many and various, that no man’s com- 
 plex idea contains them all. That our abstract ideas of substances do not 
 
Ch. 31. OF ADEQUATE AND INADEQUATE IDEAS. 
 
 ‘253 
 
 - .contain in them all the simple ideas that are united in the things them- 
 selves,, it is evident, in that men do rarely put into their complex idea of 
 any substance all the simple ideas they do know to exist in it. Because 
 endeavouring to make the signification of their specific names as clear and 
 as little cumbersome as they can, they make their specific ideas of the 
 sorts of substances, for the most part, of a few of those simple ideas which 
 are to-be-fbTtncT m them : but these having no original precedency, or right 
 to be put in, and make the specific idea more than others that are left out, 
 it is plain that both these ways our ideas of substances are deficient and 
 inadequate. These simple ideas, whereof we make our complex ones of 
 substances, are all of them (bating only the figure and bulk of some sorts) 
 powers, which being relations to other substances, we can never be sure 
 that we know all the powers that are in any one body, till we have tried 
 what changes it is fitted to give to, or receive from other substances, in 
 their several ways of application : which being impossible to be tried upon 
 any one body, much less upon all, it is impossible we should have adequate 
 ideas of any substance made up of a collection of all its properties. 
 
 Sect. 9. Whosoever first lit on a parcel of that sort of substance, we de- 
 note by the word gold, could not rationally take the bulk and figure he 
 observed in that lump to depend on its real essence or internal constitu- 
 tion. Therefore those never went into his idea of that species of body; 
 but its peculiar colour, perhaps, and weight, were the first he abstracted 
 from it to make the complex idea of that species. Which both are but 
 powers ; the one to affect our eyes after such a manner, and to produce in 
 us that idea we call yellow; and the other to force upwards any other body 
 of equal bulk, they being put into a pair of equal scales, one against another. 
 Another perhaps added to these the ideas of fusibility and fixedness, two 
 other passive powers, in relation to the operation of fire upon it; another, 
 its ductility and solubility in aq. regia, two other powers relating to the 
 operation of other bodies, in changing its outward figure or separation of 
 it into insensible parts. These, or parts of these, put together, usually 
 make the complex idea in men’s minds, of that sort of body we call gold. 
 
 Sect. JXL But no one, who hath considered the properties of bodies in 
 general, or this sort in particular, can doubt that this called gold has infinite 
 other properties not contained in that complex idea. 
 
 Some who have examined this species more accurately, could, I believe, 
 enumerate ten times as many properties in gold, all of them as inseparable 
 from its internal constitution as its colour or weight : and it is probable, 
 if any one knew all the properties that are by divers men known of this 
 metal, there would an hundred times as many ideas go to the complex 
 idea of gold as any one man yet has in his ; and yet perhaps that not be 
 the thousandth part of what is to be discovered in it. The changes which 
 that one body is apt ''to receive, and make in other bodies upon a due appli- 
 cation, exceeding far not only what we know, but what we are apt to 
 imagine. Which will not appear so much a paradox to any one, who will 
 but consider how far men are yet from knowing all the properties of that 
 one, no very compound figure, a triangle; though it bo no small number 
 that are already by mathematicians discovered of it, 
 
 — Sect. 11. Ideas of substances, as collections of their qualities r are all 
 inadequate. — So that all our complex ideas oFsubstances are imperfect 
 an d in adequate. “Which would be so also in mathematical figures, if we 
 were to have our complex ideas of them only by collecting their properties 
 in reference to other figures. How uncertain and imperfect would our 
 ideas be of an ellipsis, if we had no other idea of it but some few of its 
 properties 1 Whereas having in our plain idea the whole essence of that 
 figure, we from thence discover those properties, and demonstratively see 
 how they flow, and are inseoarable from it. 
 
254 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 Sect. 12. Simple ideas 'Uluvr*., and adequate. — Thus the mind has 
 three sorts of abstract ideas, or nominal essences: 
 
 First, simple ideas, which are or copies, but yet certainly ade- 
 
 quate. Because being intended to express nothing but the power in things 
 to produce in the mind such a sensation, that sensation, when it is pro- 
 duced, cannot but be the effect of that power. So the paper I write on, 
 naving the power, in the light (I speak according to the common notion 
 J of light) to produce in me the sensation which I call white, it cannot but 
 be the effect of such a power, in something without the mind; since the, 
 mind has not the power to produce any such idea itself, and being meant 
 for nothing else but the effect of such a power, that simple idea is real and 
 adequate : the sensation of white, in my mind, being the effect of tha' 
 power which is in the paper to produce it, is perfectly adequate to that 
 power, or else that power would produce a different idea. 
 
 Sect. 13. Ideas of substances are 'Ulvyra., inadequate. — Secondly, the 
 complex ideas of substances are ectypes, copies too ; but not perfect ones, 
 not adequate; which is very evident to the mind, in that it plainly per- 
 ceives that whatever collection of simple ideas it makes of any substance 
 that exists, it cannot be sure that it exactly answers all that are in that 
 substance ; since not having tried all the operations of all other substances 
 upon it, and found all the alterations it would receive from, or cause in 
 other substances, it cannot have an exact adequate collection of all its 
 active and passive capacities ; and so not have an adequate complex idea 
 of the powers of any substance existing, and its relations, which is that 
 sort of complex idea of substances we have. And, after all, if we could 
 have, and actually had in our complex idea, an exact collection of all the 
 secondary qualities or powers of any substance, we should not yet thereby 
 have an idea of the essence of that thing. For since the powers or quali- 
 ties that are observable by us, are not the real essence of that substance, 
 but depend on it, and flow from it, any collection whatsoever of these 
 qualities, cannot be the real essence of that thing. Whereby it is plain, 
 that our ideas of substances are not adequate, are not what the mind in- 
 tends them to be. Besides, a man has no idea of substance in general 
 nor knows what substance is in itself. 
 
 Sect. 14. Ideas of modes and relations are archetypes, and cannot 
 but be adequate. — Thirdly, complex ideas of modes and relations are ori- 
 ginals and archetypes ; are not copies, nor made after the pattern of any 
 real existence, to which the mind intends them to be conformable, and ex- 
 actly to answer. These being such collections of simple ideas that the 
 mind itself puts together, and such collections, that each of them contains 
 in it precisely all that the mind intends it should, they are archetypes and 
 essences of modes that may exist, and so are designed only for, and belong 
 only to such modes, as when they do exist, have an exact conformity with 
 those complex ideas. The ideas therefore of modes and relations cannot 
 but be adequate. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 OF TRUE AND FALSE IDEAS. 
 
 Sect. 1. Truth and falsehood properly belong to propositions. — Though 
 truth and falsehood belong. Tn propriety— ©£ -speech, only to propo- 
 sitions, yet ideas are oftentimes termed true or false (as what words are 
 there that are not used with great latitude, and with some deviation from 
 their strict and proper significations ?) Though, I think, that when 
 
Ch. 32. 
 
 OF TRUE AND FALSE IDEAS. 
 
 255 
 
 ideas themselves are termed true or false, there is still some secret or tacit 
 proposition, which is the foundatio_n_ofJ:h£L denomination : as we shall see, 
 if- "We examine the” particular occasions wherein they come to be called 
 true or false. In all which we shall find some kind of affirmation or ne- 
 gation, which is the reason of that denomination^._For. our ideas being 
 nothing but bare appearances or perceptions in our minds, cannot properly 
 and simply in themselves be said to be true or false, no more than a single 
 name of any thing can be said to be. true oriulse. 
 
 Sect. 2. Metaphysical truth contains a tacit proposition. — Indeed both 
 ideas imd-wnrds_may-he'sa.id to be true in a metaphysical sense of the 
 word truth, as all other things, that any way exist, are said to be true, i. e. 
 really to be such as they exist. Though in things called true, even in that 
 sense, there is perhaps a secret reference to our ideas looked upon as the 
 standards of that truth, which amounts to a mental proposition, though it 
 be usually not taken notice of. 
 
 Sect. 3. No idea, as an appearance in the mind, true or false. — But 
 it is not mThat metaphysical sense of truth which we inquire here, when 
 we examine whether our ideas are capable of being true or false, but in 
 the more ordinary acceptation of those words : and so I say, that the ideas 
 in our minds being only so many perceptions, or appearances there, none 
 of them are false ; the idea of a centaur having no more falsehood in it, 
 when it appears in our minds, than the name centaur has falsehood in it 
 when it is pronounced by our mouths or written on paper. For truth or 
 falsehood lying alwaysAa-sojire^i^mationi^r. negation, mental or verbal, 
 EarideasTare not cap.able, any ofth^7 °ilke.ing-faJse, till the mind-passes- 
 some judgment on them; that Is, affirms, or denies somet hing of them,,.. 
 
 Sect. 4. Ideas referred to any thing, may be true or fuXsef— Whenever 
 the mind refer ^hy of its i deas to any thing extraneous, to-themv'thhy are 
 then_cajJ3bte'to be -called true - or false. Because the mind in such a re- 
 ference makes a tacit supposition of their conformity to that thing ; which 
 supposition, as it happens to be true or false, so the ideas themselves come 
 to be denominated. The most usual cases, wherein this happens, are 
 ,hese following : 
 
 -Sect, o* Other men's ideas real existences, and sup p osed real essen- 
 ' es. are whcUlher Tusuallu refer ~Tftef r~ i.deas tn — First, when the mind 
 supposes a nyTdea" IFHasTtJ n fo r m able” t o that in other men’s minds, called 
 oy the same common name ; v. g. when the mind intends or judges its 
 ideas of justice, temperance, religion, to be the same with what other 
 men give those names to. 
 
 Secondly, when the mind supposes any idea it has in itself to be con- 
 formabfe'tcrsOfhe reaTe^stm^r^TTusRfieTwoTdSasTrf^TTTarr^d^ cen- 
 taur, s uppQ sa4-tTdffr~fTie ideas of real substances, are the one true, and 
 the other false ; the one having a conformity to what has really existed, 
 the other not. 
 
 Thirdly, wh en the .mimbmfcrs- any of its i deas to the reaL constitu tion 
 and esseiine-of mnyThing* wliereon all its properties depend: and thus the 
 greatest part, if not all our ideas of substances, ar e false. 
 
 "'Sect. 6. Tke eause of such references. — These suppositions the mind 
 is very apt faeffly lu ina-ke-coircem-ingHtts- -own ideas. But yet, if we will 
 examine it, we shall find it is chiefly, if not only, concerning its abstract com- 
 plex ideas. For the natural tendency of the mind being towards knowledge ; 
 and finding that, if it should proceed by and dwell upon any particular 
 things, its progress would be very slow, and its work endless : therefore to 
 shorten its way to knowledge, and make each perception more compre- 
 hensive j the first thing it does, as the foundation of the easier enlarging 
 ’Tfs knowledge, either by contemplation of the things themselves that it 
 woul d know ; or conference with others about them, is to bind them into 
 bundles, and rank them so into sorts, that what knowledge it gets of aDv 
 
256 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 of them, it may thereby with assurance extend to all of that sort; and so 
 advance by larger steps in that, which is its great business, knowledge. 
 This, as I have elsewhere shown, is the reason why we collect things 
 under comprehensive ideas, with names annexed to them, into genera and 
 species, i. e. into kinds and sorts. 
 
 Sect. 7. If therefore we will warily attend to the motions of the mind, 
 and observe what course it usually takes in its way to knowledge, we shall, 
 I think, find that the mind having got any idea, which it thinks it may 
 have use of, either in contemplation or discourse, the first thing it does is 
 to abstract it, and then get a name to it ; and so lay it up in its storehouse, 
 the memory, as containing the essence of a sort of things, of which that 
 name is always to be the mark. Hence it is that we may often observe, 
 that when any one sees a new thing of a kind that he knows not, he pre- 
 sently asks what it is, meaning by that inquiry nothing but the name. As 
 if the name carried with it the knowledge of the species, or the essence 
 of it : whereof it is indeed used as the mark, and is generally supposed 
 annexed to it. 
 
 Sect. 8, The c aus e of such references, — But this abstract idea being 
 something in the mind between the thing that exists and the name that 
 is given to it; it is in our ideas, that both the rightness of our knowledge, 
 and the propriety or intelligibleness of our speaking, consists. And hence 
 it is, that men are so forward to suppose, that the abstract ideas they 
 have in their minds, are such as agree to the things existing without them, 
 to which they are referred ; and are the same also, to which the names 
 they give them do, by the use and propriety of that language, belong. 
 For without this double conformity of their ideas, they find they should both 
 think amiss of things in themselves, and talk of them unintelligibly to others. 
 
 Sect. 9. Simple ideas may be false, in reference to others of the same 
 name, but are least liable to be so.— First, then, I say, that when-the truth 
 of our ideas is judged of by the conformity they have to the ideas which 
 other men have, and commonly signify by the same name, they may be 
 any of them false. But yet simple ideas are least of all liable to be so 
 mistaken ; because a man by his senses, and every day’s observation, may 
 easily satisfy himself what the simple ideas are which their several names 
 that are in common use stand for, they being but few in number, and such 
 as if he doubts or mistakes in, he may easily rectify, by the objects they 
 are to be found in. Therefore it is seldom that any one mistakes in his 
 names of simple ideas, or applies the name red to the idea of green, or the 
 name sweet to the idea bitter ; much less are men apt to confound the 
 names of ideas belonging to different senses, and call a colour by the name 
 of a taste, &c. ; whereby it is evident that the simple ideas they call by 
 any name are commonly the same that others have and mean when they 
 use the same names. 
 
 Sect. HO. Ideas of mixed modes most liable to be false in this sense.— 
 Complex ideas are much more liable to be false in this respect; and the 
 complex ideas of mixed modes much more than those of substances : be- 
 cause in substances (especially those which the common and unborrowed 
 names of any language are applied to) some remarkable sensible qualities, 
 serving ordinarily to distinguish one sort from another, easily preserve 
 those, who take any care in the use of their words, from applying them 
 to sorts of substances to which they do not at all belong. But in mixed 
 modes we are much more uncertain; it being not so easy to determine of 
 several actions, whether they are to be called justice or cruelty, liberality 
 or prodigality. And so in referring our ideas to those of other men, called 
 by the same names, ours may be false ; and the idea in our minds, which 
 we express by the word justice, may perhaps be that which ought to have 
 another name. 
 
 Sect. 11. Or at least to be thought false. — But whether or no our 
 
Ch. 32. 
 
 OF TRUE AND FALSE IDEAS. 
 
 25? 
 
 ideas of mixed modes are more liable than any sort to be different from those 
 of other men, which are marked by the same names, this at least is certain, that 
 this sort of falsehood is much more familiarly attributed to our ideas of mixed 
 modes than to any other. When a man is thought to have a false idea of 
 justice, or gratitude, or glory, it is for no other reason but that his agrees not 
 with the ideas which each of those names are the signs of in otner men. 
 
 Sect. Th&rca-son whereof seems to me tobe-this : that the 
 
 abstract ideas of mixed. modes being men’s voluntary combinations of such a 
 precise collection of simple ideas, — and so the essence of each species being 
 made by men alone, whereof we have no other sensible standard existing any 
 where but the name itself, or the definition of that name, — we have nothing 
 else to refer these our ideas of mixed modes to, as a standard to which we 
 would conform them, but the ideas of those who are thought to use those 
 names in their most proper significations ; and so, as our ideas conform or dif- 
 fer from them, they pass for true or false. An4 thus much concerning the 
 truth and falsehood of our ideas, in reference to their 'names". 
 
 Sect. lil.-Asreferred to real existences, none of our ideas can be false r 
 but those of substances-. — ^Secondly, as to the truth and falsehood of our ideas, 
 in reference to the real existence of things; when that is made the standard 
 "oFTKeirTruth, none of them can be termed false, but only our complex ideas- 
 of substances. 
 
 Sect. 14. First, simple ideas in this sense not false, and whij. — First, our 
 simpleAdeas being barely such perceptions as God has fitted us to receive, 
 and given power to external objects to produce in us by established laws and 
 ways, suitable to his wisdom and goodness, though incomprehensible to us, 
 their truth consists in nothing else but in such appearances as are produced 
 in us, and must be suitable to those powers he has placed in external objects, 
 or else they could not be produced in us : and thus answering those powers, 
 they are what they should be, true ideas. Nor do they become liable to any 
 imputation of falsehood, if the mind (as in most men I believe it does) judges 
 these ideas to be in the things themselves. For God, in his wisdom, having set 
 them as marks of distinction in things, whereby we may be able to discern 
 one thing from another, and so choose any of them for our uses, as we have 
 occasion ; it alters not the nature of our simple idea, whether we think that 
 the idea of blue be in the violet itself, or m our mind only; and only the power 
 of producing it by the texture of its parts, reflecting the particles of light 
 after a certain manner, to be in the violet itself. For that texture in the ob- 
 ject, by a regular and constant operation, producing the same idea of blue in 
 us, it serves us to distinguish by our eyes, that from any other thing, whe- 
 ther that distinguishing mark, as it is really in the violet, be only a peculiar 
 texture of parts, or else that very colour, the idea whereof (which is in us) 
 is the exact resemblance. And it is equally from that appearance to be de- 
 nominated blue, whether it be that real colour, or only a peculiar texture in 
 it, that causes in us that idea: since the name blue notes properly nothing 
 but that mark of distinction that is in a violet, discernible only by our eyes, 
 whatever it consists in ; that being beyond our capacities distinctly to know, 
 and perhaps would be of less use to us if we had faculties to discern. 
 
 Sect. 15. Though^onerrtari's ilfea of blue should be diffcrent from an*, 
 others. — Neither would it carry any imputation of falsehood to our simple 
 ideas, if, by the different structure of our organs, it were so ordered, that the 
 same object should produce in several men’s minds different ideas at the same 
 time; v. g. if the idea that a violet produced in one man’s mind by his eyes, 
 were the same that a marigold produced in another man’s, and vice versa. 
 For since this could never be known, because one man’s mind could not pass 
 into another man’s body, to perceive what appearances were produced by 
 those organs ; neither the ideas hereby, nor the names, would be at all con- 
 founded, or any falsehood be in either. For all things that had the texture of 
 a violet, producing constantly the idea that he called blue ; and those which 
 had the texture of a marigold, producing constantly the idea which he as con- 
 2 H 
 
258 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 stantly called yellow ; whatever those appearances were in his mind, he 
 would be able as regularly to distinguish things for his use by those appear- 
 ances, and understand and signify those distinctions marked by the names 
 blue and yellow, as if the appearances, or ideas in his mind, received from 
 those two flowers, were exactly the same with the ideas in other men’s minds. 
 I am nevertheless very apt to think that the sensible ideas produced by any 
 object in different men’s minds are most bommonly very near and undiscern- 
 ibly alike. For which opinion, I think, there might be many reasons offered: 
 but that being besides my present business, I shall not trouble my reader with 
 them ; but only mind him, that the contrary supposition, if it could be proved, 
 is of little use, either for the improvement of our knowledge, or the conve 
 niency of life; and so we need not trouble ourselves to examine it. 
 
 Seer. 16, First, simple ideas in this sense not false, arid why . — From 
 what lias been said concerning our simple ideas, I think it "evident, that 
 our simple ideas can none of them be false in respect of things existing with- 
 out us. For the truth of these appearances, or perceptions in our minds, 
 consisting, as has been said, only in their being answerable to the powers in 
 external objects to produce by our senses such appearances in us ; — and each 
 of them being in the mind, such as it is, suitable to the power that produced 
 it, and which alone it represents : — it cannot upon that account, or as re- 
 ferred to such a pattern, be false. Blue or yellow, bitter or sweet, can never 
 be false ideas : these perceptions in the mind are just such as they are »there, 
 answering the powers appointed by God to produce them ; and so are truly 
 what they are and are intended to be. Indeed the names maybe misapplied, 
 but that in this respect makes no falsehood in the ideas ; as if a man ignorant 
 in the English tongue should call purple scarlet. 
 
 Sect. if>~SeP_Qiidly r modes not false.— Secondly, neither can our complex 
 ideas of modes, in reference to the essence of any thing really existing, be 
 false. Because whatever complex idea I have of any mode, it hath no re- 
 ference to any pattern existing and made by nature : it is not supposed to 
 contain in it any other ideas than what it hath; nor to represent any thing but 
 such-a-namplication of-ixleas as it does.' Thus when I have the idea of such 
 an action of a man, who forbears to afford himself such meat, drink, and cloth- 
 ing, and other conveniences of life, as his riches and estate will be sufficient 
 to supply, and his station requires, I have no false idea ; but such an one as 
 represents an action, either as I find or imagine it; and so is capable of 
 neither truth nor falsehood. But when I give the name frugality or virtue to 
 this action, then it may be called a false idea, if thereby it be supposed to 
 agree with that idea, to which, in propriety of speech, the name of frugality 
 doth belong ; or to be conformable to that law, which is the standard of virtue 
 and vice. 
 
 Sect. 1 8 v -FhFdh),- ideas of substan ces, when false . — Thirdly, our com- 
 plex ideas of substances being all referred to patterns in Jhjngs themselves, 
 may be false ._ That they are all false, when looked upon as the representa- 
 tiQns-of-4,heIunknown essences of things, is so evident, that there . needs no- 
 thing to be said of it. I shall therefore pass over that chimerical supposition, 
 and consider them as collections of simple ideas in the mind, taken from com- 
 binations of simple ideas existing together, constantly in things, of which 
 patterns they are the supposed copies : and in this reference of them to the 
 existence of things they are false ideas. 1. When they put together simple 
 ideas, which in the real existence of things have no union ; as when to the 
 shape and size that exist together in a horse is joined, in the same complex 
 idea, the power of barking like a dog; which three ideas, however put to- 
 gether into one in the mind, were never united in nature ; and this there- 
 fore may be called a false idea of a horse. 2. Ideas of substances are, in this 
 respect, also false, when from any collection of simple ideas that do always 
 exist together, there is separated, by a direct negation, any other simple idea 
 which is constantly joined with them. Thus, if to extension, solidity, fusibi- 
 lity, the peculiar weightiness and yellow colour of gold, any one join in his 
 
eh. 32. 
 
 OF TRUE AND FALSE IDEAS. 
 
 255 
 
 thoughts the negation of a greater degree of fixedness than is in lead or cop- 
 per, he may be said to have a false complex idea, as well as when he joins to 
 those other simple ones the idea of perfect absolute fixedness. For either 
 way, the complex idea of gold being made up of such simple ones as have no 
 union in nature, may be termed false. But if we leave out of this his com- 
 plex idea, that of fixedness quite, without either actually joining to, or sepa- 
 rating of it from the rest in his mind, it is, I think, to be looked on as an 
 inadequate and imperfect idea, rather than a false one ; since, though it contains 
 not all the simple ideas that are united in nature, yet it puts none together 
 but what do really exist together. 
 
 Sectt iby.'Pfuth or fal'sch ood always supposes affirmation or negation . — 
 
 Though in compliance with the ordinary way of' speaking I have shotted 
 in what sense and upon what ground our ideas maybe sometimes called true 
 or false, yet if we look a little nearer into the matter, in all cases where any 
 idea is. called true or false, it is from some judgment that the mind makes, or 
 is^supposed to make, that is true or false . t For truth or falsehood being never 
 without some affirmation or negation, express or tacit, it is not to be found 
 but where signs are joined and separated, according to the agreement or disa- 
 greement of the things they stand for. ... The signs we chiefly use are either 
 ideas or words, wherewith we make either mental dr verhsL propositions. 
 Tr-uth_lies- in so joining or separating these representatives, as" the things they 
 stand for do in themselves agree or disagree ; and falsehood in the contrary, 
 as shall be more fully shown hereafter. 
 
 ^jiLx^fL.-MeSS'ijrtti'e'mffeivesncilher true nor false . — Any idea then which 
 we have in our minds, whether conformable or not to the existence of things, 
 or to any idea in the minds of other men, cannot properly for tins alone be 
 called false. For these representations, if they have nothing in them but 
 w hat isj^ nfly existing in things without, cannot be thought false, being exact 
 representations of something ; nor yet, if they have any thing in them differing 
 from the reality of things, can they properly be said to be fal&e representa- 
 tions, or ideas of things they do not represent. But the mistake and false- 
 hood is, 
 
 >3mcT. 2L- Rut are false — 1. When judged agreeable to another man’s 
 idea wWwuLheing so.— First, when the mind having any idea, it judges and 
 concludes it the same that is in other men’s minds, signified by the same 
 name ; or that it is conformable to the ordinary received signification or de- 
 finition of that word, when indeed it is not: which is the most usual mistake 
 in mixed modes, though other ideas also -are liable to it. 
 
 Sect. 22. 2. When judg.e(L-to ogre i 
 — SFcohdlyr'When if having a complex 
 simple ones as nature never puts togetl 
 of creatures really existing; as when it joins the weight of tin to the colour, 
 fusibility, and fixedness of gold. 
 
 Sect— 2 B. 3. When judg ed adequate, without being so. — Thirdly, when 
 
 in its complex idea it Has united a certain number of simple ideas that do 
 really exist together in some sort of creatures, but has also left out others as 
 much inseparable, it judges this to be a perfect complete idea of a sort of things 
 which really it is not; v. g. having joined the ideas of substance, yellow, 
 malleable, most heavy, and fusible, it takes that complex idea to be the com- 
 plete idea of gold, when yet its peculiar fixedness and solubility in aqua regia 
 are as inseparable from those other ideas or qualities of that body, as they are 
 one from another. 
 
 Sect. 24. 4. Wh e n -jttdged-ta represen t the real essence. Fourthly, the 
 mistake is yet greater, when I judge tharffiiiTcmnplex idea contains in it the 
 real essence of any body existing, when at least it contains but some few of 
 those properties which flow from its real essence and constitution. I say, 
 only some few of those properties ; for those properties consisting mostly in 
 the active and passive powers it has, in reference to other things, all that are 
 vulgarly known of any one body, of which the complex idea of that kind of 
 
 ; to real existence when they do not. 
 idea Tirade-up-of such a COltectroTTof - 
 ler, it judges it to agree to a species 
 
260 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 things is usually made, are but a very few, in comparison of what a man, that 
 has several ways tried and examined it, knows of that one sort of things : 
 and all that the most expert man knows are but a few, in comparison of what 
 are really in that body, and depend on its internal or essential constitution. 
 The essence of a triangle lies in a very little compass, consists in a very few 
 ideas, — three lines including a space make up that essence, — but the proper- 
 ties that flow from this essence are more than can be easily known or enu- 
 merated. So I imagine it is in substances, their real essences lie in a little 
 compass, though the properties flowing from that internal constitution are 
 endless. 
 
 Sect. 25. Ideas, when false. — To conclude, a man having no notion of 
 any thing without him, but by the idea he has of it in his mind (which idea 
 he has a power to call by what name he pleases,) he may indeed make an 
 idea neither answering the reason of things, nor agreeing to the idea com- 
 monly signified by other people’s words : but cannot make a wrong or false 
 idea of a thing, which is no otherwise known to him but by the idea he has 
 of it : v. g. when I frame an idea of the legs, arms and body of a man, and 
 join to this a horse’s head and neck, I do not make a false idea of any thing ; 
 because it represents nothing without me. But when I call it a man or 
 Tartar, and imagine it to represent some real being without me, or to be the 
 same idea that others call by the same name ; in either of these cases I may 
 err. And upon this account it is that it comes to be termed a false idea ; 
 though indeed the falsehood lies not in the idea, but in that tacit mental pro- 
 position wherein a conformity and resemblance is attributed to it, which it 
 has not. But yet, if having framed such an idea in my mind, without thinking 
 either that existence, or the name man or Tartar, belongs to it, I will call it 
 man or Tartar, I may be justly thought fantastical in the naming, but not 
 erroneous in my judgment; nor the idea any way false. 
 
 Sect. 26. More properly to he called right or wrong. — Upon the whole 
 matter, I think that our ideas, as they are considered by the mind, either in 
 reference to the proper signification of their names, or in reference to the 
 reality of things, may very fitly be called right or wrong ideas, according as 
 they agree or disagree to those patterns to which they are referred. But if 
 any one had rather call them true or false, it is fit he use a liberty, which 
 every one has, to call things by those names he thinks best; though, in pro- 
 priety of speech, truth or falsehood will, I think, scarce agree to them, but 
 as they, some way or other, virtually contain in them some mental proposi- 
 tion. The ideas that are in a mart’s mind, simply considered, cannot be 
 wrong, unless complex ones, wherein inconsistent parts are jumbled together. 
 All other ideas are in themselves right, and the knowledge about them right 
 and true knowledge : but when we come to refer them to any thing, as to 
 their patterns and archetypes, then they are capable of being wrong, as far as 
 they disagree with such archetypes. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 OF THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 
 
 Sect. 1 . Something unreasonable in most men. — There is scarce any one 
 that does not observe something that seems odd to him, and is in itself really 
 extravagant in the opinions, reasonings, and actions of other men. The least 
 flaw of this kind, if at all different from his own, every one is quick-sighted 
 enough to espy in another, and will by the authority of reason forwardly con- 
 demn, though he be guilty of much greater unreasonableness in his own 
 tenets and conduct, which he never perceives, and will very hardly, if at all. 
 be convinced of. 
 
;ih. 33. 
 
 OF THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 
 
 201 
 
 Sect. 2. Not wholly from self-love .— This proceeds not. wholly from self- 
 iove, though tfeThas often a great hand in it. Men of fair minds, and not 
 given up to the overweening of self-flattery, are frequently guilty of it ; and 
 in many cases one with amazement hears the arguings, and is astonished at 
 the obstinacy of a worthy man, who yields not to the evidence of reason, 
 though laid before him as clear as daylight. 
 
 Sect. 3. Not from education . — This sort of unreasonableness is usually 
 imputed to education and prejudice, and for the most part truly enough, though 
 that reaches not the bottom of the disease, nor shows distinctly enough 
 whence it rises, or wherein it lies. Education is often rightly assigned for the 
 cause, and prejudice is a good general name for the thing itself ; but yet, 1 
 think, he ought to look a little farther, who would trace this sort of madness 
 to the root it springs from, and so explain it, as to show whence this flaw 
 has its original in very sober and rational minds, and wherein it consists. 
 
 Sect. 4. A degree of madness . — I shall be pardoned for calling it by so 
 harsh a name as madness, when it is considered, that opposition to reason de- 
 serves that name, and is really madness ; and there is scarce a man so free 
 from it, but that if he should always, on all occasions, argue or do as in some 
 cases he constantly does, would not be thought fitter for Bedlam than civil 
 conversation. I do not here mean when he is under the power of an unruly 
 passion, but in the steady calm course of his life. That which will yet more 
 apologize for this harsh name, and ungrateful imputation on the greatest part 
 of mankind, is, that inquiring a little by the by into the nature of madness, 
 b. ii. c. xi. sect. 13, I found it to spring from the very same root, and to 
 depend on the very same cause we are here speaking of. This consideration 
 of the thing itself, at a time when I thought not the least on the subject 
 which I am now treating of, suggested it to me. And if this be a weakness 
 to which all men are so liable ; if this be a taint which so universally infects 
 mankind ; the greater care should be taken to lay it open under its due name, 
 thereby to excite the greater care in its prevention and cure. 
 
 Sect. 5. From a wrong connexion of ideas .- — Some of our ideas have a 
 natural correspondence and connexion one with another : it is the office and 
 excellency of our reason to trace these, and hold them together in that union 
 and correspondence which is founded in their peculiar beings. Besides this, 
 there is another connexion of ideas wholly owing to chance or custom : ideas, 
 that in themselves are not all of kin, come to be so united in some men’s minds, 
 that it is very hard to separate them ; they always keep in company, and the 
 one no sooner at any time comes into the understanding, but its associate 
 appears with it ; and if they are more than two, which are thus united, the 
 whole gang, always inseparable, show themselves together. 
 
 Sect. 6. This connexion how made . — This strong combination of ideas, 
 not allied by nature, the mind makes in itself either voluntarily or by chance ; 
 and hence it comes in different men to be very different, according to their 
 different inclinations, education, interests, &c. Custom settles habits of 
 thinking in the understanding, as well as of determining in- the will, and of 
 motions in the body ; all which seem to be but trains of motion in the animal 
 spirits, which, once set agoing, continue in the same steps they have been 
 used to, which, by often treading, are worn into a smooth path, and the mo- 
 tion in it becomes easy, and as it were natural. As far as we can compre- 
 hend thinking, thus ideas seem to be produced in our minds ; or if they are 
 not, this may serve to explain their following one another in an habitual train, 
 when once they are put into their track, as well as it does to explain such 
 motions of the body. A musician used to any tune will find, that let it but once 
 begin in his head, the ideas of the several notes of it will follow one another 
 orderly in his understanding, without any care or attention, as regularly as 
 his lingers move orderly over the keys of the organ to play out the tune he 
 has begun, though his unattentive thoughts be elsewhere a wandering. 
 Whether the natural cause of these ideas, as well as of that regular dancing 
 of his fingers, be the motion of his animal spirits, I will not determine, how 
 
262 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2 
 
 nrobable soever, by this instance, it appears to be so : but this may help us a 
 little to conceivd of intellectual habits, and of the tying together of ideas. 
 
 Sect. 7. Some antipathies an effect of it. — That there are such associa 
 tions of them made by custom in the minds of most men, I think nobody will 
 question, who has well considered himself or others ; and to this, perhaps, 
 might be justly attributed most of the sympathies and antipathies observable 
 in men, which work as strongly, and produce as regular effects as if they were 
 natural, and are therefore called so, though they at first had no other original 
 but the accidental connexion of two ideas, which either the strength of the 
 impression, or future indulgence so united, that they always afterward kept 
 company together in that man’s mind, as if they were but one idea. I say 
 most of the antipathies, I do not say all, for some of them are truly natural, 
 depend upon our original constitution, and are born with us ; but a great part 
 of those, which are counted natural, would have been known to be from un- 
 heeded, though, perhaps, early impressions, or wanton fancies at first, which 
 would have been acknowledged the original of them, if they had been warily 
 observed. A grown person surfeiting with honey, no sooner hears the name 
 of it, but his fancy immediately carries sickness and qualms to his stomach, 
 and he cannot bear the veiy idea of it; other ideas of dislike, and sickness, 
 and vomiting, presently accompany it, and he is disturbed, but he knows 
 from whence to date this weakness, and can tell how he got this indis- 
 position. Had this happened to him by an overdose of honey, when a child, 
 all the same effects would have followed, but the cause would have been mis- 
 taken, and the antipathy counted natural. 
 
 Sect. 8. I mention this not out of any great necessity there is in this pre- 
 sent argument, to distinguish nicely between- natural and acquired antipathies ; 
 but I take notice of it for another purpose, viz. that those who have children, 
 or the charge of their education, would think it worth their while diligently 
 to watch, and carefully to prevent the undue connexion of ideas in the minds 
 of young people. This is the time most susceptible of lasting impressions ; 
 and though those relating to the health of the body are by discreet people 
 minded and fenced against, yet I am apt to doubt, that those which relate 
 more peculiarly to the mind, and terminate in the understanding or passions, 
 have been much less heeded than the thing deserves : nay, those relating 
 purely to the understanding, have, as I suspect, been by most men wholly 
 overlooked. 
 
 Sect. 9. A great cause of errors. — This' wrong connexion in our minds 
 of ideas, in themselves loose and independent one of another, has such an in- 
 fluence, and is of so great force to set us awry in our actions, as well moral 
 as natural passions, reasonings, and notions themselves, that perhaps there is 
 not any one thing that deserves more to be looked after. 
 
 Sect. 10. Instances . — The ideas of goblins and sprights have really no 
 more to do with darkness than light: yet let but a foolish maid inculcate these 
 often on the mind of a child, and raise them there together, possibly he shall 
 never be able to separate them again so long as he lives ; but darkness shall 
 for ever afterward bring with it those frightful ideas, and they shall be so 
 joined that he can no more bear the one than the other. 
 
 Sect. 11. A man receives a sensible injury from another, thinks on the 
 man and that action over and over; and by ruminating on them strongly, or 
 much in his mind, so cements those two ideas together, that he makes them 
 almost one; never thinks on the man, but the pain and displeasure he suffered 
 come into his mind with it, so that he scarce distinguishes them, but has as 
 much an aversion for the one as the other. Thus hatreds are often begotten 
 from slight and almost innocent occasions, and quarrels propagated and con- 
 tinued in the world. 
 
 Sect. 12. A man has suffered pain or sickness in any place ; he saw his 
 friend die in such a room ; though these have in nature nothing to do one 
 with another, yet when the idea of the place occurs to his mind, it brings 
 (the impression being once made) that of the pain and displeasure with 
 
Oh. 33. 
 
 OF THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 
 
 263 
 
 it ; he confounds them in his mind, and can as little bear the one as the 
 other. 
 
 Sect. 13. Why time cures some disorders in the mind, which reason can- 
 not. — When this combination is settled, and while it lasts, it is not in the 
 power of reason to help us, and relieve us from the effects of it. Ideas in 
 our minds, when they are there, will operate according to their natures and 
 circumstances ; and here we see the cause why time cures certain affections, 
 which reason, though in the right, and allowed to be so, has not power over, 
 nor is able against them to prevail with those who are apt to hearken to it in 
 other cases. The death of a child, that was the daily delight of his mother’s 
 eyes, and joy of her soul, rends from her heart the whole comfort of her life, 
 and gives her all the torment imaginable ; use the consolations of reason in 
 this case, and you were as good preach ease to one on the rack, and hope 
 to allay, by rational discourses, the pain of his joints tearing asunder. Till 
 time has by disuse separated the sense of that enjoyment, and its loss from 
 the idea of the child returning to her memory, all representations, though 
 ever so reasonable, are in vain ; and therefore some, in whom the union be- 
 tween these ideas is never dissolved, spend their lives in mourning, and 
 carry an incurable sorrow to their graves. 
 
 Sect. 14. Farther instances of the effect of the association of ideas. — A 
 friend of mine knew one porfeclly cured of madness, by a very harsh am! 
 offensive operation. The gentleman, who was thus recovered, with great 
 sense of gratitude and acknowledgment, owned the cure all his life after, as 
 the greatest obligation he could have received ; but whatever gratitude and 
 reason suggested to him, he could never bear the sight of the operator : that 
 image brought back with it the idea of that agony which he suffered from his 
 hands, which was too mighty and intolerable for him to endure. 
 
 Sect. 15. Many children imputing the pain they endured at school to their 
 books they were corrected for, so join those ideas together, that a book be- 
 comes their aversion, and they are never reconciled to the study and use oi 
 them all their lives after : and thus reading becomes a torment to them, 
 which otherwise possibly they might have made the greatest pleasure of their 
 lives. There are rooms convenient enough, that some men cannot study in, 
 and fashions of vessels, which, though ever so clean and commodious, they 
 cannot drink out of, and that by reason of some accidental ideas which are 
 annexed to them, and make them offensive : and who is there that hath not 
 observed some man to flag at the appearance, or in the company of some certain 
 person not otherwise superior to him, but because having once on some oc- 
 casion got the ascendant, the idea of authority and distance goes along with 
 that of the person, and he that has been thus subjected is not able to sepa- 
 rate them 1 
 
 Sect. 16. Instances of this kind are so plentiful every where, that if I add 
 one more, it is only for the pleasant oddness of it. It is of a young gentle- 
 man, who having learned to dance, and that to great perfection, there happen- 
 ed to stand an old trunk in the room where he learned. The idea of this re- 
 markable piece of household stuff had so mixed itself with the turns and steps 
 of all his dances, that though in that chamber he could dance excellently well, 
 yet it was only whilst that trunk was there; nor could he perform well in any 
 other place, unless that or some such other trunk had its due position in the 
 room. If this story shall be suspected to be dressed up with some comical cir- 
 cumstances, a little beyond precise nature, I answer for myself, that I had it 
 some years since from a very sober and worthy man, upon his own know- 
 ledge, as I report it: and I dare say, there are very few inquisitive persons, 
 who read this, who have not met with accounts, if not examples, of this nature, 
 that may parallel, or at least justify this. 
 
 Sectt 'IZ. Its influence on intellectual habits. — Intellectual habits and de- 
 fects this wajTc unti a c t ed " *gfe‘~not less frequent and powerful, though less 
 observed. Let the ideas of being and matter be strongly joined either by edu- 
 cation or much thought, whilst these are still combined in the mind, wha‘ 
 
204 
 
 Oh HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 2. 
 
 notions, what reasonings will there he about separate spirits 1 Let custom 
 from the very childhood have joined figure and shape to the idea of God, and 
 what absurdities will that mind be liable to about the Deity] 
 
 Let the idea of infallibility be inseparably joined to any person, and these 
 two constantly together possess the mind ; and then one body, in two places 
 at once, shall, unexamined, be swallowed for a certain truth, by an implicit 
 faith, whenever that imagined infallible person dictates and demands assent 
 without inquiry. 
 
 Sect. 18. Observable in different sects . — Some such wrong and unnatural 
 combinations ofide ( p.s will be found to establish the irreconcileable opposition 
 between different sects of philosophy and religion ; for we cannot imagine 
 every one of their followers to impose wilfully on himself, and knowingly re- 
 fuse truth offered bjr plain reason. Interest, though it does a great deal in the 
 case, yet cannot be thought to work whole societies of men to so universal a 
 perverseness, as that every one of them, to a man, should knowingly maintain 
 falsehood : some at least must be allowed to do what all pretend to, i. e. to 
 pursue truth sincerely ; and therefore there must be something that blinds their 
 understandings and makes them not see the falsehood of what they embrace 
 for real truth. That which thus captivates their reasons, and leads men of 
 sincerity blindfold from coihmon sense, will, when examined, be found to be 
 wdiat we are speaking of; some independent ideas, of no alliance to one 
 another, are by education, custom, and the constant din of their party, so 
 coupled in their minds, that they always appear there together ; and they can no 
 more separate them in their thoughts, than if they were but one idea, and they 
 operate as if they were so. This gives sense to jargon, demonstration to ab- 
 surdities, and consistency to nonsense, and is the foundation of the greatest, 
 I had almost said, of all the errors in the world ; or if it does not reach so 
 far, it is at least the most dangerous one, since so far as it obtains, it hinders 
 men from seeingand examining. When two things in themselves disjoined ap- 
 pear to the sig-ht constantly united ; if the eye sees these things rivetted, which 
 are loose, where will you begin to rectify the mistakes that follow in two ideas., 
 that they have been accustomed so to join in their minds, as to substitute one 
 for the other, and, as I am apt to think, often without perceiving it themselves 1 
 This, whilst they are under the deceit of it, makes them incapable of con- 
 ruction, and they applaud themselves as zealous champions for truth, when 
 indeed they are contending for error ; and the confusion of two different ideas, 
 which a customary connexion of them in their minds hath to them made in 
 effect but one, fills their heads with false views, and their reasonings with 
 false consequences. 
 
 Sect. 19. Conclusion — Having thus given an account of the original sorts, 
 and extent of our ideas, with several other considerations, about these (I know 
 not whether I may say) instruments or materials of our knowledge; the 
 method I at first proposed to myself would now require, that I should imme- 
 diately proceed to show what use the understanding makes of them, and what 
 knowledge we have by them. This was that, which, in the first general view 
 I had of this subject, was all that I thought I should have to do: but upon a 
 nearer approach, I find that there is so close a connexion between ideas and 
 words ; and our abstract ideas and general words have so constant a relation 
 one to another, that it is impossible to speak clearly and distinctly of our 
 knowledge, which all consists in propositions, without considering, first, the 
 nature, use, and signification of language ; which, therefore, must be the 
 business of the next book. 
 
CE 1, 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 i65 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 OF WORDS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF WORDS, OR LANGUAGE IN GENERAL. 
 
 Sect. 1. Man fitted to form articulate sounds. — God having designed man 
 for a sociable creature, made him not only with an inclination, and under a 
 necessity to have fellowship with those of his own kind, but furnished him 
 also with language, which was to be the great instrument and common tie of 
 society. Man, therefore, had by nature his organs so fashioned, as to be fit 
 to frame articulate sounds, which we call words. But this was not enough 
 to produce language ; for parrots, and several other birds, 'will be taught to 
 make articulate sounds distinct enough, which yet, by no means, are capable 
 of language. 
 
 Seox,_2. To make them signs of ideas. — Besides articulate sounds, there- 
 fore, it was farther necessarythat he should be able to use these sounds as 
 signs of interna] conceptions ; and to make them stand as marks for the ideas 
 within his own mind, whereby they might be made known to others, and the 
 thoughtsof men’s minds be conveyed from one to another. 
 
 Sect. 3. To make general signs. — But neither was this sufficient to make 
 words so useful as they ought to be. It is not enough for the perfection of 
 language, that sounds can be made signs of ideas, unless those signs can be 
 so made use of, as to comprehend several particular things ; for the multipli 
 cation of words would have perplexed their use, had every particular thing 
 need of a distinct name to be signified by. To remedy this inconvenience, 
 language had yet a farther improvement in the use of general terms, whereby 
 one word was made to mark a multitude of particular existences : which ad- 
 vantageous use of sounds was obtained only by the difference of the ideas 
 they were made signs of; those names becoming general, which are made to 
 stand for general ideas, and those remaining particular, where the ideas they 
 are used for are particular. 
 
 Sect. 4. Besides these names which stand for ideas, there be other words 
 which men make use of, not to signify any idea, but the want or absence of 
 some ideas simple or complex, or all ideas together; such as nihil in Latin, 
 and in English ignorance and barrenness. All which negative or privitive 
 words cannot be said properly to belong to, or signify no ideas : for then they 
 would be perfectly insignificant sounds ; but they relate to positive ideas, and 
 signify their absence. 
 
 Sect. 5. Words ultimately derived from such as signify sensible ideas . — 
 It may also lead its a little towards the original of all our notions and know- 
 ledge, if we remark how great a dependence our words have on common sen- 
 sible ideas ; and how those, which are made use of to stand for actions and 
 notions quite removed from sense, have their rise from thence, and from ob- 
 vious sensible ideas are transferred to more abstruse significations, and made 
 to stand for ideas that come not under the cognizance of our senses ; v. g. to 
 imagine, apprehend, comprehend, adhere, conceive, instil, disgust, disturb- 
 ance, tranquillity, &c. are all words taken from the operations of sensible 
 things, and applied to certain modes of thinking. Spirit, in its primary sig- 
 nification, is breath; angel, a messenger; and I doubt not, but if we could 
 trace them to their sources, we should find, in all languages, the names, 
 
m 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 which stand for things that fall not under our senses, to have had their first 
 rise from sensible ideas. By which we may give some kind of guess, what 
 kind of notions they were, and whence derived, which filled their minds, who 
 were the first beginners of languages ; and how nature, even in the naming 
 of things, unawares suggested to men the originals and principles of all their 
 knowledge ; whilst to give names that might make known to others any ope- 
 rations they felt in themselves, or any other ideas that come not under their 
 senses, they were fain to borrow words from ordinary known ideas of sensa- 
 tion, by that means to make others the more easily to conceive those opera- 
 tions they experimented in themselves, which made no outward sensible 
 appearances: and then when they had got known and agreed names, to signify 
 those internal operations of their owji minds, they were sufficiently furnished 
 to make known by words all their other ideas ; since they could consist of 
 nothing, but either of outward sensible perceptions, or of the inward opera- 
 tions of their minds about them : we having, as has been proved, no ideas at 
 all, but what originally come either from sensible objects without, or what we 
 feel within ourselves, from the inward workings of our own spirits, of which 
 we are conscious to ourselves within. 
 
 Sect. 6. Distribution . — But to understand better the use and force of lan- 
 guage, as subservient to instruction and knowledge, it will be convenient to 
 consider, 
 
 -First,- Towlmt-it is that names, in the use of language, are immediately 
 applied. 
 
 Secondly, Sipce all (except proper) names are general, and so stand not 
 particularly for this or that single thing, but for sorts and ranks of things, it 
 will be necessary to consider, in the next place, what the sorts and kinds, or, 
 if you rather like the Latin names, what the species and genera of things are; 
 wherein they consist, and how they come to be made. These being (as they 
 ought) well looked into, we shall the better come to find the right use of 
 words, the natural advantages and defects of language, and the remedies that 
 ought to be used, to avoid the inconveniences of obscurity or uncertainty in 
 the signification of words, without which it is impossible to discourse with 
 any clearness or order concerning knowledge; which being conversant about 
 propositions, and those most commonly universal ones, has greater connex- 
 ion with words than perhaps is suspected. 
 
 These considerations, therefore, shall be the matter of the following 
 chapters. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OF THE SIGNIFICATION OF WORDS. 
 
 Sect.1. Words are sensible signs necessary for communication.— Men, 
 though he has great variety of thoughts, and such from which others, as well 
 as himself, might receive profit and delight ; yet they are all within his own 
 breast, invisible and hidden from others, nor can of themselves be made to 
 appear. The comfort and advantage of society not being to be had without 
 communication of thoughts, it was necessary that man should find out some 
 external sensible signs, whereby those invisible ideas which his thoughts are 
 made up of, might be made known to others. For this purpose nothing was 
 so fit, either for plenty or quickness, as those articulate sounds, which, with so 
 much ease hnd variety, he found himself able to make. Thus we may con- 
 ceive how words which were by nature so well adapted to that purpose, 
 come to be made use of by men, as the signs of their ideas ; not by any natu- 
 ral connexion that there is between particular articulate sounds, and certain 
 ideas, for then there would be but one language among all men: but bv ^volun- 
 tary imposition, whereby such a word is made arbitrarily theTnark of such 
 
Ch. 2. 
 
 OF THE SIGNIFICATION OF WORDS. 
 
 267 
 
 an idea. The use then of words is to be sensible marks of ideas ; and the 
 ideas they stand for are their proper and immediate signification. 
 
 Sect. 2. Ward/, arc the. sensible signs of his ideas who uses them. — The 
 use men have of these marks being either to record their own thoughts for 
 the assistance of their own memory, or, as it were, to bring out their ideas, 
 and lay them before the view of others ; words in their primary or immediate 
 signification stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them, 
 how imperfectly soever or carelessly those ideas are collected from the things 
 which they are supposed to represent. When a man speaks to another, it 
 is that he may be understood ; and the end of speech is, that those sounds, as 
 marks^may- rfmka.Jkn.own his ideas to the hearer. That then which words 
 are the marks of, are the ideas of the speaker : nor can any one apply them 
 as marks immediately To any thing else but the ideas that he himself hatn. 
 For this would be to make them signs of his own conceptions, and yet apply 
 them to other ideas ; which would be to make them signs, and not signs of 
 his ideas at the same time ; and so, in effect, to have no signification at all. 
 Words being voluntary signs, they cannot be voluntary signs imposed by him 
 on things he knows not. That would be to make them signs of nothing, 
 sounds without signification. A man cannot make his words the signs either 
 of qualities in things, or of conceptions in the mind of another, whereof he 
 has none in his own. Until he has some ideas of his own, he cannot suppose 
 them to-eurrespond with the conceptions of another man ; nor can he use any 
 signs for them ; for thus they would be the signs of he knows not what, 
 which is, in truth, to be the signs of nothing. But when he represents to him- 
 self other men’s ideas by some of his own, if he consent to give them the 
 same names that other men do, it is still to his own ideas ; to ideas that he 
 has, and not to ideas that he has not. 
 
 Sect. 3. This is so necessary in the use of language, that in this respect 
 the knowing and the ignorant, the learned and unlearned, use the words they 
 speak (with any meaning) all alike. They, in every man’s mouth, stand for 
 the ideas he has, and which he would express by them. A child having taken 
 notice of nothing in the metal he hears called gold, but the bright shining 
 yellow colour, he applies the word gold only to his own idea of that colour, 
 and nothing else ; and therefore calls the same colour in a peacock’s tail, 
 gold. Another, that hath better observed, adds to shining yellow great weight; 
 and then the sound gold, when he uses it, stands for a complex idea of a shin- 
 ing yellow, and very weighty substance. Another adds to those qualities, fu- 
 sibility : and then the word gold signifies to him a body, bright, yellow T , fusi- 
 ble, and very heavy. Another adds malleability. Each of these uses equally 
 the word gold, when they have occasion to express the idea which they have 
 applied it to ; but it is evident, that each can apply it only to his own idea ; 
 nor can he make it stand as a sign of such a complex idea as he has not. 
 
 Sect. 4. Words often secretly referred, first, to the ideas in other men’s 
 minds. — But though words, as they are used by men, can properly and im- 
 mediately signify nothing but the ideas that are in the mind of the speaker ; 
 yet they in their thoughts give them a secret reference to tw r o other things. 
 
 First.,- They suppose their words to be marks of the ideas in the minds also 
 of other men, with whom they communicate : for else they should talk in 
 vain, and could not be understood, if the sounds they applied to one idea 
 were such as by the hearer were applied to another; which is to speak two 
 languages. But in this, men stand not usually to examine whether the idea 
 they and those they discourse with have in their minds be the same: but think 
 it enough that they use the word, as they imagine, in the common accepta- 
 tion of that language ; in which they suppose that the idea they make it a sign 
 of is precisely the same, to which the understanding men of that country 
 apply that name. 
 
 Sect. 5. Secondly, to the reality of things. — Secondly, Because men 
 would not be thought to talk barely of their own imaginations, but of things 
 as really they are ; therefore they often suppose their words to stand also for 
 
268 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3 
 
 the reality of things. But this relating more particularly to substances, and 
 their names, as perhaps the former does to simple ideas and modes, we shall 
 speak of these two different ways of applying words more at large, when we 
 come to treat of the names of mixed modes and substances in particular : 
 though give me leave here to say, that it is a perverting the use of words, 
 and brings unavoidable obscurity and confusion into their signification, when- 
 ever we make them stand for any thing but those ideas we have in our own 
 minds. 
 
 Sect. 6. Words by use readily excite ideas. — Concerning words, also, it 
 is farther to be considered T" first, that they being immediately the signs of 
 men’s ideas ; and by that means the instruments whereby men communicate 
 their conceptions, and express to one another those thoughts and imagina- 
 tions they have within their own breasts ; there comes by constant use to be 
 such a connexion between certain sounds and the ideas they stand for, that 
 the names heard almost as readily excite certain ideas, as if the objects them- 
 selves, which are apt to produce them, did actually affect the senses. Which 
 is manifestly so in all obvious sensible qualities, and in all substances that 
 frequently and familiarly occur to us. 
 
 Sect. 7. Words often used without signification. — Secondly, That though 
 the proper and immediate signification of words are ideas in the mind of the 
 speaker, yet because by familiar use from our cradles we come to learn certain 
 articulate sounds very perfectly, and have them readily on our tongues, and 
 always at hand in our memories, but yet are not always careful to examine or 
 settle their significations perfectly; it often happens that men, even when 
 they would apply themselves to an attentive consideration, do set their 
 thoughts more on words than things. Nay, because words are many of them 
 learned before the ideas are known for which they stand; therefore some, not 
 only children, but men, speak several words no otherwise than parrots do, only 
 because they have learned them, and have been accustomed to those sounds. 
 But so far as words are of use and signification, so far is there a constant 
 connexion between the sound and the idea, and a designation that the one 
 stands for the other; without which application of them, they are nothing but 
 so much insignificant noise. 
 
 Sect. 8. Their signification perfectly arbitrary. — Words, by long and 
 familiar use, as has been said, come to excite in men certain ideas so con- 
 stantly and readily, that they are apt to suppose a natural connexion be- 
 tween them. But that they signify only men’s peculiar ideas, and that by 
 a perfect arbitrary imposition, is evident, in that they often fail to excite in 
 others (even that use the same language) the same ideas we take them to be 
 the signs of ; and every man has so inviolable a liberty to make words stand for 
 what ideas he pleases, that no one hath the power to make others have the 
 same ideas in their minds that he has, when they use the same words that he 
 does. And therefore the great Augustus himself, in the possession of that 
 power which ruled the world, acknowledged he could not make a new Latin 
 word ; which was as much as to say, that he could not arbitrarily appoint 
 what idea any sound should be a sign of in the mouths and common language 
 of his subjects. It is true, common use, by a tacit consent, appropriates cer- 
 tain sounds to certain ideas in all languages, which so far limits the signifi- 
 cation of that sound, that unless a man applies it to the same idea, he does 
 not speak properly : and let me add, that unless a man’s words excite the 
 same ideas in the hearer which he makes them stand for in speaking, he does 
 not speak intelligibly. But whatever be the consequence of any man’s 
 using of words differently, either from their general meaning, or the particu- 
 lar sense of the person to whom he addresses them, this is certain their sig- 
 nification, in his use of them, is limited to his ideas, and they can be signs o. 
 nothing else. 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 GENERAL TERMS. 
 
 2S& 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OF GENERAL TERMS. 
 
 Sect. 1. The greatest part of words general. — All things that exist being 
 particulars, it may perhaps be thought reasonable that words, which ought to 
 be conformed to things, should be so too ; I mean in their signification : but 
 vet we find the quite contrary. The far greatest part of words, that make 
 all languages, are general terms ; which has not been the effect of neglect or 
 chance, but of reason and necessity. 
 
 Sect. 2. For every particular thing to have a name is impossible. — First, 
 It is impossible that every particular thing should have a distinct peculiar 
 name. For the signification and use of words, depending on that connexion 
 which the mind makes between its ideas, and the sounds it uses as signs of 
 them, it is necessary, in the application of names to things, that the mind 
 should have distinct ideas of the things, and retain also the particular name 
 that belongs to every one, with its peculiar appropriation to that idea. But 
 it is beyond the power of human capacity to frame and retain distinct ideas 
 of all the particular things we meet with ; every bird and beast men saw, 
 every tree and plant that affected the senses could not find a place in the 
 most capacious understanding. If it be looked on as an instance of a prodi- 
 gious memory, that some generals have been able to call every soldier in their 
 army by his proper name, we may easily find a reason why men have never 
 attempted to give names to each sheep in their flock, or crow that flies over 
 their head ; much less to call every leaf of plants, or grain of sand that came 
 in their way, by a peculiar name. 
 
 Sect. 3’. And useless.— Secondly, If it were possible, it would yet be use- 
 less ; because it would not serve to the chief end of language. Men would 
 in vain heap up names of particular things that would not serve them to com- 
 municate their thoughts. Men learn names, and use them in talk with 
 others, only that they may be understood ; which is then only done, when by 
 use or consent the sound I make by the organs of speech excites in another 
 man’s mind, who hears it, the idea I apply it to in mine, when I speak it. This 
 cannot be done by names applied to particular things, whereof I alone having 
 the ideas in my mind, the names of them could not be significant or intelli- 
 gible to another who was not acquainted with all those very particular things 
 which had fallen under my notice. 
 
 Sect. 4. Thirdly, But yet granting this also feasible (which I think is 
 not), yet a distinct name for every particularfthing would not be of any great 
 use for the improvement of knowledge ; whichTThtrugh founded in particular 
 things, cTnlaTges itself by general views; to which things reduced, into sorts 
 under general names, are properly subservient. These, with the names be- 
 longing to them, come within some compass, and do not multiply every mo- 
 ment, beyond what either the mind can contain, or use requires: and there- 
 fore, in these, men have for the most part stopped ; but yet not so as to hin- 
 der themselves from distinguishing particular things by appropriated names, 
 where convenience demands it. And therefore in their own species, which 
 they have most to do with, and wherein they have often occasion to mention 
 particular persons, they make use of proper names ; and their distinct indi- 
 viduals have distinct denominations. 
 
 Sect. 5. . What things have proper names. — Besides persons, countries 
 also, cities, rivers, mountains, and other the like’ distinctions of place, have 
 usually found peculiar names, and that for the same reason ; they being such 
 as men have often an occasion to mark particularly, and, as it were, set be- 
 fore others in their discourses with them. And I doubt not, but if we had 
 reason to mention particular horses, as often as we have to mention particu- 
 
270 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 Iariner, we should have proper names for the one as familiar as for the other; 
 and Bucephalus would be a word as much in use as Alexander. And there- 
 fore we see that, among jockies, horses have their proper names to be known 
 and distinguished by as commonly as their servants ; because, among them, 
 there is often occasion to mention this or that particular horse, when lie is out 
 of sight. 
 
 Sect. 6. How general words are made . — The next thing to be considered is, 
 how general words come to be made. For since all things that exist are only 
 particulars, how come we by general terms, or where find we those general 
 natures they are supposed to stand for 1 v^Vords become general, by being 
 made the signs of general jdeas ; and ideasbS'came general, By separating 
 from them the circumstances of time, and place, and any other ideas, that 
 may determine them to this or that particular existence. By this way of ab- 
 straction, they are made capable of representing more individuals than one ; 
 each of which having in it a conformity to that abstract idea, is (as we call 
 it) of that sort. 
 
 Sect. 7. But to deduce this a little more distinctly, it will not perhaps 
 be amiss to trace our notions and names from their beginning, and ob- 
 serve by what degrees we proceed, and by what steps we enlarge our 
 ideas from our first infancy. There is nothing more evident, than that the 
 ideas of the persons children converse with (to instance in them alone) are 
 like the persons themselves, only particular. The ideas of the nurse and the 
 mother are well framed in their minds ; and, like pictures of them there, re- 
 present only those individuals. The names they first gave to them are con- 
 fined to these individuals ; and the names of nurse and mamma the child uses, 
 determine themselves to those persons. Afterwards, when time and a larger 
 acquaintance have made them observe, that there are a great many other 
 things in the world, that in some common agreements of shape, and several 
 other qualities, resemble their father and mother, and those persons they have 
 been used to, they frame an idea, which they find those many particulars do 
 partake in ; and to that they give, with others, the name man for example. 
 Afld thus they come to have a general name, and a general idea. Wherein 
 they make nothing new, but only leave out the complex idea they had of 
 Peter and James, Mary and Jane, that which is peculiar to each, and retain 
 only what is common to them all. 
 
 Sect. 8. By the same way that they come by the general name and idea 
 of man, they easily advance to more general names and notions. For ob- 
 serving that several things that differ from their idea of man, and cannot 
 therefore be comprehended under that name, have yet certain qualities, where- 
 in they agree with man, by retaining only those qualities, and uniting them 
 into one idea, they have again another and more general idea ; to which hav- 
 ing given a name, they make a term of a more comprehensive extension : 
 which new idea is made, not by any new addition, but only, as before, by 
 leaving out the shape, and some other properties signified by the name man, 
 and retaining only a body, with life, sense, and spontaneous motion, com- 
 prehended under the name animal. 
 
 Sect. 9. General natures are nothing hut abstract ideas . — That this is 
 the way whereby men first formed general ideas, and general names to them, 
 I think, is so evident, that there needs no other proof of it, but the consider- 
 ing of a man’s self, or others, and the ordinary proceedings of their minds in 
 knowledge : and he that thinks general natures or notions are any thing else 
 but such abstract and partial ideas of more complex ones, taken at first from 
 particular existences, will, I fear, be at a loss where to find them. For let 
 any one reflect, and then tell me, wherein does his idea of man differ from 
 that of Peter and Paul ; or his idea of horse from that of Bucephalus, but in 
 the leaving out something that is peculiar to each individual, and retaining so 
 much of those particular complex ideas of several particular existences as 
 they are found to agree ini Of the complex ideas signified by the names 
 man and horse leaving out but those particulars wherein they differ, and re* 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 GENERAL TERMS. 
 
 271 
 
 taining only those wherein they agree, and of those making a new dis ti j yt. 
 mrr ^ple^ idea, and giving the name animal to it; one has a more general 
 term, that comprehends with man several other creatures. Leave out of the 
 idea of animal, sense and spontaneous motion ; and the remaining complex 
 idea, made up of the remaining simple ones of body, life and nourishment, 
 becomes a more general one, under the more comprehensive term i livens. 
 And not to dwell longer upon this particular, so evident in itself, by the same 
 way the mind proceeds to body, substance, and at last to being, thing, and 
 euch universal terms, which stand for any of our ideas whatsoever. To con- 
 clude, this whole mystery of genera and species, which make such a noise in 
 the schools, and are with justice so little regarded out of them, is nothing 
 else but abstract ideas, more or less comprehensive, with names annexed to 
 them. In all which this is constant and un variable, that every more general 
 term stands for such an idea, as is but a part of 'any of those contained 
 under it. 
 
 — — SLe.cx.v ID, Why. the genus is ordinarily made use of in definitions . — This 
 may show us the reason why, in the defining of words, which is nothing but 
 declaring their significations, we make use of the genus, or next general 
 word that comprehends it. Which is not out of necessity, but only to save 
 the labour of enumerating the several simple ideas, which the next general 
 word or genus stands for ; or, perhaps, sometimes the shame of not being 
 able to do it. But though defining by genus and differentia (1 crave leave 
 to use these terms of art, though originally Latin, since they most properly 
 suit those notions they are applied to) I say, though defining by the genus 
 be the shortest way, yet I think it may be doubted whether it be the best. 
 This I am sure, it is not the only, and so not absolutely necessary. For de- 
 finition being nothing but making another understand by words what idea the 
 term defined stands for, a definition is best made by enumerating those 
 simple ideas that are combined in the signification of the term defined; and 
 if instead of such an enumeration men have accustomed themselves to use 
 the next general term, it has not been out of necessity, or for greater clear- 
 ness, but for quickness and despatch sake. For, I think, that to one who de- 
 sired to know what idea the word man stood for, it should be said, that man 
 was a solid extended substance, having life, sense, spontaneous motion, and 
 the faculty of reasoning ; I doubt not but the meaning of the term man would 
 be as well understood, and the idea it stands for be at least as clearly made 
 known, as when it is defined to be a rational animal : which, by the several 
 definitions of animal, vivens, and corpus, resolves itself into those enumer- 
 ated ideas. I have, in explaining the term man, followed here the ordinary 
 definition of the schools: which though, perhaps, not the most exact, yet 
 serves well enough to my present purpose. And one may, in this instance, 
 see what gave occasion to the rule, that a definition must consist of genus 
 and differentia ; and it suffices to show us the little necessity there is of such 
 a rule, or advantage in the strict observing of it. For definitions, as has been 
 said, being only the explaining of one word by several others, so that the 
 meaning or idea it stands for may be certainly known ; languages are not al- 
 ways so made according to the rules of logic, that every term can have its 
 signification exactly and clearly expressed by two others. Experience suffi- 
 ciently satisfies us to the contrary; or else those who have made this rule 
 have done ill, that they have given us so few definitions conformable to it. 
 But of definitions, more in the next chapter. 
 
 Sect. 11. Gen eral and universal are creatures of the understanding . — 
 To returrfto general words, it is plain by what has been said, that general' 
 and universal belong not to the real existence of things ;ffint-are-the-iH-ven-_ 
 tions and creatures of the understanding, made by it, for its own use, and 
 concern only-signs; whether words or ideas. Words are general, as has been" 
 said, when used for signs of general ideas, and so are appRcabTe'indift’erently 
 to many particular things- j--arrd ideas are general, whjm they are set up as the 
 representatives of many particular things ; but Irnlversality. belongs not to 
 things themselves which are all of them particular in their exTstenrey even 
 
72 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 those words and ideas which in their signification are general. When there- 
 fore we quit particulars, the generals that rest are only creatures, of our own 
 making ; their general nature being nothing but the capacity they are put 
 into by the understanding, of signifying or representing many particulars. 
 For the signification they have is nothing but a relation, -that by the mind of 
 man is added to them(l). 
 
 (1 ) Against this the Bishop of Worcester objects, and our author* answers as fol- 
 lowetli : “However,” saith the bishop, “ the abstracted ideas are the work of the 
 mind, yet they are not mere creatures of the mind ; as appears by an instance pro- 
 duced of the essence of the sun being in one single individual ; in which case it is grant- 
 ed, that the idea may he so abstracted, that more suns might agree in it, and it is as 
 much a sort, as if there were as many suns as there are stars. So that here we have 
 a real essence subsisting in one individual, but capable of being multiplied into 
 more, and the same essence remaining. But in this one sun there is a real essence, 
 and not a mere nominal or abstracted essence : but suppose there were more suns, 
 would not each of them have the real essence of the sun ? For what is it makes 
 the second sun, but having the same real essence with the first ? If it were but a 
 nominal essence, then the second would have nothing but the name.” 
 
 This, as 1 understand it, replies Mr Locke, is to prove that the abstract general 
 essence of any sort of things, or things of the same denomination, v. g. of man or 
 marigold, hath a real being out of the understanding ; which, I confess, 1 am not able 
 to conceive. Your lordship’s proof here, brought out of my essay, concerning the 
 sun, 1 humbly conceive will not reach it ; because what is said there, does not at all 
 concern the real but nominal essence, as is evident from hence, that the idea I 
 speak of there is a complex idea ; but we have no complex idea of the internal con- 
 stitution or real essence of the sun. Besides, I say expressly, that our distinguish- 
 ing substance's into species, by names, is not at all founded on their real essences. 
 So that the sun being one of these substances, I cannot, in the place quoted by 
 vour lordship, be supposed to mean by essence of the sun the real essence of the 
 sun, unless I had so expressed it. But all this argument will he at an end, when 
 your lordship shall have explained what you mean by these words, “true sun.” In 
 my sense of them, any thing will be a true sun, to which the name sun may be truly 
 and properly applied, and to that substance or thing the name sun may be truly and 
 properly applied, which has united in it that combination of sensible qualities, by 
 w hich any thing else, that is called sun, is distinguished from other substances, i. e. 
 by the nominal essence : and thus our sun is denominated and distinguished from a 
 fixed star, not by a real essence that we do not know (for if we did, it is possible 
 we should find the real essence or constitution of one of the fixed stars to be the 
 same with that of our sun) but by a complex idea of sensible qualities coexisting, 
 which, wherever they are found, make a true sun. And thus I crave leave to an- 
 swer your lordship’s question — “For what is it makes the second sun to be a true 
 sun, but having the same real essence with the first ? If it were but a nominal es- 
 sence, then the second would have nothing but the name.” 
 
 I humbly conceive, if it had the nominal essence, it would have something besides 
 the name, viz. that nominal essence, which is sufficient to denominate it truly a sun, 
 or to make it be a true sun, though we know nothing of that real essence whereon 
 that nominal one depends. Your lordship will then argue, that that real essence is 
 in the second sun, and makes the second sun. I grant it, when the second sun 
 comes to exist, so as to be perceived by us to have all the ideas contained in oi>" 
 complex idea, i. e. in our nominal essence of a sun. For should it be true (as is 
 now believed by astronomers), that the real essence of the sun were in any of the* 
 fixed stars, yet such a star could not for that be by us called a sun, whilst it an- 
 swers not our complex idea, or nominal essence of a sun. But how far that will 
 prove that the essences of things, as they are knowable by us, have a reality in 
 them distinct from that of abstract ideas in the mind, which are merely creatures 
 of the mind, I do not see ; and we shall farther inquire, in considering your lord- 
 ship’s following words. “Therefore,” say you, “there must be a real essence in 
 every individual of the same kind.” Yes, and I beg leave of your lordship to say t 
 of a different kind too. For that alone is it which makes it to be what it is. 
 
 * In his first letter. 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 GENERAL TERMo. 
 
 273 
 
 Sect. 12^. Abstract ideas are the essences of the genera and species . — 
 The next thing therefore to' be considered is, what kin3 of signification it is 
 that general words have. For, as it is evident that they do not signify barely 
 one particular thing ; for then they would not be general tern .s', but proper 
 names ; so on the other side it is as evident, they do not signify a plurality ; 
 "'for man and men would then signify the same, and the distinction of numbers 
 
 That every individual substance has real, internal, individual constitution, i. e. a 
 real essence, that makes it to be what it is, I readily grant. Upon this j our lord- 
 ship says, “Peter, James, and John, are all true and real men.” Answer. With 
 nut doubt, supposing them to be men, they are true and real men, i. e. supposing 
 the name of that species belongs to them. And so three bobaques are all true 
 and real bobaques, supposing the name of that species of animals belongs to them. 
 
 For I beseech your lordship to consider, whether in your way of argument, by 
 naming them Peter, James, and John, names familiar to us, as appropriated to in- 
 dividuals of the species man, your lordship does not first suppose them men, and 
 then very safely ask, whether they be not all true and real men ? But if I should 
 ask your lordship whether Weweena, Chuekery, and Cousheda, were true and rqal 
 men or no ? your lordship would not be able to tell me, till, I having pointed out to 
 your lordship the individuals called by those names, your lordship, by examining 
 whether they had in them those sensible qualities which your lordship has combined 
 into that complex idea to which you give the specific name man, determined them 
 all, or some of them, to be the species which you call man, and so to be true and 
 real men ; which, when your lordship has determined, it is plain you did it by that 
 which is only the nominal essence, as not knowing the real one. But your lord- 
 ship farther asks, “what is it makes Peter, James, and John real men ? Is it the 
 attributing the general name to them ? No, certainly; but that the true and real 
 essence of a man is in every one of them.” 
 
 If, when your lordship asks, “ What makes them men?” your lordship used the 
 word making in the proper sense for the efficient cause, and in that sense it were 
 true, that the essence of,a man, i. e. the specific essence of that species made a 
 man; it would undoubtedly follow, that this specific essence had a reality beyond 
 that of being only a general abstract idea In the mind. But when it is said, that 
 it is the true and real essence of a man in every one of them, that makes Peter, 
 James, and John true and real men, the true and real meaning of these words is . 
 no more, but that the essence of that species, i. e. the properties answering the 
 complex abstract idea to which the specific name is given, being found in them, 
 that makes them to be properly and truly called men, or is the reason w hy they 
 are called men. Your lordship adds, “And we must be as certain of this, as we 
 are that they are men.” 
 
 How, I beseech your lordship, are we certain that the) 7 are men, but only bv 
 our senses, finding those properties in them which answer the abstract complex 
 idea, which is in our minds, of the specific idea to which we have annexed the 
 specific name man? This I take to be the true meaning of what your lordship 
 says in the next words, viz. “They take their denomination o' being men from 
 that common nature or essence which is in them;” and I am i pt to think these 
 words will not hold true in any other sense. 
 
 Your lordship’s fourth inference begins thus — “That the general idea is not 
 made from the simple ideas by the mere act of the mind abstracting from circum- 
 stances, but from reason and consideration of the nature of things. ” 
 
 I thought, my lord, that reason and consideration had been acts of the mind, 
 mere acts of the mind, when any thing was done by them. Your lordship gives a 
 reason for it, viz. “For, when we see several individuals that have the same 
 powers and properties, we thence infer, that there must be something common to 
 all, which makes them of one kind.” 
 
 I grant the inference to be true; but must beg leave to deny that this proves, that 
 the general idea the name is annexed to, is not made by the mind. I have said, 
 and it agrees with what your lordship here says, *That “ the mind, in making i'» 
 complex ideas of substances, only follows nature, and puts no ideas together wl i 
 
 2 K 
 
 * B. 3, c. 6. §. 28, 29. 
 
274 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Took 3 
 
 (as the grammarians call them) would be superfluous and useless. -- ThaUthen 
 which general words is- a sort of-tliings.| and each, of them does that by 
 
 being a sign of an abstract- idea in the mind, to which Mea, as things existing 
 are found to agree, so they come to be ranked under that name* or. which is 
 >.! one, be of that sort. Whereby, it is evident that the essences' of the sorts, 
 or (if the Latin word pleases better) species-ef things, are nothing else but 
 
 are not supposed to have a union in nature. Nobody joins the voice of a sheep 
 with the shape of a horse; nor the colour of lead with the weight and fixedness of 
 gold, to he the complex ideas of any real substances; unless he has a mind to fill 
 his head with chimeras, and his discourses with unintelligible words. Men ob- 
 serving certain qualities always joined and existing together, therein copied nature, 
 and of ideas so united, made their complex ones of substance,” &c. Which is very 
 little different from what your lordship here says, that it is from our observation 
 of individuals, that we come to infer, “that there is something common to them 
 all.” But I do not see how it will thence follow, that the general or specific idea 
 is not made by the mere act of the mind. “No,” says your lordship, “there is 
 something common to them all, which makes them of one kind; and if the differ- 
 ence of kinds be real, that which makes them all of one kind must not be a nomi- 
 nal, but real essence.” 
 
 This may be some objection to the name of nominal essence; hut is, as I humbly 
 conceive, none to the thing designed by it. There is an internal constitution of 
 things, on which their properties depend. This your lordship and I are agreed 
 of, and this we call the real essence. There are also certain complex ideas, or 
 combinations of these properties in men’s minds, to which they commonly annex 
 specific names, or names of sorts or kinds of things. This, I believe, your lordship 
 does not deny. These complex ideas, for want of a better name, 1 have called 
 nominal essences; how properly, l will not dispute. But if any one will help me 
 to a better name for them, I am ready to receive it; till then, I must, to express 
 myself, use this. Now, my lord, body, life, and the power of reasoning, being 
 not the real essence of a man, as I believe your lordship will agree, will your 
 lordship say that they are not enougli to make the tiling wherein they are found, 
 of the kind called man, and not of the kind called baboon, because the difference 
 of these kinds is real? If this be not real enough to make the thing of one kind 
 and not of another, I do not see how animal rationale can be enough really to dis- 
 tinguish a man from a horse; for that is but the nominal, not real essence of that 
 kind, designed by the name man; and yet 1 suppose every one thinks it real enough 
 to make a real difference betsveen that and other kinds. And if nothing will serve 
 the turn, to make things of one kind, and not of another, (which, as 1 have showed, 
 signifies no more but ranking of them under different specific names) but their real 
 unknown constitutions, which are the real essences we are speaking of, 1 fear it 
 would be a long while before we should have really different kind of substances, or 
 distinct names for them, unless we could distinguish them by these differences, of 
 which we have no distinct conceptions. For I think it would not be readily an- 
 swered me, if I should demand, wherein lies the real difference in the internal 
 constitution of a stag from that of a buck, which are each of them very well known 
 to be of one kind, and not of the other; and nobody questions but that the kinds, 
 whereof each of them is, are really different. 
 
 Your lordship farther says, “And this difference doth not depend upon the 
 complex ideas of substances, whereby men arbitrarily join modes together in their 
 minds.” I confess, my lord, I know not what to say to this, because I do not know 
 what these complex ideas of substances are, whereby men arbitrarily join modes 
 together in their minds. But I am apt to think there is a mistake in the matter, 
 by the words that follow, which are these; “For let them mistake in their com- 
 plication of ideas, either in leaving out or putting in what doth not belong to them; 
 and let their ideas be what they please, the real essence of a man, and a horse, and 
 a tree, are just what they were.” 
 
 The mistake I spoke of, I humbly suppose is this, that things are here taken to 
 be distinguished by their real essences; when, by the very way of speaking of 
 them, it is cletr, that they are already distinguished by their nominal essences, and 
 are so taken to be. For what, I beseech your lordship, does your lordship mean. 
 
Ch. 'a. 
 
 GENERAL TERMS. 
 
 275 
 
 these abstract ideas. For tlte having the essence of any species being that 
 which makes any thing to be of that species, and tlie conformity to the idea 
 to which the name is annexed being that which gives a right to that name ; 
 the ^having fhe. essence, and the having that. conformity, must needs be the 
 same 'thing;" since to he of any species, and to have a right to the name of 
 that species, is all one. As, for example, to be a man, or of the species man, 
 
 when you say', “ tlie real essence of a man, anil a horse, and a tree,” but that there 
 are such kinds already set out by the signification of these names, man, horse, tree? 
 And what, I beseech your lordship, is the signification of each of these specific 
 names, but the complex idea it stands for? And that complex idea is the nominal 
 essence, and nothing else. So that taking man, as your lordship does here, to 
 stand for a kind or sort of individuals, all which agree in that common complex 
 idea, which that specific name stands for, it is certain that the real essence of all 
 the individuals comprehended under the specific name man, in your use of it, 
 -would be just the same; let others leave out or put into their complex idea of man 
 what they please; because the real essence on which that unaltered complex idea, 
 i. e. those properties depend, must necessarily' be concluded to be the same. 
 
 For I take it for granted, that in using the name man, in this place, your lord- 
 ship uses it for that complex idea which is in your lordship’s mind of that species. 
 So that your lordship, by' putting it for, or substituting it in, the place of that com- 
 plex idea where y 7 ou say the real essence of it is just as it was, or the very' same as 
 it was, does suppose the idea it stands for to be steadily the same. For, if I change 
 the signification of the word man, whereby it may not comprehend just the same 
 individuals which in your lordship’s sense it does, but shut out some. of those that 
 to your lordship are men in your signification of the word man, or take in others to 
 wliieh your lordship does not allow the name man ; I do not think you will say, that 
 the real essence of man in both these senses is the same. And yet your lordship 
 seems to say' so, when you say', ‘"Let men mistake in the complication of their ideas, 
 either in leaving out or putting in what doth not belong to them and let their 
 ideas be what they' please, the real essence of the individuals comprehended under 
 the names annexed to these ideas will be the same ; for so, I humbly conceive, it 
 must be put, to make out what your lordship aims at. For, as your lordship puts 
 it by' the name of man, or any' other specific name, your lordship seems to me to 
 suppose, that that name stands for, and not for, the same idea, at the same time. 
 
 For example, my lord, let your lordship’s idea, to which you annex the sign man, 
 he a rational animal : let another man’s idea be a rational animal of such a shape ; 
 let a third man’s idea be of an animal of such a size and shape, leaving out ration- 
 ality ; let a fourth’s be an animal with a body of such a shape, and an immaterial 
 substance, with a power of reasoning ; let a fifth leave out of his idea an immaterial 
 substance. It is plain every one of these will call his a man, as well as your lord- 
 ship ; and yet it is as plain that men, as standing for all these distinct, complex 
 ideas, cannot be supposed to have the same internal constitution, i. e. the same real 
 essence. The truth is, every distinct abstract idea with the name to it, makes a 
 real distinct kind, whatever the real essence (which we know not of any of them) be. 
 
 And therefore I grant it true what your lordship says in the next words, “ and let 
 the nominal essences differ ever so much, the real common essences or nature of 
 the several kinds are not at all altered by them,” i. e. that our thoughts or ideas 
 cannot alter the real constitutions that are in things that exist, there is nothing more 
 certain. But yet it is true, that the change of ideas, to which we annex them, can 
 and does alter the signification of their names, and thereby' alter the kinds, which 
 by these names we rank and sort them into. Your lordship farther adds, “and 
 these real essences are unchangeable,” i. e. the internal constitutions are unchangea- 
 ble. Of what, I beseech your lordship, are the internal constitutions unchangeable ? 
 Not of any thing that exists, but of God alone ; for they' may be changed all as easily 
 by that hand that made them, as the internal frame of a watch. What then is h 
 that is unchangeable ? The internal constitution, or real essence of a species ;• 
 which in plain English, is no more but this, whilst the same specific name, v. g. of 
 man, horse, or tree, is annexed to, or made the sign of the same abstract complex 
 idea, under which I rank several individuals ; it is impossible but the real consti- 
 tution on which th.xt unaltered, complex idea, or nominal essence depends, must b" 
 
276 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3 
 
 and to have a right to the name man, is the same thing. Again, to he a man 
 or of the species man, and have the essence of a man, is the same thing, 
 Now since nothing can be a man, or have a right to the name man, but what 
 has a conformity to the abstract idea the name man stands for ; nor any thing 
 be a man, or have a right to the species man, but what has the essence of 
 that species : it follows that the abstract idea for which the name stands, amd 
 the essence of the species is one and the same. From whence it is easy to 
 observe, that the essences of the sorts of things, and consequently the sort- 
 ing of this, is the workmanship of the understanding, that abstracts and makes 
 those general ideas. 
 
 Sect. 13. They are the workmanship of the understanding, but have 
 their foundation in the similitude of things. — I would not here be thought 
 to forget, much less to deny, that nature in the production of things makes 
 several of them alike ; there is nothing more obvious, especially in the races 
 of animals and all things propagated by seed. But yet, I think, we may say 
 the sorting of them under names is the workmanship of the understanding, 
 taking occasion from the similitude it observes among them to make abstract 
 general ideas, and set them up in the mind, with names annexed to them, as 
 patterns or forms (for in that sense the word form has a very proper signifi- 
 cation), to which as particular things existing are found to agree, so they 
 come to be of that species, have that denomination, or are put into that clas- 
 sis. For when we say, this is a man, that a horse ; this justice, that cruelty; 
 this a watch, that a jack ; what do we else but rank things under different 
 specific names, as agreeing to those abstract ideas, of which we have made 
 those names the signs! And what are the essences of those species, set out 
 and marked by names, but those abstract ideas in the mind ; which are, as it 
 were, the bonds between particular things that exist, and the names they are 
 to be ranked under! And when general names have any connexion with 
 particular beings, these abstract ideas are the medium that unites them ; so 
 that the essences of species, as distinguished and denominated by us, neither 
 are, nor can be any thing, but those precise abstract ideas we have in our 
 minds. And therefore the supposed real essences of substances, if different 
 from our abstract ideas, cannot be the essences of the species we rank things 
 into. For two species may be one as rationally as two different essences 
 be the essence of one species : and I demand what are the alterations may, or 
 may not, be in a horse or lead, without making either of them to be of another 
 species! In determining the species of things by our abstract ideas, this is 
 easy to resolve : but if any one will regulate himself herein by supposed real 
 essences, he will, I suppose, be at a loss ; and he will never be able to know 
 when any thing precisely ceases to be of the species of a horse or lead. 
 
 Sect. 14. Each distinct abstract idea is a distinct essence. — Nor will any 
 one wonder that I say these essences, or abstract ideas (which are the mea- 
 sures of name, and the boundaries of species,) are the workmanship of the 
 understanding, who considers, that at least the complex ones are often, in 
 several men, different collections of simple ideas ; and therefore that is covet- 
 ousness to one man, which is not so to another. Nay, even in substances, 
 
 the same, i. e. in other words, where we find all the same properties, we have rea- 
 son to conclude there is the same real, internal constitution from which those pro, 
 perties flow. 
 
 But your lordship p roves the real essences to he unchangeable, because God 
 makes them, in these following words : “ for, however there may happen some va- 
 riety in individuals by particular accidents, yet the essences of men, and horses, 
 and trees, remain always the same : because they do not depend on the ideas of 
 men, hut on the will of the Creator, who hath made several sorts of beings. ” 
 
 It is true, the real constitutions or essences of particular things existing do not 
 depend on the ideas of men, but on the will of the Creator : but their being ranked 
 into sorts, under such and such names, does depend, and wholly depend, on the 
 ideas of men. 
 
Ch. b. 
 
 GENERAL TERMS. 
 
 277 
 
 where their abstract ideas seem to be taken from the things themselves, they 
 are not constantly the same ; no, not in that species which is most familiar to 
 us, and with which we have the most intimate acquaintance ; it having been 
 more than once doubted, whether the fcetus born of a woman were a man ; 
 even so far, as that it hath been debated, whether it were, or were not to be 
 nourished and baptized ; which could not be, if the abstract idea or essence, to 
 which the name man belonged, were of nature’s making, and were not the 
 uncertain and various collection of simple ideas, which the understanding puts 
 together, and then abstracting it, affixed a name to it. So that in truth every 
 distinct abstract idea is a distinct essence : and the names that stand for such 
 ‘hstinct ideas are the names of things essentially different. Thus a circle is 
 as essentially different from an oval, as a sheep from a goat; and rain is as 
 essentially different from snow, as water from earth ; the abstract idea which 
 is the essence of one being impossible to be communicated to the other. And 
 thus any two abstract ideas, that in any part vary one from another, with two 
 distinct names annexed to them, constitute two distinct sorts, or, if you 
 please, species, as essentially different, as any two of the most remote or 
 opposite in the world. 
 
 Sect. 15. Real and nortpinaL essences. — -But since, the essences of things 
 are thought by ^(Tme'Xand not without reason) to be wholly unknown, it may 
 not be amiss to consider the several significations of the word essence. 
 
 First, essetiee may be taken for the being of any thing, whereby it is what 
 ilT7sr~A5ffThus the real internal, but generally, in substances, unknown con- 
 'stitution of things, whereon their discoverable qualities depend, may be called 
 their essence. This is the proper original signification of the word, as is 
 evident from the formation of it ; essentia, in its primary notation, signifying 
 properly being. And in this sense it is still used, when we speak of the es- 
 sence of particular things, without giving them any name. 
 
 Secondly, -the learning and disputes of the schools having been much busied 
 about genus and species, the word essence has almost lost its primary signi- 
 fication ; and instead of the real constitution of things, has been almost 
 wholly applied to the artificial constitution of genus and species. It is true, 
 there is ordinarily supposed a real constitution of the sorts of things ; and it is 
 past doubt, there must be some real constitution, on which any collection of 
 simple ideas coexisting must depend. But it being evident that things are 
 ranked under names into sorts or species, only as they agree to certain ab- 
 stract ideas to which we have annexed those names, the essence of each ge- 
 nus or sort comes to be nothing but that abstract idea, which the general or 
 sortal (if I may have leave so to call it from sort, as I do general from genus) 
 name stands for. And this we shall find to be that which the word essence 
 imports in its most familiar use. These two sorts of essences, I suppose, 
 may not ynfitly be termed, the one the real, the other the nominal essence. 
 
 Sect. 16. Constant connexion between the na me an d nominal essence — 
 Between, the nominal- essence aurLthe name there is so near a connexion, 
 that the name of any sort of things cannot be attributed to any particular be- 
 ing but what has this essence, whereby it answers that abstract idea, whercoi 
 that name is the sig n. — _____ 
 
 Sect. 17. Supposition, that species are distinguished by their real essen- 
 ces, useless. — Concerning the real essences of corporeal substances (to men- 
 tion these only), there are, if I mistake not, two opinions. The one is of 
 those who, using the word essence for they know not what, suppose a cer- 
 tain number of those essences, according to which all natural things are made, 
 and wherein they do exactly every one of them partake, and so become of 
 this or that species. The other and more rational opinion is, of those who 
 look on all natural things to have a real, but unknown constitution of their 
 insensible parts ; from which flow those sensible qualities w r hich serve us to 
 distinguish them one from another, according as we have occasion to rank 
 them into sorts under common denominations. The former of these opin- 
 ons, which supposes these essences as a certain number of forms or moulds, 
 
2 78 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 wherein all natural things that exist are cast and do equally partake, has, I 
 imagine, very much perplexed the knowledge of natural things. The 
 frequeqt productions of monsters, in all the species of animals, and of 
 changelings and other strange issues of human birth, carry with them diffi- 
 culties not possible to consist with this hypothesis : since it is as impossible 
 that two things, partaking exactly of the same real essence, should have 
 different properties, as that two figures partaking of the same real essence of 
 a circle should have different properties. But were there no other reason 
 against it, yet the supposition of essences that cannot be known, and the 
 making of them nevertheless to be that which distinguishes the species of 
 thing's, is so wholly useless and unserviceable to any part of our knowledge, 
 that that alone were sufficient to make us lay it by, and content ourselves 
 with such essences of the sorts or species of things, as come within the reach 
 of our knowledge; which, when seriously considered, will be found, as I 
 have said, to be nothing else but those abstract complex ideas to which we 
 have annexed distinct general names. 
 
 Sect. 18. Real and nominal essence the same in simple ideas and modes, 
 different in substances. — Essences being thus distinguished into nominal and 
 real, we may farther observe, that in the species of simple ideas and modes, 
 they are always the same, but in substances, always quite different. Thus 
 a figure, including a space between three lines, is the real as well as nominal 
 essence of a triangle ; it being not only the abstract idea to which the general 
 name is annexed, but the very essentia or being of the tiling itself, that 
 foundation from which all its properties flow, and to which they are all in- 
 separably annexed. But it is far otherwise concerning that parcel of matter 
 which makes the ring on my finger, wherein these two essences are apparently 
 different. For it is the real constitution of its insensible parts, on which de- 
 pend all those properties of colour, weight, fusibility, fixedness, &c. which are 
 to be found in it, which constitution we know not, and so having no 
 particular idea of, have no name that is the sign of it. But yet it is its colour, 
 weight, fusibility, fixedness, &c. which makes it to be gold, or gives it aright 
 to that name, which is therefore its nominal essence ; since nothing can be 
 called gold, but what has a conformity of qualities to that abstract complex 
 idea to which that name is annexed. But this distinction of essences be- 
 longing particularly to substances, we shall, when we come to consider their 
 names, have an occasion to treat of more fully. 
 
 Sect. 19. Essences ingenerable and incorruptible. — That such abstract 
 ideas, with names to them, as we have been speaking of, are essences, may 
 farther appear by what we are told concerning essences, viz. that they are all 
 ingenerable and incorruptible : which cannot be true of the real constitutions 
 ‘ of things, which begin and perish with them. All things that exist, besides 
 their author, are all liable to change ; especially those things we are ac- 
 quainted with, and have ranked into bands under distinct names of ensigns. 
 Thus that which was grass to-day is to-morrow the flesh of a sheep, and with- 
 in a few days after becomes part of a man : in all which, and the like 
 changes, it is evident their real essence, i. e. that constitution, whereon the 
 properties of these several things depended, is destroyed, and perishes with 
 them. But essences being taken for ideas, established in the mind, with 
 names annexed to them, they are supposed to remain steadily the same, 
 whatever mutations the particular substances are liahle to. For whatever 
 becomes of Alexander and Bucephalus, the ideas to which man and horse are 
 annexed are supposed nevertheless to remain the same ; and so the essences 
 of those species are preserved whole and undestroyed, whatever changes 
 happen to any or all of the individuals of those species. By this means, the 
 essence of a species rests safe and entire, without the existence of so much 
 as one individual of that kind. For were there now no circle existing any 
 where in the world (as perhaps that figure exists not any where exactly 
 marked out), yet the idea annexed to that name would not cease to be what 
 it is ; nor cease to be as a pattern to determine which of the particular figures 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 GENERAL TERMS. 
 
 279 
 
 we meet with have or have not a right to the name circle, ana so to show 
 which of them, by having that essence, was of that species. And though 
 there neither were nor had been in nature such a beast as an unicorn, or 
 such a fish as a mermaid; yet supposing those names to stand for complex 
 abstract ideas, that contained no inconsistency in them, the essence of a mer- 
 maid is as intelligible as that of a man ; and the idea of an unicorn as cer- 
 tain, steady, and permanent as that of a horse. From what has been 
 said, it is evident, that the doctrine of the immutability of essences proves 
 them to be only abstract ideas ; and is founded on the relation established be- 
 tween them and certain sounds as signs of them ; and will always be true as 
 long as the same name can have the same signification. 
 
 S^ct. 20. Recapitulation. — To conclude, this is that which in short 1 
 woidTsay, viz. that all the great business of genera and species, and their 
 essences, amounts to no more but this, that men making abstract ideas, and 
 settling them in their minds with names annexed to them, do thereby enable 
 themselves to consider things, and discourse of them, as it were in bundles, 
 for the' easier and readier improvement and communication of their know- 
 ledge ; which would advance but slowly, were their words and thoughts con- 
 fined only to particulars. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF THE NAMES OF SIMPLE IDEAS. 
 
 Sect- T. Names of simple ide as, modes, and substances, have each some.- 
 tliing peculia r.— wlifHs7~asTlTave~ shown, signify nothing imine- 
 <lTatelyrbwt-tfie ideasmMhe mind of the speaker ; yet upon a nearer survey 
 we shall find that the names of simple ideas, mixed modes (under which I 
 comprised relations too,) and natural substances, have each of them some- 
 thing peculiar and different from the other. For example : 
 
 Sect. 2. First, names of simple ideas and sylhstance s intimate real exist- 
 ence. — i%‘st 7 ‘TfreTTames of simple ideas and substances! withThe abstract 
 ideas m~tB<r mind which they immediately signify, intimate also some real 
 existence, from which was derived their original pattern. But the names of 
 
 thoughts any farther, as we shall see more at large iiTthe' following chapter. 
 
 Sect. 3. Secondly, names of simple ideas and modes signify always both 
 real and nominal essence. — Secondly, The names iof simple ideas arid modes 
 signify^ahvaysthe-real-as-well as nominal essence of their species. But the 
 names-f>f-T>AumLaiibstancps signify rarely, if ever, ally thing but barely the 
 nominal essence s of t ho se speci es ; as we shall show in the chapter that treats 
 of the names of substances in particular. 
 
 Sect. 4. Thirdly . names of sim ple ideas undefinable . — Thirdly, The names 
 of simple ideas are not capable ofmiydefirritkutpLhenitafnes of all complex ideas 
 are. It has not, that I know, been yet observed by any body what words are, 
 and what are not capable of being defined ; the want whereof is (as I am apt 
 to think) not seldom the occasion of great wrangling and obscurity in men’s 
 discourses, while some demand definitions of terms that cannot be defined ; 
 and others think they ought not to rest satisfied in an explication made by 
 a more general word, and its restriction (or, to speak in terms of art, by a 
 . genus and difference,) when even after such definition made according to- 
 rule, those who hear it have often no more a clear conception of the meaning 
 of the word than they had before. This at least I think, that the showing 
 what words are, and what are not capable of definitions, and wherein consists 
 a good definition, is not wholly beside our present purpose ; and perhaps 
 will afford so much light to the nature of these signs, and our ideas, as to- 
 deserve a more particular consideration. 
 
280 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 S ec'Pt-5t -Ifi-all -we^e-definah IsfitwxmliLL^a'process in infinitum. — I will 
 Hot here trouble myself to prove that all terms are not definable from that pro- 
 gress in infinitum, which it will visibly lead us into, if we should allow that 
 all names could be defined. For if the terms of one definition were still to 
 be defined by another, where at last should we stop ! But I shall, from the 
 nature of our ideas, and the signification of our words, show why some names 
 can, and others cannot, be defined, and which they are. 
 
 Sec t, J-L -W-hat a definition? -is 1 think it is agreed that a definition is 
 nothing else, but the showing the meaning of one word by several other not 
 synonymous terms,. The meaning of words being only the uleas— th-e-y-are 
 made'to stand for by him that uses them, the meaning of any term is then 
 shown, or the word is defined, when by other words the idea it is made the 
 sign of, and annexed to, in the mind of the speaker, is, as it were, repre- 
 sented or set before the view of another, and thus its signification ascer- 
 tained; this is the only use and end of definitions, and therefore the only 
 measure of what is, or is not a good definition. 
 
 Sect. 7. Sitnple ideas why undefinahle. — This being premised, I say that 
 the names of simple ideas, and those only, are incapable of being defined. 
 The reason whereof is this ; that the several terms of a definitian,^signifying 
 several ideas, they can altogether by no means represent an idea, which has 
 no composition at all : and therefore a definition, which is properly nothing 
 but the showing the meaning of one word by several others not signifying 
 each the same thing, can in the names of simple ideas have no place. 
 
 Sect. 8. Instances ; motion.— The not observing this difference in our 
 ideas, and their names, has produced that eminent trifling in the schools, 
 which is so easy to be observed in the definitions they give us of some few ol 
 these simple ideas. For as to the greatest part of them, even those masters 
 of definitions were fain to leave them untouched, merely by the impossibility 
 they found in it. What more exquisite jargon could the wit of man invent 
 than this definition, “ The act of a being in power as far forth as in power V’ 
 which would puzzle any rational man, to whom it was not already known by 
 its famous absurdity, to guess what word it could ever be supposed to be the 
 explication of. If Tully, asking a Dutchman what “ heweeginge ” was, should 
 have received this explication in his own language, that it was “ actus entis 
 in potentia quatenus in potentia I ask whether any one can imagine he 
 could thereby have understood what the word “ heweeginge ” signified, or 
 have guessed what idea a Dutchman ordinarily had in his mind, and would 
 signify to another, when he used that sound. 
 
 Sect. 9. Nor have the modern philosophers, who have endeavoured to 
 throw off the jargon of the schools, and speak intelligibly, much better suc- 
 ceeded in defining simple ideas, whether by explaining their causes, or any 
 otherwise. The atomists, who define motion to be a passage from one place 
 to another, what do they more than put one synonymous word for another 1 
 For what is passage other than motion 1 And if they were asked what pas- 
 sage was, how could they better define it than by motion 1 For is it not at 
 least as proper and significant to say, passage is a motion from one place to 
 another, as to say, motion is a passage, &c.? This is to translate, and not 
 to define, when we change two words of the same signification one for an- 
 other ; which, when one is better understood than the other, may serve to 
 discover what idea the unknown stands for ; but is very far from a definition, 
 unless we will say, every English word in the dictionary is the definition of 
 the Latin word it answers, and that motion is a definition of motus. Nor 
 will the successive application of the parts of the superficies of one body to 
 those of another, which the Cartesians give us, prove a much better definition 
 of motion, when well examined. 
 
 Sect. 10. Light. — “ The act of perspicuous, as far forth as perspicuous,’’ 
 is another peripatetic definition of a simple idea ; which though not more aj 
 surd than the former of motion, yet betrays its uselessness and insignificancy 
 more plainly; because experience will easily convince any one, that it cannot 
 
Ch. 4. 
 
 NAMES OF SIMPLE IDEAS. 
 
 281 
 
 make the meaning of the word light (which it pretends to define) at all un- 
 derstood by a blind man ; but the definition of motion appears not at first 
 sight so useless, because it escapes this way of trial. For this simple idea, 
 entering by the touch as well as sight, it is impossible to show an example 
 of any one, who has no other way to get the idea of motion but barely by the 
 definition of that name. Those who tell us that light is a great number of 
 little globules, striking briskly on the bottom of the eye, speak more intel- 
 ligibly than the schools ; but yet these words, ever so well understood, would 
 make the idea the word light stands for no more known to a man that under- 
 stands it not before, than if one should tell him that light was nothing but a 
 company of little tennis-balls, which fairies all day long struck with rackets 
 against some men’s foreheads, whilst they passed by others. For granting 
 this explication of the thing to be true, yet the idea of the cause of light, it 
 we had it ever so exact, would no more give us the idea of light itself, as it 
 is such a particular perception in us, than the idea of the figure and motion 
 of a sharp piece of steel would give us the idea of that pain which it is able 
 to cause in us. For the cause of any sensation, and the sensation itself, in 
 all the simple ideas of one sense, are two ideas ; and two ideas so different 
 and distant from one another, that no two can be more so. And, therefore, 
 should Des Cartes’s globules strike ever so long on the retina of a man, who 
 was blind by a gutta serena, he would thereby never have any idea of light, 
 or any thing approaching it, though he understood what little globules were, 
 and what striking on another body was, ever so well. And therefore the 
 Cartesians very well distinguish between the light which is the cause of that 
 sensation in us, and the idea which is produced in us by it, and is that which 
 is properly light. 
 
 Sect. 11. Si mple ideas, why undeHnab le. farther explained . — Simple 
 ideas, as lias been shown, are only to be got by those "iflipressions- objects 
 themselves make on our minds, by the proper inlets appointed to each sort. 
 If they are not received this way, all the words in the world, made use of to 
 explain or define any of their names, will never be able to produce in us the 
 idea it stands for. For words, being sounds, can produce in us no other simple 
 ideas than of those very sounds, nor excite any in us but by that voluntary 
 connexion which is known to be between them and those simple ideas, which 
 common use has made them signs of. He that thinks otherwise, let him try 
 if any words can give him the taste of a pine-apple, and make him have the 
 true idea of the relish of that celebrated delicious fruit. So far as he is told 
 it has a resemblance with any tastes, whereof he has the ideas already in his 
 memory, imprinted there by sensible objects not strangers to his palate, so 
 far may he approach that resemblance in his mind. But this is not giving us 
 that idea by a definition, but exciting in us other simple ideas by their known 
 names ; which will be still very different from the true taste of that fruit itself. 
 In light and colours, and all other simple ideas, it is the same thing ; for the 
 signification of sounds is not natural, but only imposed and arbitrary. And 
 no definition of light or redness is more fitted, or able to produce either of 
 those ideas in us, than the sound light, or red, by itself. For to hope to pro- 
 duce an idea of light or colour by a sound, however formed, is to expect that 
 sounds should be visible, or colours audible, and to make the ears do the office 
 of all the other senses : which is all one as to say, that we might taste, smell, 
 and see by the ears ; a sort of philosophy worthy only of Sanchc Pancha, who 
 had the faculty to see Dulcinea by hearsay. And therefore he that has not 
 before received into his mind, by the proper inlet, the simple idea which any 
 word stands for, can never come to know the signification of that word by 
 any other words or sounds whatsoever, put together according to any rules 
 of definition. The only way is by applying to his senses the proper object, 
 and so producing that idea in him, for which he has learned the name already. 
 A studious blind man, who -had mightily beat his head about visible objects, 
 and made use of the explication of his books and friends to understand those 
 names of light and colours which often came in Ills way, bragged one day 
 2 L 
 
282 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 that he now understood what scarlet signified. Upon which his friend de- 
 manding what scarlet was 1 the blind man answered, it was like the sound 
 of a trumpet. Just such an understanding of the name of any other simple 
 'dea will he have, who hopes to get it only from a definition, or other words 
 made use of to explain it, 
 
 Sect. 12. The contrary showed in complex ideas, by instances of a sta. 
 tue and rainbow. — The case is quite otherwise in complex ideas; which con- 
 sisting of several simple ones, it is in the power of words, standing for the 
 several ideas that make that composition, to imprint complex ideas in the 
 mind which were never there before, and so make their names bo understood. 
 In such collections of ideas, passing under one name, definition, or the teach- 
 ing the signification of one word by several others, has place, and may make 
 us understand the names of things which never came within the reach of our 
 senses ; and frame ideas suitable to those in other men’s minds, when they use 
 those names : provided that none of the terms of the definition stand for any 
 such simple ideas, which he to whom the explication is made has never yet 
 had in his thought. Thus the word statue may be explained to a blind man 
 by other words, when picture cannot; his senses having given him the idea 
 of figure, but not of colours, which therefore words cannot excite in him. 
 This gained the prize to the painter against the statuary : each of which con- 
 tending for the excellency of his art, and the statuary bragging that his was 
 to be preferred, because it reached farther, and even those who had lost their 
 eyes could yet perceive the excellency of »it, the painter agreed to refer him- 
 self to the judgment of a blind man ; who being brought where there was a 
 statue, made by the one, and a picture drawn by the other; he was first led to 
 the statue, in which he traced with his hands all the lineaments of the face 
 and body, and with great admiration applauded the skill of the workman. 
 But being led to the picture, and having his hands laid upon it, was told that 
 now he touched the head, and then the forehead, eyes, nose, &c. as his hands 
 moved over the parts of the picture on the cloth, without finding any the least 
 distinction : whereupon he cried out, that certainly that must needs be a very 
 admirable and divine piece of workmanship, which could represent to them all 
 those parts where he could neither feel nor perceive any thing. 
 
 Sect. 13. He that should use the word rainbow to one who knew all 
 those colours, but yet had never seen that phenomenon, would, by enumera- 
 ting the figure, largeness, position, and order of the colours, so well define 
 that word, that it might be perfectly understood. But yet that definition, 
 how exact and perfect soever, would never make a blind man understand it , 
 because several of the simple ideas that make that complex one, being such 
 as he never received by sensation and experience, no words are able to ex- 
 cite them in his mind. 
 
 Sect. 14. The names of complex ideas when to be made intelligible by 
 wonls. — Simple 'ideas, as has been shown, can only be got by experience, 
 from those objects which are proper to produce in us those perceptions 
 When by this means we have our minds stored with them, and know the 
 nanws for them, then we are in a condition to define, and by definition to un- 
 derstand the names of complex ideas, that are made up of them. But when 
 any term stands for a simple idea, that a man has never yet had in his mind, 
 it is impossible by any words to make known its meaning to him. When 
 any term stands for an idea a man is acquainted with, but is ignorant that 
 that term is a sign of it; there another name, of the same idea which he has 
 been accustomed to, may make him understand its meaning. But in no case 
 whatsoever is any name of any simple idea capable of a definition. 
 
 Sect. 15. Fourthly, names of simple ideas least doubtful. — Fourthly, But 
 though the names of simple ideas have not the help of definition to determine 
 their signification; yet that hinders not but that they are generally less doubt- 
 ful and uncertain, than those of mixed modes and substances ; because they 
 standing only for one simple perception, men, for the most part, easily and 
 perfectly agree in their signification ; and there is little room for mistake and 
 
Ch. 4. 
 
 NAMES OF SIMPLE IDEAS. 
 
 283 
 
 wrangling about their meaning. He that knows once that whiteness is the 
 name of that colour he has observed in snow or milk, will not be apt to mis- 
 apply that word, as long as he retains that idea ; which when he has quite 
 lost, he is not apt to mistake the meaning of it, but perceives he understands 
 it not. There is neither a multiplicity of simple ideas, to be put together, 
 which makes the doubtfulness in the names of mixed modes ; nor a supposed 
 but an unknown real essence, with properties depending thereon, the precise 
 number whereof is also unknown, which makes the difficulty in the names of 
 substances. But on the contrary, in simple ideas the whole signification of 
 the name is known at once, and consists not of parts, whereof more or less 
 being put in, the idea may be varied, and so the signification of name be ob- 
 scure and uncertain. 
 
 'Sect. 16. Fifthly, simple ideas have few ascents in linea prcedicamen- 
 tali . — Fift My-,~£his fart her may be observed concerning simple ideas and 
 „their. namesr that they have but few ascents in linea pr a d i c ament al i (as they 
 call it) from the lowest species to the surnmum genus. The reason whereof 
 is, that the lowest species being but one simple idea, nothing can be left out 
 of it ; that so the difference being taken away, it may agree with some other 
 thing in one idea common to them both ; which, having one name, is the ge- 
 nus of the other two : v. g. there is nothing that can be left out of the idea 
 of white and red, to make them agree in one common appearance, and so 
 have one general name ; as rationality being left out of the complex idea of 
 man, makes it agree with brute, in the more general idea and name of ani- 
 mal : and therefore when, to avoid unpleasant enumerations, men would com- 
 prehend both white and red, and several other such simple ideas under one 
 general name, they have been fain to do it by a word which denotes only the 
 way they get into the mind. For when white, red, and yellow are all com- 
 prehended under the genus or name colour, it signifies no more but such ideas 
 as are produced in the mind only by the sight, and have entrance only 
 through the eyes. And when they would frame yet a more general term, to 
 comprehend both colours and sounds, and the like simple ideas, they do it by 
 a word that signifies all such as come into the mind only by one sense : and 
 so the general term quality, in its ordinary acceptation, comprehends colours, 
 sounds, tastes, smells, and tangible qualities, with distinction from extension, 
 number, motion, pleasure, and pain, which make impressions on the mind, 
 and introduce their ideas by more senses than one. 
 
 Sect. 17. Sixthly, names of simple ideas stand for ideas, not at all arbitrary. 
 '—Sixt hlij ; T h eTTarnes of simple ideas, substances, and mixed modes, have also 
 this difference ; that those of mixed modes stand for ideas perfectly arbitrary ; , 
 those of substances are not perfectly so, but refer to a pattern, though with some 
 latitude ; and those of simple ideas are perfectly taken from the existence of 
 things, and are not arbitrary at all. Which, what difference it makes in the 
 significations of their names, we shall see in the following chapters. 
 
 The names of simple modes differ little from those of simple ideas. 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 OF THE NAMES OF MIXED MODES AND RELATIONS. 
 
 Sect. 1. 77 iey~stand for abstract ideas, as wettas other ge ixeralnames.—^- 
 The names of mi xed m odeaJjei«|^eTEeraTr^ been shown, for 
 
 sorts of species ofThings, each of which has its peculiar essence. The 
 essences of these species also, as has been shown, are nothing but the 
 abstract ideas in the mind, to which the name is annexed. Thus far the 
 names and essences of mixed modes have nothing but what is common to them 
 with other ideas ; but if we take a little nearer survey of them, we shah find 
 Jiat they have something peculiar, which perhaps may deserve our attention. 
 
284 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3 
 
 Sect. 2. First, the ideas they stand for are made by the understanding . — 
 THe ffirst particularity I shaU ohserve-in. them is, that the abstract ideas, or, 
 if you please, the essences of the several species- of mixed modes are made 
 by the understanding, wherein they dilifer from those of simple ideas : in 
 which sort the mind has no power to make any one, but only receives such 
 as are presented to it by the real existence of things operating upon it. 
 
 Sect. 3. Secondly, made arbitrarily, and without patterns. — In the next 
 place, these essences of the species of mixed modes are not only made by the 
 mind, but made very arbitrarily, made without patterns, or reference to any 
 real existence. Wherein they differ from those of substances, which carry 
 with them the supposition of some real being, from which they are taken, and 
 to which they are conformable. But in its complex ideas of mixed modes, 
 the mind takes a liberty not to follow the existence of things exactly. It unites 
 and retains certain collections, as so many distinct specific ideas, whilst 
 others, that as often occur in nature, and are as plainly suggested by outward 
 tilings, pass neglected, without particular names or specifications. Nor does 
 the mind, in these of mixed modes, as in the complex idea of substances, ex- 
 amine them by the real existence of things : or verify them by patterns, con- 
 taining such peculiar compositions in nature. To know whether his idea of 
 adultery or incest be right, will a man seek it any where among things exist, 
 ing '! Or is it true, because any one has been witness to such an action ? 
 No : but it suffices here, that men have put together such a collection into 
 one complex idea, that makes the archetype and specific idea, whether ever 
 any such action were committed in rerum natura or no. 
 
 Sect. A. How tivis- is -done. — To understand this right, we must consider 
 wherein this making of these complex ideas consists ; and that is not in the 
 making any new idea, but putting together those which the mind had before. 
 Wherein the mind does these three things : first,, it chooses- a certain num- 
 ber ; secondly, it gives them connexion, and makes them into one idea ; thirdly, 
 it ties them together by a name. If we examine how the mind proceeds in 
 these, and what liberty it takes in them, we shall easily observe how these 
 essences of the species of mixed modes are the workmanship of the mind, 
 and consequently, that the species themselves are of men’s making. 
 
 Sect. 5. Evidently arbitrary, in that the idea is often before the ex- 
 istence. — Nobody can doubt, but that these ideas of mixed modes are made 
 by a voluntary collection of ideas put together in the mind, independent 
 from any original patterns in nature, who will but reflect that this sort of 
 complex ideas may be made, abstracted, and have names given them, and 
 so a species be constituted, before any one individual of that species ever 
 existed. Who can doubt but the ideas of sacrilege or adultery might be 
 framed in the minds of men, and have names given them ; and so these 
 species of mixed modes be constituted, before either of them was ever 
 committed ; and might be as well discoursed of and reasoned about, and 
 as certain truths discovered of them, whilst yet they had no being but in 
 the understanding, as well as now, that they have but too frequently a real 
 existence! Whereby it is plain, how much the sorts of mixed modes are 
 the creatures of the understanding, where they have a being as subservient 
 to all the ends of real truth and knowledge, as when they really exist: and 
 we cannot doubt but law-makers have often made laws about species of ac- 
 tions, which were only the creatures of their own understandings ; beings 
 that had no other existence but in their own minds. And I think nobody 
 can deny, but that the resurrection was a species of mixed modes in the mind 
 before it really existed. 
 
 Sect. 6. Instances; murder, incest, stabbing. — To see how arbitrarily 
 these essences of mixed modes are made by the mind, we need but take a 
 view of almost any of them. A little looking into them will satisfy us, that 
 it is the mind that combines several scattered independent ideas into one 
 complex one, and, by the common name it gives them, makes them the es- 
 sence of a certain species, without regulating itself by any connexion they 
 
Ch. 5. 
 
 NAMES OE MIXED MODES. 
 
 285 
 
 have in nature. For what greater connexion in nature has the idea of a man, 
 than the idea of a sheep, with killing ; that this is made a particular species 
 of action, signified by the word murder, and the other not! Or what union 
 is there in nature between the idea of the relation of a father, with killing, 
 than that of a son, or neighbour: that those are combined into one complex 
 idea, and thereby made the essence of the distinct species parricide, whilst 
 the other makes no distinct species at all! But though they have made kill- 
 ing a man’s father, or mother, a distinct species from killing his son, or 
 daughter ; yet, in some other cases, son and daughter are taken in too, as well 
 as father and mother ; and they are all equally comprehended in the same 
 species, as in that of incest. Thus the mind in mixed modes arbitrarily unites 
 into complex ideas such as it finds convenient; whilst others, that have alto- 
 gether as much union in nature, are left loose, and never combined into one 
 idea, because they have no need of one name. It is evident, then, that the 
 mind by its free choice gives a connexion to a certain number of ideas, which 
 in nature have no more union with one another, than others that it leaves 
 out : why else is the part of the weapon, the beginning of the wound is made 
 with, taken notice of to make the distinct species called stabbing, and the 
 figure and matter of the weapon left out ! I do not say this is done without 
 reason, as we shall see more by and by; but this, I say, that it is done by the 
 free choice of the mind, pursuing its own ends ; and that therefore these spe- 
 cies of mixed modes are the workmanship of the understanding : and there is 
 nothing more evident, than that, for the most part, in the framing these ideas, 
 the mind searches not its patterns in nature, nor refers the ideas it makes to 
 the real existence of things ; but puts such together, as may best serve its 
 own purposes, without tying itself to a precise limitation of any thing that 
 really exists. 
 
 Sect. 7. But still subservient to the end of l a nguage . B ut though 
 THes^ complex ideas, or essences rnf mixed modes, depend on the mind, and 
 are made by it with great liberty; yet they are not made at random, and jum- 
 jled together without any reason at all. Though thesfe complex ideas be not 
 ilways copied from nature, yet they are always suited to the end for which 
 abstract ideas are made ; and though they be combinations made of ideas that 
 are loose enough, and have as little union in themselves, as several others to 
 which the mind never gives a connexion that combines them into one idea ; 
 yet they are always made for the convenience of communication, which is 
 the chief end of language. The use of language is -by short sounds to sig- 
 nify with ease and despatch general conceptions ; wherein not only abund- 
 ance of particulars may be contained, but also a great variety of independent 
 ideas collected into one complex one. In the making, therefore, of the spe- 
 cies of mixed modes, men have had regard only to such combinations as they 
 had occasion to mention one to another. Those they have combined into 
 distinct complex ideas, and given names to ; whilst others, that in nature 
 have as near a union, are left loose and unregarded. For to go no farther 
 than human actions themselves, if they would make distinct abstract ideas of 
 all the varieties might be observed in them, the number must be infinite, and 
 the memory confounded with the plenty, as well as overcharged to little pur- 
 pose. It suffices, that men make and name so many complex ideas of these 
 mixed modes, as they find they have occasion to have names for, in the or- 
 dinary occurrence of their affairs. If they join to the idea of killing the idea 
 of father, or mother, and so make a distinct species from killing a man’s son 
 or neighbour, it is because of the different heinousness of the crime, and the 
 distinct punishment is due to the murdering a man’s father and mother, dif- 
 ferent from what ought to be inflicted on the murder of a son or neighbour ; 
 and therefore they find it necessary to mention it by a distinct name, which 
 is the end of making that distinct combination. But though the ideas of 
 mother and daughter are so differently treated, in reference to the idea of 
 killing, that the one is joined with it, to make a distinct abstract idea with a 
 name, and so a distinct speciesi and the other not ; yet in respect of carnal 
 
286 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Rook 3 
 
 knowledge, they are both taken in under incest : and that still for the same 
 convenience of expressing under one name, and reckoning of one species, 
 such unclean mixtures as have a peculiar turpitude beyond others : and this 
 to avoid circumlocutions and tedious descriptions. 
 
 Sect. 8. Whereof the intranslatable words of divers langvjtges are a 
 proof. — A moderate skill in different languages will easily satisfy one of tile 
 truth of this, it being so obvious to observe great store of words in one lan- 
 guage, which have not any that answer them in another. Which plainly 
 shows, that those of one country, by their customs and manner of life, have 
 found occasion to make several complex ideas, and given names to them, 
 which others never collected into specific ideas. This could not have hap- 
 pened, if these species were the steady workmanship of nature, and not col- 
 lections made and abstracted by the mind, in order to naming, and for the 
 convenience of communication. The terms of our law, which are not empty 
 sounds, will hardly find words that answer them in the Spanish or Italian, no 
 scanty languages ; much less, I think, could any one translate them into the 
 Caribbee or Westoe tongues : and the Versura of the Romans, or Corban of 
 the Jews, have no words in other languages to answer them : the reason 
 whereof is plain, from what has been said. Nay, if we look a little more 
 nearly into this matter, and exactly compare different languages, we shall 
 find, that though they have words which in translations and dictionaries are 
 supposed to answer one another, yet there is scarce one of ten among the 
 names of complex ideas, especially of mixed modes, that stands for the same 
 precise idea, which the word does that in dictionaries it is rendered by. 
 There are no ideas more common, and less compounded, than the measures 
 of time, extension, and weight, and the Latin names, hora, ves, libra, are 
 without difficulty rendered by the English names, hour, foot, and pound : but 
 yet there is nothing more evident, than that the ideas a Roman annexed to 
 these Latin names were very far different from those which an Englishman 
 expresses by those English ones. And if either of these should make use of 
 the measures that those of the other language designed by their names, he 
 would be quite out in his account. These are too sensible proofs to be 
 doubted ; and we shall find this much more so, in the names of more abstract 
 and compounded ideas, such as are the greatest part of those which make up 
 moral discourses; whose names, when men come curiously to compare with 
 those they are translated into, in other languages, they will find very few of 
 them exactly to correspond in the whole extent of their significations. 
 
 Sect. 9. This shows species to be made for communication. — The reason 
 w'hy I take so particular notice of this is, that we may not be mistaken about 
 genera and species, and their essences, as if they were things regularly and 
 constantly made by nature, and had a real existence in things ; when they 
 appear, upon a more wary survey, to be nothing else but an artifice of the 
 understanding, for the easier signifying such collections of ideas as it should 
 often have occasion to communicate by one general term ; under which divers 
 particulars, as far forth as they agreed to that abstract idea, might be com- 
 prehended. And if the doubtful signification of the word species may make 
 it sound harsh to some, that I say the species of mixed modes are made by 
 the understanding ; yet, I think, it can by nobody be denied, that it is the 
 mind makes those abstract complex ideas to which specific names are given. 
 And if it be true, as it is, that the mind makes the patterns for sorting and 
 naming of things, I leave it to be considered who makes the boundaries of the 
 sort or species ; since with me species and sort have no other difference than 
 that of a Latin and English idiom. 
 
 Sect. 10. In mixed modes it is the name that ties the comb ination to- 
 gether, and makes it a species. — The near relation that there is between spe- 
 cies, essences, and their general names, at least in mixed modes, will farther 
 appear, when we consider that it is the name that seems to preserve those 
 essences, and give them their lasting duration. For the connexion between 
 the loose parts of those complex ideas being made by the mind, this union 
 
Ch. 5. 
 
 NAMES OP MIXED MODES. 
 
 28? 
 
 which has no particular foundation in nature, would cease again, were there 
 not something that did, as it were, hold It together, and keep the parts from 
 scattering. Though, therefore, it be the mind that makes the collection, it 
 is the name which is, as it were, the knot that ties them fast together. What 
 a vast variety of different ideas does the word triumphus hold together, and 
 deliver to us as one species ! Had this name been never made, or quite lost, 
 we might, no doubt, have had descriptions of what passed in that solemnity: 
 but yet, I think, that which holds those different parts together, in the unity 
 of one complex idea, is that very word annexed to it ; without which the 
 several parts of that would no more be thought to make one thing, than any 
 other show, which, having never been made but once, had never been united 
 into one complex idea, under one denomination. How much, therefore, in 
 mixed modes, the unity necessary to any essence depends on the mind, and 
 how much the continuation and fixing of that unity depends on the name in 
 common use annexed to it, I leave to be considered by those who look upon 
 essences and species as real established things in nature. 
 
 Sect. 11. Suitable to this, we find, that men speaking of mixed modes, 
 seldom imagine or take any other for species of them, but such as are set out 
 by name : becau'se-they--being L ©f-flraii J s ma'larig only, in order to naming,, no 
 such species are taken notice of, or supposed to be, unless a name be joined, 
 to it, as the sign of a man’s having combined into one idea several loose ones : 
 and by that name giving a lasting union to the parts, which could otherwise 
 cease to have any, as soon as the mind laid by that abstract idea, and ceased 
 actually to think on it. But, when a name is once annexed to it, wherein t he 
 parts of that complex idea have a settled and permanent union ; then is the 
 essence as it were established, and the species looked on as complete. For 
 to what purpose should the memory charge itself with such compositions, un- 
 less it were by abstraction to make them general 1 And to what purpose 
 make them general, unless it were that they might have general names, for 
 the convenience of discourse and communication 1 Thus we see, that kill 
 ing a man with a sword or a hatchet, are looked on as no distinct species of 
 action : but if the point of the sword first enter the body, it passes for a dis- 
 tinct species, where it has a distinct name ; as in England, in whose language 
 it is called stabbing: but in another country, where it has not happened to 
 be specified under a peculiar name, it passes not for a distinct species. But 
 in the species of corporeal substances, though it be the mind that makes the 
 nominal essence ; yet since those ideas which are combined in it are supposed 
 to have a union in nature, whether the mind joins them or no, therefore those 
 are looked on as distinct names, without any operation of the mind, either 
 abstracting or giving a name to that complex idea. 
 
 — &EOTT 12. F(w-4he ^rirrina.ls of mixed modes, we look no farther than the 
 mi nd,, which also shows them to he the workmanship of the undcrstaml- 
 rwg'.— Conforniable also 'to' what has been said concerning the essences of 
 the species of mixed modes, that they are the creatures of the understanding 
 rather than the works of nature : conformable, I say, to this, we find that 
 their names lead our thoughts to the mind, and no farther. When we speak 
 of justice, or gratitude, we frame to ourselves no imagination of any thing 
 existing, which we would conceive ; but our thoughts terminate in the ab- 
 stract ideas of those virtues, and look not farther: as they do, when we speak 
 of a horse, or iron, whose specific ideas we consider not as barely in the 
 mind, but as in things themselves, which afford the original patterns of those 
 ideas. But in mixed modes, at least the most considerable parts of them, 
 which are moral beings, we consider the original patterns as being in the 
 mind; and to those We refer for the distinguishing of particular beings undei 
 names. And hence I think it is, that these essences of the species of mixed 
 modes are by a more particular name calleiLnotions, as, by a peculiar right, 
 appertaining to the understanding. 
 
 Sect. 13. Their be ing m ade by the nnderstggj,d'mg. withowt-ftrttmvfi;- 
 . glwws - t he~ j fTttson~ why they are so compounded. — Hence likewise we may 
 
283 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 8 
 
 learn, why the complex ideas of mixed modes are commonly more com- 
 pounded and decompounded than those of natural substances. Because they 
 being- the workmanship of the understanding pursuing only its own ends, and 
 the conveniency of expressing in short those ideas it would make known to 
 another, it does with great liberty unite often in one abstract idea things that 
 in their nature have no coherence; and so, under one term, bundle together 
 a great variety of compounded and decompounded ideas. Thus the name of 
 procession, what a great mixture of independent ideas of persons, habits, ta- 
 pers, orders, motions, sounds, does it contain in that complex one, which 
 the mind of man has arbitrarily put together, to express by that one name ! 
 Whereas the complex ideas of the sorts of substances are usually made up of 
 only a small number of simple ones ; and in the species of animals, these two, 
 viz. shape and voice, commonly make the whole nominal essence. 
 
 Sect. 14. Names of mixed modes stand always for their real essences . — 
 Another thing we may observe from what has been said is, that the names of 
 mixed modes signify (when they have any determined signification) the real 
 essences of their species. For these abstract ideas being the workmanship 
 of the mind, and not referred to the real existence of things, there is no sup- 
 position of any thing more signified by that name, but barely that complex 
 idea the mind itself has formed, which is all it would have expressed by it : 
 and is that on which all the properties of the species depend, and from which 
 alone they all flow : and so in these the real and nominal essence is the same ; 
 which of what concernment it is to the certain knowledge of general truth, 
 we shall see hereafter. 
 
 Sect. 15. Why their names are usually got before their ideas. — This 
 also may show us the reason why, for the most part, the names of mixed 
 modes are got before the ideas they stand for are perfectly known. Because 
 there being no species of these ordinarily taken notice of, but what have 
 names ; and those species, or rather their essences, being abstract complex 
 ideas made arbitrarily by the mind ; it is convenient, if not necessary, to know 
 the names, before one endeavour to frame these complex ideas : unless a man 
 will fill his head with a company of abstract complex ideas, which others 
 having no names for, he has nothing to do with, but to lay by, and forget 
 again. I confess, that in the beginning of languages it. was necessary to 
 have the idea, before one gave it the name : and so it is still, where making 
 a new complex idea, one also, by giving it a new name, makes a new word. 
 But this concerns not languages made, which have generally pretty well pro- 
 vided tor ideas, which men have frequent occasion to have and communicate : 
 and in such, I ask, •‘whether it be not the ordinary method, that children learn 
 the names of mixed modes, before they have their ideas'! What one of a 
 thousand ever frames the abstract ideas of glory and ambition, before he has 
 heard the names of them? In simple ideas and substances I grant it is other- 
 wise ; which being such ideas as have a real existence and union in nature, 
 the ideas and names are got one before the other, as it happens. 
 
 Sect. 16. Reason of my being so large on this subject. — What has been 
 said here of mixed modes Ti," with very little difference, applicable also to- re- 
 lations ; which, since every man himself may observe, I may spare myself 
 the pains to enlarge on : especially, since what I have here said concerning 
 words in this third book, will possibly be thought by some to be much more 
 ban what so slight a subject required. I allow it might be brought into a 
 larrower compass ; but I was willing to stay my reader on an argument that 
 ippears to me new, and a little out of the way (I am sure it is one I thought 
 lot of when I began to write), that by searching it to the bottom, and •'turn- 
 ing it on every side, some part or other might meet with every one’s thoughts, 
 and give occasion to the most averse or negligent to reflect on a genera, 
 miscarriage, which, though of great consequence, is little taken notice of. 
 When it is considered what a pudder is made about essences, and how mucn 
 all sorts of knowledge, discourse, and conversation are pestered and disor- 
 dered by the careless and confused use and application of words, it will per- 
 
Ch. 5. 
 
 NAMES OF MIXED MODES. 
 
 289 
 
 haps be thought worth while thoroughly to lay it open. And I shall be par- 
 doned if I have dwelt long on an argument which, I think, therefore needs to 
 De incarnated; because the faults men are usually guilty of in this kind, are 
 not only the greatest Enderances of true knowledge, but are so well thought 
 of as to;;,pass for it-, - Men would often S'eb what a small pittance' of reason 
 and truth,' or possibly none at all, is mixed with those huffing opinioi.s thev 
 are swelled with, if they would but look beyond fashionable sounds, and observe 
 what ideas are, or are not comprehended under those words with which they 
 are so armed at all points, and with which they so confidently lay about 
 them. I shall imagine I have done some service to truth, peace, and learn- 
 ing, if, by any enlargement on this subject, I can make men reflect on their 
 own use of language ; and give them reason to suspect, that since it is fre- 
 quent for others, it may also be possible for them to have sometimes very 
 good and approved words in their mouths and writings, with very uncertain, 
 little, or no signification. And therefore it is not unreasonable for them to 
 be wary herein themselves, and not to be unwilling to have them examined 
 by others. With this design, therefore, I shall go on with what I have far- 
 ther to say concerning this matter. 
 
 t 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OF THE NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 
 
 Rect. 1. The common names of substances, stand for sorts. — The com- 
 mon narnSf^iubstariceSpas^eli as ot'hergeneral terms, stand for sorts ; 
 which is nothing else but the being made signs of such complex ideas, 
 wherein several particular substances do, or might agree, by virtue of which 
 they are capable of being comprehended in one common conception, and sig- 
 nified by one name. I say, do or might agree : for though there be but one 
 sun existing in the world, yet the idea of its being abstracted, so that more 
 substances (if there were several) might each agree in it ; it is as much a 
 sort, as if there were as many suns as there are stars. They want not their 
 reasons who think there are, and that each fixed star would answer the idea 
 the name sun stands for, to one who was placed in a due distance ; which, 
 by the way, may show us how much the sorts, or, if you please, genera and 
 species of things (for those Latin terms signify to me no more than the En- 
 glish word sort) depend on such collections of ideas as men have made, and 
 not on the real nature of things ; since it is not impossible but that, in pro- 
 priety of speech, that might be a sun to one, which is a star to another. 
 
 Sect. 2. The essence of each sort is the abstract idea. — The measure and 
 boundary oP-eaoIi-sfrrt, or Species, whereby it is constituted that particular 
 sort, and distinguished from others, is that we call its essence, which is no- 
 thing but that abstract idea to which the name is annexed ; so that every 
 thing contained in that idea is essential to that sort. This, though it be all 
 the e ssence of natural substances that we know, or by which we distinguish 
 them into sorts ; yet I call it by a peculiar name, the nominal essence, to dis- 
 tinguish it from the real constitution of substances, upon which depends this 
 nominal essence, and all the properties of that sort ; which, therefore, as has 
 b?en said, may be called the real essence : v. g. the nominal essence of gold 
 is that complex idea the word gold stands for, let it be, for instance, a body 
 yellow, of a certain weight, malleable, fusible, and fixed. But the real es- 
 sence is the constitution of the insensible parts of that body, on which those 
 qualities and all the other properties of gold depend. How far these two are 
 different, though they are both called essence, is obvious at first sight to 
 discover. 
 
 Sect. 8.- The... nominal and real essence different. — For though perhaps 
 voluntary motion, with serrsS arid reason, joined to'a'flddy of a certain shape, 
 
290 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 be the complex idea to which I, and others, annex the name man, and so be 
 the nominal essence of the species so called; yet nobody will say that that com- 
 plex idea is the real essence and source of all those operations, which are to 
 be found in any individual of that sort. The foundation of all those qualities, 
 which are the ingredients of our complex idea, is something quite different : 
 and had we such a knowledge of that constitution of man, from which his 
 faculties of moving, sensation, and reasoning, and other powers flow, and on 
 tvhich his so regular shape depends, as it is possible angels have, and it is 
 certain his Maker has ; we should have a quite other idea of his essence than 
 what now is contained in our definition of that species, be it what it will: and 
 our idea of any individual man would be as far different from what it is now. 
 as is his who knows all the springs and wheels and other contrivances within 
 of the famous clock at Strasburg, from that which a gazing countryman has 
 for it, who barely sees the motion of the hand, and hears the clock strike, 
 and observes only some of the outward appearances. 
 
 Sect. 4. Nothing essential to individuals . — That essence, in the ordinary 
 use of the word, relates to sorts ; and that it is considered in particular be- 
 ings no farther than as they are ranked into sorts ; appears from hence : that 
 take but away the abstract ideas, by which we sort individuals, and rank them 
 under common names, and then the thought of any thing essential to any of 
 them instantly vanishes ; we have no notion of the one without the other, 
 which plainly shows their relation. It is necessary for me to be as I am ; 
 God and nature has made me so : but there is nothing I have so essential 
 to me. An accident, or disease, may very much alter my colour, or shape ; 
 a fever, or fall, may take away my reason or memory, or both, and an apo- 
 plexy leave neither sense nor understanding, no, nor life. Other creatures 
 of my shape may be made with more and better, or fewer and worse facul- 
 ties than I have ; and others may have reason and sense in a shape and body 
 very different from mine. None of these are essential to the one, or the 
 other, or to any individual whatever, till the mind refers it to some sort or 
 species of things ; and then presently, according to the abstract idea of that 
 sort, something is found essential. Let any one examine his own thoughts, 
 and he will find that as soon as he supposes or speaks of essential, the con- 
 sideration of some species, or the complex idea, signified by some general 
 name, comes into his mind; and it is in reference to that, that this or that 
 quality is said to be essential. So that if it be asked, whether it he essential 
 to me or any other particular corporeal being to have reason 1 I sav no ; no 
 more than it is essential to this white thing I write on to have words in it. 
 But if that particular being be to be 1 counted of the sort man, and to have the 
 name man given it, then reason is essential to it, supposing reason to be a 
 part of the complex idea the name man stands for ; as it is essential to this 
 thing I write on to contain words, if I will give it the name treatise, and 
 rank it under that species. So that essential, and not essential, relate only 
 to our abstract ideas, and the names annexed to them : which amounts to no 
 more but this, that whatever particular thing has not in it those qualities, 
 which are contained in the abstract idea, which any general term stands for, 
 cannot be ranked under that species, nor be called by that name, since that 
 abstract idea is the very essence of that species. 
 
 Sect. 5. Thus if the idea of body, with some people, be bare extension or 
 space, then solidity is not essential to body : if others make the idea, to which 
 they give the natne body, to be solidity and extension, then solidity is essen- 
 tial to body. That, therefore, and that alone, is considered as essential, 
 which makes a part of the complex idea the name of a sort stands for. with- 
 out which no particular thing can be reckoned of that sort, nor be entitled to 
 that name. Should there be found a parcel of matter that had all the other 
 qualities that are in iron, but wanted obedience to the loadstone ; and would 
 neither be drawn by it, nor receive direction from it ; would anyone question 
 whether it wanted any thing essential 1 It would be absurd to ask, whether 
 a thing really existing wanted any thing essential to it Or could it be do 
 
Ch. 6. 
 
 NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 
 
 291 
 
 manded, whether this made an essential or specific Difference or no ; since 
 we have no other measure essential or specific, but our abstract ideas 1 And 
 to talk of specific differences in nature, without reference to general ideas 
 and names, is to talk unintelligibly. For I would ask any one, what is suf- 
 ficient to make an essential difference in nature, between any two particular 
 beings, without any regard had to some abstract idea, which is looked upon 
 as the essence and standard of a species 1 All such patterns and standards 
 being quite laid aside, particular beings, considered barely in themselves, will 
 be found to have all their qualities equally essential ; and every thing, in each 
 individual, will be essential to it, or, which is more, nothing at all. For 
 though it may be reasonable to ask, whether obeying the magnet be essen- 
 tial to iron 1 yet, I think, it is very improper and insignificant to ask, whe- 
 ther it be essential to the particular parcel of matter I cut my pen with, with- 
 out considering it under the name iron, or as being of a certain species 1 
 And if, as has been said, our abstract ideas, which have names annexed to 
 them, are the boundaries of species, nothing can be essential but what is con- 
 tained in those ideas. 
 
 Sect. 6. It is true, I have often mentioned a real essence, distinct in sub- 
 stances from those abstract ideas of them, which I call their nominal essence. 
 By this real essence I mean that real constitution of any thing, which is the 
 foundation of all those properties that are combined in, and are constantly 
 found to co-exist with the nominal essence ; and that particular constitution 
 which every thing has within itself, without any relation to any thing with- 
 out it. But essence, even in this sense, relates to a sort, and supposes a spe- 
 cies : for being that real constitution, on which the properties depend, it ne- 
 cessarily supposes a sort of things, properties belonging only to species, and 
 not to individuals ; v. g. supposing the nominal essence of gold to be a body 
 of such a peculiar colour and weight, with malleability and fusibility, the real 
 essence is that constitution of the parts of matter, on which these qualities 
 and their union depend ; and is also the foundation of its solubility in aqua 
 regia and other properties accompanying that complex idea. Here are essen- 
 ces and properties^'but all upon supposition of a sort, or general abstract 
 idea, which is considered as immutable : but there is no individual parcel of 
 matter, to which any of these qualities are so annexed, as to be essential to 
 it, or inseparable from it. That which is essential belongs to it as a con- 
 dition, whereby it is of this or that sort: but take away the consideration of 
 its being ranked under the name of some abstract idea; and then there is no- 
 thing necessary to it, nothing inseparable from it. Indeed, as to the real es- 
 sences of substances, we only suppose their being, without precisely knowing 
 what they are : but that which annexes them still to the species, is the no- 
 minal essence, of which they are the supposed foundation and cause. 
 
 — Sjucx»,7. The nominal essence bounds the species . — The next thing to be 
 considered is, by "which of those essences it is that substances are determined 
 into sorts, or species ; and that, it is evident, is by the nominal essence. For 
 it is that alone that the name, which is the mark of the sort, signifies. It is 
 impossible, therefore, that any thing should determine the sorts of things 
 which we rank under general names, but that idea which that name is de- 
 signed as a mark for ; which is that, as has been shown, which we call no- 
 minal essence. Why do we say, this is a horse, and that a mule ; this is an 
 animal, that an herb 1 How comes any particular thing to be of this or that 
 sort, but because it has that nominal essence, or, which is all one, agrees to 
 that abstract idea that name is annexed to 1 And 1 desire any one but to re- 
 flect on his own thoughts, when he hears or speaks any of those, or other 
 names of substances, to know what sort of essences they stand for. 
 
 Sect. 8. And that the species of things to us are nothing but the ranking 
 them under distinct names, according to the complex ideas in us, and not ac- 
 cording to precise, distinct, real essences in them, is plain from hence, that 
 we find many of the individuals that are ranked into one sort, called by one 
 common name, and so received as being of one species, have yet qualities 
 
292 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 depending on their real constitutions, as far different one from another, as 
 from others, from which they are accounted to differ specifically. This, as 
 it is easy to be observed by all who have to do with natural bodies ; so che- 
 mists especially are often, by sad experience, convinced of it, when they, 
 sometimes in vain, seek for the same qualities in one parcel of sulphur, anti- 
 mony, or vitriol, which they have found in others. For though they are bo- 
 dies of the same species, having the same nominal essence, under the same 
 name ; yet do they often, upon severe ways of examination, betray quali- 
 ties so different one from another, as to frustrate the expectation and labour 
 of very wary chemists. But if things were distinguished into species, ac- 
 cording to their real essences, it would be as impossible to find different pro- 
 perties in any two individual substances of the same species, as it is to find 
 different properties in two circles, or two equilateral triangles. That is pro- 
 perly the essence to us, which determines every particular to this or that 
 classis ; or, which is the same thing, to this or that general name : and what 
 can that be else, but that abstract idea, to which that name is annexed'! and 
 so has, in truth, a reference, not so much to the being of particular things, as 
 to their general denominations. 
 
 Sect. 9. Not the real essence, which we know not. — Nor indeed can we 
 rank and sort things, and consequently (which is' the -end of sorting) deno- 
 minate them by their real essences, because we know them not. Our facul- 
 ties carry us no farther toward the knowledge and distinction of substances, 
 than a collection of those sensible ideas which we observe in them ; which, 
 however made with the greatest diligence and exactness we are capable of, 
 yet it is more remote from the true internal constitution from which those 
 qualities flow, than, as I said, a countryman’s idea is from the inward con- 
 trivance of that famous clock at Strasburgh, whereof he only sees the out- 
 ward figure and motions. There is not so contemptible a plant or animal, 
 that does not confound the most enlarged understanding. Though the fami- 
 liar use of things about us take off our wonder, yet it cures not our igno- 
 rance. When we come to examine the stones we tread on, or the iron we 
 daily handle, we presently find we know not their make, and can give no rea- 
 son of the different qualities we find in them. It is evident the internal con- 
 stitution, whereon their properties depend, is unknown to us. For to go no 
 farther than the grossest and most obvious we can imagine among them, what 
 is that texture of parts, that real essence, that makes lead and antimony fu- 
 sible; wood and stones not! What makes lead and iron malleable ; anti- 
 mony and stones not! And yet how infinitely these come short of the 
 fine contrivances, and unconceivable real essences of plants or animals, every 
 one knows. The workmanship of the all-wise and powerful God, in the great 
 fabric of the universe, and every part thereof, farther exceeds the capacity 
 and comprehension of the most inquisitive and intelligent man, than the best 
 contrivance of the most ingenious man doth the conceptions of the most ig- 
 norant of rational creatures. Therefore we in vain pretend to range things 
 into sorts, and dispose them into certain classes, under names, by their 
 real essences, that are so far from our discovery or comprehension. A blind 
 man may as soon sort things by their colours, and he that has lost his smell 
 as well distinguish a lily and a rose by their odours, as by those internal con- 
 stitutions which he knows not. He that thinks he can distinguish sheep and 
 goats by their real essences, that are unknown to him, may be pleased to try 
 his skill in those species, called cassiowary and querechinchio ; and by their 
 internal real essences determine the boundaries of those species, without 
 knowing the complex idea of sensible qualities, that each of those names 
 stand for, in the countries where those animals are to be found. 
 
 Sect. 10. Not substantial forms, which we know less. — Those, therefore, 
 who have been taught, that the several species of substances had their dis- 
 tinct, internal, substantial forms ; and that it was those forms which made tne 
 distinction of substances into their true species and genera ; were led yet far- 
 ther out of the way, by having their minds set upon fruitless inquiries after 
 
Ch. 0. 
 
 NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 
 
 293 
 
 substantial forms, wholly unintelligible, and whereof we. ./lave scarce so much 
 as any obscure or confused conception in general. 
 
 Sk ct. 11. ThaLlhe nominal essence is that whereby we distinguish spe- 
 cies, farther evident from spirits . — That our ranking and distinguishing na- 
 tural substances into species, consists in the nominal essences the mind makes, 
 and not in the real essences to be found in the things themselves, is farther 
 evident from our ideas of spirits. For the mind getting, only by reflecting 
 on its own operations, those simple ideas which it attributes to spirits, it 
 hath, or can have no other notion of spirit, but by attributing all those opera- 
 tions, it finds in itself, to a sort of beings, without consideration of matter. 
 And even the most advanced notion we have of God is but attributing the 
 same simple ideas, which we have got from reflection on what we find in our- 
 selves, and which we conceive to have more perfection in them, than would 
 be in their absence ; attributing, I say, those simple ideas to him in an un- 
 limited degree. Thus having got, from reflecting on ourselves, the idea of 
 existence, knowledge, power, and pleasure, each of which we find it better 
 to have than to want ; and the more we have of each the better ; joining all 
 these together, with infinity to each of them, we have the complex idea of 
 an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, infinitely wise and happy Being. And 
 though we are told, that there are different species of angels ; yet we know 
 not how to frame distinct specific ideas of them : not out of any conceit that 
 the existence of more species than one of spirits is impossible, but because, 
 having no more simple ideas (nor being able to frame more) applicable to 
 such beings, but only those few taken from ourselves, and from the actions 
 of our own minds in thinking, and being delighted, and moving several parts 
 of our bodies, we can no otherwise distinguish in our conceptions the several 
 species of spirits one from another, but by attributing those operations and 
 powers, we find in ourselves, to them in a higher or lower degree ; and so 
 have no very distinct specific ideas of spirits, except only of God, to whom 
 we attribute both duration, and all those other ideas with infinity ; to the other 
 spirits, with limitation. Nor as I humbly conceive do we, between God and 
 them in our ideas, put any difference by any number of simple ideas, which 
 we have of one and not of-the other; but only that of infinity. All the par- 
 ticular ideas of existence, knowledge, will, power, and motion, &c. being 
 ideas derived from the operations of our minds, we attribute all of them to 
 all sorts of spirits, with the difference only of degrees to the utmost we can 
 imagine, even infinity, when we would frame, as well as we can, an idea of 
 the first being ; who yet, it is certain, is infinitely more remote, in the real 
 excellency of his nature, from the highest and most perfect of all created beings, 
 than the greatest man, nay purest seraph, is from the most contemptible part 
 of matter ; and consequently must infinitely exceed what our narrow under- 
 standings can conceive of him. 
 
 hereof Lhereareprobably numberless species . — It is not im- 
 possible to conceive, nor repugnant to reason, that there may be many spe- 
 cies of spirits, as much separated and diversified one from another by distinct 
 properties whereof we have no ideas, as the species of sensible things are 
 distinguished one from another by qualities which we know and observe in 
 them. That there should be more species of intelligent creatures above us, 
 than there are of sensible and material below us, is probable to me from hence; 
 that in all the visible corporeal world, we see no chasms or gaps. All quite 
 down from us the descent is by easy steps, and a continued series of things, 
 that in each remove differ very little one from the other. There are fishes 
 that have wings, and are not strangers to the airy region ; and there are some 
 birds that are inhabitants of the water, whose blood is cold as fishes, and their 
 flesh so like in taste, that the scrupulous are allowed them on fish-days. 
 There are animals so near of kin both to birds and beasts, that they are i n 
 the middle between both : amphibious animals link the terrestrial and aquatic 
 ogether ; seals live at land and sea, and porpoises have the warm blood and 
 entrails of a hog, not to mention what is confidently reported of mermaids 
 
294 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 or sea-men. There are some brutes, that seem to have as much knowledge 
 and reason as some that are called men; and the animal and vegetable king- 
 doms are so nearly joined, that if you will take the lowest of one, and the 
 highest of the other, there will scarce be perceived any great difference be- 
 tween them ; and so on, till we come to the lowest and the most inorganical 
 parts of matter, we shall find every where, that the several species are linked 
 together, and differ but in almost insensible degrees. And when we consider 
 the infinite power and wisdom of the Maker, we have reason to think, that it 
 is suitable to the magnificent harmony of the universe, and the great design 
 and infinite goodness of the Architect, that the species of creatures should 
 also, by gentle degrees, ascend upward from us toward his infinite perfection, 
 as we see they gradually descend from us downward : which, if it be proba- 
 ble, we have reason then to be persuaded, that there are far more species of 
 creatures above us than there are beneath : we being, in degrees of perfec- 
 tion, much more remote from the infinite being of God, than we are from the 
 lowest state of being, and that which approaches nearest to nothing. And 
 yet of all those distinct species, for the reasons above said, we have no clear 
 distinct ideas. 
 
 Sect. 13. The nominal essence that of the species , proved-from water 
 and ice. — But to return to the species of corporeal substances. If I should 
 ask any one, whether ice and water were two distinct species of things, I 
 doubt not but I should be answered in the affirmative : and it cannot be denied, 
 but he that says they are two distinct species is in the right. But if an Eng- 
 lishman, bred in Jamaica, who perhaps had never seen or heard of ice, com- 
 ing into England in the winter, find the water he put in his basin at night, in a 
 great part frozen in the morning, and not knowing any peculiar name it had, 
 should call it hardened water ; I ask, whether this would not be a new species 
 to him different from water ?- And, I think, it would be answered here, it 
 would not be to him a new species, no more than congealed jelly, when it is 
 cold, is a distinct species from the same jelly fluid and warm ; or than liquid 
 gold in the furnace is a distinct species from hard gold in the hands of a work- 
 man. And if this be so, it is plain, that our distinct species are nothing but 
 distinct complex ideas, with distinct names annexed to them. It is true, 
 every substance that exists, has its peculiar constitution, whereon depend 
 those sensible qualities and powers we observe .in it ; but the ranking of things 
 into species, which is nothing but sorting them under several titles, is done 
 by us according to the ideas we have of them : which, though sufficient to dis- 
 tinguish them by names, so that we may be able to discourse of them, when 
 we have them not present before us ; yet if we suppose it to be done by their 
 real internal constitutions, and that things existing are distinguished by na- 
 ture into species, by real essences, according as we -distinguish them into spe- 
 cies by names, we shall be liable to great mistakes. 
 
 Sect. 14. Difficulties against a certain number of real essences. — To 
 distinguish substantial beings into specTCSTacc'ordmg-to-tlieTJsuaUsupposition, 
 that there are certain precise essences or forms of things, whereby all the in- 
 dividuals existing are by nature distinguished into species, these tilings are 
 necessary. 
 
 Sect. 15. First, To be assured that nature, in the production of things, 
 always designs them to partake of certain regulated established essences, 
 which are to be the models of all things to be produced. This, in that crude 
 sense it is usually proposed, would need some better explication, before it can 
 be wholly assented to. 
 
 Sect. 16. Secondly, It would be necessary to know whether nature always 
 attains that essene'e it designs in the production of tilings. The irregular and 
 monstrous births, that in divers sorts of animals have been observed, will 
 always give us reason to doubt of one or both of these. 
 
 Sect. 17. Thirdly, It ought to be determined, whether those we call mon- 
 sters be really a distinct species, according to the scholastic notion of the 
 word species ; since it is certain that every thing that exists has its particular 
 
Ch. 6. 
 
 NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 
 
 295 
 
 constitution : and yet we find that some of these monstrous productions have 
 few or none of those qualities, which are supposed to result from, and accom- 
 pany the essence of that species, from whence they derive their originals, and 
 to which, by their descent, they seem to belong. 
 
 Sec t. 18. O ur-Trominal essences of substances not 'perfect collections of 
 properties. — Fourthly, The real essences of those things, which we distin- 
 guiNt+nttrspemos, and as so distinguished we name, ought to be known ; i. e. 
 we ought to have ideas of them. But since we are ignorant in these four 
 points, the supposed real essences of things stand us not in stead for the dis- 
 tinguishing substances into species. 
 
 Sec t, lip. Fifthly. The only imaginable help in this case would be, that 
 having framed perfect complex ideas of the properties of things, flowing from 
 their different real essences, we should thereby distinguish them into species. 
 But neither can this be done ; for being ignorant of the real essence itself, it 
 is impossible to know all those properties that flow from it, and are so an- 
 nexed to it, that any one of them being away, we may certainly conclude, 
 that that essence is not there, and so the thing is not of that species. We 
 can never know what are the precise number of properties depending on the 
 real essence of gold, any one of which failing, the real essence of gold, and 
 consequently gold, would not be there, unless we knew the real essence of 
 gold itself, and by that determined that species. By the word gold here, I must 
 be understood to design a particular piece of matter ; v. g. the last guinea 
 that was coined. For if it should stand here in its ordinary signification for 
 that complex idea, which I or any one else calls gold ; i. e. for the nominal 
 essence of gold, it would be jargon : so hard is it to show the various mean- 
 ing and imperfection of words, when we have nothing else but words to do 
 it by. 
 
 Sect. 20. By all which it is clear, that our distinguishing substances into 
 species by names, is not at all founded on their real essences ; nor can we 
 pretend to range and determine them exactly into species, according to the 
 internal essential differences. 
 
 Sect. 21. But such a, collection as our name stands for . — But since, as has 
 been remarked, we have need of general words, though we know not the real 
 essences of things ; all we can do is to collect such a number of simple ideas, 
 as by examination we find to be united together in things existing, and thereof 
 to make one complex idea: which, though it be not the real essence of any 
 substance that exists, is yet the specific essence to which our name belongs, 
 and is convertible with it ; by which we may at least try the truth of these 
 nominal essences. For example, there be that say, that the essence of body 
 is extension : if it be so, we can never mistake in putting the essence of any 
 thing for the thing itself. Let us then in discourse put extension for body ; 
 and when we would say that body moves, let us say that extension moves, 
 and see how ill it will look. He that should say that one extension by im- 
 pulse moves another extension, would, by the bare expression, sufficiently 
 show the absurdity of such a notion. The essence of any thing, in respect 
 of us, is the whole complex idea, comprehended and marked by that name ; 
 and in substances, besides the several distinct simple ideas that make them 
 up, the confused one of substance, or of an unknown support and cause of 
 their union, is always a part : and therefore the essence of body is not bare 
 extension, but an extended solid tiling ; and so to say an extended solid thing 
 moves, or impels another, is all one, and as intelligible as to say, body moves 
 or impels. Likewise to say, that a rational animal is capable of conversa- 
 tion, is all one as to say a man. But no one will say, that rationality is ca- 
 pable of conversation, because it makes not the whole essence to which we 
 give the name man. 
 
 Sect. 22. Our abstract ideas are to us the measures of species ; instance 
 in that of man . — There are creatures in the world that have shapes like ours, 
 but are hairy, and want language and reason. There are naturals among us 
 that have perfectly our shape, but want reason, and some of them language 
 
296 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 too. There are creatures, it is said (“ sit tides penes auctorem,” but there 
 appears no contradiction that there should be such) that, with language and 
 reason, and a shape in other things agreeing with ours, have hairy tails ; 
 others where the males have no beards, and others where the females have. 
 If it be asked whether these be all men or no, all of human species ? it is 
 plain, the question refers only to the nominal essence : for those of them to 
 whom the definition of the word man, or the complex idea signified by that 
 name, agrees, are men, and the other not. But if the inquiry be made con- 
 cerning the supposed real essence, and whether the internal constitution and 
 frame of these several creatures be specifically different, it is wholly impossi- 
 ble for us to answer, no part of that going into our specific idea ; only we 
 have reason to think, that where the faculties or outward frame so much dif- 
 fers, the internal constitution is not exactly the same. But what difference 
 in tne internal real constitution makes a specific difference, it is in vain to 
 inquire ; whilst our measures of species be, as they are, only our abstract 
 ideas, which we know ; and not that internal constitution, which makes no 
 part of them. Shall the difference of hair only on the skin, be a mark of a 
 different internal specific constitution between a changeling and a drill, when 
 they agree in shape, and want of reason and speech ? And shall not the want 
 of reason and speech be a sign to us of different real constitutions and spe- 
 cies between a changeling and a reasonable man ? And so of the rest, if we 
 pretend that the distinction of species or sorts is fixedly established by the 
 real frame and secret constitutions of things. 
 
 Sect. 23. Species not distinguished by generation. — Nor let any one say, 
 that the power of propagation in animals by the mixture of male and female, 
 and in plants by seeds, keeps the supposed real species distinct and entire. 
 For granting this to be true, it would help us in the distinction of the species 
 of things no farther than the tribes of animals and vegetables. What must 
 we do for the rest ? But in those too it is not sufficient : for if history lie 
 not, women have conceived by drills ; and what real species, by that measure, 
 such a production will be in nature, will be a new question : and we have 
 reason to think this is not impossible, since mules and jumarts, the one from 
 the mixture of an ass and a mare, and the other from the mixture of a bull 
 and a mare, are so frequent in the world. I once saw a creature that was 
 the issue of a cat and a rat, and had the plain marks of both about it ; wherein 
 nature appeared to have followed the pattern of neither sort alone, but to have 
 jumbled them both together. To which, he that shall add the monstrous pro- 
 ductions that are so frequently to be met with in nature, will find it hard even 
 in the race of animals, to determine by the pedigree of what species every 
 animal’s issue is : and be at a loss about the real essence, which he thinks cer- 
 tainly conveyed by generation, and has alone a right to the specific name. 
 But farther, if the species of animals and plants are to be distinguished only 
 by propagation, must I go to the Indies to see the sire and dam of the one, 
 and the plant from which the seed was gathered that produced the other, to 
 know whether this be a tiger or that tea? 
 
 Sect. 24. Not by substantial forms. — Upon the whole matter, it is evident, 
 that it is their own collections of sensible qualities, that men make the essen- 
 ces of their several softs of substances ; and that their real internal structures 
 are not considered by the greatest part of men, in the sorting of them. Much 
 less were any substantial forms ever thought on by any, but those who have 
 in this one part of the world learned the language of the schools : and yet 
 those ignorant men, who pretend not any insight into the real essences, nor 
 trouble themselves about substantial forms, but are content with knowin° 
 things one from another by their sensible qualities, are often better acquainted 
 with their differences, can more nicely distinguish them from their uses, and 
 better know what they may expect from each, than those learned quick-sighted 
 men, who look so deep into them, and talk so confidently of something more 
 hidden and essential. 
 
 Sect. 25 The specific essences are made by the mind. — But supposing 
 
Ch 6. 
 
 NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 
 
 297 
 
 that the real essences of substances were discoverable by those that would 
 severely apply themselves to that inquiry, yet we could not reasonably think, 
 that the ranking of things under general names was regulated by those inter- 
 nal real constitutions, or anything else but their obvious appearances : since lan- 
 guages, in all countries, have been established long before sciences. So that they 
 have not been philosophers, or logicians, or such who have troubled them- 
 selves about forms and essences, that have made the general names that are 
 in use among the several nations of men: but those more or less comprehen- 
 sive-terms have for the most part, in all languages, received their birth and 
 signifi_eation from ignorant and illiterate people, who sorted and denominated 
 things by those sensible qualities they found in them ; thereby to signify them, 
 when absent, to others, whether they had an occasion to mention a sort or a 
 particular thing. 
 
 Sect. 26. Therefore very various and uncertain . — Since then it is evident, 
 -thaiwe. sort and name substances by their nominal, and not by their real es- 
 sences; the next thing to be considered is, how and by whom these essences 
 come to be made. As to the latter, it js evident they are made by the mind, 
 qjuTnbt hy nature : for. were they nature’s workmanship, they could not be 
 sofyariou&-ftTrd tli fferent in several men, as experience tells us they are. For 
 if we will examine it, we shall not find the nominal essence of any one spe- 
 cies of substances in all men the same : no, not of that, which of all others 
 we are the most intimately acquainted with. It could not possible be, that 
 the abstract idea to which the name man is given, should be different in se- 
 veral men, if it were of nature’s making; and that to one it should be “ani- 
 mal rationale,” and to another “animal implume bipes latis unguibus.” He 
 that annexes the name man to a complex idea made up of sense and sponta- 
 neous motion, joined to a body of such a shape, has thereby one essence of 
 the species man; and he that, upon further examination, adds rationality, has 
 another essence of the species he calls man : by which means the same indi- 
 vidual will be a true man to the one, which is not so to the other. I think, 
 there is scarce any one will allow this upright figure, so well known, to be 
 the essential difference of the species man ; and yet how far men determine 
 of the sorts of animals rather by their shape than descent, is very visible : 
 since it has been more than once debated, whether several human foetuses 
 should be preserved or received to baptism or no, only because of the differ- 
 ence of their outward configuration from the ordinary make of children, with- 
 out knowing whether they were not as capable of reason as infants cast in 
 another mould : some whereof, though of an approved shape, are never capa- 
 ble of as much appearance of reason all their lives as is to be found in an ape 
 or an elephant, and never give any signs of being actuated by a rational soul. 
 Whereby it is evident, that the outward figure, which only was found want- 
 ing, and not the faculty of reason, which nobody could know would be want- 
 ing in its due season, was made essential to the human species. The learned 
 divine or lawyer must, on such occasions, renounce his sacred definition of 
 “ animal rationale,” and substitute some other essence of the human species. 
 Monsieur Menage furnishes us with an example worth the taking notice of on 
 this occasion : “ When the abbot of St Martin (says he) was born, he had so 
 little of the figure of a man, that it bespake him rather a monster. It was 
 for some time under deliberation, whether he should be baptised or no. How- 
 ever, he was baptised and declared a man provisionally [till time should show 
 what he would prove.] Nature had moulded him so untowardly, that he was 
 called all his life the Abbot Malotru, i. e. ill-shaped. He was of Caen.” 
 Menagiana, This child, we see, was very near being excluded out of 
 
 the species of man, barely by his shape. He escaped very narrowly as he 
 was, and it is certain a figure a little more oddly turned had cast him, and he 
 had been executed as a thing not to be allowed to pass for a man. And yet 
 there can be no reason given, why, if the lineaments of his face had been a 
 little altered, a rational soid could not have been lodged in him ; why a visage 
 somewhat longer, or a nose flatter, or a wider mouth, could not have consist* 
 2 N 
 
298 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 0 
 
 ed, as well as the rest of his ill figure, with such a soul, such parts, as made 
 him, disfigured as he was, capable to be a dignitary in the church. 
 
 Sect. 27. Wherein, then, would I gladly know, consist the precise and 
 unmovable boundaries of that species'! It is plain, if we examine, there is 
 no such thing made by nature, and established by her among men. The real 
 essence of that, or any other sort of substances, it is evident we know not ; 
 and therefore are so undetermined in our nominal essences, which we make 
 ourselves, that if several men were to be asked concerning some oddly-shaped 
 foetus, as soon as born, whether it were a man or no, it is past doubt, one 
 should meet with different answers : which could not happen, if the nominal 
 essences, whereby we limit and distinguish the species of substances, were 
 not made by man with some liberty, but were exactly copied from precise 
 boundaries set by nature, whereby it distinguished all substances into certain 
 species. Who would undertake to resolve what species that monster was of, 
 which is mentioned by Licetus, lib. i. c. 3, with a man’s head and hog’s body! 
 or those other, which to the bodies of men had the heads of beasts, as dogs, 
 horses, &,c. ! If any of these creatures had lived, and could have spoke, it 
 would have increased the difficulty. Had the upper part to the middle been 
 of human shape, and all below swine; had it been murder to destroy it! Or 
 must the bishop have been consulted, whether it were man enough to be ad- 
 mitted to the font or no ! as, I have been told, it happened in France some 
 years since, in somewhat a like case. So uncertain are the boundaries of 
 species of animals to us, who have no other measures than the complex ideas 
 of our own collecting : and so far are we from certainly knowing what a man 
 is ; though, perhaps, it will be judged great ignorance to make any doubt 
 about it. And yet, I think, I may say, that the certain boundaries of that 
 species are so far from being determined, and the precise number of simple 
 ideas, which make the nominal essence, so far from being settled and per- 
 fectly known, that very material doubts may still arise about it. And I ima- 
 gine none of the definitions of the word man, which we yet have, nor de- 
 scriptions of that sort of animal, are so perfect and exact, as to satisfy a con- 
 siderate inquisitive person; much less to obtain a general consent, and to 
 be that which men would every where stick by, in the decision of cases, and 
 determining of life and death, baptism or no baptism, in productions that 
 might happen. 
 
 Sect. 28. But not so_grbitr.ary.Jis, mixed modest— -But though these nomi- 
 nal essences of substances are made by the mind, they are not yet made so 
 arbitrarily as those of mixed modes. To the making of any nominal - essence, 
 it ismecessary, first, that.the ideas whereof it consists have such a union as to 
 make but one idea, how compounded soever ; secondly, that the particular idea 
 so united be exactly the same, neither more nor less. For if two abstract 
 complex ideas differ either in number or sorts of their component parts, they 
 make two different, and not one and the same essence, tfr the first of these, 
 the mind, in making its complex ideas of substances, only follows nature, and., 
 puts none together which are not supposed to have a union in nature. Ncr- 
 body joins the voice of a sheep with the shape of a horse, nor the colour of 
 lead with the weight and fixedness of gold, to be the complex ideas of any 
 real substances ; unless he has a mind to fill his head with chimeras, and his 
 discourse with unintelligible words. Men observing certain qualities always 
 joined and existing together, therein copied nature ; and of ideas so united, 
 made their complex ones of substances. For though men may make what 
 complex ideas they please, and give what names to them they will ; yet if 
 they will be understood, when they speak of things really existing, they must 
 in some degree conform their ideas to the things they would speak of; or else 
 men’s language will be like that of Babel ; and every man’s words being in- 
 telligible only to himself, would no longer serve to conversation, and the or- 
 dinary affairs of life, if the ideas they stand for be not some way answering 
 the common appearances and agreement of substances, as they really exist. 
 
 Sect. 29. Though very imperfect. — Secondly, though the mind of man. 
 
Ch. 6 
 
 NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 
 
 2S9 
 
 in making its complex ideas of substances, never puts any together that do 
 not really or are not supposed to coexist ; and so it truly borrows that union 
 from nature — yet the number it combines depends upon the various care, in- 
 dustry, or fancy of him that makes it. Men generally content themselves 
 witfusome-Tew'sensible obvious qualities ; and often, if not always, leave out 
 others as material, and_ as firmly united, as those that they take. Of sensi- 
 ble substances There are two sorts ; one of organized bodies, whiclrare propa- 
 gated by seed ; and in these, the shape is that which to us is the leading 
 quality and most characteristical part that determines the species : and there- 
 fore in vegetables and animals, an extended solid substance of such a certain 
 figure usually serves the turn. For however some men seem to prize their 
 definition of “ animal rationale,” yet should there a creature be found, that 
 had language and reason, but partook not of the usual shape of a man, I be- 
 lieve it would hardly pass for a man, how much soever it were “ animal ra- 
 tionale.” And if Balaam’s ass had, all his life, discoursed as rationally as he 
 did once with his master, I doubt yet whether any one would have thought 
 him worthy the name man, or allowed him to be of the same species with 
 himself. As in vegetables and animals it is the shape, so in most other bodies, 
 not propagated by seed, it is the colour we most fix on, and are most led by. 
 Thus, where we find the colour of gold, we are apt to imagine all the other 
 qualities, comprehended in our complex idea, to be there also : and we com- 
 monly take these two obvious qualities, viz. shape and colour, for so presump- 
 tive ideas of several species, that in a good picture we readily say this is a 
 lion and that a rose ; this is a gold, and that a silver goblet, only by the dif- 
 ferent figures mod colours represented to the eye by the pencil. 
 
 Sect. 30. WMch yet serve for common converse. — But though this serves 
 well enough for gross and confused conceptions, and inaccurate ways of talk- 
 ing and thinking ; yet men are far enough from having agreed on the precise 
 number of simple ideas, or qualities, belonging to any sort of things, signified 
 by its name. Nor is it a wonder, since it requires much time, pains, and 
 skill, strict inquiry, and long examination, to find out what and how many 
 those simple ideas are, which are constantly and inseparably united in nature, 
 and are always to be found together in the same subject. Most men, wanting 
 either time, inclination, or industry enough for this, even to some tolerable 
 degree, content themselves with some few obvious and outward appearances 
 of things, thereby readily to distinguish and sort them for the common affairs 
 of life ; and so, without farther examination, give them names, or take up the 
 names already m use ; which, though in common conversation they pass well 
 enough for the signs of some few obvious qualities) coexisting, are yet far 
 enough from comprehending, in a settled signification, a precise number of 
 simple ideas ; much less all those which are united in nature. He that shall 
 consider, after so much stir about genus and species, and such a deal of talk 
 of specific differences, how few words we have yet settled definitions of, may 
 with reason imagine that those forms, which there hath been so much noise 
 made about, are only chimeras, which give us no light into the specific natures 
 of things. And he that shall consider how far the names of substances are 
 from navmg significations, wherein all who use them do agree, will have rea- 
 son to conclude, that though the nominal essences of substances are all sup- 
 posed to be copied from nature, yet they are all, or most of them very im- 
 perfect ; since the composition of those complex ideas are, in several men, 
 very different; and therefore that these boundaries of species are as men, and 
 not as nature makes them, if at least there are in nature any such prefixed 
 bounds. It is true that many particular substances are so made by nature, 
 that they have agreement and likeness one with another, and so afford a foun- 
 dation of being ranked into sorts. But the sorting of things by us, or the 
 making of determinate species, being in order to naming and comprehending 
 them under general terms ; I cannot see how it can be properly said, that na- 
 ture sets the boundaries of the species of things : or if it be so, our bounda- 
 ries of species are not exactly conformable to those in nature. For we hav 
 
soo 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Bo< A 
 
 ing need of general names for present use, stay not for a perfect discovery of 
 all those qualities which would best show us their most material differences 
 and agreements ; but we ourselves divide them, by certain obvious appear- 
 ances, into species, that we may the easier under general names communi- 
 cate our thoughts about them. For having no other knowledge of any sub- 
 stance, but of the simple ideas that are united in it ; and observing several 
 particular things to agree with others in several of those simple ideas ; we 
 make that collection our specific idea, and give it a general name ; that in re- 
 cording our own thoughts, and in our discourse with others, we may in one 
 short word design all the individuals that agree in that complex idea, without 
 enumerating the simple ideas that make it up ; and so not waste our time and 
 breath in tedious descriptions; which we see they are fain to do, who would 
 discourse of any new sort of things they have not yet a name for. 
 
 Sect. 31. Essences of species under the same name very different ;^, Buf 
 however these species of substances pass well enough in OTdinary conversa- 
 tion, it is plain that this complex idea, wherein they observe several indi- 
 viduals to agree, is by different men made very differently ; by some more, 
 and others less accurately. In some, this complex idea contains a greater, 
 and in others a smaller number of qualities ; and so is apparently such as the 
 mind makes it. The yellow shining colour makes gold to children ; others 
 add weight, malleableness, and fusibility ; and others yet other qualities, 
 which they find joined with that yellow colour, as constantly as its weight 
 and fusibility ; for in all these and the like qualities, one has as good a right 
 to be put into the complex idea of that substance wherein they are all joined, 
 as another. And therefore different men leaving out or putting in several 
 simple ideas, which others do not, according to their various examination, 
 skill, or observation of that subject, have different essences of gold ; which 
 must therefore be of their own, and not of nature’s making. 
 
 Sect. 32. The more general our ideas are, the more incomplete- and par- 
 tial they are. — If the number of simple ideas, that made the nominal essence 
 of the lowest species, or first sorting of individuals, depends on the mind of 
 man variously collecting them, it is much more evident that they do so in the 
 more comprehensive classes, which by the masters of logic are called genera. 
 These are complex ideas designedly imperfect: and it is visible at first sight, 
 that several of those- -qualities .th&t are to be found in the things , themselves 
 are purposely left out of gencrical ideas. For as the mind, to make general 
 ideas comprehending several particulars, leaves out those of time, and place, 
 and such other, that make them incommunicable to more than one individual ; 
 so to make other yet more general ideas, that may comprehend different sorts, 
 it leaves out those qualities that distinguish them, and puts into its new col- 
 lection only such ideas as are common to several sorts. The same conveni- 
 ence that made men express several parcels of yellow matter coming from 
 Guinea and Peru under one name, sets them also upon making of one name 
 that may comprehend both gold and silver, and some other bodies of different 
 sorts. This is done by leaving out those qualities which are peculiar to each 
 sort, and retaining a complex idea made up of those that are common to them 
 all; to which the name metal being annexed, there is a genus constituted; the 
 essence whereof, being that abstract idea containing only malleableness and 
 fusibility, with certain degrees of weight and fixedness, wherein some bodies 
 of several kinds agree, leaves out the colour, and other qualities peculiar to 
 gold and silver, and the other sorts comprehended under the name metal. 
 Whereby it is plain, that men follow not exactly the patterns set them by na- 
 ture, when they make their general ideas of substances ; since there is no body 
 to be found, which has barely malleableness and fusibility in it, without other 
 qualities as inseparable as those. But men in making their general ideas, 
 seeing more the convenience of language and quick despatch, by short and 
 comprehensive signs, than the true and precise nature of things as they exist, 
 nave, in the framing their abstract ideas, chiefly pursued that end which was 
 to be furnished with store of general and variously comprehensive names. So 
 
Ch. 6. 
 
 NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 
 
 301 
 
 that in this whole business of genera and species, the genus, or more com- 
 prehensive, is but a partial conception of what is in the species, and the 
 species but a partial idea of what is to be found in each individual. If there- 
 fore any one will think that a man, and a horse, and an animal, and a plant, 
 &c. are distinguished by real essences made by nature, he must think nature 
 to be very liberal of these real essences, making one for body, another for an 
 animal, and another for a horse; and all these essences liberally bestowed 
 upon Bucephalus. But if we would rightly consider what is done, in all these 
 genera and species, or sorts, we should find that there is no new thing made, but 
 only more or less comprehensive signs, whereby we may be enabled to ex- 
 press, in a few syllables, great numbers of particular things, as they agree in 
 more or less general conceptions, which we have framed to that purpose. In 
 all which we may observe, that the more general term is always the name of 
 a less complex idea ; and that each genus is but a partial conception of the 
 species comprehended under it. So that if these abstract general ideas be 
 thought to be complete, it can only be in respect of a certain established re- 
 lation between them and certain names, which are made use of to signify 
 them ; and not in respect of any thing existing, as made by nature. 
 
 ' S-Egr . 33. This aLL accommodated to the end of speech. — This is adjusted 
 to the true end of speech, which is to be the easiest and shortest way of com- 
 municating our notions. For thus he, that would discourse of things as they 
 agreed in the complex ideas of extension and solidity, needed but use the word 
 body to denote all such. He that to these would join others, signified by the words 
 life, sense, and spontaneous motion, needed but use the word animal, to signify 
 all which partook of those ideas : and he that had made a complex idea of a 
 body, with life, sense, and motion, with the faculty of reasoning, and a cer- 
 tain shape joined to it, needed but use the short monosyllable man to express 
 all particulars that correspond to that complex idea. Tins is the proper busi- 
 ness of genus and species ; and this men do, without any consideration of 
 real essences, or substantial forms, which come not within the reacii of our 
 knowledge, when we think of those things ; nor within the signification of our 
 words, when we discourse with others. 
 
 Sect. 34. Instance in casuaries. — Were I to talk with any one of a sort 
 o fMn r s r s Park, about three or four feet high, with 
 a covering of something between feathers and hair, of a dark brown colour, 
 without wings, but in the place thereof two or three little branches coming 
 down like sprigs of Spanish broom, long great legs, with feet only of three 
 claws, and without a tail; I must make this description of it, and so may make 
 others understand me : but when I am told that the name of it is cassowary, 
 I may then use that word to stand in discourse for all my complex idea men- 
 tioned in that description ; though by that word, which is now become a spe- 
 cific name, I know no more of the real essence or constitution of that sort 
 of animals than I did before : and knew probably as much of the nature of 
 that species of birds, before I learned the name, as many Englishmen do of 
 swans, or herons, which are specific names, very well known, of sorts of birds 
 common in England. 
 
 Sect- -35-.- Men dcter-mine fhe sorts. — From what has been said, it is evi- 
 dent that men make sorts of things. jFtrn-it-heingdifferent essences alone 
 that -maJtfl .jifferent species, it is plain that they "who make, those abstract - 
 ideas, which arelthgj'nomlnal essences, do thereby make the species, or sort. 
 Should there be a body' found, having all -the other-qualities of gold, except 
 malleableness, it would no doubt be made a question whether it were gold or 
 no, i. e. whether it were of that species. This could be determined only by 
 that abstract idea to which every one annexed the name gold.; so that it would 
 be true gold to him, and belong to that species, who included not malleable- 
 ness in his nominal essence, signified by the sound gold ; and on the other 
 side it would not be true gold, or of that species, to him who included mal- 
 leableness in his specific idea. And who, I pray, is it that makes these di- 
 verse species even under one and the same name, but men that make two 
 
OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 ^02 
 
 different abstract ideas, consisting not exactly of the same collection of 
 qualities! Nor is it a mere supposition to imagine that a body may exist, 
 wherein the other obvious qualities of gold may be without malicableness ; 
 since it is certain, that gold itself will be sometimes so eager (as artists call 
 it) that it will as little endure the hammer as glass itself. What we have 
 said of the putting in or leaving malleablcness out of the complex idea the 
 name gold is by any one annexed to, may be said of its peculiar weight, fixed- 
 ness, and several other the like qualities: for whatsoever is left out, or put in, 
 it is still the complex idea, to which that name is annexed, that makes the 
 species ; and as any particular parcel of matter answers that idea, so the name 
 of the sort belongs truly to it ; and it is of that species. And thus any thing 
 is true gold, perfect metal. All which determination of the species, it is 
 plain, depends on the understanding of man, making this or that complex idea. 
 
 Sect. 38. Nature makes the similitude. — This then, in short, is the case . 
 nature makes many particular things which do agree one with another, in 
 mhh'y sensible qualities, and probably too in their internal frame and constitu- 
 tion : but it is not this real essence that distinguishes them into species ; it is 
 men, who, taking occasion from the qualities they find united in them, and 
 wherein they observe often several individuals to agree, range them into sorts, 
 in order to their naming, for the convenience of comprehensive signs ; under 
 which individuals, according to their conformity to this or that abstract idea, 
 come to be ranked as under ensigns ; so that this is of the blue, that of the red 
 regiment ; this a man, that a drill : and in this, I think, consists the whole 
 business of genus and species. 
 
 Sect. 37. I do not deny but nature, in the constant production of particu- 
 lar beings, makes them not always new and various, but very much alike and 
 of kin one to another: but I think it nevertheless true, that the boundaries 
 of the species, whereby men sort them, are made by men ; since the essences 
 of the species, distinguished by different names, are, as has been proved, of 
 man’s making, and seldom adequate to the internal nature of the things they 
 are taken from. So that we may truly say, such a manner of sorting of 
 things is the workmanship of men. 
 
 Sect. 38. Each abstract idea is an essence. — One thing I doubt not but wili 
 seem very strange in this doctrine p which is, that from what has been said it 
 will follow, that each abstract idea, with a name to it, makes a distinct species. 
 But who can help it, if truth will have it so 1 For so it must remain till some- 
 body can show us the species of things limited and distinguished by some- 
 thing else, and let us see, that general terms signify not our abstract ideas, 
 but something different from them. I would fain know why a shock and a 
 hound are not as distinct species as a spaniel and an elephant. We have no 
 other idea of the different essence of an elephant and a spaniel, than we 
 have of the different essence of a shock and a hound ; all the essential difference, 
 whereby we know and distinguish them one from another, consisting only ir. 
 the different collection of simple ideas, to which we have given those differ- 
 ent names. 
 
 Sect. 39. Genera and species are in order to naming.— How much the 
 making of species and genera is in order to general names, and how much 
 general names are necessary, if not to the being, yet at least to the complet- 
 ing of a species, and making it pass for such, will appear, besides what has 
 been said above concerning ice and water, in a very 'familiar example. A 
 silent and a striking watch are but one species to those who have but one 
 name for them : but he that has the name watch for one, and clock for the 
 other, and distinct complex ideas to which those names belong, to him they 
 are different species. It will be said, perhaps, that the inward contrivance 
 and constitution is different between these two, which the watchmaker has a 
 clear idea of. And yet it is plain, they are but one species to him, when he 
 has but one name for them. For what is sufficient in the inward contrivance 
 to make a new species 1 There are some watches that are made with four 
 wheels, others with five: is this a specific difference to the workman’ Some 
 
Ch. 6. 
 
 NAMES CE SUBSTANCES. 
 
 303 
 
 have strings and physies, and others none; some have the balance loose, and 
 others regulated by a spiral spring, and others by hog’s bristles : are any or 
 all of these enough to make a specific difference to the workman, that knows 
 each of these, and several other different contrivances, in the internal con- 
 stitutions of watches 1 It is certain each of these hath a real difference from 
 the rest; but whether it be an essential, a specific difference or no, relates 
 only to the complex idea to which the name watch is given : as long as they 
 all agree in the idea which that name stands for, and that name does not as a 
 genencal name comprehend different species under it, they are not essentially 
 nor specifically different. But if any one will make minuter divisions from 
 differences that he knows in the internal frame of watches, and to such pre- 
 cise complex ideas, give names that shall prevail, they will then be new species 
 to them, who have those ideas with names to them ; and can by those differ- 
 ences distinguish watches into these several sorts, and then watch will be 
 a generical name. But yet they would be no distinct species to men ignorant 
 of clock-work and the inward contrivances of watches, who had no other 
 idea but the outward shape and bulk, with the marking of the hours by the 
 hand. For to them all those other names would be but synonymous terms 
 for the same idea, and signify no more, nor no other thing but a watch. Just 
 thus, I think, it is in natural things. Nobody will doubt that the wheels or 
 springs (if I may so say) within, are different in a rational man and a change- 
 ling, no more than that there is a difference in the frame between a drill and 
 a changeling. But whether one or both these differences be essential or 
 specifical, is only to be known to us, by their agreement or disagreement with 
 the complex idea that the name man stands for: for by that alone can it be 
 determined, whether one, or both, or neither of those be a man or no. 
 
 - Sect. 40. Sne cies.jif-artiytcTaT things Jess' conf used than naturaL ^. From 
 whaFhas been before said, we may see the reason why in the species of arti- 
 ficial things, there is generally less confusion and uncertainty, than in natu- 
 ral. Because an artificial thin g. haing -a-piodttctiQii .af.jnan, jvhich the artifi- 
 cer designed, and therefore well knows the idea of, the name of it is supposed 
 to stand for no other idea, nor to import any other essence than what is cer- 
 tainly to be known, and easy enough to be apprehended. For the idea or 
 essence of the several sorts of artificial things, consisting, for the most part, 
 in nothing but the determinate figure of sensible parts ; and sometimes motion 
 depending thereon, which the artificer fashions in matter, such as he finds for 
 his turn ; it is not beyond the reach of our faculties to attain a certain idea 
 thereof, and to settle the signification of the names, whereby the species of 
 artificial things are distinguished with less doubt, obscurity, and equivocation, 
 than we can in things natural, whose differences and operations depend upon 
 contrivances beyond the reach of our discoveries. 
 
 Sect. 41. ArtifficiaL things of distinct species . — I must be excused here 
 jfJb-tlunTTFrTificial things are of ^lsHncT'spem^jis well as natural: since I 
 find they are as plainly and orderly ranked into sorts, by different abstract 
 ideas, with general names annexed to them, as distinct one from another as 
 those of natural substances. For why should we think a watch and pistol 
 as distinct spe'cies one from another, as a horse and a dog, they being ex- 
 pressed in our minds by distinct ideas, and to others by distinct appellations ? 
 
 Se ct 1 42. Siihsta yeps aln ne have proper na mes . — This is farther to be on- 
 served concerning substances, that they alone of all our several sorts of ideas 
 have particular or proper names, whereby the only particular thing is signi- 
 fied. Because in simple ideas, modes, and relations, it seldom happens that 
 men have occasion to mention often this or that particular when it is ab- 
 sent. Besides, the greatest part of mixed modes, being actions which perish 
 in their birth, are not capable of a lasting duration as substances, which are 
 the actors : and wherein the simple ideas that tnake up the complex ideas de- 
 signed by the name, have a lasting_union. 
 
 &EirfT"4B. Difficulty to treat of words . — I must beg pardon of my reader, 
 for having dwelt so long upon this subject, and perhaps with some obscurity 
 
504 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3 
 
 But I desire it may be considered how difficult it is to lead another by words 
 into the thoughts of things stripped of those specific differences we give them : 
 which things, if I name not, I say nothing ; and if I do name them, I thereby 
 rank them into some sort or other, and suggest to the mind the usual abstract 
 idea of that species, and so cross my purpose. For to talk of a man, and to 
 lay by, at the same time, the ordinary signification of the name man, which 
 is our complex idea usually annexed to it; and bid the reader consider man as 
 lie is in himself, and as he is really distinguished from others in his internal 
 constitution, or real essence, that is, by something, he knows not what, looks 
 like trifling: and yet thus one must do who would speak of the supposed real 
 essences and species of things, as thought to be made by nature, if it be but 
 only to make it understood, that there is no such thing signified by the gene- 
 ral names, which substances are called by, but because it is difficult by known 
 familiar names to do this, give me leave to endeavour by an example, to make 
 the different consideration the mind has of specific names and ideas a little 
 more clear; and to show how the complex ideas of modes are referred some- 
 times to archetypes in the minds of other intelligent beings ; or, which is the 
 same, to the signification annexed by others to their received names ; and 
 sometimes to no archetypes at all. Give me leave also to show how the 
 mind always refers its ideas of substances, either to the substances them- 
 selves, or to the signification of their names as to the archetypes; and also 
 to make plain the nature of species, or sorting of things, as apprehended, 
 and made use of by us ; and of the essences belonging to those species, which 
 is perhaps of more moment, to discover the extent and certainty of our know- 
 ledge than we at first imagine. 
 
 Sect. 44. Instances of mixed modes in kinneali and niouph — Let us sup- 
 pose Adam in the state of a grown man, with-a good understanding, but in a 
 strange country, with all things new and unknown about him ; and no other 
 faculties to attain the knowledge "of them, but what one of this age has now. 
 He observes Lamech more melancholy than usual, and imagines it to be from 
 a suspicion he has of his wife Adah (whom he most ardently loved) that she 
 had too much kindness for another man. Adam discourses these his thoughts 
 to Eve, and desires her to take care that Adah commit not folly : and in these 
 discourses with Eve he makes use of these two new words, kinneah and 
 niouph. In time Adam’s mistake appears, for he finds Lamech’s trouble pro- 
 ceeded from having killed a man ; but yet the two names, kinneah and niouph ; 
 the one standing for suspicion, in a husband, of his wife’s disloyalty to him, 
 and the other for the act of committing disloyalty, lost not their distinct sig- 
 nifications. It is plain then that here were two distinct complex ideas of 
 mixed modes, with names to them, two distinct species of action essentially 
 different ; I ask wherein consisted the essences of these two distinct species 
 of action? And it is plain it consisted in a precise combination of simple 
 ideas, different in one from the other. I ask, whether the complex idea in 
 Adam’s mind, which he called kinneah, were adequate or no ? And it is plain 
 it was, for it being a combination of simple ideas, which he, without any re- 
 gard to any archetype, without respect to any thing as a pattern, voluntarily 
 put together, abstracted, and gave the name kinneah to, to express in short 
 to others, by that one sound, all the simple ideas contained and united in that 
 complex one ; it must necessarily follow, that it was an adequate idea. His 
 own choice having made that combination, it had all in it he intended it should, 
 and so could not but be perfect, could not but be adequate, it being referred to no 
 other archetype, which it was supposed to represent. 
 
 Sect. 45. These words, kinneah and niouph, by degrees grew into com- 
 mon use ; and then the case was somewhat altered. Adam’s children had the 
 same faculties, and thereby the same power that he had to make what com- 
 plex ideas of mixed modes they pleased in their own minds : to abstract them, 
 and make what sounds they pleased the signs of them : but the use of names 
 being to make our ideas within us known to others, that cannot be done, but 
 when the' same sign stands for the same idea in two who would communicate 
 
Ch. 6. 
 
 NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 
 
 •305 
 
 their thoughts, and discourse together. Those therefore of Adam’s children 
 that found these two words, kinneah and niouph, in familiar use, could not 
 take them for insignificant sounds ; but must needs conclude, they stood for 
 something, for certain ideas, abstract ideas, they being general names, which 
 abstract ideas were the essences of the species distinguished by those names. 
 If, therefore, they would use these words, as names of species already es- 
 iablished and agreed on, they were obliged to conform the ideas, in their 
 ninds, signified by these names, to the ideas that they stood for in other men’s 
 minds, as to their patterns and archetypes ; and then indeed their ideas of 
 these complex modes were liable to be inadequate, as being very apt (especi- 
 ally those that consisted of combinations of many simple ideas) not to be ex- 
 actly conformable to the ideas in other men’s minds, using the same names ; 
 though for this there be usually a remedy at hand, which is to ask the meaning 
 of any word we understand not, of him that uses it: it being as impossible to 
 know certainly what the words jealousy and adultery (which I think answer 
 HtOpand TISO) stand for in another man’s mind, with whom I would discourse 
 about them; as it was impossible, in the beginning of language, to know 
 what kinneah and niouph stood for in another man’s mind, without explica- 
 tion, they being voluntary signs in every one. 
 
 Sireau.46. Instances of substances in zahab . — Let us now also consider, 
 after the same manner, the names of substances in their first application. 
 One of Adam’s children, roving in the mountains, lights on a glittering sub- 
 stance which pleases his eye ; home he carries it to Adam, who, upon con- 
 sideration of it, finds it to be hard, to have a bright yellow colour, and an ex- 
 ceeding great weight. These, perhaps, at first, are all the qualities he takes 
 notice of in it : and abstracting this complex idea, consisting of a substance 
 having that peculiar bright yellowness, and a weight very great in proportion 
 to its bulk, he gives it the name zahab, to denote and mark all substances 
 that have these sensible qualities in them. It is evident now that, in this 
 case, Adam acts quite differently from what he did before in forming those 
 ideas of mixed modes, to which he gave the names kinneah and niouph. 
 For there he puts ideas together, only by his own imagination, not taken 
 from the existence of any thing; and to them he gave names to denominate 
 all things that should happen to agree to those his abstract ideas, without 
 considering whether any such thing did exist or no : the standard there was 
 of his own making. But in the forming his idea of this new substance, he 
 takes the quite contrary course ; here he has a standard made by nature ; and 
 therefore being to represent that to himself, by the idea he has of it, even 
 when it is absent, he puts in no simple idea into his complex one, but what 
 he has the perception of from the thing itself. He takes care that his idea 
 be conformable to this archetype, and intends the name should stand for an 
 idea so conformable. 
 
 Sect. 47. This piece of matter, thus denominated zahab, by Adam, being 
 quite different from any he had seen before, nobody, I think, will deny to be 
 a distinct species, and to have its peculiar essence ; and that the name zahab 
 is the mark of the species, and a name belonging to all things partaking in 
 that essence. But here it is plain, the essence Adam made the name zahab 
 stand for, was nothing but a body hard, shining, yellow, and very heavy. 
 But the inquisitive mind of man, not content with the knowledge of these, 
 as I may say, superficial qualities, puts Adam on farther examination of this 
 matter. He therefore knocks and beats it with flints, to see what was dis- 
 coverable in the inside : he finds it yield to blows, but not easily separate into 
 pieces : he finds it will bend without breaking. Is not now ductility to be 
 added to his former idea, and made part of the essence of the species thdt 
 name zahab stands fori Farther trials discover fusibility and fixedness. Are 
 not they also, by the same reason that any of the others were, to be put into 
 the complex idea signified by the name zahab 1 If not, what reason will there 
 be shown more for the one than the other 1 If these must, then all the other 
 properties, which any farther trials shall discover in this matter, ought, by the 
 
306 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3 
 
 game reason to make a part of the ingredients of the complex idea, which 
 ■ lie name zahab stands for, and so be the essence of the species marked by 
 that name. Which properties, because they are endless, it is plain, that the 
 idea made after this fashion by this archetype, will be always inadequate. 
 
 Sect 48. Their ideas imperfect, and therefore various. — But this is not 
 all; it would also follow, that the names of substances would not only have 
 (as in truth they have) but would also be supposed to have different significa- 
 tions, as used by different men, which wotild very much cumber the use of 
 language. For if every distinct quality, that were discovered in any matter 
 by any one, were supposed to make a necessary part of the complex idea, signi- 
 fied by the common name given it, it must follow, that men must suppose the 
 same word to signify different things in different men; since they cannot 
 doubt but. different men may have discovered several qualities in substances 
 of the same denomination, which others know nothing of. 
 
 Sect. 49. Therefore to fix their species, a real essence is supposed. — To 
 avoid this, therefore, they have supposed a real essence belonging to every 
 species, from which these properties all flow, and would have their name of 
 the species stand for that. But they not having any idea of that real essence 
 in substance, and their words signifying nothing but the ideas they have, that 
 which is done by this attempt, is only to put the name or sound in the place 
 and stead of the thing having that real essence, without knowing what the 
 real essence is ; and this is that which men do, when they speak of species 
 of things, as supposing thefn made by nature, and distinguished by real 
 essences. 
 
 Sect. 50- - Winch supposition, is of no use. — For let us consider, when 
 we affirm that all gold is fixed, either it means that fixedness is a part of the 
 definition, part of the nominal essence the word gold stands for; and so this 
 affirmation, all gold is fixed, contains nothing but the signification of the 
 term gold. Or else it means, that fixedness not being a part of the defini- 
 tion of the word gold, is a property of that substance itself; in which case, 
 it is plain, that the word gold stands in the place of a substance, having the 
 real essence of a species of things made by nature. In which way of sub- 
 stitution it has so confused and uncertain a signification, that though this 
 proposition, gold is fixed, be in that sense an affirmation of something real, 
 yet it is a truth will always fail us in its particular application, and so is of 
 no real use nor certainty. For let it be ever so true, that all gold, i. e. all 
 that has the real essence of gold, is fixed, what serves this for, whilst we 
 know not, in this sense, what is or is not gold 1 for if we know not the real 
 essence of gold, it is impossible we should know what parcel of matter lias 
 that essence, and so whether it he true gold or no. 
 
 Sect. 51. Conclusion. — To conclude: what liberty Adam had at first to 
 make any complex ideas of mixed modes, by no other patterns but by his 
 own thoughts, the same have all men ever since had. And the same necessity 
 of conforming his ideas of substances to things without him, as to arche- 
 types made by nature, that Adam was under, if he would not wilfully impose 
 upon himself ; the same are all men ever since under too. The same liberty 
 also that Adam had of affixing any new name to any idea, the same has any 
 one still (especially the beginners of languages, if we can imagine any such) 
 but only with this difference, that in places where men in society have al- 
 ready established a language among them, the significations of words are very 
 warily and sparingly to be altered: because men being furnished already with 
 names for their ideas, and common use having appropriated known names to 
 certain ideas, an affected misapplication of them cannot but be very ridicu- 
 lous. He that hath new notions will perhaps venture sometimes on the coin- 
 ing of new terms to express them : but men think it aboldness, and it is uncer- 
 tain whether common use will ever make them pass for current. But in com- 
 munication with others, it is necessary that we conform the ideas we make 
 the vulgar words of any language stand for, to their known proper significa- 
 tions (which I have explained at large already) or else to make known that 
 new signification we apply them to. 
 
Ch. 7. 
 
 OF PARTICLES. 
 
 b07 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OF PARTICLES. 
 
 Sect. Particles canned parts, or whole sentences together. — Besides 
 words which are names of ideas in the mind, there are a great many others 
 that are made use of to signify the connexion that the mind gives to ideas, 
 or propositions, one with another. The mind, in communicating its thought 
 to others, does not only need signs of the ideas it has then before it, but others 
 also, to show or intimate some particular action of its own at that time re- 
 lating to those ideas. This it does several ways ; as is, and is not, are the 
 general marks of the mind, affirming or denying. But besides affirmation or 
 negation, without which there is in words no truth or falsehood, the mind 
 does, in declaring its sentiments to others, connect not only the parts of pro- 
 positions, but whole sentences one to another, with their several relations 
 and dependencies, to make a coherent discourse. 
 
 Sect. 2. In them consists the art of well speaking. — The words, where- 
 by it signifies, what connexion it gives to the several affirmations and nega- 
 tions, that it unites in one continued reasoning or narration, are generally 
 called particles ; and it is in the right use of these that more particularly con- 
 sists the clearness and beauty of a good style. To think well, it is not enough 
 that a man has ideas clear and distinct in his thoughts, nor that he observes 
 the agreement or disagreement of some of them ; but he must think in train, 
 and observe the dependence of his thoughts and reasonings upon one another. 
 And to express well such methodical and rational thoughts, he must have 
 words to show what connexion, restriction, distinction, opposition, emphasis, 
 &c. he gives to each respective part of his discourse. To mistake in any of 
 these, is to puzzle, instead of informing, his hearer ; and therefore it is that 
 those words which are not truly by themselves the names of any ideas, are 
 of such constant and indispensable use in language, and do much contribute 
 to men’s well expressing themselves. 
 
 SectTB V~They show w hafrelation the mind gives to its own thoughts . — 
 This part of grammar has been perhaps as much neg'leGted as -some others 
 over-diligently cultivated. It is easy for men to write, one after another, of 
 cases and genders, moods and tenses, gerunds and supines : in these, and the 
 like, there has been great diligence used ; and particles themselves, in some 
 languages, have been, with great show of exactness, ranked into their several 
 orders. But though prepositions and conjunctions, &c. are names well known 
 in grammar, and the particles contained under them carefully ranked into their 
 distinct subdivisions ; yet he who would show the right use of particles, and 
 what significancy and force they have, must take a little more pains, en- 
 ter into his own thoughts, and observe nicely the several postures of his mind 
 in discoursing. 
 
 Sect. 4. Neither is it enough, for the explaining of these words, to render 
 them, as is usual in dictionaries, by words of another tongue which come 
 nearest to their signification : for what is meant by them is commonly as hard 
 to be understood in one as another language. They are all marks of some 
 action, or intimation of the mind ; and therefore to understand them rightly, 
 the several views, postures^ stands, turns, limitations, and exceptions, and 
 several other thoughts of the mind,for which we have either none, or very 
 deficient names, are diligently to be studied. Of thesejbere is a great variety, 
 m uc li_ exceeding- The number of particles that most languages have to express, 
 them . by ; andtherefore it is not to he wondered that most of these particles 
 have divers, and sometimes almost opposite significations. In the Hebrew 
 tongue there is a particle, consisting but of one single letter, of which there 
 are reckoned up, as I remember, seventy, I am sure above fifty, several signifi 
 cations. 
 
508 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 Sect. 5. Instance in but. — But is a particle, none more familiar in our 
 language ; and he that says it is a decretive conjunction, and that it answers 
 sed in Latin, or mais in French, thinks he has sufficiently explained it. But 
 it seems to me to intimate several relations the mind gives to the several 
 propositions or parts of them, which it joins by this monosyllable. 
 
 First, “ but to say no more here it intimates the stop of the mind in the 
 course it was going, before it came quite to the end of it. 
 
 Secondly, “ I saw but two plants here it shows, that the mind limits the 
 sense to what is expressed, with a negation of all other. 
 
 Thirdly, “ you pray ; but it is not that God would bring you to the true re- 
 ligion.” 
 
 Fourthly, “ but that he would confirm you in your own.” The first of these buts 
 intimates a supposition in the mind of something otherwise than it should be ; 
 the latter shows, that the mind makes a direct opposition between that, and 
 what goes before it. 
 
 Fifthly, “ all animals have sense ; but a dog is an animal;” here it signifies 
 little more but that the latter proposition is joined to the former, as the minor 
 of a syllogism. 
 
 Sect. 6. This matter but lightly touched here. — To these, I doubt not, 
 might be added a great many other significations of this particle, if it were 
 my business to examine it in its full latitude, and consider it in all the places 
 it is to be found : which if one should do, I doubt whether in all those man- 
 ners it is made use of, it would deserve the title of discretive which gramma- 
 rians give to it. But 1 intend not here a full explication of this sort of signs. 
 The instances I have given in this one, may give occasion to reflect on their 
 use and force in language, and lead us into the contemplation of several ac- 
 tions of our minds in discoursing, which it has found a way to intimate to 
 others by these particles ; some whereof constantly, and others in certain 
 constructions, have the sense of a whole sentence contained in them. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OF ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE TERMS. 
 
 Sect. 1. Abstract terms not predicable one of another , and why. — The 
 ordinary words of language, and our common use of them, would have given 
 us light into the nature of our ideas, if they had been but considered with at- 
 tention. The mind, as has been shown, has a power to abstract its ideas, and 
 so they become essences, general essences, whereby the sorts of things are 
 distinguished. Now each abstract idea being distinct, so that of any two 
 the one can never be the other, the mind will, by its intuitive knowledge, perceive 
 their difference ; and therefore in propositions no two whole ideas can ever 
 be affirmed one of another. This we see in the common use of language, 
 which permits not any two abstract words, or names of abstract ideas, to be 
 affirmed one of another. For how near of kin soever they may seem to be, 
 and how certain soever it is, that man is an animal, or rational, or white, yet 
 every one at first hearing perceives the falsehood of these propositions ; hu- 
 manity is animality, or rationality, or whiteness : and this is as evident as any 
 of t'ne most allowed maxims. All our affirmations then are only inconcrete, 
 which is the affirming, not one abstract idea to be another, but one abstract 
 idea to be joined to another ; which abstract ideas, in substances, may be of 
 any sort ; in all the rest, are little else but of relations ; and in substances, 
 the most frequent are of powers ; v. g. “ a man is white,” signifies, that the 
 thing that has f he essence of a man, has also in it the essence of whiteness, 
 which is nothing but a power to produce the idea of whiteness in one, whose 
 eyes can discover ordinary objects ; or, “ a man is rational,” signifies that 
 
Ch. 8. 
 
 ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE TERMS. 
 
 309 
 
 .the same thing that hath the essence of a man, hath also in it the essence of 
 rationality, i. e. a power of reasoning. 
 
 Sect. 2. They show the difference of our ideas. — This distinction of 
 names shows us also the difference of our ideas : for if we observe them, we 
 shall find that our simple ideas h^ve v ail abstrac t as .well as concrete names; 
 the one whereof is (to speak the language of grammarians) a substantive, the 
 other an abjective j as whiteness, white ; sweetness, swpet. The like also 
 holdsirrour'ideas of modes and relations, as justice, just; equality, equal; 
 only with this difference, that some of the concrete names of relations, among 
 men, chiefly are substantives ; as paternitas, pater ; whereof it were easy to 
 render a reason. But as to our ideas of substances, we have very fevu or no 
 abstract names at all. For though the schools have introduced animalitas, 
 humanitas, corporietas, and some others ; yet they hold no proportion with 
 that infinite number of names of substances, to which they never were ridicu- 
 lous enough to attempt the coining of abstract ones ; and those few that the 
 schools forged, and put into the mouths of their scholars, could never yet get 
 admittance into common use, or obtain the license of public approbation. 
 Which seems to me at least to intimate the confession of all. mankind, that 
 they have no ideas of the real essences of substances, since they have not 
 names for such ideas ; which no doubt they would have had, had not their 
 consciousness to themselves of their ignorance of them kept them from so 
 idle an attempt. And therefore, though they had ideas enough to distinguish 
 gold from a stone, and metal from wood ; yet they but timorously ventured on 
 such terms, as aurietas and saxietas, metallietas and lignietas, or the like 
 names, which should pretend to signify the real essences of those substances, 
 whereof they knew they had no ideas. And indeed it was only the doctrine of 
 substantial forms, and the confidence of mistaken pretenders to a knowledge 
 that they had not, which first coined, and then introduced animalitas, and 
 humanitas, and the like ; which yet went very little farther than their own 
 schools, and could never get to be current among understanding men. In- 
 deed, humanitas was a word familiar among the Romans, but in a far different 
 sense, and stood not for the abstract essence of any substance ; but was the 
 abstracted name of a mode, and its concrete, humanus, not homo. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF THE IMPERFECTION OF WORDS. 
 
 Sect. 1. Words are used for recording and communicating our thoughts. 
 — From what has been said in the foregoing chapters, it is easy to perceive 
 what imperfection there is in language, and how the very nature of words 
 makes it almost unavoidable for many of them to be doubtful and uncertain 
 in their significations. To examine the perfection or imperfection of words 
 it is necessary first to consider their use and end : for as they are more or less 
 fitted to attain that, so are they more or less perfect. We have, in the former 
 part of this discourse, often upon occasion mentioned a double use of words. 
 
 First, one for the recording of our own thoughts. 
 
 Secondly, the other for the communicating of our thoughts to others. 
 
 Sect. 2. Any words will serve for recording. — As to the first of these, 
 for the recording our own thoughts for the help of our own memories, whereby, 
 as it were, we talk to ourselves, any words will serve the turn. For since 
 sounds are voluntary and indifferent signs of any ideas, a man may use what 
 words he pleases, to signify his own ideas to himself; and there will be no 
 imperfection in them, if he constantly use the same sign for the same idea, 
 for then he cannot fail of having his meaning understood, wherein consists 
 the right use and perfection of language. 
 
310 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 Sect. 3. Communication by words civil or philosophical. — As to com- 
 munication of words, that too has a double use. 
 
 I. Civil. 
 
 II. Philosophical. 
 
 First, by their civil use, I mean such a communication of thoughts and 
 ideas by words, as may serve for the upholding common conversation and 
 commerce, about the ordinary affairs and conveniences of civil life, in the 
 societies of men one among another. 
 
 Secondly, by the philosophical use of words, I mean such a use of them as 
 may serve to convey the precise notions of things, and to express, in general 
 propositions, certain and undoubted truths, which the mind may rest upon, 
 and be satisfied with, in its search after true knowledge. These two uses are 
 very distinct ; and a great deal less exactness will serve in the one than in the 
 other, as we shall see in what follows. 
 
 Sect. 4. The imperfection of words in the doubtfulness of their signifi- 
 cation. — The chief end of language in communication being to be understood, 
 words serve not well for that end, neither in civil nor philosophical discourse, 
 when any word does not excite in the hearer the same idea which it stands 
 for in the mind of the speaker. Now since sounds have no natural connexion 
 with our ideas, but have all their signification from the arbitrary imposition 
 of men, the doubtfulness and uncertainty of their signification, which is the 
 imperfection we here are speaking of, has its cause more in the ideas they 
 stand for, than in any incapacity there is in one sound more than in another, 
 to signify any idea: for in that regard they are all equally perfect. 
 
 That then which makes doubtfulness and -uncertainty in the signification 
 of some more than other words, is the difference of ideas they stand for. 
 
 Sect. 5. Causes of their imperfection. — Words having naturally no sig- 
 nification, the idea which each stands for must be learned and retained by 
 those who would exchange thoughts, and hold intelligible discourse with 
 others in any language. But this is hardest to be done where, 
 
 First, the ideas they stand for are very complex, and made up of a great 
 number of ideas put together. 
 
 Secondly, where the ideas they stand for have no certain connexion in na- 
 ture ; and so no settled standard, any where in nature existing, to rectify and 
 adjust them by. 
 
 Thirdly, when the signification of the word is referred to a standard, which 
 standard is not easy to be known. 
 
 Fourthly, where the signification of the word, and the real essence of the 
 thing, are not exactly the same. 
 
 These are difficulties that attend the signification of several words that are 
 intelligible. Those which are not intelligible at all, such as names standing 
 for any simple ideas, which another has not organs or faculties to attain, — as 
 the names of colours to a blind man, or sounds to a deaf man, — need not 
 here be mentioned. 
 
 In all these cases we shall find an imperfection in words, which I shall 
 more at large explain, in their particular application to our several sorts of 
 ideas; for if we examine them, we shall find that the names of mixed modes 
 are most liable to doubtfulness and imperfection, for the two first of these 
 reasons ; and the names of substances chiefly for the two latter. 
 
 Sect. 6. The names of mixed modes doubtful. — First, the names of mixed 
 modes are many of them liable to great uncertainty and obscurity in their 
 signification. 
 
 First, because the ideas they stand for are so complex. — I. Because of 
 that great composition these complex ideas are often made up of. To make 
 words serviceable to the end of communication, it is necessary (as has been 
 said) that they excite in the hearer exactly the same idea they stand for in 
 the mind of the speaker. Without this, men fill one another’s heads with 
 noise and sounds; but convey not thereby their thoughts, and lay not before 
 
Oh. 9. 
 
 IMPERFECTION OF WORDS. 
 
 911 
 
 one another their ideas, which is the end of discourse and language. But 
 when a word stands for a very complex idea that is compounded and decom- 
 pounded, it is not easy for men to form and retain that idea so exactly as to 
 make the name in common use stand for the same precise idea, without any 
 the least variation. Hence it comes to pass, that men’s names of very com- 
 pound ideas, such as for the most part are moral words, have seldom, in two 
 different men, the same precise signification; since one man’s complex idea 
 seldom agrees with another’s, and often differs from his own, from that which 
 he had yesterday, or will have to-morrow. 
 
 Sect. 7. Secondly, because they have no standards. — II. Because the 
 najnesjjRmixed ‘rn'ottes; for the most part, want standards in nature, whereby 
 men may rectify and adjust their significations ; therefore they are very various 
 and doubtful. They are assemblages of ideas put together at the pleasure of 
 the mind, pursuing its own ends of discourse, and suited to its own notions; 
 whereby it designs not to copy any thing really existing, but to denominate 
 and rank things, as they come to agree with those archetypes or forms it lias 
 made. He that first brought the word sham, or wheedle, or banter, in use, 
 put together, as he thought fit, those ideas he made it stand for ; and as it is 
 with any new names of modes, that are now brought into any language, so it 
 was with the old ones, when they were first made use of. Names therefore 
 that stand for collections of ideas which the mind makes at pleasure, must 
 needs be of doubtful signification, when such collections are nowhere to be 
 found constantly united in nature, nor any patterns to be shown whereby men 
 may adjust them. What the word murder, or sacrilege, &c. signifies, can 
 never be known from things themselves : there be many of the parts of those 
 complex ideas which are not visible in the action itself; the intention of the 
 mind, or the relation of holy things, which make a part of murder or sacrilege, 
 have no necessary connexion with the outward and visible action of him that 
 commits either: and the pulling the trigger of the gun, with which 'the murder 
 is committed, and is all the action that perhaps is visible, has no natural con- 
 nexion with those other ideas that make up the complex one, named murder. 
 They have their union and combination only from the understanding, which 
 unites them under one name : but uniting them without any rule or pattern, 
 it cannot be but that the signification of the name that stands for such volun- 
 tary collections should be often various in the minds of different men, who 
 have scarce any standing rule to regulate themselves and their notions by, in 
 such arbitrary ideas. 
 
 Se&c^S. Propriety not a sufficient remedy. — It is true, common use, that 
 is the rule of propriety, may be supposed herejo afford some aid, to settle the 
 signification of language ; and it cannot be denied but that in some measure 
 it does. Common use regulates the meaning of words pretty well for com- 
 mon conversation; but nobody having an authority to establish the precise 
 signification of words, nor determine to what ideas any one shall annex them, 
 common use is not sufficient to adjust them to philosophical discourses; there 
 being scarce any name of any very complex idea (to say nothing of others) 
 which in common use has not a great latitude, and which, keeping within 
 the bounds of propriety, may not be made the sign of far different ideas. Be- 
 sides, the rule and measure of propriety itself being nowhere established, it 
 is often matter of dispute whether this or that way of using a word be pro- 
 priety of speech or no. From all which it is evident, that the names of such 
 kind of very complex ideas are naturally liable to this imperfection, to be of 
 doubtful and uncertain signification ; and even in men that have a mind to un- 
 derstand one another, do not always stand for the same idea in speaker and 
 hearer. Though the names glory and gratitude be the same in every man’s 
 mouth through a whole country, yet the complex collective idea, which every 
 one thinks on, or intends by that name, is apparently very different in men 
 using the same language. 
 
 Sect. 9. The way pf4earwmg~tkese names contributes also to their doubt- 
 fulness. — The way-also wherein the names of mixed modes are ordinarily 
 learned, does not a little contribute to the doubtfulness of their signification. 
 
312 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 For if we will observe how children learn languages, we shall find that to 
 make them understand what the names of simple ideas, or substances, stand 
 for, people ordinarily show them the thing whereof they would have them 
 have the idea ; and then repeat to them the name that stands for it, as white, 
 weet, milk, sugar, cat, dog. But as for mixed, modes, especially the most 
 material of them, moral wotdvthe sounds are usually learned first; and then 
 to know what complex ideas they stand for, they are either beholden to the 
 explication of others, or (which happens for the most part) are left to their 
 own observation and industry; which being little laid out in the search of the 
 Irue and precise meaning of names, these moral words are in most men’s 
 mouths little more than bare sounds; or when they have any, it is for the 
 most part but a very loose and undetermined, and consequently obscure 
 and confused, signification. And even those themselves, who have with 
 more attention settled their notions, do yet hardly avoid the inconveni- 
 ence, to have them stand for complex ideas, different from those 
 which other, even intelligent and studious men, make them the signs of. 
 Where shall one find any, either controversial debate, or familiar discourse, 
 concerning honour, faith, grace, religion, church, &c. wherein it is not easy to 
 observe the different notions men have of them"! which is nothing but this, that 
 they are not agreed in the signification of those words, nor have in their minds 
 the same complex ideas which they make them stand for: and so all the con- 
 tests that follow thereupon are only about the meaning of a sound. And 
 hence we see, that in the interpretation of laws, whether divine or human, 
 there is no end ; comments beget comments, and explications make new mat- 
 ter for explications ; and of limiting, distinguishing, varying the signification 
 of these moral words, there is no end. These ideas of men’s making are, by 
 men still having the same power, multiplied in infinitum. Many a man who 
 was pretty well satisfied of the meaning of a text of scripture, or clause in the 
 code, at first reading, has by consulting commentators quite lost the sense of 
 it, and by those elucidations given rise or increase to his doubts, and drawn 
 obscurity upon the place. I say not this, that I think commentaries needless ; 
 but to show how uncertain the names of mixed modes naturally are, even in 
 the mouths of those who had both the intention and the faculty of speaking as 
 clearly as language was capable to express their thoughts. 
 
 Sect. 10. Hence unavoidable obscurity in ancient authors . — What ob- 
 scurity this has unavoidably brought upon the writings of men, who have lived 
 in remote ages and in different countries, it will be needless to take notice; 
 since the numerous volumes of learned men, employing their thoughts that 
 way, are proofs more than enough to show what attention, study, sagacity, and 
 reasoning are required, to find out the true meaning of ancient authors. But 
 there being no writings we have any great concernment to be very solicitous 
 about the meaning of, but those that contain either truths we are requiied to 
 believe, or laws we are to obey, and draw inconveniences on us when we mis- 
 take or transgress ; we may be less anxious about the. sense of other authors, 
 who writing but their own opinions, we are under no greater necessity to know 
 them, than they to know ours. Our good or evil depending not on their decrees, 
 we may safely be ignorant of their notions: and therefore, in the reading of 
 them, if they do not use their words with a due clearness and perspicuity, we 
 may lay them aside, and, without any injury done them, resolve thus with our- 
 selves : 
 
 ‘ Si non vis intelligi, debes negligi.” 
 
 Sect. 11. Names of substances of doubtful signification . — If the signifi- 
 cation of themames of mixed modes are -uncertain, because there be no real 
 , standards existing in nature to which those ideas ariTTefen-ed, and by which 
 they may be adjusted, the names of-suhstances are of a doubtful signification, 
 fora contrary reason, viz. because the ideas they stand for are supposed con- 
 firmable to the reality of things, and are referred to standards made by nature. 
 In our ideas of substances, wc have not the liberty, as in mixed modes, bo frame 
 what combinations we think fit, to be the characteristical notes to rank and de- 
 
Ch. 9. 
 
 IMPERFECTION OF WORDS. 
 
 313 
 
 nominate tilings by. In these we must follow nature, suit our complex ideas 
 to real existences, and regulate the signification of their names by the things 
 themselves, if we will have our names to be the signs of them, and stand for 
 them. Here, it is true, we have patterns to follow, but patterns that will 
 make the signification of their names very uncertain; for names must be of a 
 very unsteady and various meaning, if the ideas they stand for be referred to 
 standards without us, that either cannot be known at all, or can be known but 
 imperfectly and uncertainly. 
 
 Sect. J.2. Names of substances referred, first, to real essences that cannot 
 beHnown. — The names of substances have, as has been shown, a double re- 
 Ierence~irrtheir ordinary use. 
 
 First, sometimes they are made to stand for, and so their signification is 
 supposed' to agree to, the real constitution of things, from which all their 
 properties flow, and in which they all centre. But this real constitution, (or 
 as it is apt to be called) essence, being utterly unknown to us, any sound that 
 is put to stand for it must be very uncertain in its application ; and it will be 
 impossible to know what things are, or ought to be, called a horse, or anatomy, 
 when those words are put for real essences that we have no ideas of at all. 
 And therefore, in this supposition, the names of substances being referred to 
 standards that cannot be know, their significations can never be adjusted and 
 established by those standards. 
 
 Sect. 13. Secondly, to^eoexisting qualities, which are hnown hut imper- 
 feclly.— The" simple ideas that are found to coexist irT substances being 
 thutwhichTlieir names immediately signify, these, as united in the several 
 sorts of things, are the proper standards to which their names are referred, 
 and by which their significations may be best rectified. But neither will these 
 archetypes so well serve this purpose, as to leave these names without very 
 various and uncertain significations : because these simple ideas that coexist, 
 and are united in the same subject, being very numerous, and having all an 
 equal right to go into the complex specific idea, which the specific name is to 
 stand for; men, though they propose to themselves the very same subject to 
 consider, yet frame very different ideas about it ; and so the name they use 
 for it unavoidably comes to have, in several men, very different significations. 
 The simple qualities which make up the complex ideas, being most of them 
 powers, in relation to changes, which they are apt to make in, or receive 
 from other bodies, are almost infinite. He that shall but observe what a great 
 variety of alterations any one of the baser metals is apt to receive from the 
 different application only of fire ; and how much a greater number of changes 
 any of them will receive in the hands of a chemist, by the application of 
 other bodies ; will not think it strange that I count the properties of any sort 
 of bodies not easy to be collected, and completely known by the ways of in- 
 quiry, which our faculties are capable of. They being therefore at least so 
 many that no man can know the precise and definite number, they are differ- 
 ently discovered by different men, according to their various skill, attention, 
 and ways of handling ; who therefore cannot choose but have different ideas 
 of the same substance, and therefore make the signification of its common 
 name very various and uncertain. For the complex ideas of substances be- 
 ing made up of such simple ones as are supposed to coexist in nature, every 
 One has a right to put into his complex ideas those qualities he has found to be 
 united together. For though in the substance of gold one satisfied himself 
 with colour and weight, yet another thinks solubility in aq. regia as neces- 
 sary to be joined with that colour in his idea of gold as any one does its fusi- 
 bility ; solubility in aq. regia being a quality as constantly joined with its 
 colour and weight, as fusibility, or any other; others put into it ductility or 
 fixedness, &c. as they have been taught by tradition or experience. Who of 
 ail these has established the right signification of the word gold for who shall 
 be the judge to determine 1 Each has its standard in nature, which he appeals 
 to ; and with reason thinks he has the same right, to put into his complex idea, 
 2 P 
 
314 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3 
 
 signified by the word gold, those qualities which upon trial he has found 
 united, as another, who has not so well examined, has to leave them out ; or 
 i third, who has made other trials, has to put in others. For the union in na- 
 ture of these qualities being the true ground of their union in one complex 
 idea, who can say one of them has more reason to be put in, or left out, than 
 another 1 From hence it will always unavoidably follow, that the complex 
 ideas of substances, in men using the same name for them, will be very vari- 
 ous ; and so the significations of those names very uncertain. 
 
 Sect. 14. Thirdly , to coexisting qualities which are known hut imperfectly. 
 Besides, there is scarce any particular thing existing, which, in some of it 
 simple ideas, does not communicate with a greater, and in others a less num- 
 ber of particular beings : who shall determine, in this case, which are those 
 that are to make up the precise collection that is to be signified by the specific 
 name ; or can, with any just authority, prescribe which obvious or common 
 qualities are to be left out ; or which more secret, or more particular are to be 
 put into the signification of the name of any substance l All which together 
 seldom or never fail to produce that various and doubtful signification in the 
 names of substances, which causes such uncertainty, disputes, or mistakes, 
 when we come to a philosophical use of them. 
 
 Sect. 15. With this imperfection, they may serve for civil, but not well 
 for philosophical use. — It is true, as to civil and common conversation, 
 the general names of substances, regulated in their ordinary signification by 
 some obvious qualities, (as by the shape and figure in things of known semi- 
 nal propagation, and in other substances, for the most part, by colour, joined 
 with some other sensible qualities) do well enough to design the things men 
 would be understood to speak of; and so they usually conceive well enough 
 the substances meant by the word gold, or apple, to distinguish the one from 
 the other. But in philosophical inquiries and debates, where general truths 
 are to be established, and consequences drawn from positions laid down — 
 there the precise signification of the names of substances will be found, not 
 only not to be well established, but also very hard to be so. For example, he 
 that shall make malleableness, or a certain degree of fixedness, a part of his 
 complex idea of gold, may make propositions concerning gold, and draw 
 consequences from them, that will truly and clearly follow from gold, taken 
 in such a signification ; but yet such as another man can never be forced to 
 admit, nor be convinced of their truth, who makes not malleableness, or the 
 same degree of fixedness, part of that complex idea, that the name gold, in his 
 use of it, stands for. 
 
 Sect. 16. Instance liquor. — This is a natural, and almost unavoidable im- 
 perfection TrTStnrost' alt'the names of substances, in all languages whatsoever, 
 which men will easily find, when once passing from confused or loose notions, 
 they come to more strict and close inquiries : for then they will be convinced 
 how doubtful and obscure those words are in their signification, which in or- 
 dinary use appeared very clear and determined. I was once in a meeting of 
 very learned and ingenious physicians, where by chance there arose a ques- 
 tion, whether any liquor passed through the filaments of the nerves. The 
 debate having been managed a good while, by variety of arguments on both 
 sides, I (who° had been used to suspect that the greatest parts of disputes 
 were more about the signification of words than a real difference in the con- 
 ception of things) desired, that before they went any farther on in this dis- 
 pute, they would first examine, and establish among them, what the word 
 liquor signified. They at first were a little surprised at the proposal; and 
 had they been persons less ingenious, they might perhaps have taken it for a 
 very frivolous or extravagant one ; since there was no one there that thought 
 not himself to understand very perfectly what the word liquor stood for; 
 which I think, too, none of the most perplexed names of substances. How- 
 ever, they were pleased to comply with my motion ; and, upon examination, 
 found that the signification of that word was not so settled and certain as 
 Jiey had all imagined, but that each of them made it a sign of a different 
 
ch. y. 
 
 IMPERFECTION OF WORDS. 
 
 315 
 
 complex idea. This made them believe that the main of their dispute was 
 about the signification of that term ; and that they differed very little in their 
 opinions concerning some fluid and subtle matter passing through the con- 
 duits of the nerves, though it was not so easy to agree whether it was to be 
 called liquor or no — a thing which, when considered, they thought it not worth 
 the contending about. 
 
 Sect. 17. Instance Gold. — How much this is the case in the greatest pari 
 of disptTresTKM“nien are engaged so hotly in, I shall perhaps have an occa- 
 sion in another place to take notice. Let us only here consider a little more 
 exactly the fore-mentioned instance of the word gold, and we shall see how 
 hard it is precisely to determine its signification. I think all agree to make 
 it stand for a body of a certain yellow shining colour ; which being the idea 
 to which children have annexed that name, the shining yellow part of a pea- 
 cock’s tail is properly to them gold. Others finding fusibility, joined with 
 that yellow colour in certain parcels of matter, make of that combination a 
 complex idea, to which they give the name gold, to denote a sort of sub- 
 stances ; and so exclude from being gold all such yellow shining bodies as 
 by fire will be reduced to ashes ; and admit to be of that species, or to be 
 comprehended under that name gold, only such substances, as having that 
 shining yellow colour, will by fire be reduced to fusion, and not to ashes. 
 Another, by the same reason, adds the weight ; which being a quality as 
 straightly joined with that colour as its fusibility, he thinks has the same reason 
 to be joined in its idea, and to be signified by its name ; and therefore the other 
 made up of body, of such a colour and fusibility, to be imperfect ; and so on 
 of all the rest : wherein no one can show a reason why some of the insepara- 
 ble qualities, that are always united in nature, should be put into the nominal 
 essence, and others left out ; or why the word gold, signifying that sort of 
 body the ring on his finger is made of, should determine that sort, rather by 
 its colour, weight, and fusibility, than by its colour, weight and solubility in 
 aq. regia : since the dissolving of it by that liquor is as inseparable from it 
 as the fusion by fire ; and they are both of them nothing but the relation which 
 that substance has to two other bodies, which have a power to operate differ- 
 ently upon it. For by what right is it that fusibility comes to be a part of 
 the essence signified by the word gold, and solubility but a property of it ; or 
 why is its colour part of the essence, and its malleableness but a property ! 
 That which I mean is this : that these being all but properties depending on 
 its real constitution, and nothing but powers, either active or passive, in re- 
 ference to other bodies ; no one has authority to determine the signification of 
 the word gold (as referred to such a body existing in nature) more to one 
 collection of ideas to be found in that body than to another : whereby the sig- 
 nification of that name must unavoidably be very uncertain ; since, as has been 
 said, several people observe several properties in the same substance ; and, I 
 think, I may say nobody at all. And therefore we have but very imperfect de- 
 scriptions of things, and words have very uncertain significations. 
 
 Sect. 18. Tfsjnames of simple ideas the least doubtful. — From what has 
 been- sniff,' it is easy to observe what' has-been before remarked, viz. That 
 the names of simple ideas are, of all others, the least liable to mistakes, and 
 that for these reasons. First, because the ideas they stand for, being each 
 but one single perceptiorrpare -ran etr easier got, and more clearly retained, 
 than the more complex ones ; and therefore are not liable to the uncertainty 
 which usually attends those compounded ones of substances and mixed modes, 
 in which the precise number of simple ideas, that maxe them up, are not 
 easily agreed, and so readily kept in the mind r-and .-.secondly, because they 
 are never referred to any other essence, but barely that perception they im- 
 mediately signify ; which reference is that which renders the signification of 
 the names of substances naturally so perplexed, and gives occasion to so many 
 disputes. Men that do not perversely use their words, or on purpose set 
 themselves to cavil, seldom mistake, in any language which they are acquain- 
 ted with, the use and signification of the names of simple ideas : white and 
 
316 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3 
 
 sweet, yellow and bitter, carry a very obvious meaning with them, which ev- 
 ery one precisely comprehends, or easily perceives he is ignorant of, and seeks 
 to be informed. But what precise collection of simple ideas modesty or fru- 
 gality stand for in another’s use, is not so certainly known. And however 
 we are apt to think we well enough know what is meant by gold or iron ; yet 
 the precise complex idea others make them the signs of, is not so certain ; 
 and I believe it is very seldom that, in speaker and hearer, they stand for ex- 
 actly the same collection : which must needs produce mistakes and disputes, 
 when they are made use of in discourses, wherein men have to do with uni- 
 versal propositions, and would settle in their minds universal truths, and con- 
 sider the consequences that follow from them. 
 
 Sect. 19. Andnext to them, simple modes. — By the same rule, the names 
 of simple modes are, next to those of simple ideas, least liable to doubt and 
 uncertainty, especially those of figure and number, of which men have so 
 clear and distinct ideas. Who ever, that had a mind to understand them, 
 mistook the ordinary meaning of seven, or a triangle ! And in general the 
 least compounded ideas in every kind have the least dubious names. 
 
 Sect. 20. The most doubtful are the names of very compounded mixed 
 modes and substances. — Mixed modes, therefore, that are made up but of a 
 few and obvious simple ideas, have usually names of no very uncertain sig- 
 nification ; but the same names of mixed modes, which comprehend a great 
 number of simple ideas, are commonly of a very doubtful and undetermined 
 meaning, as has been shown. The names of substances, being annexed to 
 ideas that are neither the real essences nor exact representations of the pat- 
 terns they are referred to, are liable yet to greater imperfection and uncer- 
 tainty, especially when we come to a philosophical use of them. - 
 
 Sect. 21. Why this imperfection charged upon words. — The great dis- 
 order that happens in our names of substances, proceeding for the most part 
 from our want of knowledge, and inability to penetrate into their real consti- 
 tutions, it may probably be wondered, why I charge this as an imperfection 
 ratner upon our words than understandings. This exception has so much 
 appearance of justice, that I think myself obliged to give a reason why I have 
 followed this method. I must confess, then, that when I first began this dis- 
 course of the understanding, and a good while after, I had not the least 
 thought that any consideration of words was at all necessary to it. But when, 
 having passed over the original and composition of our ideas, I began to ex- 
 amine the extent and certainty of our knowledge, I found it had so near a 
 connexion with words, that, unless their force and manner of signification 
 were first well observed, there could be very little said clearly and pertinently 
 concerning knowledge ; which being conversant about truth, had constantly 
 to do with propositions ; and though it terminated in things, yet it was for 
 the most part so much by the intervention of words, that they seemed scarce 
 separable from our general knowledge. At least, they interpose themselves 
 so much between our understandings and the truth, which it would contem- 
 plate and apprehend, that, like the medium through which visible objects pass, 
 their obscurity and disorder do not seldom cast a mist before our eyes, and 
 impose upon our understandings. If we consider, in the fallacies men put 
 upon themselves as well as others, and the mistakes in men’s disputes and 
 notions, how great a part is owing to words, and their uncertain or mistaken 
 significations — we shall have reason to think this no small obstacle in the 
 way to knowledge ; which, I conclude, we are the more carefully to be warned 
 of, because it has been so far from being taken notice of as an inconvenience, 
 that the arts of improving it have been made the business of men’s study, and 
 obtained the reputation of learning and subtility, as we shall see in the fol- 
 lowing chapter. But I am apt to imagine, that were the imperfections or 
 ’anguage, as the instruments of knowledge, more thoroughly weighed, a great 
 many of the controversies that make such a noise in the world, would of them- 
 selves cease ; and the way to knowledge, and perhaps peace, too, lie a great 
 deal opener than it does. 
 
Ch. 9. 
 
 IMPERFECTION OF WORDS. 
 
 317 
 
 Sect. 22. This should teach us moderation, in imposing our oun sense 
 of old authors. — Sure I am, that the signification of words, in all languages, 
 depending very much on the thoughts, notions, and ideas of him that uses 
 — them, must unavoidably be of great uncertainty to men of the same language 
 and country. This is so evident in the Greek authors, that he that shall 
 peruse their writings, will find in almost every one of them a distinct lan- 
 guage, though the same words. But when to this natural difficulty in every 
 country there shall be added different countries and remote ages, wherein the 
 speakers and writers had very different notions, tempers, customs, ornaments, 
 and figures of speech, &c. every one of which influenced the signification of 
 their words then, though to us now they are lost and unknown ; it would be- 
 come us to be charitable one to another in our interpretations or misunder- 
 standing of those ancient writings ; which, though of great concernment to 
 be understood, are liable to the unavoidable difficulties of speech, which (if 
 we except the names of simple ideas, and some very obvious things) is not 
 capable, without a constant defining the terms, of conveying the sense and 
 intention of the speaker, without any manner of doubt and uncertainty to the 
 hearer. And in discourses of religion, law, and morality, as they are matters 
 of the highest concernment, so there will be the greatest difficulty. 
 
 Sect. 23. The volumes of interpreters and commentators on the old and 
 new Testaments are but too manifest proofs of this. Though every thing said 
 in the text be infallibly true, yet the reader may be, nay cannot choose but be, 
 very fallible in the understanding of it. Nor is it to be wondered, that the 
 will of God, when clothed in words, should be liable to that doubt and uncer- 
 tainty which unavoidably attends that sort of conveyance ; when even his 
 Son, whilst clothed in flesh, was subject to all the frailties and inconveniences 
 of human nature, sin excepted : and we ought to magnify his goodness, that 
 he hath spread before all the world such legible characters of his works and 
 providence, and given all mankind so sufficient a light of reason, that they to 
 whom this written word never came, could not (whenever they set themselves 
 to search) either doubt of the being of a God, or of the obedience due to him. 
 Since then the precepts of natural religion are plain, and very intelligible to 
 all mankind, and seldom come to be controverted ; and other revealed truths, 
 which are conveyed to us by books and languages, are liable to the common 
 and natural obscurities and difficulties incident to words ; methinks it would 
 become us to be more careful and diligent in observing the former, and less 
 magisterial, positive, and imperious in imposing our own sense and interpre- 
 tations of the latter. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OF THE ABUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 &1CT,.L Abuse of words.— Besides the imperfection that is naturally in 
 language, and the obscurity and confusion that is so hard to be avoided in the 
 use of words, there are several wilful faults and neglects which men are guilty 
 of in this way of communication, whereby they render these signs less clear 
 and distinct in their signification than naturally they need to be. 
 
 Sect. 2. First, words without any, or w ithou t clear iVIcas.— First, in this 
 kind, the firsthand most-palpahleTibuse is, the using of words without clear 
 and distinct ideas ; or, which is worse, signs without any thing signified. Of 
 these there- are two sorts. 
 
 Jr One may observe, in all languages, certain words, that, if they be ex- 
 amined, will be found, in their first original and their appropriate use, not to 
 stand for any clear and distinct ideas. These, for the most part, the several 
 sects of philosophy and religion have introduced. For their authors or pro 
 
318 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 tnoters, either affecting something singular and out of the way of common 
 apprehension, or to support some strange opinions, or cover some weakness 
 of their hypothesis, seldom fail to coin new words, and such as, when they 
 come to be examined, may justly be called insignificant terms. For having 
 either had no determinate collection of ideas annexed to them, when they 
 were first invented, or at least, such as, if well examined, will be found incon- 
 sistent ; it is no wonder if afterwards, in the vulgar use of the same party, 
 they remain empty sounds, with little or no signification, among those who 
 think it enough to have them often in their mouths, as the distinguishing 
 characters of their church, or school, without much troubling their heads to 
 examine what are the precise ideas they stand for. 1 shall not need here to 
 heap up instances ; every man’s reading and conversation will sufficiently 
 furnish him: or if he wants to be better stored, the great mint-masters of this 
 kind of terms, I mean the schoolmen and metaphysicians, (under which, I 
 think, the disputing natural and moral philosophers of these latter ages may 
 be comprehended) have wherewithal abundantly to content him. 
 
 Sect. 3. — II. Others there be who extend this abuse yet farther ; who 
 take so little care to lay by words, which, in their primary notation, have 
 scarce any clear and distinct ideas which they are annexed to ; that, by an 
 unpardonable negligence, they familiarlyTise words, which the propriety of 
 language has affixed to very important ideas, without any distinct meaning at 
 all. Wisdom, glory, grace, &c. are words frequent enough in every man’s 
 mouth ; but if a great many of those who use them should be asked what they 
 mean by them, they would be at a stand, and not know what to answer : a 
 plain proof, that though they have learned those sounds, and have them ready 
 at their tongue’s end, yet there are no determined ideas laid up in their minds, 
 which are to be expressed to others by them. 
 
 Sect. 4. Occasioned by learning names before the ideas they belong to. 
 — Men having been accustomed from their cradles to learn words, which are 
 easily got and retained, before they knew or had framed the complex ideas to 
 which they were annexed, or which were to be found in the things they were 
 thought to stand for ; they usually continue to do so all their lives ; and, with- 
 out taking the pains necessary to settle in their minds determined ideas, they 
 use their words for such unsteady and confused notions as they have, contenting 
 themselves with the same words other people use : as if their very sound neces- 
 sarily carried with it constantly the same meaning. This, though men make a 
 shift with, in the ordinary occurrences of life, where they find it necessary to be 
 understood, and therefore they make signs till they are so ; yet this insignificancy 
 m their words, when they come to reason concerning either their tenets or 
 interest, manifestly fills their discourse with abundance of empty, unintelli- 
 gible noise and jargon ; especially in moral matters, where the words for the 
 most part standing for arbitrary and numerous collections of ideas not 
 regularly and permanently united in nature, their bare sounds are often only 
 thought on, or at least very obscure and uncertain notions annexed to them. 
 Men take the words they find in use among their neighbours ; and that they 
 may not seem ignorant what they stand for, use them confidently, without 
 much troubling their heads about a certain fixed meaning : whereby, besides 
 the ease of it, they obtain this advantage, that as in such discourses they seldom 
 are in the right, so they are seldom to be convinced that they are in the 
 wrong ; it being all one to go about to draw those men out of their mistakes, 
 who have no settled notions, as to dispossess a vagrant of his habitation, who 
 has no settled abode. This I guess to be so ; and every one may observe in 
 himself and others whether it be or no. 
 
 Sect. 5. Unsteady application of them. — Secondly, another great abuse 
 of words is inconsistency in the use of them. It is hard to find a discourse 
 written upon any subject, especially of controversy, wherein one shall not ob- 
 serve, if he read with attention, the same words (and those commonly the most 
 material in the discourse, and upon which the argument turns) used some- 
 times for one collection of simple ideas, and sometimes for another, which is 
 
Ch. 10. 
 
 OF WORDS. 
 
 319 
 
 ABUSE 
 
 a perfect abuse of language. Words being intended for signs of my ideas, to 
 make them known to others, not by any natural signification, but by a voluntary 
 imposition — it is plain cheat and abuse, when I make them stand sometimes for 
 one thing and sometimes for another ; the wilful doing whereof can be imputed 
 to nothing but great folly, or greater dishonesty : and a man, in his accounts 
 with another, may, with as much fairness, make the characters of numbers 
 stand sometimes for one and sometimes for another collection of units, (u. g. 
 this character 3 stands sometimes for three, sometimes for four, and some- 
 times for eight) as in his discourse, or reasoning, make the same words stand for 
 different collections of simple ideas. If men should do so in their reckonings, 
 I wonder who would have to do with them 1 One who would speak thus, in 
 the affairs and business of the world, ar.d call eight sometimes seven, and 
 sometimes nine, as best served his advantage, will presently have clapped 
 upon him one of the two names men are commonly disgusted with : and yet 
 in arguings and learned contests, tire same sort of proceedings passes com- 
 monly for wit and learning: but to me it appears a greater dishonesty than 
 the misplacing of counters in the casting up a debt ; and the cheat the greater, 
 by how much truth is of greater concernment and value than money. 
 
 Sect. 6„. Affected obscurity by wrong -■oytjdicaUon,- — Thirdly, another 
 
 abuse of language isRmT'affeeted-- obscurity, by either applying old words to 
 new and unusual significations, or introducing new and ambiguous terms, 
 without defining either ; or else putting them so together, as may confound 
 their ordinary meaning. Though the peripatetic philosophy has been most 
 eminent in this way, yet other sects have not been wholly clear of it. There 
 are scarce 'any of them that are not cumbered with some difficulties (such is 
 the imperfection of human knowledge) which they have been fain to cover 
 with obscurity of terms, and to confound the signification of words, which, 
 like a mist before people’s eyes, might hinder their weak parts from being 
 discovered. That body and extension, in common use, stand for two distinct 
 ideas, is plain to any one that will but reflect a little : for were their signifi- 
 cation precisely the same, it would be proper, and as intelligible, to say the 
 body of an extension, as the extension of a body : and yet there are those who 
 find it necessary to confound their signification. To this abuse, and the mis- 
 chiefs of confounding the signification of words, logic and the liberal sciences, 
 as they have been handled in the schools, have given reputation ; and the 
 admired art of disputing hath added much to the natural imperfection of lan- 
 guages, whilst it has been made use of and fitted to perplex the signification 
 of words, more than to discover the knowledge and truth of things : and he 
 that will look into that sort of learned writings, will find the words there 
 much more obscure, uncertain, and undeterminable in their meaning than they 
 are in ordinary conversation. 
 
 Sect. 7. Logic and dispute have much contributed to this. — This is un- 
 avoidably to bo so, where men’s parts and learning are estimated by their skill 
 in disputing. And if reputation and reward shall attend these conquests, 
 which depend mostly on the fineness and niceties of words, it is no wonder 
 if the wit of man, so employed, should perplex, involve, and subtilize the 
 signification of sounds, so as never to want something to say, in opposing or 
 defending any question: the victory being adjudged not to him who had truth 
 on his side, but the last word in the dispute. 
 
 Sect. 8. Calling it subtility. — This, though a very useless skill, and that 
 whieUL think the direct p apuslte-to the ways of knowledge, hath yet passed 
 hitherto under the laudable and esteemed names of subtility and acuteness ; 
 and has had the applause of the schools, and encouragement of one part of the 
 learned men of the world. And no wonder, since the philosophers of old 
 (the disputing and wrangling philosophers I mean, such as Lucian wittingly 
 and with reason taxes) and the schoolmen since, aiming at glory and esteem 
 for their great and universal knowledge, (easier a great deal to be pretended 
 to than really acquired) found this a good expedient to cover their ignorance 
 with a curious, and inexplicable web of perplexed words, and urocure to them- 
 
320 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 selves the admiration of others by unintelligible terms, the apter to produce 
 wonder, because they could not be understood : whilst it appears in all his- 
 tory, that these profound doctors were no wiser, nor more useful, than their 
 neighbours ; and brought but small advantage to human life, or the societies 
 wherein they lived ; unless the coining of new words, where they produced 
 no new things to apply them to, or the perplexing or obscuring the significa- 
 tion of old ones, and so bringing all things into question and dispute, were 
 a thing profitable to the life of man, or worthy commendation and reward. 
 
 Sect. 9. This learning very little benefits society. — For notwithstanding 
 these learned disputants, these all-knowing doctors, it \\ as to the unscholas- 
 tic statesman that the governments of the world owed their peace, defence, 
 and liberties ; and from the illiterate and condemned mechanic (a name of 
 disgrace) that they received the improvements of useful arts. Nevertheless, 
 this artificial ignorance and learned gibberish prevailed mightily in these last 
 ages, by the interest and artifice of those who found no easier way to that 
 pitch of authority and dominion they have attained, than by amusing the men 
 of business and ignorant, with hard words, or employing the ingenious and 
 idle in intricate disputes about unintelligible terms, and holding them perpetu- 
 ally entangled in that endless labyrinth. Besides, there is no such way to 
 gain admittance, or give defence to strange and absurd doctrines, as to guard 
 them round about with legions of obscure, doubtful, and undefined words : 
 which yet make these retreats more like the dens of robbers, or holes of foxes, 
 than the fortresses of fair warriors ; which, if it be hard to get them out of, 
 it is not for the strength that is in them, but the briers and thorns, and the 
 obscurity of the thickets they are beset with. For untruth being unacceptable 
 to the mind of man, there is no other defence left for absurdity but obscurity. 
 
 Sect. 1U. But destroys the instruments of knowledge and communication. 
 —Thus learned ignorance, and this art of keeping, even inquisitive men, from 
 true knowledge, hath been propagated in the world, and hath much perplexed, 
 whilst it pretended to inform, the understanding. For we see that other well- 
 meaning and wise men, whose education and parts had not acquired that acute- 
 ness, could intelligibly express themselves to one another; and in its plain 
 use make a benefit of language. But though unlearned men well enough un- 
 derstood the words white and black, &c. and had constant notions of the ideas 
 signified by those words ; yet there were philosophers found, who had learn- 
 ing and subtilty enough to prove, that snow was black ; i. e. to prove that 
 white was black. Whereby they had the advantage to destroy the instru- 
 ments and means of discourse, conversation, instruction, and society; whilst 
 with great art and subtilty they did no more but perplex and confound the 
 signification of words; and thereby render language less useful than the real 
 defects of it had made it ; a gift, which the illiterate had not attained to. 
 
 Sect. 11. As useful as to confound the sound of the letters. — These 
 learned men did equally instruct men’s understandings, and profit their lives, 
 as he who should alter the signification of known characters, and by a subtle 
 device of learning, far surpassing the capacity of the illiterate, dull, and vul- 
 gar, should, in his writings, show that he could put A for B, and D for E, &c. 
 to the no small admiration and benefit of his reader: it being as senseless to 
 put black, which is a word agreed on to stand for one sensible idea, to put it, 
 I say, for another, or the contrary idea, i. e. to call snow black, as to put this 
 mark A, which is a character agreed on to stand for one modification of sound,, 
 made by a certain motion of the organs of speech, for B, which is agreed on 
 to stand for another modification of sound, made by another certain motion of 
 the organs of speech. 
 
 Sect. 12. This art has perplexed religion and justice . — Nor hath this 
 mischief stopped in logical niceties, or curious empty speculations ; it hath 
 invaded the great concernments of human life and society, obscured and per- 
 plexed the material truths of law and divinity ; brought confusion, disorder, 
 and uncertainty into the affairs of mankind ; and if not destroyed, yet in a 
 great measure rendered useless, these two great rules, religion and justice 
 
Ch. 10. 
 
 ABUSES OF WORDS. 
 
 321 
 
 What have the greatest part of the comments and disputes upon the laws of 
 God and man served for, but to make the meaning more doubtful, and per- 
 plex the sensei What have been the effects of those multiplied curious 
 distinctions and acute niceties, but obscurity and uncertainty, leaving the 
 words more unintelligible, and the reader more at a loss ! How else comes 
 it to pass that princes, speaking or writing to their servants, in their ordinary 
 commands, are easily understood ; speaking to their people, in their laws, are 
 not so 1 And, as I remarked before, doth it not often happen, that a man of 
 an ordinary capacity very well understands a text, or a law, that he reads, till 
 he consults an expositor, or goes to counsel ; who, by that time he hath done 
 explaining them, makes the words signify either nothing at all, or what he 
 pleases. 
 
 Sect, 13. And ought not to pass for learning. — Whether any by-interests 
 of these professions have occasioned this, I will not here examine ; but I leave 
 it to be considered, whether it would not be well for mankind, whose concern 
 ment it is to know things as they are, and to do what they ought, and not to 
 spend their lives in talking about them, or tossing words to and fro; whether 
 it would not be well, I say, that the use of words were made plain and direct, 
 and that language, which was given us for the improvement of knowledge and 
 bond of society, should not be employed to darken truth, and unsettle people’s 
 rights;' to raise mists, and render unintelligible both morality and religion! 
 Or that, at least, if this will happen, it should not be thought learning or 
 knowledge to do so ! 
 
 SEG^^AA^-T&Jting them for things. — Fourthly, another great abuse of 
 words, is the taking them for things. This, though it in some degree con- 
 cerns all names in general, yet more particularly affects those of substances. 
 To this abuse those men are most subject who most confine their thoughts to 
 any one system, and give themselves up into a firm belief of the perfection 
 of any received hypothesis; whereby they come to be persuaded, that the 
 terms of that sect are so suited to the nature of things, that they perfectly 
 correspond with their real existence. Who is there, that has been bred up 
 in the peripatetic philosophy, who does not think the ten names, under which 
 are ranked the ten predicaments, to be exactly conformable to the nature of 
 things ! Who is there of lhat school that is not pertuaded, that substantial 
 forms, vegetative souls, abhorrence of a vacuum, intentional species, &c. are 
 something real! These words men have learned from their very entrance 
 upon knowledge, and have found their masters and systems lay great stress 
 upon them ; and therefore they cannot quit the opinion, that they are con- 
 formable to nature, and are the representations of something that really ex- 
 ists. The Platonists have their soul of the world, and the Epicureans their 
 endeavour towards motion in their atoms, when at rest. There is scarce any 
 sect in philosophy has not a distinct set of terms, that others understand not ; 
 but yet this gibberish, which, in the weakness of human understanding, serves 
 so well to palliate men’s ignorance, and cover their errors, comes, by familiar 
 use among those of the same tribe, to seem the most important part of lan- 
 guage, and of all other the terms the most significant. And should aerial 
 and aetherial vehicles come once, by the prevalency of that doctrine, to be 
 generally received any where, no doubt those terms would make impressions 
 on men’s minds, so as to establish them in the persuasion of the reality of 
 such things, as much as peripatetic forms and intentional species have here- 
 tofore done. 
 
 Sect. 15. Instance, in matter. — How much names taken for things are 
 apt te"rmslead the understanding, the attentive reading of philosophical wri- 
 ters would abundantly discover ; and that, perhaps, in words little suspected 
 of any such misuse. I shall instance in one only, and that a very familiar 
 one : how many intricate disputes have there been about matter, as if there 
 were some such thing really in nature, distinct from body ; as it is evident 
 the word matter stands for an idea distinct from the idea of body ! For if the 
 ideas these two terms stood for were precisely the same, they might indiffer- 
 
322 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Ecok 3. 
 
 ently, in all places, be put one for another. But we see, that though it be 
 proper to say, there is one matter of all bodies, one cannot say there is one 
 body of all matters : we familiarly say, one body is bigger than another ; but 
 it sounds harsh (and I think is never used) to say, one matter is bigger than 
 another. Whence comes this, then 1 viz. from hence, that though matter and 
 body be not really distinct, but wherever there is the one there is the other ; 
 yet matter and body stand for two different conceptions, whereof the one is 
 incomplete, and but a part of the other. For body stands for a solid extended 
 figured substance, whereof matter is but a partial and more confused concep- 
 tion, it seeming to me to be used for the substance and solidity of body, 
 without taking in its extension and figure : and therefore it is that, speaking 
 of matter, we speak of it always as one, because in truth it expressly contains 
 nothing but the idea of a solid substance, which is every where the same, every 
 where uniform. This being our idea of matter, we no more conceive or 
 speak of different matters in the world, than we do of different solidities ; 
 though we both conceive and speak of different bodies, because extension and 
 figure are capable of variation. But since solidity cannot exist without exten- 
 sion and figure, the taking matter to be the name of something really existing 
 under that precision, has no doubt produced those obscure and unintelligible 
 discourses and disputes, which have filled the heads and books of philosophers, 
 concerning materia prima ; which imperfection or abuse, how far it may con- 
 cern a great many other general terms, I leave to be considered. This, 1 
 think, 1 may at least say, that we should have a great many fewer disputes 
 in the world, if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas 
 only, and not for things themselves. For when we argue about matter, or any 
 the like term, we truly argue only about the idea we express hy that sound, 
 whether that precise idea agree to any thing really existing in nature or no. 
 And if men would tell what ideas they make their words stand for, there could 
 not be half that obscurity or wrangling, in the search or support of truth, that, 
 there is. 
 
 Sect. 16. This makes errors lasting. — But whatever inconvenience fol- 
 lows from this mistake of words, this I am sure, that by constant and familiar 
 use, they charm men into notions far remote from the truth of tilings. It 
 would be a hard matter to persuade any one that the words which his father 
 or schoolmaster, the parson of the parish, or such a reverend doctor used, sig- 
 nified nothing that really existed in nature ; which, perhaps, is none of the 
 least causes that men are so hardly drawn to quit their mistakes, even in opin- 
 ions purely philosophical, and where they have no other interest but truth. 
 For the words they have a long time been used to, remaining firm in their 
 minds, it is no wonder that the wrong notions annexed to them should not 
 be removed. 
 
 Sect. 17 . Setting them for ivhat they cannot signify. — Fifthly, another 
 abuse of words, is the setting them in the place of things which they do or 
 can by no means signify. We may observe, that in the general names' of sub- 
 stances, whereof the nominal essences are only known to us, when we put 
 them into propositions, and affirm or deny any thing about them, we do most 
 commonly tacitly suppose, or intend they should stand for, the real essence of 
 a certain sort of substances. For when a man says gold is malleable, he 
 means and would insinuate something more than this, that what I call gold is 
 malleable, (though truly it amounts to no more) but would have this under- 
 stood, viz. that gold, i. e. what has the real essence of gold, is malleable , 
 which amounts to thus much, that malleableness depends on, and is insepara- 
 ble from, the real essence of gold. But a man not knowing wherein that real 
 essence consists, the connexion in his mind of malleableness is not truly with 
 an essence he knows not, but only with the sound gold he puts for it. Thus 
 when we say, that animal rationale is, and animal implume bipes latis un- 
 guihus is not a good definition of a man ; it is plain we suppose the name man 
 m this case to stand for the real essence of a species, and would signify, that 
 a rational animal better described that real essence, than a two-legged animal 
 
Ch. 10. 
 
 ABUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 323 
 
 with broad nails, and without feathers. For else, why might not Plato as 
 properly make the word or man, stand for his complex idea, made 
 
 up of the idea of a body, distinguished from others by a certain shape and 
 other outward appearances, as Aristotle make the complex idea, to which he 
 gave the name nvd^aurc r, or man, of body and the faculty of reasoning joined 
 together, unless the name avfigaa-sc, or man, were supposed to stand for some- 
 , thing else than what it signifies ; and to be put in the place of some other 
 thing than the idea a man professess he would express by it 1 
 
 Sect. 18. v. g. Putting them for the real essences of substances. — It is 
 ffTT?q~t-U p. pa ma s. -of -substances would be much more useful, and propositions 
 made in them much more certain, were the real essences of substances the ideas 
 in our minds, which those words signified. And it is for want of those real es- 
 sences that our words convey so little knowledge or certainty in our dis- 
 courses about them : and therefore the mind, to remove that imperfection as 
 much as it can, makes them, by a secret supposition, to stand for a thing, 
 having that real essence, as if thereby it made some nearer approaches to it. 
 For though the word man or gold signifying nothing truly but a complex 
 idea of properties united together in one sort of substances ; yet there is 
 scarce any body in tfie use of these words, but often supposes each of those 
 names to stand for a thing having the real essence, on which these properties 
 depend. Which is so far from diminishing the imperfections of our words, 
 that by a plain abuse it adds to it, when we would make them stand for some- 
 thing, which, not being in our complex idea, the name we use can no ways 
 be the sign of. 
 
 — - Rtcct. 19. TJenre we think every change of our idea in substances not to 
 change the species. — This shows us the reason why in mixed modes any of 
 the ideas that make the composition of the complex one, being left out or 
 changed, it "is allowed to be another thing, i. e. to be of another species : as 
 is plain in chance-medley, man-slaughter, murder, parricide, &c. The reason 
 whereof is, because the complex idea signified by that name is the real as 
 well as nominal essence ; and there is no secret reference of that name to 
 any other essence but that. But in substances it is not so. For though in 
 that called gold one puts into his complex idea what another leaves out, and 
 vice versa ; yet men do not usually think that therefore the species is changed : 
 because they secretly in their minds refer that name, and suppose it an- 
 nexed to a real immutable essence of a thing existing, on which those pro- 
 perties depend. He that adds to his complex idea of gold that of fixedness and 
 solubility in aq. regia, which he put not in it before, is not thought to have 
 changed the species ; but only to have a more perfect idea, by adding another 
 simple idea, which is always in fact joined with those other, of which his 
 former complex idea consisted. But this reference of the name to a thing, 
 whereof we had not the idea, is so far from helping at all, that it only serves 
 the more to involve us in difficulties. For by this tacit reference to the real 
 essence of that species of bodies, the word gold (which, by standing for a 
 more or less perfect collection of simple ideas, serves to design that sort of 
 body well enough in civil discourse) comes to have no signification at all, 
 being put for somewhat, whereof we have no idea at all, and so can signify 
 nothing at all, when the body itself is away. For however it may be thought 
 all one, yet, if well considered, it will be found quite a different thing to ar- 
 gue about gold in name, and about a parcel in the body itself, v. g. a piece 
 of leaf-gold laid before us ; though in discourse we are fain to substitute 
 the name for the thing. 
 
 Seot. 20. The cause of the abuse, a supposition of nature's working 
 — ulv.ays reguTdrlij.— rhnt Which T think very much disposes men to substitute 
 their names for the real essences of species, is the supposition before men- 
 tioned, that nature works regularly in the production of things, and sets the 
 boundaries to each of those species, by giving exactly the same real internal 
 constitution to each individual, which we rank under one general name. 
 Whereas any one who observes their different qualities can hardly doubt, that 
 
S24 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3, 
 
 many of the ndividuals called by the same name, are, in their internal consti- 
 tution, as different one from another as several of those which are ranked 
 under different specific names. This supposition, however, that the same 
 precise and internal constitution goes always with the same specific name, 
 makes men forward to take those names for the representatives of those real 
 essences, though indeed they signify nothing but the complex ideas they have 
 in their minds when they use them. So that, if I may so say, signifying one 
 thing, and being supposed for, or put in the place of another, they cannot but, 
 in such a kind of use, cause a great deal of uncertainty in men’s discourses ; 
 especially in those who have thoroughly imbibed the doctrine of substantial 
 forms, whereby they firmly imagine the several species of things to be deter- 
 mined and distinguished. 
 
 Sect. 21. This abuse contains two false suppositions. — But however pre- 
 posterous and absurd it be to make our names stand for ideas we have not, 
 or (which is all one) essences that we know not, it being in effect to make 
 our words the signs of nothing ; yet it is evident to any one, who ever so lit- 
 tle reflects on the use men make of their words, that there is nothing more 
 familiar. When a man asks whether this or that thing he sees, let it be a 
 drill, or a monstrous foetus, be a man or no ; it is evident, the question is not, 
 whether that particular thing agree to his complex idea, expressed by the 
 name man ; but whether it has in it the real essence of a species of things, 
 which he supposes his name man to stand for. In which way of using the 
 names of substances there are these false suppositions contained. 
 
 First, there are certain precise essences, according to which nature makes 
 all particular things, _and by which they are distinguished into species. That 
 every thing has a real constitution, whereby it is what it is, and on which its 
 sensible qualities depend, is past doubt ; but I think it has been proved, that 
 this makes not the distinction of species, as we rank them, nor the bounda- 
 ries of their names. 
 
 Secondly, this tacitly also insinuates, as if we had ideas of these proposed 
 essences. For to what purpose else is it to inquire whether this or that thing 
 have the real essence of the species man, if we did not suppose that there were 
 such a specific essence known 1 which yet is utterly false : and therefore such 
 application of names, as would make them stand for ideas which we have not, 
 must needs cause great disorder in discourses and reasonings about them, and 
 be a great inconvenience in our communication by words. 
 
 Sect, 22. A supposition that words have a certain and evident significa- 
 tion. — Sixthly, there remains yet another more general, though perhaps less 
 observed, abuse of words ; and that is, that men having by a long and familiar 
 use annexed to them certain ideas, they are apt to imagine so near and neces- 
 sary a connexion between the names and the signification they use them in, 
 that they forwardly suppose one cannot but understand what their meaning 
 is ; and therefore one ought to acquiesce in the words delivered, as if it were 
 past doubt, that, in the use of those common received sounds, the speaker and 
 hearer had necessarily the same precise ideas. Whence presuming, that when 
 they have in discourse used any term, they have thereby, as it were, set be- 
 fore others the very thing they talk of ; and so likewise taking the words of 
 others as naturally standing for just what they themselves have been accus- 
 tomed to apply them to, they never trouble themselves to explain their own, 
 or understand clearly others’ meaning. From whence commonly proceed 
 noise and wrangling, without improvement or information ; whilst men take 
 words to be the constant regular marks of agreed notions, which in truth are 
 no more but the voluntary and unsteady signs of their own ideas. And yet men 
 think it strange, if, in discourse, or (where it is often absolutely necessary) in 
 dispute, one sometimes asks the meaning of their terms : though the arguings 
 one may every day observe in conversation make it evident, that there are few 
 names of complex ideas which any two men use for the same just precise col- 
 lection. It is hard to name a word which will not be a clear instance of tins. 
 Life is a term, none more familiar. Any one almost would take it for an af- 
 
Ch. 10. 
 
 ABUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 325 
 
 front to be asked what he meant by it. Ancl yet if it comes m question, 
 whether a plant, that lies ready formed in the seed, have life ; whether the 
 embryo in an egg before incubation, or a man in a swoon without sense or 
 motion, be alive or no ; it is easy to perceive that a clear, distinct, settled 
 idea does not always accompany the use of so known a word as that of life is. 
 Some gross and confused conceptions men indeed ordinarily have, to which 
 they apply the common words of their language ; and such a loose use of their 
 words serves them well enough in their ordinary discourses or affairs. But 
 this is not sufficient for philosophical inquiries. Knowledge and reasoning 
 require precise determinate ideas. And though men will not be so impor- 
 tunately dull, as not to understand what others say without demanding an ex- 
 plication of their terms ; nor so troublesomely critical, as to correct others in the 
 use of the words they receive from them : yet where truth and knowledge are 
 concerned in the case, I know not what fault it can be to desire the explica- 
 tion of words whose sense seems dubious ; or why a man should be ashamed 
 to own his ignorance in what sense another man uses his words, since he has 
 no other way of certainly knowing it but by being informed. This abuse of 
 taking words upon trust has nowhere spread so far, nor with so ill effects, as 
 among men of letters. The multiplication and obstinacy of disputes, which 
 have so laid waste the intellectual world, is owing to nothing more than to 
 this ill use of words. For though it be generally believed that there is great 
 diversity of opinions in the volumes and variety of controversies the world is 
 distracted with, yet the most I can find that the contending learned men of 
 different parties do, in their arguings one with another, is, that they speak 
 different languages. For I am apt to imagine, that when any of them, quit- 
 ling terms, think upon things, and know what they think, they think all the 
 same ; though perhaps what they would have, be different. 
 
 Sect. 23. The ends of language: 1. to convey our ideas. — To conclude 
 this- eonsideration of the imperfection and abuse of language ; the ends of 
 language in our discourse with others being chiefly these three : first, to make 
 known one man’s thoughts or ideas to another ; secondly, to do it with as 
 much ease and quickness as possible ; and, thirdly, thereby to convey the 
 knowledge of things : language is either abused or deficient when it fails of 
 any of these three. 
 
 First, words fail in the first of these ends, and lay not open one man’s ideas 
 to another’s view : 1. When men have names in their mouths, without any 
 determinate ideas in their minds, whereof they are the signs ; or, 2. When 
 they apply the common received names of any language to ideas, to which 
 the common use of that language does not apply them : or, 3. When they 
 apply them very unsteadily, making them stand now for one, and by and by 
 for another idea. 
 
 Sect. 24. To do it with quickness. — Secondly, men fail of conveying 
 their thoughts with all the quickness and ease that may be, when they have 
 complex ideas, without having any distinct names for them. This is some- 
 times the fault of the language itself, which has not in it a sound yet applied 
 to such a signification ; and sometimes the fault of the man who has not yet 
 learned the name for that idea he would show another. 
 
 Sect. 25. Therewith to convey the knowledge of things. — Thirdly, 
 there is'no -knowledge of things conveyed by men’s words, when their ideas 
 agree not to the reality of things. Though it be a defect, that has its original 
 in our ideas, which are not so conformable to the nature of things, as atten- 
 tion, study, and application might make them ; yet it fails not to extend it- 
 self to our words too, when we use them as signs of real beings, which yet 
 never had any reality or existence. 
 
 Secj. 26. How men's words fail in all these. — First, he that hath words 
 of any language, without distinct ideas in his mind to which he applies them, 
 does, so far as he uses them in discourse, only make a noise without any sense 
 or signification ; and how learned soever he may seem by the use of hard 
 words, or learned terms, is not much more advanced thereby in knowledge 
 
326 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3 
 
 'Jian he would be in learniriU, who had nothing in his study but the hare ti- 
 tles of books, without possessing the contents of them. For all such words, 
 however put into discourse, according to the right construction of grammati- 
 cal rules, or the harmony of well turned periods, do yet amount to nothing 
 but bare sounds, and nothing else. 
 
 Sect. 27. Secondly, he that has complex ideas, without particular names 
 for them, would be in no better case than a bookseller, who had in his ware- 
 house volumes that lay there unbound, and without titles ; which he could 
 therefore make known to others only by showing the loose sheets, and commu- 
 nicating them only by tale. This man is hindered in his discourse for want of 
 words to communicate his complex ideas, which he is therefore forced to make 
 known by an enumeration of the simple ones that compose them; and so is fain 
 often to use twenty words to express what another man signifies in one. 
 
 Sect. 28. Thirdly, he that puts not constantly the same sign for the same 
 idea, but uses the same words sometimes in one, and sometimes in another 
 signification, ought to pass in the schools and conversation for as fair a man 
 as he does in the market and exchange, who sells several tilings under the 
 same name. 
 
 Sect. 29. Fourthly, he that applies the words of any language to ideas 
 different from those to which the common use of that country applies them, 
 however his own understanding may be filled with truth and light, will not by 
 such words be able to convey much of it to others, without defining his terms. 
 For however the sounds are such as are familiarly known, and easily enter 
 the ears of those who are accustomed to them ; yet standing for other ideas 
 than those they usually are annexed to, and are wont to excite in the mind of 
 the hearers, they cannot make known the thoughts of him who thus uses them. 
 
 Sect. 30. Fifthly, he that imagined to himself substances such as never 
 have been, and filled his head with ideas which have not any correspondence 
 with the real nature of things, to which yet he gives settled and defined names, 
 may fill his discourse, and perhaps another man’s head, with the fantastical 
 imaginations of his own brain, but will be very far from advancing thereby 
 one jot in real and true knowledge. 
 
 Sect. 31. He that hath names without ideas, wants meaning in his words, 
 and speaks only empty sounds. He that hath complex ideas without names 
 for them, wants liberty and despatch in his expressions, and is necessitated 
 to use periphrases. He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily, will either 
 be not minded, or not understood. He that applies his names to ideas differ- 
 ent from their common use, wants propriety in his language, and speaks gib- 
 berish. And he that hath the ideas of substances disagreeing with the real 
 existence of things, so far wants the materials of true knowledge in his under- 
 standing, and hath instead thereof chimeras. 
 
 Sect. 327 'How in substances . — In our notions concerning substances, we 
 are liable to all the former inconveniences : v. g. 1. He that uses the word taran- 
 tula, without having any imagination or idea what it stands for, pronounces a 
 good word ; but so long means nothing at all by it. 2. He that in a new dis- 
 covered country shall see several sorts of animals and vegetables, unknown to 
 him before, may have as true ideas of them as of a horse or a stag ; but can 
 speak of them only by a description, till he shall either take the names the 
 natives call them by, or give them names himself. 3. He that uses the word 
 body sometimes for pure extension, and sometimes for extension and solidity 
 together, will talk very fallaciously. 4. He that gives the name horse to that 
 idea which common usage calls mule, talks improperly, and will not be un- 
 derstood. 5. He that thinks the name centaur stands for some real being, 
 imposes on himself, and mistakes words for things. 
 
 Sect. 33. How in modes and relations . — In modes and relations generally 
 we are liable only to the four first of these inconveniences ; viz. 1. 1 may have 
 in my memory the names of modes, as gratitude or charity, and yet not have 
 any precise ideas annexed in my thoughts to those names. 2. I may have 
 ideas, and not know the names that belong to them ; v. g. I may have the 
 
Ch. 10. 
 
 ABUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 327 
 
 idea of a man’s drinking till his colour and humour be altered, till his tongue 
 trips, and his eyes look red, and his feet fail him ; and yet not know that it 
 is to be called drunkenness. 3. I may have the ideas of virtues or vices, and 
 names also, but apply them amiss : v. g. when I apply the name frugality to 
 that idea which others call and signify by this sound, covetousness. 4. 1 may 
 use any of those names with inconstancy. 5. But, in modes and relations, 
 I cannot have ideas disagreeing to the existence of things : for modes being 
 complex ideas made by the mind at pleasure ; and relation being but by way 
 of considering or comparing two things together, and so also an idea of my 
 own making ; these ideas can scarce be found to disagree with any thing ex- 
 isting, since they are not in the mind as the copies of things regularly made by 
 nature, nor as properties inseparably flowing from the internal constitution or 
 essence of any substance ; but as it were patterns lodged in my memory, with 
 names annexed to them, to denominate actions and relations by, as they come 
 to exist. But the mistake is commonly in my giving a wrong name to my 
 conceptions ; and so using words in a different sense from other people, I am 
 not understood, but am thought to have wrong ideas of them, when I give 
 wrong names to them. Only if I put in my ideas of mixed modes or relations 
 any inconsistent ideas together, I fill my head also with chimeras ; since 
 such ideas, if well examined, cannot so much exist in the mind, much less 
 any real being ever be denominated from them. 
 
 Sect. 34. Figurative speech also an abuse of language. — Sixthly, since wit 
 and fancyTiritheasier entertainment in the world than dry truth and real know- 
 ledge, figurative speeches and allusion in language will hardly be admitted as 
 an imperfection or abuse of it. I confess, in discourses where we seek rather 
 pleasure and delight than information and improvement, such ornaments as 
 are borrowed from them can scarce pass for faults. But yet if we would 
 speak of things as they are, we must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides 
 order and clearness, all the artificial and figurative application of words elo- 
 quence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move 
 the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment, and so indeed are perfect 
 cheats ; and, therefore, however laudable or allowable oratory may render them 
 in harangues and popular addresses, they are certainly, in all discourses that 
 pretend to inform or instruct, wholly to be avoided ; and where truth and 
 knowledge are concerned, cannot but be thought a great fault, either of the 
 language or person that makes use of them. What, and how various they 
 are, will be superfluous here to take notice ; the books of rhetoric which 
 abound in the world will instruct those who want to be informed : only I can 
 not but observe how little the preservation and improvement of truth and 
 knowledge is the care and concern of mankind ; since the arts of fallacy are 
 endowed and preferred. It is evident how much men love to deceive and be 
 deceived, since rhetoric, that powerful instrument of error and deceit, has its 
 established professors, is publicly taught, and has always been had in great re- 
 putation : and, I doubt not, but it will be thought great boldness, if not brutality 
 in me, to have said thus much against it. Eloquence, like the fair sex, has 
 too prevailing beauties in it to suffer itself ever to be spoken against. And 
 it is in vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving wherein men find pleasure 
 to be deceived. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 OF THE REMEDIES OF THE FOREGOING IMPERFECTIONS AND 
 
 ABUSES. 
 
 Sect. l^fFhey^re worth seeking . — The natural and improved imperfec- 
 tions of languages we'have seerr above at large; and speech being the great 
 oond that holds society together, and the common conduit whereby the im 
 
328 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3 
 
 provements of knowledge are conveyed from one man, and one generation 
 to another ; it would well deserve our most serious thoughts to consider what 
 remedies are to be found for the inconveniences above mentioned. 
 
 Sect. 2. Are not easy . — I am not so vain to think, that any one can pre- 
 tend to attempt the perfect reforming the languages of the world, no, not so 
 much as of his own country, without rendering himself ridiculous. To re- 
 quire that men should use their words constantly in the same sense, and for 
 none but determined and uniform ideas, would be to think that all men should 
 have the same notions, and should talk of nothing but what they have clear 
 and distinct ideas of; which is not to be expected by any one who hath not 
 vanity enough to imagine he can prevail with men to be very knowing or 
 very silent. And he must be very little skilled in the world, who thinks that 
 a voluble tongue shall accompany only a good understanding ; or that men’s 
 talking much or little should hold proportion only to their knowledge. 
 
 Sect. 3. But yet necessary to philosophy . — But though the market and 
 exchange must be left to their own ways of talking, and gossipings not be 
 robbed of their ancient privilege ; though the schools and men of argument 
 would perhaps take it amiss to have any thing offered to abate the length, or 
 lessen the number, of their disputes ; yet methinks those who pretend seriously 
 to search after or maintain truth, should think themselves obliged to study how 
 they might deliver themselves without obscurity, doubtfulness, or equivocation, 
 to which men’s words are naturally liable, if care be not taken. 
 
 Sect. 4. Misuse of words the great cause of errors . — For he. that shall 
 well consider the errors and obscurity, the mistakes and confusion, that are 
 spread in the world by an ill use of words, will find some reason to doubt 
 whether language, as it has been employed, has contributed more to the im- 
 provement or hinderance of knowledge among mankind. How many are 
 there that, when they would think on things, fix their thoughts only on words, 
 especially when they would apply their minds to moral matters 1 And who 
 then can wonder, if the result of such contemplations and reasonings, about 
 little more than sounds, whilst the ideas they annexed to them are very con- 
 fused and very unsteady, or perhaps none at all ; who can wonder, I say, 
 that such thoughts and reasonings end in nothing but obscurity and mistake, 
 without' -any clear judgment or knowledge 1 
 
 Sect. 5'. Obstinacy . — This inconvenience, in an ill use of words, men suf- 
 fer in their own private meditations : but much more manifest are the disor- 
 ders which follow from it, in conversation, discourse, and arguings with oth- 
 ers. For language being the great conduit whereby men convey their dis- 
 coveries, reasonings, and knowledge, from one to another ; he that makes an 
 ill use of it, though he does not corrupt the fountains of knowledge, which are 
 in things themselves ; yet he does, as much as in him lies, break or stop the 
 pipes whereby it is distributed to the public use and advantage of mankind. 
 He that uses words without any clear and steady meaning, what does he but 
 lead himself and others into errors ! And he that designedly does it, ought 
 to be looked on as an enemy to truth and knowledge. And yet who can 
 wonder that all the sciences and parts of knowledge have been so overcharged 
 with obscure and equivocal terms, and insignificant and doubtful expressions, 
 capable to make the most attentive or quick-sighted very little or not at all the 
 more knowing or Orthodox ; since subtilty, in those who make profession to 
 teach or defend truth, hath passed so much for a virtue : a virtue, indeed, 
 which, consisting for the most part in nothing but the fallacious and illusory 
 use of obscure or deceitful terms, is only fit to make men more conceited ir. 
 their ignorance, and more obstinate in their errors. 
 
 Sect. 6. And wrangling. — Let us look into the books of controversy ol 
 any kind; there we shall see, that the effect of obscure, unsteady, or equivo- 
 cal terms, is nothing hut noise and wrangling about sounds, without convincing 
 or bettering a man’s understanding. For if the idea be not agreed on betwixt 
 /he speaker and hearer, for which the words stand, the argument is not about 
 things, but names. As often as such a word, whose signification is rut as- 
 
Ch. 11. 
 
 REMEDIES OF THE ABUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 329 
 
 certained betwixt them, comes in use, their understandings have no other ob- 
 ject wherein they agree, but barely the sound ; the things that they think on 
 at that time, as expressed by that word, being quite different. 
 
 Sect. 7. Instance, bat and bird. — Whether a bat be a bird or no, is not a 
 question ; Whether a bat be another thing than indeed it is, or have other 
 qualities than indeed it has, for that would be extremely absurd to doubt of : 
 but the question is, 1. Either between those that acknowledge themselves to 
 nave but imperfect ideas of one or both of this sort of things, for which these 
 names are supposed to stand ; and then it is a real inquiry concerning the 
 name of a bird or a bat, to make their yet imperfect ideas of it more complete, 
 by examining whether all the simple ideas, to which, combined together, they 
 both give the name bird, be all to be found in a bat : but this is a question only 
 of inquirers (not disputers,) who neither affirm nor deny, but examine. Or, 
 2. It is a question between disputants, whereof the one affirms, and the other 
 denies, that a bat is a bird. And then the question is barely about the signi- 
 fication of one or both these words ; in that they not having both the same 
 complex ideas, to which they give these two names, one holds, and the other 
 denies, that these two names may be affirmed one of another. Were they 
 agreed in the signification of these two names, it were impossible they should 
 dispute about them : for they would presently and clearly see (were that ad- 
 justed between them) whether all the simple ideas, of the more general name 
 bird, were found in the complex idea of a bat, or no ; and so there could be no 
 doubt whether a bat were a bird or no. And here I desire it may be consid- 
 ered, and carefully examined, whether the greatest part of the disputes in the 
 world are not merely verbal, and about the signification of words ; and whether, 
 if the terms they are made in were defined, and reduced in their signification 
 (as they must be where they signify any thing) to determined collections of the 
 simple ideas they do or should stand for, those disputes would not end of them- 
 selves and immediately vanish. I leave it then to be considered, what the 
 learning of disputation is, and how well they are employed for the advantage 
 of themselves or others, whose business is only the vain ostentation of sounds ; 
 i. e. those who spend their lives in disputes and controversies. When I shall 
 see any of those combatants strip all his terms of ambiguity and obscurity 
 (which every one may do in the words he uses himself) I shall think him a 
 champion for knowledge, truth, and peace, and not the slave of vainglory, 
 ambition, or a party. 
 
 Sect. 8. To remedy the defects of speech before mentioned to some de- 
 gree, and to prevent the inconveniences that follow from them, I imagine the 
 observation of these following rules may be of use, till somebody better able 
 shall judge it worth his while to think more maturely on this matter, and 
 oblige the world with his thoughts on it. 
 
 1. Remedy, to use no word without an idea. — First, a man should take care 
 to use no word without a signification, no name without an idea for which he 
 makes it stand. This rule will not seem altogether needless to any one who 
 shall take the pains to recollect how often he has met with such words, as in- 
 stinct, sympathy, and antipathy, &c. in the discourse of others, so made use 
 of, as he might easily conclude, that those that used them had no ideas in their 
 minds to which they applied them ; but spoke them only as sounds, which 
 usually served instead of reasons on the like occasions. Not but that these 
 words, and the like, have very proper significations in which they may be 
 used ; but there being no natural connexion between any words and any ideas, 
 these, and any other, may be learned by rote, and pronounced or writ by men, 
 who have no ideas in their minds to which they have annexed them, and for 
 which they make them stand ; which is necessary they should, if men wQuld 
 speak intelligibly even to themselves alone. 
 
 Sect. 9. 2. To have distinct ideas annexed to them in modes. — Secondly, 
 it is not enough a man uses his words as signs of’some ideas : those he an- 
 nexes them to, if they be simple, must be clear and distinct; if complex, must 
 be determinate, i. e. the precise collection of simple ideas settled in the nrnd 
 2 R 
 
330 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 with that sound annexed to it, as the sign of that precise determined collection, 
 and no other. This is very necessary in names of inodes, and especially moral 
 words; which having no settled objects in nature, from whence their ideas are 
 taken, as from their original, are apt to be very confused. Justice is a word 
 in every man’s mouth, but most commonly with a very undetermined loose sig- 
 nification : which will always be so, unless a man has in his mind a distinct 
 comprehension of the component parts that complex idea consists of: and it 
 it be decompounded, must be able to resolve it still on, till he at last comes to 
 the simple ideas that make it up : and unless this be done, a man makes an ill 
 use of the word, let it be justice, for example, or any other. I do not say, a 
 man need stand to recollect, and make this analysis at large, every time the 
 word justice comes in his way : but this at least is necessary, that he have 
 so examined the signification of that name, and settled the idea of all its 
 parts in his mind, that he can do it when he pleases. If one, who makes his 
 complex idea of justice to be such a treatment of the person or goods of another 
 as is according to law, hath not a clear and distinct idea what law is, which 
 makes a part of his complex idea of justice, it is plain his idea of justice it- 
 self will be confused and imperfect. This exactness will, perhaps, be judged 
 very troublesome ; and therefore most men will think they may be excused 
 ’from settling the complex ideas of mixed modes so precisely in their minds. 
 But yet I must say, till this be done, it must not be wondered that they have a 
 great deal of obscurity and confusion in their own minds, and a great deal of 
 wrangling in their discourse with others. 
 
 Sect. 10. Distinct and conformable in substances . — In the names of 
 substances, for a right use of them, something more is required than barely 
 determined ideas. In these the names must also be conformab le to things as 
 th ey ex ist :Jaut of this I shall have occasion to speak more largely by auiaby! 
 This exactness is absolutely necessary in inquiries after philosophical know- 
 ledge, and in controversies about truth. And though it would be well, too, it 
 it extended itself to common conversation, and the ordinary affairs of life , 
 yet I think that is scarce to be expected. Vulgar notions suit vulgar dis- 
 courses ; and both, though confused enough, yet serve pretty well the market 
 and the wake. Merchants and lovers, cooks and tailors, have words where- 
 withal to despatch their ordinary affairs ; and so, I think, might philosophers and 
 disputants too, if they had a mind to understand, and to be clearly understood. 
 
 Sect. 11. 3. Propriety^ Thirdly, it is not enough that men have ideas, de- 
 termined ideas, forwftich they make these signs stand : but they must also take 
 care to apply their words, as near as may be, to such ideas as cormuon use 
 has annexed them to. For words, especially of languages already framed, 
 being no man’s private possession, but the common measure of commerce and 
 communication, it is not for any one, at pleasure, to change the stamp they 
 are current in, nor alter the ideas they are affixed to ; or, at least, when there 
 is a necessity to do so, he is bound to give notice of it. Men’s intentions in 
 speaking are, or at least should be, to be understood ; which cannot be with- 
 out frequent explanations, demands, and other the like incommodious inter- 
 ruptions, where men do not follow common use. Propriety of speech is that 
 which gives our thoughts entrance into other men’s minds with the greatest 
 ease and advantage ; and therefore deserves some part of our care and study, 
 especially in the names of moral words. The proper signification and use of 
 terms is best to be learned from those who in their writings and discourses 
 appear to have had the clearest notions, and applied to them their terms with 
 the exactest choice and fitness. This way of using a man’s words, accord- 
 ing to the propriety of the language, though it have not always the good for- 
 tune to be understood, yet most commonly leaves the blame of it on him 
 who is so unskilful in the language he speaks, as not to understand it, when 
 made use of as it ought to be.' 
 
 Sect. 12. 4. To make known their meaning. — Fourthly, but because com- 
 mon use has not so visibly annexed any signification to words, as to make 
 men know always certainly what they precisely stand for ; and because men. 
 
Ch. 11. 
 
 REMEDIES OF THE ABUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 33 1 
 
 in the improvement of their knowledge, come to have ideas different from the 
 vulgar and ordinary received ones, for which they must either make new 
 words (which men seldom venture to do, for fear of being thought guilty of ' 
 affectation or novelty) or else must use old ones in a new signification : 
 therefore, after the observation of the foregoing rules, it is sometimes neces- 
 sary, for the ascertaining the signification of words, to declare their meaning ; 
 where either common use has left it uncertain and loose (as it has in most 
 names of very complex ideas) or where the term, being very material in the 
 discourse, and that upon which it chiefly turns, is liable to any doubtfulness 
 or mistake. 
 
 Sect. 13. Andjhat three ways. — As the ideas men’s words stand for are 
 of different sorts ; so the way of making known the ideas they stand for, 
 when there is occasion, is also different. For though defining be thought the 
 proper way to make known the proper signification of words, yet there are 
 some words that will not be defined, as there are others, whose precise mean- 
 ing cannot be made known but by definition ; and perhaps a third, which par- 
 take somewhat of both the other, as we shall see in the names of simple ideas, 
 modes, and substances. 
 
 Sect. 14. 1. Tn^rimple-i ilp.ns. by synnrtM mnns^tprms: or showing. — First, 
 when a man makes use of the name of any simple idea, which he perceives is 
 not understood, or is in danger to be mistaken, he is obliged by the laws of 
 ingenuity, and the end of speech, to declare his meaning, and make known 
 what idea he makes it stand for. This, as has been shown, cannot be done 
 by definition ; and therefore, when a synonymous word fails to do it, there is 
 but one of these ways left. First, sometimes the naming the subject, where- 
 in that simple idea is to be found, will make its name to be understood by 
 those who are acquainted with that subject, and know it by that name. So 
 to make a countryman understand what “ feuille-morte” colour signifies, it 
 may suffice to tell him, it is the colour of withered leaves falling in autumn. 
 Secondly, but the only sure way of making known the signification of the name 
 of any simple idea, is by presenting to his senses that subject which may pro- 
 duce it in his mind, and make him actually have the idea that word stands for. 
 
 Sect. 15. 2.1njr/nxettinedes-,- by definition. — Secondly, mixed modes, es- 
 pecially those belonging to morality, being most of them such combinations 
 of ideas as the mind puts together of its own choice, and whereof there are 
 not always standing patterns to be found existing ; the signification of their 
 names cannot be made known, as those of simple ideas, by any showing ; 
 but, in recompense thereof, may be perfectly and exactly defined. For they 
 being combinations of several ideas, that the mind of man has arbitrarily put 
 together, without reference to any archetypes, men may, if they please, ex- 
 actly know the ideas that go to each composition, and so both use these w r ords 
 in a certain and undoubted signification, and perfectly declare, when there is 
 occasion, what they stand for. This, if well considered, would lay great 
 blame on those who make not their discourses, about moral things very clear 
 and distinct. For since the precise signification of the names of mixed 
 modes, or, which is all one, the real essence of each species is to be known, 
 they being not of nature’s, but man’s making, it is a great negligence and per- 
 verseness to discourse of moral things with uncertainty and obscurity ; which 
 is more pardonable in treating of natural substances, where doubtful terms are 
 hardly to be avoided, for a quite contrary reason, as we shall see by and by. 
 
 Sect. 16. Morality c apalJIe ~fif^dem&nstratTorc. —Up o n this ground it is, 
 that I am bold to think that morality is capable of demonstration, as well as 
 mathematics ; since the precise real essence of the things moral words stand 
 for may be perfectly known ; and so the congruity or incongruity of the 
 things themselves be certainly discovered ; in which consists perfect know- 
 ledge. Nor let any one object, that the names of substances are often to be 
 made use of in morality, as well as those of modes, from which will arise 
 obscurity. For as to substances, when concerned in moral discourses, their 
 divers natu-es are not so much inquired into as supposed ; v. g. when we say 
 
332 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 3. 
 
 that man is subject to law, we mean nothing by man bat a corporeal rational 
 creature : what the real essence or other qualities of that creature are, in this 
 case, is noway considered. And therefore, whether a child or changeling be a 
 man in a physical sense, may among the naturalists be as disputable as it will, 
 it concerns not at all the moral man, as I may call him, which is this immova- 
 ble, unchangeable idea, a corporeal rational being. For where there a mon- 
 key, or any other creature, to be found, that has the use of reason to such a 
 degree as to be able to understand general signs, and to deduce consequences 
 about general ideas, he would no doubt be subject to law, and in that sense 
 be a man, how much soever he differed in shape from others of that name. 
 The names of substances, if they be used in them as they should, can no 
 more disturb moral than they do mathematical discourses : where, if the 
 mathematician speaks of a cube or globe of gold, or any other body, he has 
 his clear settled idea, which varies not, though it may by mistake be ap 
 plied to a particular body to which it belongs not. 
 
 Sect. 17. Definitions can make moral discourses clear. — This I have here 
 mentioned by the by, to show of what consequence it-js for men, in their 
 names of mixed modes, and consequently in all their moral discourses, to de- 
 fine their words when there is occasion : since thereby moral knowledge may 
 be brought to so great clearness and certainty. And it must be great want 
 of ingenuity (to say no worse of it) to refuse to do it : since a definition is 
 the only way whereby the precise meaning of moral words can be known ; 
 and yet a way whereby their meaning may be known certainly, and without 
 leaving any room for any contest about it. And therefore the negligence or 
 perverseness of mankind cannot be excused, if their discourses in morality be 
 not much more clear than those in natural philosophy ; since they are about 
 ideas in the mind, which are none of them false or disproportionate : they 
 having no external beings for the archetypes which they are referred to, and 
 must correspond with. It is far easier for men to frame in their minds an 
 idea which shall be the standard to which they will give the name justice, 
 with which pattern, so made, all actions that agree shall pass under that de- 
 nomination ; than, having seen Aristides, to frame an idea that shall in all 
 things be exactly like him : who is as he is, let men make what idea they 
 please of him. For the one, they need but know the combination of ideas 
 that are put together in their own minds ; for the other, they must inquire 
 into the whole nature, and abstruse hidden constitution, and various qualities 
 of a thing existing without them. 
 
 Sect. 18. And is the only way. — Another reason that makes the defining 
 of mixed modes so necessary, especially of moral words, is what I mentioned 
 a little before, viz. that it is the only way whereby the signification of the 
 most of them can be known with certainty. For the ideas they stand for being 
 for the most part such whose component parts nowhere exist together, but 
 scattered and mingled with others, it is the mind alone that collects them, and 
 gives them the union of one idea : and it is only by words, enumerating the 
 several simple ideas which the mind has united, that we can make known to 
 others what their names stand for ; the assistance of the senses in this case 
 not helping us, by the proposal of sensible objects, to show the ideas which 
 our names of this kind stand for, as it does often in the names of sensible 
 simple ideas, and also to some degree in those of substances. 
 
 Sect. 19. 3. In substances, by showing and defining. — Thirdly, for the 
 explaining the signification of the names of substances, as they stand for the 
 ideas we have of their distinct species, both the before-mentioned ways, viz. 
 of showing and defining, are requisite in many cases to be made use of. For 
 there being ordinarily in each sort some leading qualities, to which we sup- 
 pose the other ideas, which make up our complex idea of that species, an- 
 nexed ; we forwardly give the specific name to that thing, wherein that cha 
 racteristical mark is found, which we take to be the most distinguishing idea 
 of that species. These leading or characteristical (as I may call them) ideas, 
 in the sorts of animals and vegetables, are (as has been before remarked, ch 
 
Ch. 11. 
 
 REMEDIES OF THE ABUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 333 
 
 vi. sect. 29. and ch. ix. sect. 15.) mostly figure, and in inanimate bodies 
 colour, and in some both together. Now, 
 
 Sect. 20. Ideas of the leading qualities of substances are best got by 
 showing. — These leading sensible qualities are those which make the chief 
 ingredients of our specific ideas, and consequently the most observable and 
 invariable part in the definitions of our specific names, as attributed to sorts 
 of substances coming under our knowledge. For though the sound man, in 
 its own nature, be as apt to signify a complex idea, made up of animality and 
 rationality, united in the same subject, as to signify any other combination ; 
 j T et used as a mark to stand for a sort of creatures we count of our own kind, 
 perhaps, the outward shape is as necessary to be taken into our complex idea, 
 signified by the word man, as any other we find in it: and therefore why Pla- 
 to’s “ animal implume bipes latis unguibus ” should not be a good definition 
 of the name man, standing for that sort of creatures, will not be easy to show : 
 for it is the shape, as the leading quality, that seems more to determine that 
 species than a faculty of reasoning, which appears not at first, and in some 
 never. And if this be not allowed to be so, I do not know how they can be 
 excused from murder who kill monstrous births (as we call them), because of 
 an unordinary shape, without knowing whether they have a rational soul or 
 no : which can be no more discerned in a well-formed than ill-shaped infant, 
 as soon as born. And who is it has informed us, that a rational soul can inhabit 
 no tenement, unless it has just such a sort of frontispiece ; or can join itself to, 
 and inform no sort of body but one that is just of such an outward structure 1 
 
 Sect. 21. Now these leading qualities are best made known by showing, 
 and can hardly be made known otherwise. For the shape of a horse, or 
 cassiowary, will be but rudely and imperfectly imprinted on the mind by 
 words ; the sight of the animals doth it a thousand times better : and the idea 
 of the particular colour of gold is not to be got by any description of it, but 
 only by the frequent exercise of the eyes about it, as is evident in those who 
 are used to this metal, who will frequently distinguish true from counterfeit, 
 pure from adulterate, by the sight; where others (who have as good eyes, but 
 yet by use have not got the precise nice idea of that peculiar yellow) shall 
 not perceive any difference. The like may be said of those other simple 
 ideas, peculiar in their kind to any substance, for which precise ideas there 
 are no peculiar names. The particular ringing sound there is in gold, dis- 
 tinct from the sound of other bodies, has no particular name annexed to it, 
 no more than the particular yellow that belongs to that metal. 
 
 Sect. 22. The ideas of their powers best by definition. — But because 
 many of the simple ideas that make up our specific ideas of substances are 
 powers which lie not obvious to our senses in the things as they ordinarily ap- 
 pear ; therefore in the signification of our names of substances, some part of 
 the signification will be better made known by enumerating those simple ideas 
 than by showing the substance itself. For he that to the yellow shining 
 colour of gold got by sight, shall, from my enumerating them, have the ideas 
 of great ductility, fusibility, fixedness, and solubility in aq. regia, will have a 
 perfecter idea of gold than he can have by seeing a piece of gold, and thereby 
 imprinting in his mind only its obvious qualities. But if the formal constitu- 
 tion of this shining, heavy, ductile thing (from whence all these its properties 
 flow) lay open to our senses, as the formal constitution or essence of a tri- 
 angle does, the signification of the word gold might as easily be ascertained 
 as that of triangle. 
 
 Sect. 23. A reflection on the knowledge of spirits. — Hence we may take 
 notice how much the foundation of all our knowledge of corporeal things lies 
 in our senses. For how spirits, separate from bodies (whose knowledge 
 and ideas of these things are certainly much more perfect than ours) know 
 them, we have no notion, no idea at all. The whole extent of our know- 
 ledge or imagination reaches not beyond our own ideas, limited to our ways 
 of perception. Though yet it be not to be doubted that spirits of a higher 
 rank than those immersed in flesh may have as clear ideas of the radical 
 
334 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Cook 3 
 
 constitution of substances, as we have of a triangle, and so perceive how all 
 their properties and operations flow from thence: but the manner how they 
 come by that knowledge exceeds our conceptions. 
 
 Sect. 24. 4. Ideas also of substances must be conformable to things . — 
 But though definitions will serve to explain the names of substances as 
 they stand for our ideas; yet they leave them not without great imperfection 
 as they stand for things. For our names of substances being not put barely 
 for our ideas, but being made use of ultimately to represent things, and so 
 are put in their place ; their signification must agree with the truth of things 
 as well as with men’s ideas. And therefore in substances we are not always 
 to rest in the ordinary complex idea, commonly received as the signification 
 of that word, but must go a little farther, and inquire into the nature and 
 properties of the things themselves, and thereby perfect, as much as we can, 
 our ideas of their distinct species ; or else learn them from such as are used to 
 that sort of things, and are experienced in them. For since it is intended their 
 names should stand for such collections of simple ideas as do really exist in 
 things themselves, as well as for the complex idea in other men’s minds, 
 which in their ordinary acceptation they stand for: therefore to define their 
 names right, natural history is to be inquired into ; and their properties are, 
 with care and examination, to be found out. For it is not enough, for the 
 avoiding inconveniences in discourse and arguings about natural bodies and 
 substantial things, to have learned, from the propriety of the language, the 
 common, but confused, or very imperfect idea, to which each word is applied, 
 and to keep them to that idea in our use of them ; but we must, by acquainting 
 ourselves with the history of that sort of things, rectify and settle our com- 
 plex idea belonging to each specific name ; and in discourse with others 
 (if we find them mistake us) we ought to tell what the complex idea is, that 
 we make such a name stand for. This is the more necessary to be done by 
 all those who search after knowledge and philosophical verity, in that children, 
 being taught words whilst they have but imperfect notions of things, apply 
 them at random, and without much thinking, and seldom frame determined 
 ideas to be signified by them. Which custom (it being easy, and serving 
 well enough for the ordinary affairs of life and conversation) they are apt to 
 continue when they are men : and so begin at the wrong end, learning words 
 first and perfectly, but make the notions to which they apply those words after- 
 ward very overtly. By this means it comes to pass, that men speaking the 
 proper language-of their country, i. e. according to grammar rules of that 
 language, do yet speak very improperly of things themselves ; and by their 
 arguing one with another, make but small progress in the discoveries of use- 
 ful truths, and the knowledge of things as they are to be found in themselves, 
 and not in our imaginations ; and it matters not much, for the improvement of 
 our knowledge, how they are called. 
 
 Sect. 25. Not easy to be made so . — It were therefore to be wished, that 
 men, versed in physical inquiries, and acquainted with the several sorts of na- 
 tural bodies, would set down those simple ideas, wherein they observe the indi- 
 viduals of each sort constantly to agree. This would remedy a great deal of 
 that confusion which comes from several persons applying the same name to 
 a collection of a smaller or greater number of sensible qualities, proportionably 
 as they have been more or less acquainted with, or accurate in examining the 
 qualities of any sort of things which come under one demomination. But a 
 dictionary of this sort, containing, as it were, a natural history, requires too 
 many hands, as well as too much time, cost, pains, and sagacity, ever to be 
 hoped for; and till that be done, wc must content ourselves with such defini- 
 tions of the names of substances as explain the sense men use them in. And 
 it would be well, where there is occasion, if they would afford us so much. 
 This yet is not usually done ; but men talk to one another, and dispute in 
 words, whose meaning is not agreed between them, out of a mistake that the 
 significations of'common words are certainly established, and the precise ideas 
 they stand for perfectly known ; and that it is a shame to be ignorant of them. 
 
Ch. 11. 
 
 REMEDIES OE THE ABUSE OF WORDS. 
 
 335 
 
 Both which suppositions are false : no names of common complex ideas hav- 
 ing so settled determined significations, that they are constantly used for the 
 same precise ideas. Nor is it a shame for a man not to have a certain know- 
 ledge of any thing, but by the necessary ways of attaining it ; and so it is no 
 discredit not to know what precise idea any sound stands for in another man’s 
 mind, without he declare it to me by some other way than barely using that 
 sound ; there being no other way, without such a declaration, certainly tc 
 know it. Indeed, the necessity of communication by language brings men to 
 an agreement in the signification of common words, within some tolerable 
 latitude, that may serve for ordinary conversation : and so a man cannot be 
 supposed wholly ignorant of the ideas which are annexed to words by common 
 use, in a language familiar to him. But common use, being but a very uncer- 
 tain rule, which reduces itself at last to the ideas of particular men, proves 
 often but a very variable standard. But though such a dictionary, as I have 
 above mentioned, will require too much time, cost, and pains, to be hoped 
 for in this age ; yet methinks it is not unreasonable to propose, that words 
 standing for things, which are known and distinguished by their outward 
 shapes, should be expressed by little draughts and prints made of them. A 
 vocabulary made after this fashion would, perhaps, with more ease, and in less 
 time, teach the true signification of many terms, especially in languages of 
 remote countries or ages, and settle truer ideas in men’s minds of several 
 things, whereof we read the names in ancient authors, than all the large and 
 laborious comments of learned critics. Naturalists, that treat of plants and 
 animals, have found the benefit of this way : and he that has had occasion tc 
 consult them, Mull have reason to confess, that he has a clearer idea of apium 
 or ibex, from a little print of that herb or beast, than he could have from a 
 long definition of the names of either of them. And so no doubt he would 
 have of strigil and sistrum, if instead of currycomb and cymbal, which are 
 the English names dictionaries render them by, he could see stamped in the 
 margin small pictures of these instruments, as they were in use among the 
 ancients. “Toga, tunica, pallium,” are words easily translated by gown, 
 coat, and cloak ; but we have thereby no more true ideas of the fashion of 
 those habits among the Romans that we have of the faces of the tailors who 
 made them. Such things as these, which the eye distinguishes by their 
 shapes, M'ould be best let into the mind by draughts made of them, and more 
 determine the signification of such words than any other words set for them, 
 or made use of to define them. But this only by the by. 
 
 Sect. 26. 5, By constancy in their signification . — Fifthly, if men will not 
 be at the pains to declare the meaning of their words, and definitions of their 
 terms are not to be had ; yet this is the least that can be expected, that in all 
 discourses, wherein one man pretends to instruct or convince another, he 
 should use the same word constantly in the same sense : if this were done 
 (which nobody can refuse without great disingenuity,) many of the books ex- 
 tant might be spared; many of the controversies in dispute would /be at an 
 end ; several of those great volumes, swoln with ambiguous words, now used 
 in one sense, and by and by in another, would shrink into a very narrow com- 
 pass; and many of the philosophers (to mention no other) as well as poet’s 
 works, might be contained in a nut-shell. 
 
 Sect. 27. When the var iation, is tp. be explained. — But after all, the pro- 
 vision of words is'' so scanty in respect of that infinite variety of thoughts, 
 that men, wanting terms to suit their precise notions, will, notwithstanding 
 their utmost caution, be forced often to use the same word in somewhat dif- 
 ferent senses. And though in the continuation of a discourse, or the pur- 
 suit of an argument, there can be hardly room to digress into a particular de- 
 finition, as often as a man varies the signification of any term ; yet the import 
 of the discourse will, for the most part, if there be no designed fallacy, suf- 
 ficiently lead candid and intelligent readers into the true meaning of it : but 
 where that is not sufficient to guide the reader, there it concerns the writer 
 to explain his meaning, and show in what sense he there uses that term. 
 
336 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 OF KNOWLEDGE AND OPINION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF KNOWLEDGE IN GENERAL. 
 
 Sect 1. --(hrrknmbledge conversant about our ideas. — Since the mind, in 
 
 all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other immediate object but its own 
 ideas, which it alone does, or can contemplate, it is evident, that our know- 
 ledge is only conversant about them. 
 
 __ Sect. 2. Knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement 
 of^rwoKIecis . — Knowledge then seems to me to be nothing but the perception 
 of tire connexion or agreement, or disagreement and repugnany of any of our 
 ideas. In this alone it consists. Where this perception is, there is know- 
 ledge : and ^here it is not, there, though we may fancy, guess, or believe, yet 
 we always come short of knowledge. For when we know that white is not 
 black, what do we else but perceive that these two ideas do not agree 1 when 
 we possess ourselves of the utmost security of the demonstration, that the 
 three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones, what do we more but 
 perceive, that equality to two right ones, does necessarily agree to, and is 
 inseparable from, the three angles of a trianglel(l) 
 
 (1) The placing of certainty, as Mr Locke does, in the perception of the agree- 
 ment or disagreement of our ideas, the bishop of Worcester suspects may be of 
 dangerous consequence to that article of faith which he has endeavoured to defend; 
 to which Mr Locke answers*, since your lordship hath not, as I remember, shown, 
 or gone about to show, how this proposition, viz. that certainty consists in the per- 
 ception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, is opposite or inconsistent 
 with that article of faith which your lordship has endeavoured to defend; it is plain, 
 it is but your lordship’s fear, that it may be of dangerous consequence to it, which, 
 as I humbly conceive, is no proof that it is any way inconsistent with that article. 
 
 Nobody, I think, can blame your lordship, or any one else, for being concerned 
 for any article of the Christian faith: but if that concern (as it may, and as we know 
 it has done) makes any one apprehend danger, where no danger is, are we, there- 
 fore, to give up and condemn any proposition, because any one, though of the first 
 rank and magnitude, fears it may be of dangerous consequence to any truth of reli- 
 gion, without showing that it is so? If such fears be the measures whereby to 
 judge of truth and falsehood, the affirming that there are antipodes would be still a 
 heresy; and the doctrine of the motion of the earth must be rejected, as overthrow- 
 ing the truth of the Scripture; for of that dangerous consequence it has been appre- 
 hended to be, by many learned and pious divines, out of their great concern for 
 religion. And yet, notwithstanding those great apprehensions of what dangerous 
 consequence it might be, it is now universally received by learned men, as an 
 undoubted truth; and writ for by some, whose belief of the Scripture is not at all 
 questioned; and particularly-, very lately, by a divine of the church of England, 
 with great strength of reason, in his wonderfully ingenious New Theory of the 
 Earth. 
 
 The reason your lordship gives of your fears, that it may be of such dangerous 
 consequence to that article of faith which your lordship endeavours to defend, 
 though it occur in more places than one, is only this, viz. that it is made use of 
 
 * In his second letter to the Bishop of Worcester 
 
Ch 1. 
 
 OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 afu 
 
 Sect. 3. This agreement fourfold . — But to understand a little more dis- 
 tinctly, wherein this agreement or disagreement consists, I think we may re- 
 duce it all to these four sorts : 
 
 by ill men to do mischief, i. e. to oppose that article of faith which your lordship 
 hath endeavoured to defend. But, my lord, if it be a reason to lay by any thing 
 as bad, because it is, or may be, used to an ill purpose, I know not what will be 
 innocent enough to be kept. Arms, which were made for our defence, are some- 
 times made use of to do mischief; and yet they' are not thought of d; ngerous con- 
 sequence for all that. Nobody lays by his sword and pistols, or tl inks them of 
 such dangerous consequence as to be neglected, or thrown away, because robbers, 
 and the worst of men, sometimes make use of them to take away honest men’s 
 lives or goods. And the reason is, because they were designed, and will serve to 
 preserve them. And who knows but this may be the present case? If your lord- 
 ship thinks, that placing of certainty in the perception of the agreement or dis- 
 agreement of ideas be to be rejected as false, because you apprehend it may' be of 
 dangerous consequence to that article of faith: on the other side, perhaps others, 
 w ith me, may think it a defence against error, and so (as being of good use) to be 
 received and adhered to. 
 
 I would not, my lord, be hereby thought to set up my own, or any one’s judg- 
 ment against your lordship’s. But I have said this only to show, whilst the argu- 
 ment lies for or against the truth of any proposition, barely in an imagination that 
 it may be of consequence to the supporting or overthrowing of any remote truth; 
 it will be impossible, that way, to determine of the truth or falsehood of that pro- 
 position. For imagination will be set up against imagination, and the stronger 
 probably' will be against your lordship; the strongest imaginations being usually 
 in the weakest heads. The only way, in this case, to put it past doubt, is to show 
 the inconsistency' of the two propositions; and then it will be seen, that one over- 
 throws the other; the true, the false one. 
 
 Your lordship says, indeed, this is a new method of certainty. I will not say' 
 so myself, for fear of deserving a second reproof from your lordship, for being too 
 forward to assume to myself the honour of being an original. But this, I think, 
 gives me occasion, and will excuse me from being thought impertinent, if I ask 
 your lordship, whether there be any other, or older, method of certainty? and what 
 it is? For, if there be no other, nor older than this, either this was always the 
 method of certainty', and so mine is no new one; or else the world is obliged to 
 me for this new one, after having been so long in the want of so necessary a thing 
 as a method of certainty'. If there be an older, I am sure y'our lordship cannot but 
 know it; your condemning mine as new, as well as your thorough insight into an- 
 tiquity, cannot but satisfy every body that you do. And therefore to set the world 
 right in a thing of that great concernment, and to overthrow mine, and thereby 
 prevent the dangerous oonsecjuence there is in my having unreasonably started it, 
 will not, I humbly conceive, misbecome your lordship’s care of that article you 
 have endeavoured to defend, nor the good-w ill you bear to truth in general. For 
 I will be answerable for myself, that I shall; and I think I may be for all others, 
 that they all will give ofT the placing of certainty' in the perception of the agree- 
 ment or disagreement of ideas, if your lordship will be pleased to show that it lies 
 ’n any thing else. 
 
 But truly', not to ascribe to myself an invention of what has been as old as know- 
 lelge is in the world, I must own, I am not guilty of what your lordship is pleased 
 to call starting new methods of certainty. Knowledge, ever since there has been 
 any in the world, has consisted in one particular action in the mind; and so, I con- 
 ceire, will continue to do to the end of it. And to start new methods of know- 
 ledge, or certainty (for they are to me the same thing), i. e. to find out and pro- 
 pose new methods of attaining knowledge, either with more ease and quickness, or 
 in things yet unknown, is what I think nobody could blame: but this is not that 
 which your lordship here means by new methods of certainty. Your lordship, I 
 think, means by it, the placing of certainty in something, wherein either it does 
 not consist, or else wherein it was not placed before now; if this be to be called a 
 new method of certainty. As to the latter of these, I shall know whether I am 
 guilty or no, when your lordship will do me the favour to tell me wherein it was 
 
 2 S 
 
338 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 1. Identity, or diversity. 
 
 2. Relation. 
 
 3. Coexistence, or necessary connexion. 
 
 4. Real existence. 
 
 placed before -which your lordship knows I professed myself ignorant of, when I 
 writ my book, and so I am still. But if starting new methods of certainty be the 
 placing of certainty in something wherein it does not consist; whether I have done 
 that or no, I must appeal to the experience of mankind. 
 
 There are several actions of men’s minds, that they are conscious to themselves 
 of performing, as willing, believing, knowing, &c. which they have so particular a 
 sense of, that they can distinguish them one from another; or else they could not 
 say, when they willed, when they believed, and when they knew any thing. But 
 though these actions were different enough from one another, not to be confounded 
 by those who spoke of them, yet nobody, that I had met with, had, in their writings, 
 particularly set down wherein the act of knowing precisely consisted. 
 
 To this reflection upon the actions of my own mind the subject of my Essay 
 concerning Human Understanding naturally led me; wherein if I have done any 
 thing new, it has been to describe to others, more particularly than had been done 
 before, what it is their minds do when they perform that action which they call 
 knowing; and if, upon examination, they observe I have given a true account of 
 that action of their minds in all the parts of it, I suppose it will be in vain to dis- 
 pute against what they find and feel in themselves. And if I have not told them 
 right and exactly what they find and feel in themselves, when their minds perform 
 the act of knowing, what 1 have said will be all in vain; men will not be persuaded 
 against their senses. Knowledge is an internal perception of their minds; and if, 
 when they reflect on it, they find it is not what I have said it is, my groundless con- 
 ceit will not be hearkened to, but be exploded by every body, and die of itself: and 
 nobody need to be at any pains to drive it out of the world. So impossible is it 
 to find out, or start new methods of certainty, or to have them received, if any one 
 places it in any thing but in that wherein it really consists: much less can any one 
 be in danger to be misled into error, by any such new, and to every one visibly 
 senseless project. Can it be supposed, that any one could start a new method of 
 seeing, and persuade men thereby that they do not see what they do see? It is to 
 be feared, that any one can cast such a mist over their eyes, that they should not 
 know when they see, and so be led out of the way by it? 
 
 Knowledge, I find in myself, and I conceive in others, consists in the perception 
 _f the agreement or disagreement of the immediate objects of the mind in think- 
 ing, which I call ideas: but whether it does so in others or no, must he determined 
 by their own experience, reflecting upon the action of their mind in knowing; for 
 that I cannot alter, nor, I think, they themselves. But whether they will call 
 those immediate objects of their minds in thinking ideas or no, is perfectly in their 
 own choice. If they dislike that name, they may call them notions or conceptions, 
 or how they please; it matters not, if they use them so as to avoid obscurity and 
 contusion. If they are constantly used in the same and a known sense, every one 
 has the liberty to please himself in his terms; there lies neither truth, nor error, 
 nor science, in that; though those that take them for things, and not for what they 
 are, bare arbitrary signs of our ideas, make a great deal ado often about them; as 
 if some great matter lay in the use of this or that sound. All that I know or can 
 imagine of difference about them is, that those words are always best, whose signi- 
 fications are best known in the sense they are used; and so are least apt to breed 
 confusion. 
 
 My lord, your lordship hath been pleased to find fault with my use of the new 
 term, ideas, without telling me a better name for the immediate objects of the mind 
 in thinking. Your lordship also has been pleased to find fault with my definition 
 of knowledge, without doing me the favour to give me a better. For it is only 
 about my definition of knowledge that all this stir concerning certainty is made 
 For, with me, to know and to be certain is the same thing; what I know, that I am 
 certain of; and what I am certain of, that I know. What reaches to knowledge, 1 
 think may be called certainty; and what comes short of certainty, I think cannot be 
 
Ch. 1. 
 
 OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 339 
 
 Sect. 4. 1. Of identity or diversity. — First, as to the first sort of agreement 
 orcitsauTeeinetit', viz. "identity or diversity. It is the first act of the mind, 
 when it has any sentiments or ideas at all, to perceive its ideas ; and so far 
 as it perceives them, to know each what it is, and thereby also to perceive 
 their difference, and that one is not another. This is so absolutely neces- 
 sary, that without it tkereL.could.be no knowledge, no reasoning, no imagina- 
 
 called knowledge; as your lordship could not but observe in the 18th section of 
 chap. iv. of my 4th book, which you have quoted. 
 
 My definition of knowledge stands thus; “ knowledge seems to me to be nothing 
 but the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repug- 
 nancy of any of our ideas.” This definition your lordship dislikes, and appre- 
 hends it may be of dangerous consequence to that article of Christian faith which 
 your lordship hath endeavoured to defend. For this there is a very easy remedy; 
 it is hut for your lordship to set aside this definition of knowledge by giving us a 
 better, and this danger is over. But your lordship chooses rather to have a con- 
 troversy with my book for having it in it, and to put me upon the defence of it: for 
 which I must acknowledge myself obliged to your lordship for affording me so 
 much of -your time, and for allowing me the honour of conversing so much with 
 one so far above me in all respects. 
 
 Your lordship says, it may be of dangerous consequence to that article of Chris- 
 tian faith which you have endeavoured to defend. Though the laws of disputing 
 allow bare denial as a sufficient answer to sayings, without any offer of a proof: yet, 
 my lord, to show how willing I am to give your lordship all satisfaction, in what 
 you apprehend may be of dangerous consequence in my book, as to that article, I 
 shall not stand still sullenly, and put your lordship upon the difficulty of showing 
 wherein that danger lies; but shall, on the other side, endeavour to show your lord- 
 ship that that definition of mine, whether true or false, right or wrong, can he of 
 no dangerous consequence to that article of faith. The reason which 1 shall offer 
 for it is this: because it can he of no consequence to it at all. 
 
 That which your lordship is afraid it may be dangerous to, is an article of faith- 
 that which your lordship labours and is concerned for, is the certainty of faith. 
 Now, my lord, I humbly conceive the certainty of faith, if your lordship thinks fit 
 to call it so, has nothing to do with the certainty of knowledge. As to talk of the 
 certainty of faith, seems all one to me as to talk of the knowledge of believing, a 
 way of speaking not easy to me to understand. 
 
 Place knowledge in what you will; start what new methods of certainty you 
 please, that are apt to leave men’s minds more doubtful than before; place cer- 
 tainty on such ground as will leave little or no knowledge in the world (for these 
 are the arguments your lordship uses against my definition of knowledge): this 
 shakes not at all, nor in the least concerns the assurance of faith; that is quite dis- 
 tinct from it, neither stands nor falls with knowledge. 
 
 Faith stands by itself, and upon grounds of its own; nor can be removed from 
 them, and placed on those of knowledge. Their grounds are so far from being 
 the same, or having any thing common, that when it is brought to certainty, faith 
 is destroyed; it is knowledge then, and faith no longer. 
 
 With what assurance soever of believing I assent to any article of faith, so that 
 I steadfastly venture my all upon it, it is still but believing. Bring it to certainty, 
 and it ceases to be faith. I believe that Jesus Christ was crucified, dead, and buried, 
 rose again the third day from the dead, and ascended into heaven: let now such 
 methods of knowledge or certainty be started, as leave men’s minds more doubtful 
 than before; let the grounds of knowledge be resolved into what any one pleases, 
 it touches not my faith; the foundation of that stands as sure as before, and cannot 
 be at all shaken by it; and one may as well say, that any thing that weakens the 
 sight, or casts a mist before the eyes, endangers the hearing, as that any thing 
 which alters the nature of knowledge (if that could be done) should be of dangerous 
 consequence to an article of faith. 
 
 Whether then I am or am not mistaken in the placing certainty in the percep- 
 tion of the agreement or disagreement of ideas, — whether this account of know- 
 ledge be true or false, enlarges or straitens the bounds of it more than it should,-- 
 
340 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Be ok 4. 
 
 non, no distinct thoughts at all. By this the mind clearly and infallibly per- 
 ceives each idea to agree with itself, and to be what it is : and all distinct 
 ideas to disagree, i. e. the one not to be the other ; and this it does without 
 pains, labour, or deduction ; but at first view, by its natural power of percep- 
 tion and distinction. And though men of art have reduced this into those 
 general rules, what is, is ; and, it is impossible for the same thing to be, and 
 not to be ; for ready application in all cases, wherein there may be occasion 
 to reflect on it ; yet it is certain, that the first exercise of this faculty is about 
 particular ideas. A man infallibly knows, as soon as ever he has them in his 
 inind, that the ideas he calls white and round, are the very ideas they are, 
 and that they are not other ideas which he calls red or square. Nor can any 
 maxim or proposition in the world make him know it clearer or surer than he. 
 did before, and without any such general rule. This then is the firsfagree- 
 ment or disagreement, which the mind perceives in its ideas ; which it always 
 perceives at first sight : and if there ever happen any doubt about it, it will 
 always be found to be about the names, and not the ideas themselves, whose 
 identity and diversity will always be perceived, as soon and as clearly as -the 
 ideas themselves are, nor can it possibly be otherwise. 
 
 Sect. 5. 2. Relative. — Secondly, the next sort of agreement or disagree- 
 ment the mind perceives in any of its ideas, may, I think, be called relative, 
 and is nothing but the perception of the relation between any two ideas, of 
 what kind soever, whether substances, modes, or any other. For since all 
 distinct ideas must eternally be known not to be the same, and so be univer- 
 sally and constantly denied one of another, there could be no room for any 
 positive knowledge at all, if we could not perceive any relation between our 
 ideas, and find out the agreement or disagreement they have one with anoth- 
 er, in several ways the mind takes of comparing them. 
 
 Sect. 6. 3. Of coexistence. — Thirdly, The third sort of agreement, or dis- 
 agreement, to be found in our ideas, which the perception of the mind is em- 
 ployed about, is coexistence or non-coexistence in the same subject ; and this 
 belongs particularly to substances. Thus, when we pronounce concerning 
 " "gold'that is fixed, our knowledge of this truth amounts to no more but this, 
 that fixedness, or a power to remain in the fire unconsumed, is an idea that 
 always accompanies and is joined with that particular sort of yellowness, 
 weight, fusibility, malleableness, and solubility in aqua regia, which make our 
 complex idea, signified by the word gold. 
 
 Sect. 7. 4. Of real existence. — Fourthly, the fourth and last sort is that 
 of actual, real existence agreeing to any idea. Within these four sorts of 
 agreement or disagreement is, I suppose, contained all the knowledge we 
 have, or are capable of : for all the inquiries that we can make concerning 
 any of our ideas, all that we know or can affirm concerning them, is, that it is, 
 or is not, the same with some other ; that it does, or does not, always coexist 
 with some other idea in the same subject, that it has tins or that relation to 
 some other idea ; or that it has a real existence without the mind. Thus 
 blue is not yellow, is of identity : two triangles upon equal bases between two 
 parallels are equal, is of relation : iron is susceptible of magnetical impres- 
 sions, is of coexistence : God is, is of real existence. Though identity and 
 coexistence are truly nothing but relations, yet they are so peculiar ways of 
 agreement or disagreement of our ideas, that they deserve well to be consid- 
 
 faith still stands upon its own basis, which is not at all altered by it; and every 
 article of that has just the same unmoved foundation, and the very same credibility, 
 that it had before. So that, my lord, whatever I have said about certainty', and 
 how much soever I may be out in it, if I am mistaken, your lordship has no reason 
 to apprehend any danger to any article of faith from thence; every one of them 
 stands upon the same bottom it did before, out of the reach of what belongs to 
 knowledge and certainty. And thus much of my way of certainty by ideas; which, 
 
 I hope, will satisfy your lordship how far it is from being dangerous to any article 
 of the Christian faith whatsoev r 
 
OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 341 
 
 Eh. 1. 
 
 ered as distinct heads, and not under relation in general ; since they are so 
 different grounds of affirmation and negation, as will easily appear to any one, 
 who will but reflect on what is said in several places of this essay. I should 
 now proceed to examine the several degrees of our knowledge, but that it is 
 necessary first to consider .thgjli fferent a c c e p t at ionjso n rtL k pn w 1 e d <tp 
 
 ,Ekx:t. 8. KuxM-,{-f<hr^-rtrtv(drt)r /wfolirdTI— There are several ways wherein 
 the mind is possessed of truth, each of which is called knowledge. 
 
 T. There is aclualfkrrowledgb, which is the present view the mind has of 
 the agreement or disagreement of any of its ideas, or of the relation they have 
 one to another. 
 
 ~_2, A man is said to know any proposition, which having been once laid 
 before fils ‘ thoughts, he evidently perceived the agreement or disagreement of 
 the ideas whereof it consists ; and so lodged it in ..his memory, that when- 
 ever that proposition comes again to be reflected on, he, without doubt or hesi- 
 tation, embraces thetight side, assents to, and is certain of the truth of it. 
 This, I think, one may call habitual knowledge : and thus a man may be said 
 to know all those truths which are lodged" in his memory, by a foregoing 
 clear and full perception, whereof the mind is assured past doubt, as often as 
 it has occasion to reflect on them. For our finite understandings being able 
 to think clearly and distinctly but on one thing at once, if men had no know- 
 ledge of any more than what they actually thought on, they would all be very 
 ignorant ; and he that knew most would know but one truth, that being all 
 he was able to think on at one time. 
 
 Sec miff Habitual knowledge twofold . — Of habitual knowledge, there are 
 also, vulgarly speaking, two degrees : 
 
 First, the one is of such truths laid up in the memory, as, whenever they 
 occur to the mind, it actually perceives the relation is between those ideas. 
 And this is all those truths whereof we have an intuitiv e kno wledge, where 
 the ideas themselves, by an immediate view, discover their agreemebt or dis- 
 agreement one with another. 
 
 -^Secondly, the other is of such truths, whereof the mind having been con- 
 vinced, it retains the memory of the conviction without the proofs. Thus a 
 man that remembers certainly that he once perceived the demonstration, that 
 the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones, is certain that he 
 knows it, because he cannot doubt the truth of it. In his adherence to a truth, 
 where the demonstration by which it was at first known is forgot, though a 
 man may be thought rather to believe his memory than really to know, and 
 this way of entertaining a truth seemed formerly to me like something be- 
 tween opinion and knowledge ; a sbrtxif-assurance which exceeds bare belief, 
 for that relies on the testimony of another: yet upon a due examination I 
 find it comes not short of perfect certainty, and is in effect true knowledge. 
 That wmch is apt to mislead our first thoughts into a mis'ake in this matter 
 is, that tne agreement or disagreement of the ideas in tins case is not per- 
 ceived, as it was at first, by an actual view of all the intermediate ideas, 
 whereov tne agreement or disagreement of those in the proposition was at 
 first perceived ; but by other intermediate ideas, that show the agreement or 
 disagreement of the ideas contained in the proposition whose certainty we 
 rememoer. For example, in this proposition, that the three angles of a tri- 
 angle are equal to two right ones, one who has seen and clearly perceived the 
 demonstration of this truth knows it to be true, when that demonstration is 
 gone our. of his mind ; so that at present it is not actually in view, and pos- 
 sibly cannot oe recollected : but he knows it in a different way from what he 
 did oefore. The agreement of the two ideas joined in that proposition is per- 
 ceived. out it is by the intervention of other ideas than those which at first 
 produced that perception. He remembers, i. e. he knows (for remembrance 
 is but tne reviving of some past knowledge) that he was once certain of the 
 truth of this proposition, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two 
 right ones. The immutability of the same relations between the same im 
 mutable things, is now the idea that shows him that if the three angles of a 
 
342 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 triangle were once equal to two right ones, they will always be equal to two 
 right ones. And hence he comes to be certain, that what was once true in 
 the case, is always true ; what ideas once agreed, will always agree ; and con- 
 sequently what he once knew to be true, he will always know to be true, as 
 ong as he can remember that he once knew it. Upon this ground it is, that 
 Darticular demonstrations in mathematics afford general knowledge. Ifthen 
 me perception that the same ideas will eternally have the same habitudes and 
 -elations, be not a sufficient ground of knowledge, there could be no know- 
 ledge of general propositions in mathematics ; for no mathematical demon- 
 stration would be any other than particular : and when a man had demonstra- 
 ted any proposition concerning one triangle or circle, his knowledge would 
 not reach beyond that particular diagram. If he would extend it further, he 
 must renew his demonstration in another instance, before he could know it 
 to be true in another like triangle, and so on : by which means one could nev- 
 er come to the knowledge of any general propositions. Nobody, I think, can 
 deny that Mr. Newton certainly knows any proposition, that he now at any 
 lime reads in his book, to be true ; though he has not in actual view that ad- 
 mirable chain of intermediate ideas, whereby he at first discovered it to be 
 true. Such a memory as that, able to retain such a train of particulars, may 
 be well thought beyond the reach of human faculties ; when the very discov- 
 ery, perception, and laying together that wonderful connexion of ideas, is 
 found to surpass most readers’ comprehension. But yet it is evident, the 
 author himself knows the proposition to be true, remembering he once saw 
 the connexion of those ideas, as certainly as he knows such a man wounded 
 another, remembering that he saw him run him through. But because the 
 memory is not always so clear as actual perception, and does in all men more 
 or less decay in length of time, this among other differences is one, which 
 shows that demonstrative knowledge is much more imperfect than intuitive, 
 as we shall see in the following chapter. 
 
 . CHAPTER II. 
 
 OF THE DEGREES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Sectv.1- Intuitive.— All our knowledge consisting, as I have said, in the 
 view the mind has of its own ideas, which is the utmost light and greatest 
 certainty we, with our faculties, and in our way of knowledge, are capable of; 
 it may not be amiss to consider a little the degrees of its evidenced- -Iheudif- 
 ferent clearness of our knowledge seems to me to lie in the different way_of, 
 perception the mind has of the agreement or disagreement of any of its ideas. 
 For if we will reflect on our own ways of thinking, we shall find that some- 
 times the mind perceives the agreement or disagreement of two ideas immedi- 
 ate.y by themselves, without the intervention of any other: and this, I think, 
 we may call iwtoiiiveJkno.wle.dge. -For in Jt.his._ the juixuLis- at no pains of 
 proving or examining, hut.perceives.the truth, as..the-eye doth light, only by 
 being directed towards it. Thus the mind perceives that white is not black, 
 that a circle is not a triangle, that three are more than two, and equal to one 
 and two. Such kind of truths the mind perceives at the first sight of the ideas 
 together, by bare intuition, without the intervention of any other idea ; and 
 this kind of knowledge is the clearest and most certain that human frailty is 
 capable of. This part of knowledge is irresistible, and like bright sunshine, 
 forces itself immediately to be perceived, as soon as ever the mind turns its 
 view that way ; and leaves no room for hesitation, doubt, or examination, 
 Dut the mind is presently filled with the clear light of it. It is on this intui- 
 tion that depends all the certainty and evidence of all our knowledge ; which 
 certainty every one finds to be so great, that he cannot imagine, and there 
 
Ch. 2. 
 
 DEGREES OE KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 343 
 
 fore not require a greater : for a man cannot conceive himself capable of a 
 greater certainty, than to know that any idea in his mind is such as he per- 
 ceives it to be ; and that two ideas, wherein he perceives a difference, are dif- 
 ferent., and not precisely the same. lie that demands a greater certainty than 
 .his, demands he knows not what, and shows only that he has a mind to be a 
 sceptic, without being able to be so. Certainty depends so wholly on this in- 
 tuition. thatin th g nex t, degree .of knowledge, which I cadi demonst rative, t his 
 intuition is necessary in all the connexions of the inTermediate .ideas, with- 
 otifc which. we- eannot attain knowledge and certainty. 
 
 f iTlie- next'degree ©f knowledge is, where the 
 
 mind perceives the agreement or disagreement of any ideas, but not immedi- 
 ately;-- Thoagh'.“$i?Bfirever the mind perceives the agreement or disagreement 
 -of -any of Its ideas, there - be certain knowledge; yet it does not always hap- 
 pen that the mind sees that agreement or disagreement which there is between 
 them, even where it is discoverable : and in that case remains in ignorance, 
 and at most gets no farther than a probable conjecture. The reason why the 
 mind cannot always perceive presently the agreement or disagreement of two 
 ideas is, because those ideas, concerning whose agreement or disagreement 
 the inquiry is made, cannot by the mind be so put together as to show it. 
 In this case, then, when the mind cannot so bring its ideas together, as by their 
 immediate comparison, and as it were juxta-position, or application one to 
 another, to perceive their agreement or disagreement, it is fain, by the inter- 
 vention of other ideas, (one or more, as it happens) to discover the agreement 
 or disagreement which it searches ; and this is that which we call reasoning. 
 Thus the mind being willing to know the agreement or disagreement in big- 
 ness between the three angles of a triangle and two right ones, cannot by an 
 immediate view and comparing them do it : because the three angles of a tri- 
 angle cannot be brought at once, and be compared with any one or two an- 
 gles : and so of this the mind has no immediate, no intuitive knowledge. 
 In this case the mind is fain to find out some other angles, to which the three 
 angles of a triangle have an equality ; and, finding those equal to two right 
 ones, comes to know their equality to two right ones. 
 
 Sect. 3. Depends on proofs. — Those intervening ideas which serve to 
 show the agreement of any two others, are called proofs ; and where the 
 agreement and disagreement is by this means plainly and clearly perceived, 
 it is called demonstration, it being shown to the understanding, and the mind 
 made to see that it is so. A quickness in the mind to find out these interme- 
 diate ideas (that shall discover the agreement or disagreement of any other) 
 and to apply them right is, I suppose, that which is called sagacity. 
 
 Sect. 4. But not. so easy. — This knowledge by intervening proofs, though 
 it be certain, yet fhe~e\ntfence of if is net altogether so clear and bright, nor 
 the assent so ready, as in intuitive knowledge. For though, in demonstra- 
 tion, the mind does at last perceive the agreement or disagreement of the 
 ideas it considers ; yet it is not without pains and attention : there must be 
 more than one transient view to find it. A steady application and pursuit 
 are required to this discovery : and there must be a progression by steps and 
 degrees, before theTnind can in this way arrive at certainty, and come t.o per- 
 ceive the agreement or repugnancy between two ideas that need proofs, and 
 the use of reason to show it. 
 
 Sect. 5. Not without precedent doubt. — Another difference between in- 
 tuitive and demonstrative knTmfledff a is. that tho ugh in the latter all doubt be 
 removed, when by the intervention of the intermediate ideas the agreement 
 or disagreement is perceived ; yet before the demonstration there was a doubt, 
 which in intuitive knowledge cannot happen to the mind, that has its faculty 
 of perception left to a degree capable of distinct ideas, no more than it can be 
 a doubt to the eye (that can distinctly see white and black) whether this ink 
 and this paper be all of a colou-r. If there be sight in the eyes, it will at 
 first glimpse, without hesitation, perceive the words piinted on this paper dif- 
 ferent from the colour of the paper : and so if the mind have the faculty of 
 
344 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 distinct perceptions, it will perceive the agreement or disagreement of those 
 ideas that produce intuitive knowledge. If the eyes have lost the faculty of 
 seeing, or the mind of perceiving, we in vain inquire after the quickness of 
 sight in one, or clearness of perception in the other. 
 
 Sect. 6. Not so clear. — It is true, the perception produced by demonstra- 
 tion is also very clear, yet it is often with a great abatement of that evident 
 lustre and full assurance that always accompany that which I call intuitive ; 
 like a face reflected by several mirrors one to another, where, as long as it 
 retains the similitude and agreement with the object, it produces a knowledge; 
 but it is still in every successive reflection, with a lessening of that perfect 
 clearness and distinctness which is in the first ; till at last, after many removes, 
 it has a great mixture of dimness, and is not at first sight so knowable, es- 
 pecially to weak eyes. Thus it is with knowledge made out by a long train 
 of proof. 
 
 Sect. 7. Each step must have intuitive evidence.— Now in every step 
 reason makes in demonstrative knowledge, there is an intuitive knowledge 
 of that agreement or disagreement it seeks with the next intermediate idea, 
 which it uses as a proof : for if it were not so, that yet would need a proof; 
 since without the perception of such agreement or disagreement, there is no 
 knowledge produced. If it be perceived by itself, it is intuitive knowledge : 
 if it cannot be perceived by itself, there is need of some intervening idea, as a 
 common measure to show their agreement or disagreement. By which it is 
 plain, that every step in reasoning that produces knowledge has intuitive cer- 
 tainty ; which when the mind perceives, there is no more required, but to re- 
 member it, to make the agreement or disagreement of the ideas, concerning 
 which we inquire, visible and certain. So that to make any thing a demon- 
 stration, it is necessary to perceive the immediate agreement of the inter- 
 vening ideas, whereby the agreement or disagreement of the two ideas under 
 examination (whereof the orte is always the first, and the other the last in the 
 account) is found. This intuitive perception of the agreement or disagree- 
 ment of the intermediate ideas, in each step and progression of the demon- 
 stration, must also be carried exactly in the mind, and a man must be sure 
 that no part is left out ; which, because in long deductions, and the use of 
 many proofs,- the memory does not always so readily and exactly retain ; 
 therefore it comes to pass, that this is more imperfect than intuitive know- 
 ledge, and men embrace often falsehood for demonstrations. 
 
 Sect. 8. Hence the mistake “ ex preecognitis et prceconcessis.” — The ne- 
 cessity of this intuitive knowledge, in each step of scientifical or demonstra- 
 tive reasoning, gave occasion, I imagine, to that mistaken axiom, that all 
 reasoning was “ex praecognitis et pneconcessis which how far it is mis- 
 taken, I shall have occasion to show more at large, when I come to consider 
 propositions, and particularly those propositions which are called maxims; 
 and to show that it is by a mistake that they are supposed to be the founda- 
 tions of all our knowledge and reasonings. 
 
 Sect. 9. Demonstration not limited to quantity. — It has been generally 
 taken for granted, that mathematics alone are capable of demonstrative cer- 
 tainty : but to have such an agreement or disagreement, as may intuitively 
 be perceived, being, as I imagine, not the privilege of the ideas of number, 
 extension, and figure alone, it may possibly be the want of due method and 
 application in us, and not of sufficient evidence in things, that demonstration 
 has been thought to have so little to do in other parts of knowledge, and 
 been scarce so much as aimed at by any but mathematicians. For whatever 
 ideas we have, wherein the mind can perceive the immediate agreement or 
 disagreement that is between them, there the mind is capable of intuitive 
 knowledge ; and where it can perceive the agreement or disagreement of any 
 two ideas, by an intuitive perception of the agreement or disagreement they 
 have with any intermediate ideas, there the mind is capable of demonstration,, 
 which is not limited to ideas of extension, figure, number, and their modes. 
 
 Sect. 10. Why it has been so thought. — The reason why it has been ge 
 
C-h. 2. 
 
 DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 345 
 
 nerally sought for, and supposed to be only in those, I imagine has been not 
 only the general usefulness of those sciences ; but because, in comparing their 
 equality or excess, the modes of numbers have every the least difference very 
 clear and perceivable : and though in extension every the least excess is not 
 so perceptible, yet the mind has found out ways to examine and discover de- 
 monstratively, the just equality of two angles, or extensions, or figures : and 
 both these, i. e. numbers and figures, can be set down by visible and lasting 
 marks, wherein the ideas under consideration are perfectly determined ; which 
 for the most part they are not, where they are marked only by names and 
 .words- 
 
 Sect. Ft. But in other simple ideas, whose modes and differences are made 
 and counted by degrees, and not quantity, we have not so nice and accurate 
 a distinction of their differences, as to perceive and find ways to measure their 
 just - equality, or the least differences. For those other simple ideas, being 
 appearances or sensations, produced in us by the size, figure, number, and 
 motion of minute corpuscles singly insensible ; their different degrees also 
 depend upon the variation of some or all of those causes : which since it 
 cannot be observed by us in particles of matter, whereof each is too subtile 
 to be perceived, it is impossible for us to have any exact measures of the 
 different degrees of these simple ideas. For supposing the sensation or idea 
 we name whiteness, be produced in us by a certain number of globules, which, 
 having a verticity about their own centres, strike upon the retina of the eye 
 with a certain degree of rotation, as well as progressive swiftness ; it will 
 hence easily follow, that the more the superficial parts of any body are so 
 ordered, as to reflect the greater number of globules of light, and to give them 
 the proper rotation, which is fit to produce this sensation of white in us, the 
 more white will that body appear, that from an equal space sends to the retina 
 the greater number of such corpuscles, with that peculiar sort of motion. I 
 do not say, that the nature of light consists in very small round globules, nor 
 of whiteness m such a texture of parts as gives a certain rotation to these 
 globules, when it reflects them ; for I am not now treating physically of light 
 or colours : but this, I think, I may say, that I cannot (and I would be glad 
 any one would make intelligible that he did) conceive how bodies without us 
 can any ways affect our senses, but by the immediate contact of the sensible 
 bodies themselves, as in tasting and feeling, or the impulse of some insensi- 
 ble particles coming from them, as in seeing, hearing, and smelling ; by the 
 different impulse of which parts, caused by their different size, figure, and 
 motion, the variety of sensations is produced in us. 
 
 Sect. 12. Whether then they be globules, or no, — or whether they have a 
 verticity about their own centres that produces the idea of whiteness in us, — 
 this is certain, that the more particles of light are reflected from a body, fitted 
 to give them that peculiar motion, which produces the sensation of whiteness 
 in us, — and possibly, too, the quicker that peculiar motion is, — the whiter 
 does the body appear from which the greater number are reflected, as is evi- 
 dent in the same piece of paper put in the sunbeams; in the shade, and in a 
 dark hole ; in each of which it will produce in us the idea of whiteness in far 
 different degrees. 
 
 Sect. 13. Not knowing, therefore, what number of particles, nor what 
 motion of them is fit to produce any precise degree of whiteness, we cannot 
 demonstrate the certain equality of any two degrees of whiteness, because we 
 have no certain standard to measure them by, nor means to distinguish every 
 the least real difference, the only help we have being from our senses, which 
 in this point fail us. But where the difference is so great as to produce in the 
 mind clearly distinct ideas, whose differences can be perfectly retained, there 
 these ideas or colours, as we see in different kinds, as blue and red, are as 
 capable of demonstration as ideas of number and extension. What I have 
 here said of whiteness and colours, I think, holds true in all secondary quali- 
 ties, and their modes. 
 
 C. 14. Sensitive knowledge of particular existence. — T lie sjLtwo-rvW. 
 
246 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 intuition and demonstration, are the degrees of our knowledge ; whatever 
 tomes short of one of these, with what assurance uoever embraced, is but 
 faith, or opinion, but not knowledge, at least in all general truths. There 
 is, indeed, another perception of the mind, employed about the particular 
 existence of finite beings without us ; which going beyond bare probability, 
 and yet not reaching perfectly to either of the foregoing degrees of certainty, 
 passes under the name of knowledge. There can be nothing more certain 
 than that the idea we receive from an external object is in our minds ; this is 
 intuitive knowledge. But whether there be any thing more than barely that 
 idea in our minds, whether we can thence certainly infer the existence of any 
 thing without us, which corresponds to that idea, is that whereof some men 
 think there may be a question made ; because men may have such ideas in 
 their minds, when no such tiling exists, no such object affects their senses. 
 But yet here, I think, we are provided with an evidence, that puts us past 
 doubting: for I ask any one, whether he be not invincibly conscious to him- 
 self of a different perception, when he looks on the sun by day, and thinks 
 on it by night ; when he actually tastes wormwood, or smells a rose, or only 
 thinks on that savour or odouri— We as plainly find the difference- there is 
 between an idea revived in our minds by our own memory, and actually coming 
 in our minds by our senses, as we do between any two distinct ideas. If 
 any one say, a dream may do the same thing, and all these ideas may be 
 produced in us without any external objects ; he may please to dream that 
 I make him this answer ; 1. That it is no great matter, whether I remove 
 this scruple or no : where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no 
 use, truth and knowledge nothing. 2. That I believe he will allow a very 
 manifest difference between dreaming of being in the fire, and being actually 
 in it. But yet, if he be resolved to appear so sceptical as to maintain, that 
 what I call being actually in the fire is nothing but a dream, and we cannot 
 thereby certainly know that any such thing as fire actually exists without 
 us ; I answer, that we certainly finding that pleasure or pain follows upon the 
 application of certain objects to us, whose existence we perceive, or dream 
 that we perceive, by our senses ; this certainty is as great as our happiness 
 or misery, beyond which we have no concernment to know, or to be. So 
 that, I think, we may add to the two former sorts of knowledge, this also, 
 of the existence of particular external objects, by that perception and con- 
 sciousness we have of the actual entrance of ideas from them, and ajlqw- 
 these three degrees of knowledge, viz. intuitive, demonstrati ve^mUs’ensi- 
 tive : in each of which there are' different degrees and ways of evidence and 
 certainty. 
 
 Sect. 15. Knowledge not always clear, where the ideas are so. But since 
 our knowledge is founded on, and employed about, our ideas only, will it not 
 follow from thence, that it is conformable to our ideas ; and that where our 
 ideas are clear and distinct, or obscure and confused, our knowledge will be 
 so too 1 To which I answer, no : for. our knowledge consisting in the per- 
 ception of the agreement or disagreement of any two ideas",' its clearness or 
 obscurity consists in the clearness or obscurity of that perception, and not in 
 the clearness or obscurity of the ideas themselves ; v. g. a man that has as 
 clear ideas of the angles of a triangle, and of equality to two right ones, as 
 any mathematician in the world, may yet have but a very obscure perception of 
 their agreement, and so have but a very obscure knowledge of it. .. But id eas, 
 which by reason of their obscurity or otherwise are con fusedj trnrmTrt'-prO-d uce 
 any clear or distinct inowledgey because as far as any ideas are confused, 
 so far the mind cannot perceive clearly, whether they agree or disagree- 
 Or to express the same thing in a way less apt to be misunderstood ; he that 
 hath not determined ideas to the words he uses, cannot make propositions 
 of them, of whose truth he can be certain. 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 347 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OF THE EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Sect. 1. Knowledge, as has been said, lying in the perception of agree- 
 ment or disagreement of any of our ideas, it follows from hence, that, 
 
 l^Na-f 'axth&r^than .we -have ideas. — First, we can have knowledge no far- 
 ther than'we~have ideas. 
 
 Sect. 2. 2. No farther than we can perceive their agreement or dis- 
 agreement. — Secondly, that we can have no knowledge farther than we can 
 have perception of their agreement or disagreement. Which perception be- 
 ing, 1. Either by intuition, or the immediate comparing any two ideas ; or, 
 2. By reason, examining the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, by the 
 intervention of some others ; or, 3. By sensation, perceiving the existence 
 of particular tilings : hence it also follows, 
 
 Sect. 3. 3. Intuitive knowledge extends itself not to all the relations of 
 '-all our ideas. — Thirdly, that we cannot have an intuitive knowledge that 
 sliMl-extend itself to all our ideas, and all that we would know about them ; 
 because we cannot examine and perceive all the relations they have one to 
 another, by juxta-position, or an immediate comparison one with another. Thus 
 having the ideas of an obtuse and an acute angled triangle, both drawn from 
 equal bases, and between parallels, I can, by intuitive knowledge, perceive 
 the one not tij be the other, but cannot that way know whether they be equal 
 or no : because their agreement or disagreement in equality can never be 
 perceived by an immediate comparing them : the difference of figure makes 
 their parts incapable of an exact immediate application ; and therefore there 
 is need of some intervening qualities to measure them, by, which is demon- 
 stration, or rational knowledge. 
 
 Sect. 4. 4. Nor demonstrative knowledge. — Fourthly, it also follows, from 
 what is above observed, that our rational knowledge cannot reach- to- the 
 whole extent of our ideas ; because between two different ideas we would ex- 
 — amine, we cannot always find such mediums, as we can connect one to an- 
 other with an intuitive knowledge, in all the parts of the deduction ; and 
 wherever that fails, we come short of knowledge and demonstration. 
 
 Sect. 5. 5. Sensitive knowledge narrower than either. — Fifthly, sensitive 
 knowledge reaching no farther than the existence of things actually present 
 to our senses, is yet much narrower than either of the former. 
 
 Sect. 6. 6. Our-knowledge therefore narrower than our ideas. — From all 
 which it is evident, that the extent of our knowledge . jmme§ not only shojtof 
 the reality, o f things, but, even of the extent of our ownifteaST — Thtrfigh our 
 knowledge be limited to our ideas, and cannot exceed 'tlidffi felthe r in extent 
 or perfection ; and though these be very narrow bounds, in respect of the 
 extent of all being, and far short of what we may justly imagine to be in 
 some even created understandings, not tied down to the dull and narrow in- 
 formation which is to be received from some few, and not very acute ways of 
 perception, such as are our senses ; yet it would be well with us if our know- 
 ledge were but as large as our ideas, and there were not many doubts and 
 inquiries concerning the ideas we have, whereof we are not, nor I believe 
 ever shall be, in 'this world, resolved. Nevertheless. I do not, .q uestion but 
 ‘‘hat human knowledge, under the present circumstances of our beings and 
 constitutions, may be carried much farther than it hitherto has been, if men 
 would sincerely, and with freedom of mind, employ all that industry and la- 
 bour of thought, in improving the means of discovering truth, which they do 
 for the colouring or support of falsehood, to rnaintaim-a- -system,, interest, or 
 party,- they. are once engaged in. But yet, after all, I think I may without 
 injury to human' perffectionr be confident, that our knowledge would never 
 
348 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 reach to all we might desire to know concerning those ideas we have ; nor be 
 able to surmount all the difficulties, and resolve all the questions that might 
 arise concerning any of them. We have the ideas of a sqtiare, a circle, and 
 equality ; and yet, perhaps, shall never be able to find a circle equal to a 
 square, and certainly know that it is so. We have the ideas of matter and 
 thinking, (2) but possibly shall never be able to know, whether any mere ma._ 
 
 (2) Against that assertion of Mr Locke, that possibly we shall never be able to 
 know whether any mere material being thinks or no, &c. the bishop of Worcester 
 argues thus: If this be true, then, for all that we can know by our ideas of matter 
 and thinking, matter may have a power of thinking: and, if this hold, then it is 
 impossible to prove a spiritual substance in us from the idea of thinking: for how 
 can we be assured by our ideas, that God hath not given such a power of thinking to 
 matter so disposed as our bodies are? especially since it is said*, “that, in respect 
 to our notions, it is not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive 
 that God can, if he pleases, superadd to our idea of matter a faculty of thinking, 
 than that he should superadd to it another substance, with a faculty of thinking.” 
 Whoever asserts this can never prove a spiritual substance in us from a faculty of 
 thinking, because he cannot know, from the idea of matter and thinking, that mat- 
 ter so disposed cannot think: and he cannot be certain, that God hath not framed 
 the matter of our bodies so as to be capable of it. 
 
 To which Mr Locke answers thus): Here your lordship argues, that upon my 
 
 principles it cannot be proved that there is a spiritual substance in us. "To which 
 give me leave, with submission, to say, that I think it may be proved from my 
 principles, and I think I have done it; and the proof in my book stands thus : first, 
 we experiment in ourselves thinking. The idea of this action or mode of thinking 
 is inconsistent with the idea of self-subsistence, and therefore has a necessary con- 
 nexion with a support or subject of inhesion: the idea of that support is what we 
 call substance; and so from thinking experimented in us, we have a proof of a 
 thinking substance in us, which in my sense is a spirit. Against this your lord- 
 ship will argue, that by what I have said of the possibility that God may, if he 
 pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, it can never be proved that there 
 is a spiritual substance in us, because, upon that supposition, it is possible it may 
 be a material substance that thinks in us. I grant it; but add, that the general idea 
 of substance being the same every where, the modification of thinking, or the power 
 of thinking, joined to it, makes it a spirit, without considering what other modi- 
 fications it has, as, whether it has the modification of solidity, or no. As, on the 
 other side, substance, that has the modification of solidity, is matter, whether it 
 has the modification of thinking or no. And therefore, if your lordship means by 
 a spiritual, an immaterial substance, I grant I have not proved, nor upon my prin- 
 ciples can it be proved (your lordship meaning, as I think you do, demonstratively 
 proved), that there is an immaterial substance in us that thinks. Though I pre- 
 sume, from what I have said about this supposition of a system of matter, think- 
 ing): (which there demonstrates that God is immaterial) will prove it in the highest 
 degree probable, that the thinking substance in us is immaterial. But your lord- 
 ship thinks not probably enough, and by charging the want of demonstration upon 
 my principle, that the thinking thing in us is immaterial, your lordship seems to 
 conclude it demonstrable from principles of philosophy. That demonstration I 
 should with joy receive from your lordship, or any one. For though all the great 
 ends of morality and religion are well enough secured without it, as I have shovvn§, 
 yet it would be a great advance of our knowledge in nature and philosophy. 
 
 To what I have said in my book, to show that all the great ends of religion and 
 morality are secured barely by the immortality of the soul, without a necessary 
 supposition that the soul is immaterial, I crave leave to add, that immortality may 
 and shall be annexed to that, which in its own nature is neither immaterial nor 
 immortal, as the apostle expressly declares in these words], For this corruptible 
 must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 
 
 ) B. 4. c. 10. sect. 16 
 ] 1 Cor. xv. 53. 
 
 * Essay of Human Understanding, b. 4. c. 3. sect. 6. 
 + In his first letter to the Bishop of Worcester. 
 
 § B. 4. c. 3. sect. 6. 
 
Cn. 3. 
 
 EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 349 
 
 terial being thinks, or no ; it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of 
 our own ideas without revelation, to discover, whether omnipotency has not 
 given to some systems of matter, fitly disposed, a power to perceive and 
 think, or else joined and fixed to matter so disposed, a thinking immaterial 
 
 Perhaps my using the word spirit for a thinking substance, without excluding 
 materiality out of it, will be thought too great a liberty, and such as deserves cen- 
 sure, because I leave immateriality out of the idea I make it a sign of. I readily 
 own, that words should be sparingly ventured on in a sense wholly new, and no- 
 thing but absolute necessity can excuse the boldness of using any term in a sense 
 whereof we can produce no example. But, in the present case, I think 1 have 
 great authorities to justify me. The soul is agreed, on all hands, to be that in us 
 which thinks. And he that will look into the first book of Cicero’s Tusculan 
 Questions, and into the sixth book of Virgil’s iEneid, will find, that these two 
 great men, who of all the Romans best understood philosophy, thought, or at least 
 did not deny, the soul to be a subtile matter, which might come under the name of 
 aura, or ignis, or sether, and this soul they both of them called spiritus: in the no- 
 tion of which, it is plain, they included only thought and active motion, without 
 the total exclusion of matter. Whether they thought right in this, I do not say; 
 that is not the question; but whether they spoke properly, when they called an 
 active, thinking, subtile substance, out of which they excluded only gross and pal- 
 pable matter, spiritus, spirit. I think that nobody will deny, that if any among the 
 Romans can be allowed to speak properly, Tully and Virgil are the two who may 
 most securely be depended on for it: and one of them, speaking of the soul, says, 
 Dura spiritus hos reget artus; and the other, Vita continetur corpore et spiritu. 
 Where it is plain, by corpus, he means (as generally every where) only gross 
 matter that may be felt and handled, as appears by these words, si cor, aut san- 
 guis, aut cerebrum est animus; certe, quoniam est corpus, interibit cum reliquo 
 corpore; si anima est, forte dissipabitur; si ignis, extinguetur, Tusc. Quxst. 1. 1. 
 c. 11. Here Cicero opposes corpus to ignis and anima, i. e. aura, or breath. 
 And the foundation of that his distinction of the soul, from that which he calls 
 corpus, or body, he gives a little lower in these words, tanta ejus tenuitas ut fugiat 
 aciem, ib. c.. 22. Nor was it the heathen world alone that had this notion of spirit; 
 the most enlightened of all the ancient people of God, Solomon himself, speaks 
 after the same manner*: That which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts, even 
 one thing befalleth them; as the one dietfi, so dieth the other, yea, they have all 
 one spirit. So I translate the Hebrew word HIT here, for so I find it translated the 
 very next verse but onef: who knoweth the spirit of man that goelh upward, and 
 the spirit of the beast that goeth downwards to tiie earth ? In which places it is 
 plain that Solomon applies the word m and our translators of him the word 
 spirit, to a substance, out of which materiality was not wholly excluded, unless the 
 spirit of a beast that goeth downwards to the earth be immaterial. Nor did the 
 way of speaking in our Saviour’s time vary from this: St Luke tells us):, that when 
 our Saviour, after his resurrection, stood in the midst of them, they were affrighted, 
 aud supposed they had seen ra-viv/n*., the Greek word\whieh always answers to 
 spirit in English; and so the translators of the Bible render it here, they supposed 
 that they had seen a spirit. But our Saviour says to them, Behold my hands and 
 my feet, that it is I myself; handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones 
 as you see me have. Which words of our Saviour put the same distinction be- 
 tween body and spirit, that Cicero did in the place above cited, viz. That the one 
 was a gross compages that could be felt and handled; and the other, such a3 Virgil 
 describes the ghost or soul of Anchises: 
 
 ^ Ter conatus ibi collo dare brachia circum. 
 
 Ter frustra comprensa mantis effugit imago, 
 
 Par levibus ventis volucrique simillima somno§. 
 
 I would not be thought hereby to say, that spirit never does signify a purely 
 immaterial substance. In that sense the Scripture, I take it, speaks, when it says 
 God is a spirit; and in that sense I have used it; and in that sense I have proved 
 
 * Eccl. iii. 19. 
 
 t Eccl. iii. 21. 
 
 j: Chap. xxiv. 37. 
 
 §. Lib. vi. 
 
OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 350 
 
 substance : it being, in respect of our notions, not much more remote from 
 our comprehension to conceive, that God can, if he pleases, superadd to 
 matter a faculty of thinking, than that he should superadd to it another sub- 
 stance, with a faculty of thinking; since we know not wherein thinking con- 
 
 from my principles that there is a spiritual substance; and am certain that therr is 
 a spiritual immaterial substance: which is, 1 humbly conceive, a direct answer to 
 your lordship’s question in the beginning of this argument, viz. Mow we come to 
 be certain that there are spiritual substances, supposing this principle to be true, 
 that the simple ideas by sensation and reflection are the sole matter and foundation 
 of all our reasoning! 1 But this hinders not, but that if God, that infinite, omni- 
 potent, and perfectly immaterial Spirit, should please to give to a system of very 
 subtile matter, sense and motion, it might with propriety of speech be called spirit, 
 though materiality were not excluded out of its complex idea. Your lordship 
 proceeds, it is said indeed elsewhere*, that it is repugnant to the idea of senseless 
 matter, that it should put into itself sense, perception, and knowledge. But this 
 doth not reach the present case; which is not what matter can do of itself, but what 
 matter prepared by an omnipotent hand can do. And what certainty can we have 
 that he hath not done it? We can have none from the ideas, for those are given 
 up in this case, and consequently we can have no certainty, upon these principles, 
 whether we have any spiritual substance within us or not. 
 
 Your lordship in this paragraph proves, that, from what I say, we can have no 
 certainty whether we have any spiritual substance in us or not. If by spiritual 
 substance your lordship means an immaterial substance in us, as you speak, I grant 
 what your lordship says is true, that it cannot upon these principles be demon- 
 strated. But I must orave leave to say at the same time, that upon these principles 
 it can be proved, to the highest degree of probability. If by spiritual substance 
 your lordship means a thinking substance, I must dissent from your lordship, and 
 say, that we can have a certainty, upon my principles, that there is a spiritual sub- 
 stance in us. In short, my lord, upon my principles, i. e. from the idea of think- 
 ing, we can have a certainty that there is a thinking substance in us; from hence 
 we have a certainty that there is an eternal thinking substance. This thinking 
 substance, which has been from eternity, I have proved to be immaterial. This 
 eternal, immaterial, thinking suustance, has put into us a thinking substance, which, 
 whether it be a material or immaterial substance, cannot be infallibly demonstrated 
 from our ideas: though from them it may' be proved, that it is to the highest degree 
 probable that it is immaterial. 
 
 Again, the bishop of Worcester undertakes to prove from Mr Locke’s princi- 
 ples, that we may be certain, “ That the first eternal thinking being, or omnipotent 
 Spirit, cannot, if he would, give to certain systems of created sensible matter, put 
 together as he sees fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought.” 
 
 To which Mr Locke has made the following answer in his third letter. 
 
 Your first argument I take to be this; that according to me, the knowledge we 
 have being by our ideas, and our idea of matter in general being a solid substance, 
 and our idea of body, a solid extended figured substance; if I admit matter to be 
 capable of thinking, I confound the idea of matter with the idea of a spirit; to 
 which I answer, No, no more than I confound the idea of matter with the idea of 
 a horse, when I say that matter in general is a solid extended substance; and that a 
 horse is a material animal, or an extended soli <1 substance, with sense and spon- 
 taneous motion. 
 
 The idea of matter is an extended solid substance; wherever there is such a sub- 
 stance, there i3 matter, and the essence of matter, whatever other qualities, not con- 
 tained in that essence, it shall please God to superadd to it. For example, God 
 creates an extended solid substance, without the superadding any thing else to it, and 
 so we may consider it at rest: to some parts of it he superadds motion, but it has 
 still the essence of matter: other parts of it he frames into plants, with all the ex- 
 cellencies of vegetation, life and beauty, which is to be found in a rose or peach-tree, 
 &e. above the essence of matter, in general, but it is still but matter: to other 
 parts hs adds sense and spontaneous motion, and those other properties that are tn 
 
 * B. 4. c. 10. sect. 5. 
 
Chap. 3. 
 
 EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 351 
 
 gists, nor to what sort of substances the Almighty has been pleased to give 
 that power, which cannot be in any created being, but merely by the good 
 pleasure and bounty of the Creator. / For I see no contradiction in it, that 
 the first eternal thinking being should, if he pleased, give to certain systems 
 
 he found in an elephant. Hitherto it is not doubted but the power of God may go, 
 and that the properties of a rose, a peach, or an elephant, superadded to matter, 
 change not the properties of matter; but matter is in these things matter still. But 
 if one venture to go one step farther, and say, God may give to matter thought, 
 reason, and volition, as well as sense and spontaneous motion, there are men ready 
 presently to limit the power of the omnipotent Creator, and tell us he cannot do 
 it; because it destroys the essence, or changes the essential properties of matter. 
 To make good which assertion, they have no more to say, but that thought and 
 reason are not included in the essence of matter. I grant it; but whatever excel- 
 lency, not contained in its essence, be superadded to matter, it does not destroy 
 the essence of matter, if it leaves it an extended solid substance; wherever that is, 
 there is the essence of matter: and if every thing of greater perfection superadded 
 to such a substance, destroys the essence of matter, what will become of the essence 
 of matter in a plant or an animal, whose properties far exceed those of a mere ex- 
 tended solid substance? 
 
 But it is farther urged, that we cannot conceive how matter can think. I grant 
 it; but to argue from thence, that God therefore cannot give to matter a faculty of 
 thinking, is to say God’s omnipotency is limited to a narrow compass, because 
 man’s understanding is so; and brings down God’s infinite power to the size of our 
 capacities. If God can give no power to any parts of matter, but what men can 
 account for from the essence of matter in general; if all such qualities and proper- 
 ties must destroy the essence, or change the essential properties of matter, which 
 are to our conceptions above it, and we cannot conceive to be fne natural conse- 
 quence of that essence: it is plain that the essence of matter is destroyed, and its 
 essential properties changed, in most of the sensible parts of this our system. For 
 it is visible, that all the planets have revolutions about certain remote centres, which 
 I would have any one explain, or make conceivable by the bare essence, or natural 
 powers depending on the essence of matter in general, without something added to 
 that essence, which we cannot conceive; for the me ring of matter in a crooked 
 line, or the attraction of matter by matter; is all that can be said in the case; either 
 of which it is above our reach to derive from the essence of matter or body in 
 general; though one of these two must unavoidably be allowed to be superadded in 
 this instance to the essence of matter in general. The omnipotent Creator advised 
 not with us in the making of the world, and his ways are not the less excellent be- 
 cause they are past finding out. 
 
 In the next place, the vegetable part of the creation is not doubted to be wholly 
 material; and yet he that, will look into it will observe excellencies and operations in 
 this part of matter which he will not find contained in the essence of matter in 
 general, nor be able to conceive how they can be produced by it. And will he 
 therefore say, that the essence of matter is destroyed in them because they have 
 properties and operations not contained in the essential properties of matter as 
 matter, nor explicable by the essence of matter in general? 
 
 Let us advance one step farther, and we shall in the animal world meet with yet 
 greater perfections and properties, no ways explicable by the essence of matter in 
 general. If the omnipotent Creator had not superadded to the earth, which pro- 
 duced the irrational animals, qualities far surpassing those of the dull dead earth, 
 out of which they were made life, sense, and spontaneous motion, nobler qualities 
 than were before in it, it had still remained rude senseless matter; and if tc the 
 individuals of each species he had not superadded a power of propagation, the spe- 
 ;ies had perished with those individuals: but by these essences or properties of 
 each species, superadded to the matter which they were made of, the essences or 
 properties of matter in general were not destroyed or changed, any more than any 
 thing that was in the individuals before was destroyed or changed by the power of 
 generation, superadded to them by the first benediction of the Almighty. 
 
 In all such cases, the superinducement of greater perfections and nobler quali- 
 ties destroys nothing of the essence or perfections that were there before; unless 
 
352 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 . 
 
 of created senseless matter, put together, as he thinks fit, some degrees of 
 sense, perception, and thought: though, as I think, I have proved, Book 4. ch. 
 10. Sect. 14. it is no less than a contradiction to suppose matter (which is 
 evidently in its own nature void of sense and thought) should be that eternal 
 
 there can ne showed a manifest repugnancy between them: but all the proof offer- 
 ed for that, is only, that we cannot conceive how matter, without such superadded 
 perfections, can produce such effects; which is, in truth, no more than to say, mat- 
 ter in general, or every part of matter, as matter, has them not; but is no reason to 
 prove, that God, if he pleases, cannot superadd them to some parts of matter, unless 
 it can be proved to be a contradiction, that God should give to some parts of mat- 
 ter qualities and perfections, which matter in general has not; though we cannot 
 conceive how matter is invested with them, or how it operates by virtue of those 
 new endowments; nor is it to be wondered that we cannot, whilst we limit all its 
 operations to those qualities it had before, and would explain them by the known 
 properties of matter in general, without any such induced perfections. For, if this 
 be the right rule of reasoning, to deny a thing to be, because v/e cannot conceive 
 the manner how it comes to be; I shall desire them who use it, to stick to this 
 rule, and see what work it will make both in divinity as well as philosophy: and 
 whether they can advance any thing more in favour of scepticism. 
 
 For to keep within the present subject of the power of thinking and self-mo- 
 tion, bestowed by omnipotent power in some parts of matter: the ohjeetion to this 
 is, I cannot conceive how matter should think. What is the consequence ? F.rgo, 
 God cannot give it a power to think. Let this stand for a good reason, and then 
 proceed in oilier cases by the same. You cannot conceive how matter can attract 
 matter at any distance, much less at the distance of 1,000,000 miles; ergo, God 
 cannot give it such a power: you cannot conceive how matter should feel, or move 
 itself, or affect an immaterial being, or be moved by it; ergo, God cannot give it 
 such powers: which is in effect to deny gravity, and the revolution of the planets 
 about the sun; to make brutes mere machines, without sense or spontaneous mo- 
 tion; and to allow man neither sense nor voluntary motion. 
 
 Let us apply this rule one degree farther. You cannot conceive how an ex- 
 tended solid substance should think, therefore God cannot make it think: can you 
 conceive how your own soul, or any substance, thinks? You find indeed that you 
 do think, and so do I: but I want to be told how the action of thinking is per- 
 formed: this, l confess, is beyond my conception; and I would be glad any one, 
 who conceives it, would explain it to me. God, I find, has given me this faculty; 
 and since I cannot but be convinced of his power in this instance, which though 
 I every moment experiment in myself, yet I cannot conceive the manner of; what 
 would it be less than an insolent absurdity, to deny his power in other like cases 
 only for this reason, because I cannot conceive the manner how? 
 
 To explain this matter a little farther: God has created a substance; let it be, 
 for example, a solid extended substance. Is God bound to give it, besides being, 
 a power of action? that, I think, nobody will say: he therefore may leave it in a 
 state of inactivity, and it will be nevertheless a substance; for action is not neces- 
 sary to the being of any substance that God does create. God has likewise created 
 amt made to exist, de novo, an immaterial substance, which will not lose its being 
 of a substance, though God should bestow on it nothing more but this bare being, 
 without giving it any activity at all. Here are now two distinct substances, the 
 one material, the other immaterial, both in a state of perfect inactivity. Now I 
 ask, what power God can give to one of thwsc- substances (supposing them to retain 
 the same distinct natures that they had as substances in their state of inactivity) 
 which he cannot give to the other? In that state, it is plain, neither of them thinks; 
 for thinking being an action, it cannot be denied, that God can put an end to any 
 action of any created substance, without annihilating of the substance whereof it is 
 an action; and if it be so, he can also create or give existence to such a substance, 
 without giving that substance any action at all. By the same reason it is plain, 
 that neither of them can move itself: now, I would ask, 'why Omnipotency cannot 
 give to either of these substances, which are equally in a state of perfect inactivity, 
 the same power that it can give to the other? Let it be, for example, that of spon- 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 &53 
 
 first thinking Being. What certainty of knowledge can any one have that 
 some perceptions, such as, v. g. pleasure and pain, should not be in some 
 bodies themselves, after a certain manner, modified and moved, as well as 
 that they should be in an immaterial substance, upon the motions of the parts 
 
 tuneous or self-motion, which is a power that it is supposed God can give to an 
 unsolid substance, but denied that he can give to solid substance. 
 
 If it be asked, why they limit the omnipotency of God, in reference to the one 
 rather than the other of these substances? all that can be said to it is, that they 
 cannot conceive, how the solid substance should ever be able to move itself. And 
 as little, say I, are they able to conceive, how a created unsolid substance should 
 move itself. But there may be something in an immaterial substance that you do 
 not know. I grant it; and in a material one too: for example, gravitation of matter 
 towards matter, and in the several proportions observable, inevitably shows that 
 there is something in matter that we do not understand, unless we can conceive 
 self-motion in matter; or an inexplicable and inconceivable attraction in matter, at 
 immense, almost incomprehensible distances; it must therefore be confessed, that 
 there is something in solid, as well as in unsolid substances, that we do not under- 
 stand. But this we know, that they may each of them have their distinct beings, 
 without any activity superadded to them, unless you will deny, that God can take 
 from any being its power of acting, which it is probable will be thought too pre- 
 sumptuous for any one to do; and I say, it is as hard to conceive self-motion in a 
 created immaterial, as in a material being, consider it how you will: and therefore 
 this is no reason to deny Omnipotency to be able to give a power of self-motion to 
 a material substance if he pleases, as well as to an immaterial; since neither of 
 them can have it from themselves, nor can we conceive how it can be in either of 
 Jiem. 
 
 The same is visible in the other operation of thinking; both these substances 
 may be made, and exist without thought; neither of them has, or can have, the power 
 of thinking from itself: God may give it to either of them, according to the good 
 pleasure of his omnipotency; and in whichever of them it is, it is equally beyond 
 >ur capacity to conceive how either of these substances thinks. But for that reason 
 .o deny that God, who had power enough to give them both a being out of nothing, 
 ;an, by the same omnipotency, give them what other powers and perfections he 
 pleases, has no better foundation than to deny his power of creation, because we 
 cannot conceive how it is performed: and there, at last, this way of reasoning must 
 terminate. 
 
 That Omnipotency cannot make a substance to be solid and not solid at the same 
 time, I think with due reverence we may say; but that a solid substance may not 
 have qualities, perfections, and powers, which have no natural or visibly necessary 
 connexion with solidity and extension, is too much for us (who are but of yester- 
 day, and know nothing) vo be positive in. If God cannot join things together by 
 connexions inconceivatV to us, we must deny even the consistency and being of 
 matter itself; since e-ery particle of it having some bulk, has its parts connected 
 by ways inconceivable to us. So that all the difficulties that are raised against the 
 thinking of matter, 1rom our ignorance, or narrow conceptions, stand not at all in 
 the way of the power of God, if he pleases to ordain it so; nor prove any thing 
 against his having endued some parcels of matter, so disposed as he thinks fit, 
 with a faculty of thinking, till it can be shown that it contains a contradiction to 
 suppose it. 
 
 Though to me sensation be comprehended under thinking in general, yet, in the 
 foregoing discourse, I have spoke of sense in brutes, as distinct from thinking; 
 because your lordship, as I remember, speaks of sense in brutes. But here I take 
 ■iberty to observe, that if y'our lordship allows brutes to have sensation, it will 
 follow either that God can and doth give to some parcels of matter a power of 
 Derception and thinking; or that all animals have immaterial, and consequently, 
 recording to your lordship, immortal souls as well as men; and to say that fleas 
 ind mites, &c. have immortal souls as well as men, will possibly be looked on as 
 joing a great way to serve an hypothesis. 
 
 I have been pretty large in making this matter plain, that they who are so for- 
 
 2 U 
 
354 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 of body I Body, as far as we can conceive, being able only to strike and 
 affect body ; and motion, according to the utmost reach of our ideas, being 
 able to produce nothing but motion : so that when we allow it to produce 
 pleasure or pain, or the idea of a colour or sound, we are fain to quit our 
 
 ward to bestow hard censures or names on the opinions of those who differ from 
 them, may consider whether sometimes they' are not more due to their own; and 
 that they may be persuaded a little to temper that heat, which, supposing the truth 
 in their current opinions, gives them (as they think) a right to lay what imputations 
 they please on those who would fairly examine the grounds they stand upon. For 
 talking with a supposition and insinuations, that truth and knowledge, nay, an i 
 religion too, stand and fall with their systems, is at best but an imperious way of 
 begging the question, and assuming to themselves, under the pretence of zeal for 
 the cause of God, a title to infallibility. It is very becoming that men’s zeal for 
 truth should go as far as their proofs, but not go for proofs themselves. He that 
 attacks received opinions with any thing but fair arguments, may, I own, be justly 
 suspected not to mean well, nor to be led by the love of truth; but the same may 
 ne said of him, too, who so defends them. An error is not the better for being 
 common, nor truth the worse for having lain neglected:, and if it were put to the 
 vote any where in the world, I doubt, as things are managed, whether truth would 
 have the majority, at least whilst the authority of men, and not the examination of 
 things, must be its measure. The imputation of scepticism, and those broad in- 
 sinuations to render what I have writ suspected, so frequent, as if that were the 
 great business of all this pains you have been at about me, has made me say thus 
 much, my lord, rather as my sense of the way to establish truth in its full force 
 and beauty, than that I think the world will need to have any thing said to it, to 
 make it distinguish between your lordship’s and my design in writing, which there- 
 fore I securely leave to the judgment of the reader, and return to the argument in 
 hand. 
 
 What I have above said, I take to be a full answer to all that your lordship 
 would infer from my idea of matter, of liberty, of identity, and from the power 
 of abstracting. You ask*, How can my idea of liberty agree with the idea that 
 bodies can operate only by motion and impulse? Ans. By the omnipotency of 
 God, who can make all things agree, that involve not a contradiction. It is true, 
 I say+, “that bodies operate by impulse, and nothing else. ” And so I thought 
 when I writ it, and can yet conceive no other way of their operation. But I am 
 since convinced by the judicious Mr Newton’s incomparable book, that it is too 
 bold a presumption to limit God’s power in this point by my narrow conceptions. 
 The gravitation of matter towards matter, by ways inconceivable to me, is not only 
 a demonstration that God can, if he pleases, put into bodies powers, and ways of 
 operation, above what can be derived from our idea of body, or can be explained 
 by what we know of matter; but also an unquestionable, and every where visible 
 instance, that he has done so. And therefore in the next edition of my book, 1 
 will take care to have that passage rectified. 
 
 As to self-consciousness, your lordship asksj, What is there like self-conscious- 
 ness in matter? Nothing at all in matter as matter. But that God cannot bestow 
 on some parcels of matter the power of thinking, and with it self-consciousness, 
 will never be proved by asking§, How is it possible to apprehend that mere body 
 should perceive that it doth perceive? The weakness of our apprehension I grant 
 in theease: I confess as much as you please, that we cannot conceive how a solid, no, 
 nor how an unsolid created substance thinks; but this weakness of our apprehension 
 reaches not the power of God, whose weakness is stronger than any thing in men. 
 
 Your argument from abstraction we have in this question||, If it may be in the 
 power of matter to think, how comes it to be so impossible for such organized 
 bodies as the brutes have, to enlarge their ideas by abstraction? Ans. This seems 
 to suppose, that I place thinking within the natural power of matter. If that be 
 vour meaning, my lord, I never say, nor suppose, that all matter has naturally in 
 t a faculty of thinking, but the direct contrary. But if you mean that certain 
 
 * 1st Answer. t Essay, b. 2. ch. 8. sect. 11. £ 1st Answer. 
 
 § 1st Answer. (| 1st Answer. 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 355 
 
 reason, go beyond our ideas, and attribute it wholly to the good pleasure of 
 our Maker. For since we must allow he has annexed effects to motion, 
 which we can no way conceive motion able to produce, what reason have we 
 to conclude, that he could not order them as weil to be produced in a subject 
 
 parcels of matter, ordered by the Divine power, as seems fit to him, may he mad-e 
 capable of receiving from his omnipotency the faculty of thinking; that, indeed , 
 1 say; and that being granted, the answer to your question is easy; since if Omni- 
 poteuey can give thought to any solid substance, it is not hard to conceive, that 
 God may give that faculty in a higher or lower degree, as it pleases him, who 
 knows what disposition of the subject is suited to such a particular way or degree 
 of thinking. 
 
 Another argument, to prove that God cannot endue any parcel of matter with 
 the faculty of thinking, is taken from those words of mine*, where I show, by what 
 connexion of ideas we may come to know that God is an immaterial substance, 
 they are these, “the idea of an eternal actual knowing being, with the idea of im- 
 materiality, by the intervention of the idea of matter, and of its actual division, 
 divisibility, and want of perception,” &c. From whence your lordship thus 
 arguesf, here the want of perception is owned to be so essential to matter, that 
 God is therefore concluded to be immaterial. Ans. Perception and knowledge in 
 that one eternal Being, where it has its source, it is visible must be essentially 
 inseparable fro r m it; therefore the actual want of perception in so great a part of 
 tlie particular parcels of matter, is a demonstration, that the first Being, from 
 whom perception and knowledge are inseparable, is not matter: how far this makes 
 the want of perception an essential property of matter, I will not dispute; it suffices 
 that it shows, that perception is not an essential property of matter; and therefore 
 matter cannot be that eternal original Being to which perception and knowledge 
 are essential. Matter, I say, naturally is without perception; ergo, says your 
 lordship, want of perception is an essential property of matter, and God does not 
 change the essential properties of things, their nature remaining. From whence 
 you infer, that God cannot bestow on any parcel of matter (the nature of matter 
 remaining) a faculty of thinking. If the rules of logic, since my days, be not 
 changed, I may safely deny this consequence. For an argument that runs thus, 
 God does not; ergo, he cannot, I was taught when I first came to the university, 
 would not hold. For I never said God did; but):, “ that I see no contradiction in 
 it, that he should, if he pleased, give to some systems of senseless matter a faculty 
 of thinking;” and I know nobody before Des Cartes, that ever pretended to show 
 that there was any contradiction in it. So that at worst, my not being able to see 
 in matter any such incapacity, as makes it impossible for Omnipotency to bestow 
 on it a faculty of thinking, makes me opposite only to the Cartesians. For, as far 
 as I have seen or heard, the fathers of the Christian church never pretended to de- 
 monstrate that matter was incapable to receive a power of sensation, perception, 
 and thinking, from the hand of the omnipotent Creator. Let us, therefore, if you 
 please, suppose the form of your argumentation right, and that your lordship 
 means, God cannot: and then, if your argument be good, it proves, that God could 
 not give to Balaam’s ass a power to speak to his master as he did; for the want of 
 rational discourse being natural to that species, it is but for your lordship to call it 
 an essential property, and then God cannot change the essential properties of things, 
 their nature remaining: whereby it is proved, that God cannot, with all his omni- 
 poteney, give to an ass a power to speak as Balaam’s did. 
 
 You say§, my lord, you do not set bounds to God’s omnipotency: for he may, if 
 he please, change a body into an immaterial substance, i. e. take away from a sub- 
 stance the solidity which it had before, and which made it matter, and then give it 
 a faculty of thinking which it had not before, and which makes it a spirit, the same 
 substance remaining. For if the substance remains not, body is not changed into 
 an immaterial substance, but the solid substance, and all belonging to it, is anni- 
 ailated, and an immaterial substance created, which is not a change of one thing 
 nto another, but the destroying of one, and making another de novo. In this 
 
 * 1st Letter. + 1st Answer. j: B. 4. e. 3. sect. 6. § 1st Answer. 
 
35ti 
 
 ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 we cannot conceive capable of them, as well as in a subject we cannot con- 
 ceive the motion of matter can any way operate upon 1 I say not this, that 
 I would any way lessen the belief of the soul’s immateriality : I am not here 
 speaking of probability, but knowledge ; and I think not only, that it be- 
 
 cnange therefore of a body or material substance into an immaterial, let us observe 
 jiese distinct considerations. 
 
 First, you say, God may, if he pleases, take away from a solid substance soli- 
 dity, which is that which makes it a material substance or body; and may make it 
 •in immaterial substance, i. e. a substance without solidity. But this privation of 
 one quality gives it not another; the bare taking away a lower or less noble quality- 
 does not give it a higher or nobler; that must be the gift of God. For the bare 
 privation of one, and a meaner quality, cannot be the position of a higher and 
 better; unless any one will say, that cogitation, or the power of thinking, results 
 from the nature of substance itself; which if it do, then wherever there is substance, 
 there must be cogitation, or a power of thinking. Here, then, upon your lordship’s 
 own principles, is an immaterial substance without the faculty of thinking. 
 
 In the next place, you will not deny, but God may give to this substance, thus 
 deprived of solidity, a faculty of thinking; for you suppose it made capable of that, 
 bv being made immaterial; whereby you allow, that the same numerical substance 
 may be sometimes wholly incogitative, or without a power of thinking, and at other 
 times perfectly cogitative, or endued with a power of thinking. 
 
 Further, you will not deny, but God can give it solidity and make it material 
 again. For, I conclude, it will not be denied, that God can make it again what it 
 was before. Now I crave leave to ask your lordship, why God, having given to 
 this substance the faculty of thinking after solidity was taken from it, cannot re- 
 store to it solidity again without taking away the faculty of thinking? When you 
 have resolved this, my lord, you will have proved it impossible for God’s omnipo- 
 tence to give a solid substance a faculty of thinking; but till then, not having proved 
 it impossible, and yet denying that God can do it, is to deny that he can do what 
 is in itself possible; which, as I humbly conceive, is visibly to set bounds to God’s 
 omnipotency, though you say here* you do not set bounds to God’s omnipotence. 
 
 If I should imitate your lordship’s way of writing, I should not omit to bring 
 in Epicurus here, and take notice that this was his way, Deum verbis ponere, re 
 tollere: and then add, that I am certain you do not think he promoted the great 
 ends of religion and morality. For it is with such candid and kind insinuations as 
 these, that you bring in both Hobbesf and Spinosaj into your discourse here about 
 God’s being able, if he please, to give to some parcels of matter, ordered as he 
 thinks fit, a faculty of thinking: neither of those authors having, as appears by any 
 passages you bring out of them, said any thing to this question, nor having, as it 
 seems, any other business here, but by their names skilfully to give that character 
 to my book, with which you would recommend it to the world. 
 
 I pretend not to inquire what measure of zeal, nor for what, guides your lord- 
 ship’s pen in such a way of writing, as yours lias all along been with me: only I 
 cannot but consider, what reputation it would give to the writings of the fathers 
 of the church, if they should think truth required, or religion allowed them to 
 imitate such patterns. But God be thanked, there be those among them who do 
 not admire such ways of managing the cause of truth or religion; they being sensible 
 that if every one, who believes or can pretend he hath truth on his side, is thereby 
 authorized, without proof, to insinuate whatever may serve to prejudice men’s minds 
 against the other side, there will be great ravage made on charity and practice, 
 without any gain to truth or knowledge: and that the liberties frequently taken by 
 disputants to do so, may have been the cause that the world in all ages has received 
 so much harm, and so little advantage from controversies in religion. 
 
 These are the arguments which your lordship has brought to confute one saying 
 in my book, by other passages in it; which therefore being all but argumenta ad 
 tiominem, if they did prove what they do not, are of no other use, than to gain a 
 victory over me: a thing, methinks, so much beneath your lordship, that it does 
 
 * 1st Answer. 
 
 t Ibid. 
 
 t Ibid. 
 
Cb. 3. 
 
 EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 357 
 
 comes the modesty of philosophy not to pronounce magisterially, where we 
 want that evidence that can produce knowledgej^but also -that it is of use 
 to us to discern how Ctr our knowledge does reach;- for the state we are at 
 presenr in, hot' being that of vision, we must, in many things, content our- 
 
 not deserve one of your pages. The question is, whether God can, if he pleases, 
 bestow on any parcel of matter, ordered as he thinks fit, a faculty of perception 
 and thinking. You say*, you look upon a mistake herein to be of dangerous con- 
 sequence as to the great ends of religion and morality. If this be so, my lord, I 
 think one may well wonder, why your lordship has brought no arguments to 
 establish the truth itself, which you look on to be of such dangerous consequence 
 to be mistaken in; but have spent so many pages only in a personal matter, in 
 endeavouring to show, that I had inconsistencies in my book; which if any such 
 thing had been shown, the question would be still as far from being decided, and 
 the danger of mistaking about it as little prevented, as if nothing of all this had 
 been said. If therefore your lordship’s care of the great ends of religion and mo- 
 rality have made you think it necessary to clear this question, the world has reason 
 to conclude there is little to be said against that proposition which is to be found 
 in my book, concerning the possibility, that some parcels of matter might be so 
 ordered by Omnipotence, as to be endued with a faculty of thinking, if God so 
 pleased; since your lordship’s concern for the promoting the great ends of religion 
 and morality has not enabled you to produce one argument against a proposition 
 that you think of such dangerous consequence to them. 
 
 And here I crave leave to observe, that though in your title page you promise 
 to prove that my notion of ideas is inconsistent with itself (which if it were, it 
 could hardly be proved to be inconsistent with any thing else) and with the articles 
 of the Christian faith; yet your attempts all along have been to prove me, in some 
 passages of my book, inconsistent with myself, without having shown any proposi- 
 tion in my book inconsistent with any article of the Christian faith. 
 
 I think your lordship has indeed made use of one argument of your own; but 
 it is such an one, that I confess 1 do not see how it is apt much to promote religion, 
 especially the Christian religion, founded on revelation. I shall set down your 
 lordship’s words, that they may be considered: you sayf, that you are of opinion, 
 that the great ends of religion and morality are best secured by the proofs of the 
 immortality of the soul from its nature and properties; and which you think prove 
 it immaterial. Your lordship does not question whether God can give immortality 
 to a material substance; but you say it takes off very much from the evidence of 
 immortality, if it depend wholly upon God’s giving that, which of its own nature it 
 is not capable of, &c. So likewise you sayf, if a man cannot be certain, but that 
 matter may think (as I affirm), then what becomes of the soul’s immateriality (and 
 consequently immortality) from its operations? But for all this, say I, his assu- 
 rance of faith remains on its own basis. Now you appeal to any man of sense, 
 whether the finding the uncertainty of his own principles, which he went upon, in 
 point of reason, doth not weaken the credibility of these fundamental articles when 
 they are considered purely as matters of faith? For before, there was a natural 
 credibility in them on account of reason; but by going on wrong grounds of cer- 
 tainty, all that is lost, and instead of being certain, he is more doubtful than ever. 
 And if the evidence of faith fall so much short of that of reason, it must needs 
 have less effect upon men’s minds, when the subserviency of reason is taken away: 
 as it must be when the grounds of certainty by reason are vanished. Is it at all 
 probable, that he who finds his reason deceive him in such fundamental points, 
 shall have his faith stand firm and unmovable on the account of revelation? For 
 in matters of revelation there must be some antecedent principles supposed, before 
 we can believe any thing on the account of it. 
 
 More to the same purpose we have some pages farther, where, from some of my 
 words your lordship says§, you cannot but observe, that we have no certainty upon 
 my grounds, that self-consciousness depends upon an individual immaterial sub- 
 stance, and consequently that a material substance may, according to my princi- 
 ples, have self-consciousness in it; at least, that I am not certain of the contrary. 
 
 1st Answer. 
 
 + Ibid. 
 
 i 2d Answer. 
 
 § Ibid. 
 
358 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 selves with faith and probability; and in the present question, about the im- 
 materiality of the soul, if our faculties cannot arrive at demonstrative cer 
 tainty, we need not think it strange. All the great ends of morality and 
 religion are well enough secured, without philosophical proofs of the soul’s 
 
 Whereupon your lordship bids me consider, whether this doth not a little affect the 
 whole article of the resurrection. What does all this tend to, but to make the 
 world believe that I have lessened the credibility of the immortality of the soul, 
 and the resurrection, by saying, that though it be most highly probable, that the 
 soul is immaterial, yet upon my principles it cannot be demonstrated; because it 
 is not impossible to God’s omnipotency, if he pleases, to bestow upon some par- 
 cels of matter, disposed as he sees fit, a faculty of thinking? 
 
 This your accusation of my lessening the credibility of these articles of faith is 
 founded on this, that the article of the immortality of the soul abates of its credi- 
 bility, if it be allowed, that its immateriality (which is the supposed proof from 
 reason and philosophy of its immortality) cannot be demonstrated from natural 
 reason: which argument of your lordship’s bottoms, as I humbly conceive, on 
 this, that divine revelation abates of its credibility in all those articles it proposes, 
 proportionably as human reason fails to support the testimony of God. And all 
 that your lordship in those passages has said, when examined, will, I suppose, be 
 found to import thus much, viz. Does God propose any thing to mankind to be 
 believed? It is very fit and credible to be believed, if reason can demonstrate it 
 to be true. But if human reason come short in the case, and cannot make it out, 
 its credibility is thereby lessened; which is in effect to say, that the veracity of 
 God is not a firm and sure foundation of faith to rely upon, without the concurrent 
 testimony of reason; i. e. with reverence be it spoken, God is not to be believed on 
 his own word, unless what he reveals be in itself credible, and might be believed 
 without him. 
 
 If this be a way to promote religion, the Christian religion, in all its articles, I 
 am not sorry that it is not a way to be found in any of my writings; for I imagine 
 any thing like this would (and I should think deserved to) have other titles than 
 bare scepticism bestowed upon it, and would have raised no small outcry against 
 anv one, who is not to be supposed to be in the right in all that he says, and so 
 may securely say what he pleases. Such as I, the profanum vulgus, who take 
 too much upon us, if we would examine, have nothing to do but to hearken and 
 believe, though what he said should subvert the very foundations of the Christian 
 faith. 
 
 What I have above observed is so visibly contained in your lordship’s argument, 
 that when I met with in your answer to my first letter, it seemed so strange for a 
 man of your lordship’s character, and in a dispute in defence of the doctrine of the 
 Trinity, that I could hardly persuade myself, but it was a slip of your pen; but 
 when I found it in your second letter* made use of again, and seriously enlarged 
 as an argument of weight to be insisted upon, I was convinced that it was a princi- 
 ple that you heartily embraced, how little favourable soever it was to the articles 
 of the Christian religion, and particularly those which you undertook to defend. 
 
 I desire my reader to peruse the passages as they stand in your letters them- 
 selves, and see whether what you say in them does not amount to this: that a reve- 
 lation from God is more or less credible, according as it has a stronger or weaker 
 confirmation from human reason. For, 
 
 1. Your lordship saysf, you do not question whether God can give immortality 
 to a material substance; but you say it takes otf very much from the evidence of 
 immortality, if it depends wholly upon God’s giving that, which of its own nature 
 it is not capable of. 
 
 To which I reply, any one’s not being able to demonstrate the soul to be imma- 
 terial takes off not very much, nor at all, from the evidence of its immortality, 
 if God has revealed that it shall be immortal: because the veracity of God is a 
 demonstration of the truth of what he has revealed, and the want of another de- 
 monstration of a proposition, that is demonstratively true, takes not off from the 
 evidence of it. For where there is a clear demonstration, there is as much evi- 
 
 * 2d Answer. 
 
 f 1st Answer. 
 
Cb. 3. 
 
 EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 3ht) 
 
 immateriality; since it is evident, that he who made us at the beginning tc 
 subsist here, sensible intelligent beings, and for several years continued us in 
 such a state, can and will restore us to the like state of sensibility in another 
 world, and make us capable there to receive the retribution he has designed 
 
 dence as any truth can have, that is not self-evident. God has revealed that the 
 souls of men should live for ever. But, says your lordship, from this evidence it 
 takes off very much, if it depends wholly upon God’s giving that which of its own 
 nature it is not capable of, i. e. The revelation and testimony of God loses much 
 of its evidence, if this depends wholly upon the good pleasure of God, and cannot 
 be demonstratively made out by natural reason, that the soul is immaterial, and 
 consequently in its own nature immortal. For that is all that here is or can be 
 meant by these w'ords, ‘ which of its own nature it is not capable of,’ to make them 
 to the purpose. For the whole of your lordship’s discourse here is to prove, 
 that the soul cannot be material, because then the evidence of its being immortal 
 would be very much lessened. Which is to say, that it is not as credible upon 
 divine revelation, that a material substance should be immortal, as an immaterial; 
 or, which is all one, that God is not equally to be believed, when he declares, that 
 a material substance shall be immortal, as when he declares, that an immaterial 
 shall be so; because the immortality of a material substance cannot be demonstrated 
 from natural reason. 
 
 Let us try this rule of your lordship’s a little further. God hath revealed, that 
 the bodies men shall have after the resurrection, as well as their souls, shall live 
 to eternity. Does your lordship believe the eternal life of the one of these more 
 than of the other, because you think you can prove it of one of them by natural 
 reason, and of the other not? Or can any one, who admits of divine revelation in 
 the case, doubt of one of them more than the other? or think this proposition less 
 credible, that the bodies of men, after the resurrection, shall live for ever; than 
 this, that the souls of men shall, after the resurrection, live for ever? For that 
 lie must do, if he thinks either of them is less credible than the other. If this 
 be so, reason is to be consulted how far God is to be believed, and the credit of 
 divine testimony must receive its force from the evidence of reason; which is evi- 
 dently to take aw'ay the credibility of divine revelation in all supernatural truths, 
 wherein the evidence of reason fails. And how much such a principle as this 
 tends to the support of the doctrine of the Trinity, or the promoting of the Chris- 
 tian religion, I shall leave it to your lordship to consider. 
 
 I am not so well read in Hobbes or Spinosa as to be able to say, what were 
 their opinions in this matter. But possibly there be those, who will think your 
 lordship’s authority of more use to them in the case, than those justly decried 
 names; and be glad to find your lordship a patron of the oracles of reason, so little 
 to the advantage of the oracles of divine revelation. This, at least, I think, may 
 be subjoined to the words at the bottom of the next page*, that those who have 
 gone about to lessen the credibility of the articles of faith, which evidently they 
 do, who say they are less credible, because they cannot be made out demonstra- 
 tively by natural reason, have not been thought to secure several of the articles of 
 the Christian faith, especially those of the Trinity, incarnation, and resurrection of 
 the body, which are those upon the account of which I am brought by your lordship 
 into this dispute. 
 
 I shall not trouble the reader with your lordship’s endeavours, in the following 
 words, to prove, that if the soul be not an immaterial substance, it ean be nothing 
 but life; your very first words visibly confuting all that you allege to that purpose-, 
 they aref, If the soul be a material substance, it is really nothing but life; which 
 is to say, that if the soul be really a substance, it is not really a substance, but 
 really nothing else but an affection of a substance; for the life, whether of a mate- 
 rial or immaterial substance, is not the substance itself, but an affection of it. 
 
 2. You sayj, Although we think the separate state of the soul after death is, 
 sufficiently revealed in the Scripture; yet it creates a great difficulty in understat d 
 ing it, if the soul be nothing but life, or a material substance, which must be dis 
 solved when life is ended. For, if the soul be a material substance, it must be 
 
 1st Answer. 
 
 f Ibid. 
 
 % Ibid. 
 
360 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 to mer according to their doings in this life. And therefore it is not of such 
 mighty necessity to determine one way or the other, as some, over zealous for 
 or against the immateriality of the soul, have been forward to make the world 
 Believe. Who, either on the one side, indulging too much their thoughts un- 
 
 made up, as others are, of the cohesion of solid and separate parts, how minute 
 and invisible soever they be. And what is it which should keep them together, 
 when life is gone? So that it is no easy matter to give an account how the soul 
 should be capable of immortality, unless it be an immaterial substance; and then 
 we know the solution and texture of bodies cannot reach the soul, being of a dif- 
 ferent nature. 
 
 Let it be as hard a matter as it will, to give an account what it is that should 
 keep the parts of a material soul together, after it is separated from the body; yet 
 it will be always as easy to give an account of it, as to give an account what it is 
 which shall keep together a material and immaterial substance. And yet the diffi- 
 culty that there is to give an account of that, I hope does not, with your lordship, 
 weaken the credibility of the inseparable union of soul and body to eternity: and I 
 persuade myself, that the men of sense, to whom your lordship appeals in the case, 
 do not find their belief of this fundamental point much weakened by that'difficulty. 
 I thought heretofore (and by your lordship’s permission would think so still) that 
 the union of the parts of matter, one with another, is as much in the hands of 
 God, as the union of a material and immaterial substance; and that it does not take 
 off very much, or at all, from the evidence of immortality, which depends on that 
 union, that it is no easy matter to give an account what it is that should keep them 
 together: though its depending wholly upon the gift and good pleasure of God, where 
 the manner creates great difficulty in the understanding, and our reason cannot 
 discover in the nature of things how it is, be that which your lordship so positively 
 says, lessens the credibility of the fundamental articles of the resurrection and 
 immortality. 
 
 But, my lord, to remove this objection a little, and to show of how small a force 
 it is even with yourself; give me leave to presume, that your lordship as firmly 
 believes the immortality of the body after the resurrection, as any other article of 
 faith; if so, then it being no easy matter to give an account what it is that shall 
 keep together the parts of a material soul, to one that believes it is material, can 
 no more weaken the credibility of its immortality, than the like difficulty weakens 
 the credibility of the immortality of the body. For, when your lordship shall find 
 it an easy matter to give an account what it is, besides the good pleasure of God, 
 which shall keep together the parts of our material bodies to eternity, or even soul 
 and body, I doubt not but any one, who shall think the soul material, will also find 
 it as easy to give an account what it is that shall keep those parts of matter also 
 together to eternity. 
 
 Were it not that the warmth of controversy is apt to make men so far forget, as 
 to take up those principles themselves (when they will serve their turn) which 
 they have highly condemned in others, I should wonder to find your lordship to 
 argue, that because it is a difficulty to understand what shall keep together the 
 minute parts of a material soul, when life is gone ; and because it is not an easy 
 matter to give an account how the soul should be capable of immortality, unless it 
 be an immaterial substance ; therefore it is not so credible, as if it were easy to give 
 an account, by natural reason, how it could be. For to this it is that all this your 
 discourse tends, as is evident by what is already set down ; and will be more fully 
 made out by what your lordship says in other places, though there needs no such 
 proof, since it would all be nothing against me in any other sense. 
 
 I thought your lordship had in other places asserted, and insisted on this truth, 
 that no part of divine revelation was the less to be believed, because the thing it- 
 self created great difficulty in the understanding, and the manner of it was bard to 
 be explained, and it was no easy matter to give an account how it was. This, as I 
 take it, your lordship condemned in others as a very unreasonable principle, and 
 such as would subvert all the articles of the Christian religion, that were mere 
 matters of faith, as I think it will : and is it possible that you should make use of 
 it here yourself, against the article of life and immortality, that Christ hath brought 
 to light through the gospel, and neither was nor could be made out by natural rea- 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 361 
 
 mersed altogether in matter, can allow no existence to what is not material : 
 or who, on the other side, finding not cogitation within the natural powers of 
 matter, examined over and over again by the utmost intention of mind, have 
 the confidence to conclude, that Omnipotency itself cannot give perception 
 
 son without revelation? But you will say, you speak only of the soul ^ and your 
 words are, That it is no easy matter to give an account how the soul should be 
 capable of immortality, unless it be an immaterial substance. I grant it ; but crave 
 leave to say, that there is not any one of those difficulties, that are or can be raised 
 about the manner how a material soul can be immortal, which do not as well reach 
 the immortality of the body. 
 
 But, if it were not so, I am sure this principle of your lordship’s would reach 
 other articles of faith, wherein our natural reason finds it not so easy to give an ac- 
 count how those mysteries are ; and which, therefore, according to your principles, 
 must be less credible than other articles, that create less difficulty to the under- 
 standing. For your lordship says,* that you appeal to any man of sense whether a 
 man who thought by his principles he could from natural grounds demonstrate the 
 immortality of the soul, the finding the uncertainty of Ihose principles he went upon 
 in point of reason, i. e. the finding he could not certainly prove it by natural reason, 
 doth not weaken the credibility of that fundamental article, when it is considered 
 purely as a matter of faith ? which, in effect, I humbly conceive, amounts to this, 
 that a proposition divinely revealed, that cannot be proved by natural reason, is less 
 credible than one that can : which seems to me to come very little short of this, 
 with due reverence be it spoken, that God is less to be believed when he affirms a 
 proposition that cannot be proved by natural reason, than when he proposes what 
 can be proved by it. The direct contrary to which is my opinion, though you en- 
 deavour to make it good by these following words :f If the evidence of faith falls 
 so much short of that of reason, it must needs have less effect upon men’s minds, 
 when the subserviency of reason is taken away : as it must be when the grounds of 
 certainty by reason are vanished. Is it at all probable, that he who finds his reason 
 deceive him in such fundamental points, should have bis faith stand firm and un- 
 movable on the account of revelation ? Than which I think there are hardly 
 plainer words to be found out to declare, that the credibility of God’s testimony de- 
 pends on the natural evidence or probability of the things we receive from revela- 
 tion, and rises and falls with it, and that the truths of God, or the articles of mere 
 faith, lose so much of their credibility, as they want proof from reason : which, if 
 true, revelation may come to have no credibility at all. For if, in this present case, 
 the credibility of this proposition, the souls of men shall live for ever, revealed in 
 the Scripture, be lessened by confessing it cannot be demonstratively proved from 
 reason ; though it be asserted to be most highly probable : must not, by the same 
 rule, its credibility dwindle away to nothing, if natural reason should not be able to 
 make it out to be so much as probable, or should place the probability from natural 
 principles on the other side ? For, if mere want of demonstration lessens the 
 credibility of any proposition divinely revealed, must not want of probability, or 
 contrary probability from natural reason, quite take away its credibility ? Here at 
 last it must end, if in any one case the veracity of God, and the credibility of the 
 truths we receive from him by revelation, be subjected to the verdicts of human 
 reason, and be allowed to receive any accession or diminution from other proofs, 
 or want of other proofs, of its certainty or probability. 
 
 If this be your lordship’s way to promote religion, or defend its articles, I know 
 not what argument the greatest enemies of it could use more effectual for the sub- 
 version of those you have undertaken to defend ; this being to resolve all revelation 
 perfectly and purely into natural reason, to bound its credibility by that, and leave 
 no room for faith in other things, than what can be accounted for by natural reason 
 without revelation. 
 
 Your lordship! insists much upon it, as if I had contradicted what I have said in 
 my essay, by saying§ that upon my principles it cannot be demonstratively proved, 
 that it is an immaterial substance in us that thinks, however probable it be. He 
 that will be at the pains to read that chapter of mine, and consider it, will find 
 
 * 2d Answer. f Ibid. j: 1st Answer. § Book 2. ch. 23. 
 
 2 V 
 
362 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 and thought to a substance which has the modification of solidity. He that 
 considers how hardly sensation is, in our thoughts, reconcileable to extended 
 matter ; or existence to any thing that hath no extension at all ; will confess 
 that he is very far from certainly knowing what his soul is. It is a point which 
 
 that my business was there to show, that it was no harder to conceive an immaterial 
 than a material substance ; and that from the ideas of thought, and a power of moving 
 of matter, which we experienced in ourselves (ideas originally not belonging to the 
 matteras matter), there was no more difficulty to conclude there was an immaterial 
 substance in us, than that we had material parts. These ideas of thinking, and power 
 of moving of matter, I in another place showed, did demonstratively lead us to the 
 certain knowledge of the existence ofan immaterial thinking being, in whom we have 
 the idea of spirit in the strictest sense ; in which sense 1 also applied it to the soul, 
 in the 23d ch. of my essay ; the easily conceivable possibility, nay, great probability, 
 that the thinking substance in us is immaterial, giving me sufficient ground for it : 
 in which sense I shall think I may safely attribute it to the thinking substance in us, 
 till your lordship shall have better proved from my words, that it is impossible it 
 should be immaterial. For I only say, that it is possible, i. e. involves no con- 
 tradiction, that God, the omnipotent immaterial spirit, should, if he pleases, give 
 to some parcels of matter, disposed as he thinks fit, a power of thinking and mov- 
 ing; which parcels of matter, so endued with a power of thinking and motion, 
 might properly be called spirits, in contradistinction to unthinking matter. In all 
 which, I presume, there is no manner of contradiction. 
 
 I justified my use of the word spirit, in that sense, from the authorities of Cicero 
 and Virgil, applying the Latin word spiritus, from whence spirit is derived, to the 
 soul as a thinking thing, without excluding materiality out of it. To which your 
 lordship replies,* That Cicero, in his Tusculan Questions, supposes the soul not 
 
 to be a finer sort of body, but of a different nature from the body That he calls 
 
 the body the prison of the soul —and says, that a wise man’s business is to draw 
 
 off his soul from his body. And then your lordship concludes, as is usual, with a 
 question, Is it possible now to think so great a man looked on the soul but as a mo- 
 dification of tite body, which must be at an end with life. Ans. No ; it is impossible 
 that a man of so good sense as Tully, when he uses the word corpus or body for 
 the gross and visible parts of a man, which he acknowledges to be mortal, should 
 look on the soul to be a modification of that body, in a discourse wherein he was 
 endeavouring to persuade another that it was immortal. It is to be acknowledged 
 that truly great men, such as he was, are not wont so manifestly to contradict them- 
 selves. He had therefore no thought concerning the modification of the body of a 
 man in the case : he was not such a trifleras to examine, whether the modification 
 of the body of a man was immortal, when that body itself was mortal : and there- 
 fore, that which he reports as Dictearchus’s opinion, he dismisses in the beginning 
 without any more ado, c. 11. But Cicero’s was a direct, plain, and sensible in- 
 quiry, viz. What the soul was > to see whether from thence he could discover its 
 immortality. But in all that discourse in his first book of Tusculan Questions, 
 where he lays out so much of his reading and reason, there is not one syllable 
 showing the least thought that the soul was an immaterial substance; but many 
 things directly to the contrary. 
 
 Indeed, 1. He shuts out the body, taken in the sense he uses corpus all along, + 
 for the sensible organical parts of a man ; and is positive that is not the soul : and 
 body in this sense, taken for the human body, he calls the prison of the soul : and 
 says a wise man, instancing in Socrates and Cato, is glad of a fair opportunity to 
 get out of it. But he nowhere says any such thing of matter : he calls not matter 
 'n general the prison of the soul, nor talks a word of being separate from it. 
 
 2. He concludes that the soul is not, like other things here below, made up of a 
 composition of the elements, c. 27. 
 
 3. He excludes the two gross elements, earth and water, from being the soul, c. 26. 
 
 So far he is clear and positive : but beyond this he is uncertain ; beyond this he 
 
 could not get ; for in some places he speaks doubtfully, whether the soul be not air 
 or fire. Anima sit animus, ignisve, nescio, c. 25. And therefore he agrees with 
 Pansetirs, that if it be at all elementary, it is, as he calls it, inflammata anima, in- 
 
 * 1st Answer. 
 
 t Ch. 19, 22, 30, 31, &c. 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 363 
 
 seems to me to be put out of the reach of our knowledge : and he who will 
 give hirnself leave to consider freely, and look into the dark and intricate part 
 of each hypothesis, will scarce find his reason able to determine him fixedly 
 for or against the soul’s materiality. Since on which side soever he views 
 
 flamed air ; and for this he gives several reasons, c. 18, 19. And though he thinks 
 it to be of a peculiar nature of its own, yet he is so far from thinking it immaterial, 
 that he says, c. 19, that the admitting it to be of an aerial or igneous nature will not 
 be inconsistent with any thing he had said. 
 
 That wiiich he seems most to incline to is, that the soul was not at all elementary, 
 hut was of the same substance with the heavens ; which Aristotle, to distinguish 
 from the four elements, and the changeable bodies here below, which he supposed 
 made up of them, called quinta essentia. That this was Tully’s opinion is plain 
 from these words, Ergo animus (qui, ut ego dico, divinus) est, ut Euripides audet 
 dicere, Deus ; et quidem, si Deus aut anima aut ignis est, idem est animus hominis. 
 Nam ut ilia natura coelestis et terra vacat et humore ; sic utriusque harum rerum 
 humanus animus est expers. Sin autem est quinta qusedam natura ab Aristotele 
 inducta ; primum hsee et decorum est et animorum. Hanc nos sententiam secuti, 
 his ipsis verbis in consolatione hsec expressimus, ch. 29. And then he goes on, c. 27. 
 to repeat those his own words, which your lordship has quoted out of him, where- 
 in he had affirmed, in his treatise De Consolatione, the soul not to have its original 
 from the earth, or to be mixed or made of any thing earthly ; but had said singularis 
 est igitur quredam natura et vis animi, sejuncta ab his usitatis notisque naturis : 
 whereby he tells us, he meant nothing but Aristotle’s quinta essentia : which being 
 unmixed, being that of which the gods and souls consisted, he calls it divinum 
 cceleste, and concludes it eternal ; it being, as he speaks, sejuncta ab omni mortal! 
 concretione. From which it is clear, that in all his inquiry about the substance of 
 the soul, his thoughts went not beyond the four elements, or Aristotle’s quinta es- 
 sentia, to look for it. In all which there is nothing of immateriality, but quite the 
 contrary. 
 
 He was willing to believe (as good and wise men have always been) that the soul 
 was immortal ; hut for that, it is plain, he never thought of its immateriality but as 
 the eastern people do, who believe the soul to be immortal, but have nevertheless 
 no thought, no conception of its immateriality. It is remarkable what a very con- 
 siderable and judicious author says in the case.* No opinion, says he, has been so 
 universally received as that of the immortality of the soul ; hut its immateriality is 
 a truth, the knowledge whereof has not spread so far. And indeed it is extremely 
 difficult to let into the mind of a Siamite the idea of a pure spirit. This the mis- 
 sionaries who have been longest among them are positive in. All the pagans of the 
 east do truly believe, that there remains something of a man after his death, which 
 subsists independently and separately from his body. But they give extension and 
 figure to that which remains, and attribute to it all the same members, all the same 
 substances, both solid and liquid, which our bodies are composed of. They only 
 suppose that the souls are of a matter subtile enough to escape being seen or hand- 
 led. Such were the shades and manes of the Greeks and the Romans. And it is by 
 these figures of the souls, answerable to those of the bodies, that Virgil supposed 
 iEneas knew Palinurus, Dido, and Anchises, in the other world. 
 
 This gentleman was not a man that travelled into those parts for his pleasure, 
 and to have the opportunity to tell strange stories, collected by chance, when he 
 returned: but one chosen on purpose (and he seems well chosen for the purpose) 
 to inquire into the singularities of Siam. And he has so well acquitted himself of 
 the commission, which his epistle dedicatory tells us he had, to inform himself 
 exactly of what was most remarkable there, that had we but such an account of 
 other countries of the east as he has given us of this kingdom, which he was an envoy 
 to, we should be much better acquainted than we are with the manners, notions, 
 and religions of that part of the world inhabited by civilized nations, who want 
 neither good sense nor acuteness of reason, though not cast into the mould of the 
 logic and philosophy of our schools. 
 
 But, to return to Cicero: it is plain, that in his inquiries about the soul, his 
 
 *Loubere du Royaume de Siam, T. 1. c. 19, § 4. 
 
364 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 •t, either as an unextended substance, or as a thinking extended matter; the 
 difficulty to conceal either will, whilst either alone is in his thoughts, still 
 drive him to the contrary side ; an unfair way which some men take with 
 themselves, who, because of the inconceivableness of something they find fti 
 
 thoughts went not at all beyond matter. This, the expressions that drop from him 
 in several places of this book evidently show. For example, that the souls of 
 excellent men and women ascended into heaven; of others, that they remained 
 here on earth, c. 12. That the soul is hot, and warms the body: that, at its leav- 
 ing the body, it penetrates, and divides, and breaks through our thick, cloudy, 
 moist air: that it stops in the region of fire, and ascends no farther; the equality 
 of warmth and weight making that its proper place, where it is nourished and 
 sustained, with the same things wherewith the stars are nourished and sustained: 
 and that by the convenience of its neighbourhood, it shall there have a clearer 
 view and fuller knowledge of the heavenly bodies, c. 19. That the soul also from 
 this height shall have a pleasant and fairer prospect of the globe of the earth, the 
 disposition of whose parts will then lie before it in one view, c. 20. That it is 
 hard to determine what conformation, size, and place, the soul has in the body: 
 that it is too subtile to be seen: that it is in the human body as in a house, or a 
 vessel, or a receptacle, c. 22. All which are expressions that sufficiently evidence 
 that he who used them had not in his mind separated materiality from the idea of 
 the soul. 
 
 ft may perhaps he replied, that a great part of this which we find in chap. 19, 
 is said upon the same principles of those who would have the soul to be anima in- 
 flammata, inflamed air. I grant it. But it is also to be observed, that in this 19th, 
 and the two following chapters, he does not only not deny, but even admits, that 
 so material a thing as inflamed air may think. 
 
 The truth of the case in short is this: Cicero was willing to believe the soul im- 
 mortal; but when he sought in the nature of the soul itself something to establish 
 this his belief in a certainty of it, he found himself at a loss. He confessed ht 
 knew not what the soul was; but the not knowing what it was, he argues, c. 22, 
 was no reason to conclude it was not. And thereupon he proceeds to the repeti- 
 tion of what he had said in his 6th book, De Repub. concerning the soul. The ar 
 gument, which, borrowed from Plato, he there makes use of, if it have any force in 
 it, not only proves the soul to be immortal, but more than, I think, your lordship 
 will allow to be true; for it proves it to be eternal and without beginning, as well 
 as without end: Neque nata certe est, et seterna est, says he. 
 
 Indeed, from the faculties of the soul he concludes right, that it is of divine 
 original: but as to the substance of the soul, he at the end of this discourse con- 
 cerning its faculties, c. 25, as well as at this beginning of it, c. 22, is not ashamed 
 to own his ignorance of what it is; Anima sit animus, ignisve, nescio ; nee me 
 pudet, ut istos, fateri nescire quod nesciam. Illud si ulla alia de re obscura 
 affirmare possem, sive anima, sive ignis sit animus, eum jurarem esse divinum, c. 
 25. So that all the certainty he could attain to about the soul was that he was 
 confident there was something divine in it, i. e. there were faculties in the soul that 
 could not result from the nature of matter, but must have their original from a 
 divine power; but yet those qualities, as divine as they were, he acknowledged 
 might be placed in breath or fire, which, I think, your lordship will not deny to be 
 material substances. So that all those divine qualities , which he so much and 
 so justly extols in the soul, led- him not, as appears, so much as to any the least 
 thought of immateriality. This is demonstration, that he built them not upon an 
 exclusion of materiality out of the soul; for he avowedly professes he does not 
 know but breath or fire might be this thinking thing in us: and in all his considera- 
 tions about the substance of the soul itself, he stuck in air or fire, or Aristotle’s 
 quinta essentia; for beyond those it is evident he went not. 
 
 But with all his proofs out of Plato, to whose authority he defers so much, 
 with all the arguments his vast reading and great parts could furnish him with for 
 the immortality of the soul, he was so little satisfied, so far from being certain, so 
 far from any thought that he had, or could prove it, that he over and over again 
 t ,rofesses his ignorance and doubt of it. In the beginning he enumerates the several 
 t pinions of the philosophers, which he had well studied, about it: and then, full of 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 365 
 
 one, throw themselves violently into the contrary hypothesis, though alto- 
 gether as unintelligible to an unbiassed understanding. This serves not only to 
 show the weakness and the scantiness of our knowledge, but the insignificant 
 triumph of such sort of arguments, which, drawn from our own views, may 
 
 uncertainty, says Harum sententiarum quse vera sit, Deus aliquis viderit; quie 
 verisiraillima, magna qusestio, c. 11. And towards the latter end, having gone them 
 all over again, and one after another examined them, he professes himself still at a 
 loss, not knowing on which to pitch, nor what to determine. Mentis acies, says 
 he, seipsam, intuens, nonnunquam hebescit, oh emaque causam contemplandi dili- 
 gentiam amittimus. ltaque dubitans, circumspectans, hsesitans, multa adversa re- 
 vertens, tanquam in rate in mari immenso, nostra vehitur oratio, c. 30. And to 
 conclude this argument, when the person he introduces as discoursing xvith him 
 tells him he is resolved to keep firm to the belief of immortality; Tally answers, 
 c. 32, Laudo id quidem, et si nihil animis oportet considere: movemur enim sape 
 aliquo acute concluso; labamus, mutamusque sententiam clarioribus etiam in re* 
 bus; in his est enim aliqua obscuritas. 
 
 So immovable is that truth delivered by the spirit of truth, that though the light 
 of nature gave some obscure glimmering, some uncertain hopes of a future state; yet 
 human reason could attain to no clearness, no certainty about it, but that it was 
 Jescs Christ alone who had brought life and immortality to light through the 
 gospel*. Though we are now told, that to own the inability of natural reason, 
 to bring immortality to light, or, which passes for the same, to own principles 
 upon which the immateriality of the soul (and, as it is urged, consequently its 
 immortality) cannot be demonstratively proved, does lessen the belief of this 
 article of revelation, which Jesus Christ alone has brought to light, and 
 which consequently the Scripture assures us is established and made certain only 
 by revelation. This would not perhaps have seemed strange, from those who are 
 justly complained of for slighting the revelation of the gospel, and therefore would 
 not be much regarded, if they should contradict so plain a text of Scripture, in 
 favour of their all sufficient reason: but what use the promoters of scepticism and 
 infidelity, in an age so much respected by your lordship, may make of what comes 
 from one of your great authority and learning, may deserve your consideration. 
 
 And thus, my lord, I hope, I have satisfied you concerningCicero’s opinion about 
 the soul, in his first book of Tusculan Questions: which, though I easily believe, 
 as your lordship says, you are no stranger to, yet I humbly conceive you have not 
 shown (and, upon a careful perusal of that treatise again, I think I may boldy say 
 vou cannot show) one word in it, that expresses any thing like a notion inTully of 
 the soul’s immateriality, or its being an immaterial substance. 
 
 From what you bring out of Virgil, your lordship concludesf, that he, no more 
 than Cicero, does me any kindness in this matter, being both asserters of the soul’s 
 immortality. My lord, were not the question of the soul’s immateriality, according 
 to custom, changed here into that of its immortality, which I am no less an asser- 
 tor of than either of them, Cicero and Virgil do me all the kindness 1 desired of 
 them in this matter: and that was to show, that they attributed the word spiritus 
 to the soul of man without any thought of its immateriality; and this the verses you 
 yourself bring out of Virgilf, 
 
 Et cum frigida mors anima seduxerit artus, 
 
 Omnibus umbra locis adero, dabis, improbe, pcenas; 
 
 confirm, as well as those I quoted out of his 6th book; and for this, Monsieur de 
 la Loubere shall be my witness in the words above set down out of him; where 
 he shows that there be those among the heathens of our days, as well as Virgil and 
 others among the ancient Greeks and Romans, who thought the souls or ghosts of 
 men departed did not die with the body, without thinking them to be perfectly 
 immaterial ; the latter being much more incomprehensible to them than the 
 former. And what Virgil’s notion of the soul is, and that corpus, when put in 
 contradistinction to the soul, signifies nothing but the gross tenement of flesh and 
 
 * Tim. i. 10. 
 
 t 1st Answer. 
 
 $ AJneid, vi. 385. 
 
366 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 satisfy us that we can find no certainty on one side of the question; but do 
 not at all thereby help us to truth by running into the opposite opinion, which, 
 on examination, will be found clogged with equal difficulties. For wnat 
 safety, what advantage to any one is it, for the avoiding the seeming absur- 
 
 bones, is evident from this verse of his iEneid, vi. where he calls the souls which 
 yet were visible, 
 
 Tenues sine corpore vitas. 
 
 Your lordship’s* answer concerning what is said in Eccles. xii. turns wholly 
 upon Solomon’s taking the soul to be immortal, which was not what 1 questioned: 
 all that I quoted that place for, was to show, that spirit in English might properly 
 be applied to the soul, without any notion of its immateriality, as nil was by 
 Solomon, which, whether he thought the souls of men to be immaterial, does little 
 appear in that passage, where he speaks of the souls of men and beasts together, 
 as he does. But farther, what I contended for is evident from that place, in that 
 the word spirit is there applied by our translators to the souls of beasts, which 
 your lordship, I think, does not rank among the immaterial, and consequently im- 
 mortal spirits, though they have sense and spontaneous motion. 
 
 But you sayf, if the soul be not of itself a free thinking substance, you do not 
 see what foundation there is in nature for a day of judgment. Answer, Though 
 the heathen world did not of old, nor do to this day, see a foundation in nature for 
 a day of judgment; yet in revelation, if that will satisfy your lordship, every one 
 may see a foundation for a day of judgment, because God has positively declared 
 it; though God has not by that revelation taught us what the substance of the 
 soul is; nor has any where said, that the soul of itself is a free agent. Whatso- 
 ever any created substance is, it is not of itself, but is by the good pleasure of its 
 Creator: whatever degrees of perfection it has, it has from the bountiful hand of its 
 Maker. For it is time in a natural, as well as a spiritual sense, what St Paul says!, 
 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing, as of ourselves, but our 
 sufficiency is of God. 
 
 But your lordship, as I guess by your following words, would argue, that a 
 material substance cannot be a free agent: whereby 1 suppose you only mean, 
 that you cannot see or conceive how a solid substance should begin, stop, or 
 change its own motion. To which, give me leave to answer, that when you 
 can make it conceivable, how any created, finite, dependent substance can move 
 itself, or alter or stop its own motion, which it must to be a free agent; I suppose 
 you will find it no harder for God to bestow this power on a solid than an unsolid 
 created substance. Tully, in the place above quoted§, could not conceive this 
 power to be in any thing but what was from eternity; Cum pateat igitur seter- 
 num id esse quod seipsum moveat, quisest qui hanc naturam animis esse tributam 
 neget? But though you cannot see how any created substance, solid or not solid, 
 can be a free agent, f pardon me, my lord, if I put in both, till your lordship please 
 to explain it of either, and show the manner how either of them can, of itself, 
 move itself or any tiling else) yet I do not think you will so far deny men to be free 
 agents, from the difficulty there is to see how they are free agents, as to doubt whe- 
 ther there be foundation enough for a day of judgment. 
 
 It is not for me to judge how far your lordship’s speculations reach: but finding 
 in myself nothing to be truer than what wise Solomon tells me||. As thou knowest 
 not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of 
 her that is with child; even so thou knowest not the works of God, who maketh 
 all things; I gratefully receive and rejoice in the light of revelation, which sets 
 me at rest in many things, the manner whereof my poor reason can by no means 
 make out to me: Omnipotency, I know, can do any thing that contains in it no 
 contradiction : so that I readily believe whatever God has declared, though my 
 reason find difficulties in it which it cannot master. As in the present case, God 
 
 having revealed that there shall be a day of judgment, I think that foundation 
 
 enougli to conclude men are free enough to be made answerable for their actions, 
 
 * 1st Answer. f Ibid. I 2 Cor. iii. 5. 
 
 § Tusculan Qusest. 1. 1. c. 23. |] Eccles. xi. 5. 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 36? 
 
 dities, and to him insurmountable rubs he meets with in one opinion, to take 
 refuge in the contrary, which is built on something altogether as inexplicable, 
 and as far remote from his comprehension 1 it is past controversy, that we 
 have in us something that thinks ; our very doubts about what it is, confirm 
 the certainty of its being, though we must content ourselves in the ignorance 
 oUwdfatiiind of being it is : and it is in vain to go about to be sceptical in 
 this, as it is unreasonable in most other cases to be positive against the being 
 of any thing, because we cannot comprehend its nature. For I would fain 
 know what substance exists, that has not something in it which manifestly 
 baffles our understandings. Other spirits, who see and know the nature and 
 inward constitution of things, how much must they exceed us in knowledge 1 
 To which if we add larger comprehension, which enables them at one glance 
 to see the connexion and agreement of very many ideas, and readily supplies 
 to them the intermediate proofs, which we, by single and slow steps, and 
 long poring in the dark, hardly at last find out, and are often ready to forget 
 one before we have hunted out another; we may guess at some part of the 
 happiness of superior ranks of spirits, who have a quicker and more penetrat- 
 ing sight, as well as a larger field of knowledge. But to return to the argu- 
 ment in hand; our knowledge, I say, is not only limited to the paucity and 
 :smperfections of the ideas we have, and which we employ it about, but even 
 comes short of that too. But how far it reaches, let us now inquire. 
 
 S e cr-JL ^ILu&fan-our knowledge reaches . — The affirmations or negations 
 we make concerning the ideas we have, may, as I have before intimated in 
 general, be reduced to these four sorts, viz. identity, coexistence, relation, 
 and real existence. I shall examine how far our knowledge extends in each 
 of these. 
 
 Sect. 8. \.(hJxlinowTed~gedfTdentiiy(mdrd,iversity l as far as our ideas. 
 — Frrsty'asfto identity and diversity, in this way of the agreement or disagree- 
 ment of our ideas, our intuitive knowledge is as far extended as our ideas 
 themselves : and there can be no idea in the mind, which it does not pre- 
 sently, by an intuitive knowledge, perceive to be what it is, and to be differ- 
 ent from any other. 
 
 Sect. 9. 2 . Of coextstenc,^ a very little way. — Secondly, as to the second 
 sort, which is the agreement or disagreement of our ideas in coexistence; in 
 this our knowledge is very short, though in this consists the greatest and 
 r lost material part of our knowledge concerning substances. For our ideas 
 of the species of substances being, as I have shown, nothing but certain col- 
 and to receive according to what they have done; though how man is a free agent, 
 surpasses my explication or comprehension. 
 
 In answer to the place I brought out of St Luke,* your lordship asks,f 
 Whether from these words of our Saviour it follows, that a spirit is only an ap- 
 pearance! I answer, No; nor do I know who drew such an inference from them: 
 but it follows, that in apparitions there is something that appears, and that which 
 appears is not wholly immaterial; and yet this was properly called 7rvw/u.it, and 
 was often looked upon by those who called it in Greek, and now call it spi- 
 
 rit in English, to be the ghost or soul of one departed; which I humbly conceive 
 justifies my use of the word spirit, for a thinking voluntary agent, whether mate- 
 rial or immaterial. 
 
 Your lordship says,}: that I grant, that it cannot upon these principles be de- 
 monstrated, that the spiritual substance in us is immaterial: from whence you con- 
 clude, that then my grounds of certainty from ideas are plainly given up. This 
 being a way of arguing which you often make use of, I have often had occasion to 
 consider it, and cannot after all see the force of this argument. I acknowledge 
 that this or that proposition cannot upon my principles be demonstrated; ergo, I 
 grant this proposition to be false, that certainty consists in the perception of the 
 agreement or disagreement of ideas. For that is my ground of certainty, and till 
 that be given up, my grounds of certainty are not given up. 
 
 * Ch. xxiv. v. 32. 
 
 f 1st Answer 
 
 $ Ibid. 
 
368 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 lections of simple ideas united in one subject, and so coexisting together ; 
 v. g. our idea of flame is a body hot, luminous, and moving upward ; of gold, 
 a body heavy to a certain degree, yellow, malleable, and fusible: these, or 
 some such complex ideas as these in men’s minds, do those two names of the 
 different substances, flame and gold, stand for. When we would know any 
 thing farther concerning these, or any other sort of substances, what do we in- 
 quire, but what other qualities or powers these substances have or have not! 
 Which is nothing else but to know what other simple ideas do or do not 
 coexist with those that make up that complex idea. 
 
 Sect. 10. Because the connexion between most simple ideas is unknown. 
 —This, how weighty and considerable a part soever of human science, is yet 
 very narrow, and scarce any at all. The reason whereof is, that the simple 
 ideas, whereof our complex ideas of substances are made up, are, for the most 
 part, such as carry with them, in their own nature, no visible necessary con- 
 nexion or inconsistency with any other simple ideas, whose coexistence with 
 them we would inform ourselves about. 
 
 Sect. 11. Especially of secondary qualities . — The ideas that our complex 
 ones of substances are made up of, and about which our knowledge concern- 
 ing substances is most employed, are those of their secondary qualities ; 
 which depending all (as has been shown) upon the primary qualities of their 
 minute and insensible parts, — or if not upon them, upon something yet more 
 remote from our comprehension, — it is impossible we should know which 
 have a necessary union or inconsistency one with another: for not knowing 
 the root they spring from, not knowing what size, figure, and texture of parts 
 they are, on which depend, and from which result, those qualities which make 
 our complex idea of gold ; it is impossible we should know what other quali- 
 ties result from, or are incompatible with, the same constitution of the insen- 
 sible parts of gold, and so consequently must always coexist with that com- 
 plex idea we have of it, or else are inconsistent with it. 
 
 Sect. 12. Because all connexion between any secondary and primary 
 qualities is imdiscoverable . — Besides this ignorance of the primary qualities 
 of the insensible parts of bodies, on which depend all their secondary quali- 
 ties, there is yet another and more incurable part of ignorance, which sets 
 us more remote from a certain knowledge of the coexistence or incoexistence 
 (if I may so say) of different ideas in the same subject ; and that is, that 
 there is no discoverable connexion between any secondary quality and those 
 primary qualities which it depends on. 
 
 Sect. 13. That the size, figure, and motion _ of one body should cause a 
 change in the size, figure, and motion of another body, is mot- beyo-nd- our 
 conception : the separation of the parts of one body upon the intrusion of 
 another, and the change from rest to motion upon impulse, — these and the 
 like seem to us to have some connexion one with another. And if we knew 
 these primary qualities of bodies, we might have reason to hope we might be 
 able to know a great deal more of these operations ofthem one upon another : 
 hut our minds not being able to discover any connexion betwixt those primary 
 qualities of bodies and the sensations that are produced in us by them, we can 
 never be able to establish certain and undoubted rules of the consequences or 
 coexistence of any secondary qualities, though we could discover the size, 
 figure, or motion of those invisible parts which immediately produce them. 
 We are so far from knowing what figure, size, or motion of parts produce a 
 yellow colour, a sweet taste, or a sharp sound, that we can by no means con- 
 ceive how any size, figure, or motion of any particles, can possibly produce 
 in us the idea of any colour, taste, or sound whatsoever ; there is no con- 
 ceivable connexion between the one and the other. 
 
 Sect. 14. In vain, therefore, shall we endeavour to discover by our ideas 
 (the only true way of certain and universal knowledge) what other ideas are 
 to be found constantly joined with that of our complex idea of any substance: 
 since we neither know the real constitution of the minute parts on which their 
 qualities do depend, nor, did we know them, could we discover any neces- 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 369 
 
 sary connexion between them and any of the secondary qualities : which is 
 necessary to be done before we can certainly know their necessary coexis- 
 tence. So that, let our complex idea of any species of substances be what it 
 will, we can hardly, from the simple ideas contained in it, certainly deter- 
 mine the necessary coexistence of any other quality whatsoever. Our know- 
 ledge in all these inquiries reaches very little farther than our experience. 
 Indeed, some few of the primary qualities have a necessary dependence and 
 visible connexion one with another, as figure necessarily supposes extension ; 
 receiving or communicating motion by impulse, supposes solidity. But 
 though these and perhaps some other of our ideas have, yet there are so few 
 oi them that have a visible connexion one with another, that we can by intu- 
 ition or demonstration discover the coexistence of very few of the qualities that 
 are to be found united in substances : and we are left only to the assistance 
 of our senses, to make known to us what qualities they contain. For of all 
 the qualities that are coexistent in any subject, without this dependence and 
 evident connexion of their ideas one with another, we cannot know certainly 
 any two to coexist any farther than experience, by our senses, informs us. 
 Thus, though we see the yellow colour, and upon trial find the weight, mal- 
 leableness, fusibility, and fixedness, that are united in a piece of gold ; yet 
 because no one of these ideas has any evident dependence, or necessary con- 
 nexion with the other, we cannot certainly know, that where any four of 
 these are, the fifth will be there also, how highly probable soever it may be ; 
 because the highest probability amounts not to certainty, without which there 
 can be no true knowledge. For this coexistence can be no farther known 
 than it is perceived ; and it cannot be perceived but either in particular sub- 
 jects, by the observation of our senses, or in general, by the necessary con- 
 nexion of the ideas themselves. 
 
 JUnere, 15. Of repugnancy to coexist , larger. — As to the incompatibility 
 or repugnancy to coexistence ; we may know that any subject may have 
 of each sort of primary qualities but' one particular at once ; v. g. each par- 
 ticular extension, figure, number of parts, motion, excludes all other of each 
 kind.^JTJie-like also is certain of all sensible ideas peculiar to each sense ; for 
 whatever of each kind is present in any subject, excludes all other of that sort ; 
 v. g. no one subject can have two smells or two colours at the same time. 
 To this perhaps will be said, has not an opal, or the infusion of lignum ne- 
 phriticum, two colours at the same time ? To which I answer, that these 
 bodies, to eyes differently placed, may, at the same time, afford different co- 
 lours ; but I take liberty also to say, that to eyes differently placed, it is dif- 
 ferent parts of the object that reflect the particles of light ; and therefore it is 
 not the same part of the object, and so not the very same subject, which at 
 the same time appears both yellow and azure. For it is as impossible that 
 the very same particle of any body should at the same time differently modify 
 or reflect the rays of light, as that it should have two different figures and 
 textures at the same time. 
 
 Sect. 16. OfTfiS^coexistence of powers, a very little way. — But as to the 
 'qroweri of substances to chan^the^gensible qualities of other bodies, which 
 make a great part of our inquiries about them, and is no inconsiderable branch 
 of our knowledge ; I doubt, as to these, whether our knowledge reaches much 
 farther than our experience ; or whether we can come to the discovery of 
 most of these powers, and be certain that they are in any subject, by the con- 
 nexion of any of those ideas which to us make its essence. Because the ac- 
 tive and passive powers of bodies, and their ways of operating, consisting in 
 a texture and motion of parts, which we cannot by any means come to dis- 
 cover ; it is but in very few cases we can be able to perceive their dependence 
 on, or repugnance to, any of those ideas, which make our complex one of that 
 sort of things. I have here instanced in the corpuscularian hypothesis, as 
 that which is thought to go farthest in an intelligible explication of those 
 qualities of bodies ; and I fear the weakness of human understanding is scarce 
 able to substitute another, which will afford us a fuller and clearer discovery 
 2 W 
 
370 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 of the necessary connexion and coexistence of the powers which are to be 
 observed united in several sorts of them. This at least is certain, that which- 
 ever hypothesis be clearest and truest, (for of that it is not my business to de- 
 termine) our knowledge concerning corporeal substances will be very little 
 advanced by any of them, till we are made to see what qualities and powers 
 of bodies have a necessary connexion and repugnancy one with another ; 
 which in the present state of philosophy, I think we know but to a very small 
 degree : and I doubt whether, with those faculties we have, we shall ever be 
 able to carry our general knowledge (I say not particular experience) in 
 this part much farther. Experience is that which in this part we must 
 depend on. And it were to be wished that it were more improved. We 
 find the advantages some men’s generous pains have this way brought to the 
 stock of natural knowledge. And if others, especially the philosophers by fire, 
 who pretend to it, had been so wary in their observations, and sincere in their 
 reports, as those who call themselves philosophers ought to have been, our 
 acquaintance with the bodies here about us, and our insight into their powers 
 and operations, had been yet much greater. 
 
 Sect. 17. Of spirits, yet narrower. — If we are at a loss in respect of the 
 powers and operations of bodies, I think it is easy to conclude, we are much 
 more in the dark in reference to the spirits ; whereof we naturally have no 
 ideas but what we draw from that of our own, by reflecting on the operations 
 of our own souls within us, as far as they can come within our observation. 
 But how inconsiderable a rank the spirits that inhabit our bodies hold among 
 those various and possibly innumerable kinds of nobler beings ; and how far 
 short they come of the endowments and perfections of cherubim and seraphim,, 
 and infinite sorts of spirits above us ; is what by a transient hint in another 
 place, I have offered to my reader’s consideration. 
 
 Sect. 18. 3. Of other relalions, it is not easjj to say'Tiowfirn^As to the 
 third sort of our knowledge, viz. the agreement or disagreement of any of 
 our ideas in any other relation : this, as it is the largest field of our know- 
 ledge, so it is hard to determine how far it may extend ; because the ad- 
 vances that are made in this part of knowledge, depending on our sagacity 
 in finding intermediate ideas, that may show the relations and habitudes of 
 ideas, whose coexistence is not considered, it is a hard matter to tell 
 when we are at an end of such discoveries ; and when reason has all the 
 helps it is capable of, for the finding of proofs, or examining the agreement ' 
 or disagreement of remote ideas. They that are ignorant of algebra cannot 
 imagine the wonders in this kind are to be done by it : and what farther im- 
 provements and helps, advantageous to other parts of knowledge the saga- 
 cious mind of man may yet find out, it is not easy to determine. This at 
 east I believe, that the ideas of quantity are not those alone that are capa- 
 ble of demonstration and knowledge ; and that other, and perhaps more useful 
 parts of contemplation, would afford us certainty, if vices, passions, and dom- 
 ineering interest did not oppose or menace such endeavours. 
 
 Morality capable of demonstration. — The idea of a Supreme Being, infi- 
 nite in power, goodness, and wisdom, whose workmanship we are, and on 
 whom we depend ; and the idea of ourselves, as understanding rational beings, 
 being such as are clear in us, would, I suppose, if duly considered and pur- 
 sued, afford such foundations of our duty and rules of action, as might place 
 morality among the sciences capable of demonstration : wherein I doubt not 
 but from self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences, as incontesti- 
 ble as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made 
 out to any one that will apply himself with the same indifferency and atten- 
 tion to the one, as he does to the other of these sciences. The relation of 
 other modes may certainly be perceived, as well as those of number and ex- 
 tension ; and I cannot see why they should not also be capable of demonstra- 
 tion, if due methods were thought on to examine or pursue their agreement 
 or disagreement. Where there is no property, there is no injustice, is a pro- 
 position as certain as any demonstration in Euclid : for the idea of property 
 oeing a right to any thing ; and the idea to which the name injustice is given 
 
Ch. 3 
 
 EXTENT OF HLMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 371 
 
 being the invasion or violation of that right ; it is evident that these ideas 
 being thus established, and these names annexed to them, I can as certainly 
 know this proposition to be true, as that a triangle has three angles equal to 
 two right ones. Again, “ no government allows absolute liberty the idea 
 of government being the establishment of society upon certain rules or laws 
 which require conformity to them ; and the idea of absolute liberty being for 
 any one to do whatever he pleases ; I am as capable of being certain of the 
 truth of this proposition, as of any in the mathematics. 
 
 Sect. 19. Two things have made moral ideas thought incapable of de- 
 monstration: their complexedness, and want of sensible representations . — 
 That which in this respect has given the advantage to the ideas of quantity, 
 and made them thought more capable of certainty and demonstration, is, 
 ■^-First, That they can be set down and represented by sensible marks, which 
 have a greater and nearer correspondence with them than any words or 
 sounds whatsoever. Diagrams drawn on paper are copies of the ideas in 
 the mind, and not liable to the uncertainty that words carry in their significa- 
 tion. An angle, circle, or square, drawn in lines, lies open to the view, ana 
 cannot be mistaken ; it remains unchangeable, and may at leisure be consid- 
 ered and examined, and the demonstration be revised, and all the parts of it 
 may be gone over more than once without any danger of the least change in 
 the ideas. This cannot be thus done in moral ideas ; we have no sensible 
 marks that resemble them, whereby we can set them down ; we have nothing 
 but words to express them by : which though, when written, they remain 
 the same, yet the ideas they stand for may change in the same man ; and it 
 is very seldom that they are not different in different persons. 
 
 . Secondly, Another thing that makes the greater difficulty in ethics is, that 
 moral ideas are commonly more complex than those of the figures ordinarily 
 -considered in mathematics. From whence these two inconveniences fol- 
 low : first,' that their names are of more uncertain signification, the precise 
 collection of simple ideas they stand for not being so easily agreed on, and 
 so the sign that is used for them in communication always, and in thinking 
 often, does not steadily carry with it the same idea. Upon which the same 
 disorder, confusion, and error follow, as would if a man, going to demon- 
 strate something of an heptagon, should, in the diagram he took to do it, 
 leave out one of the angles, or by oversight make the figure with one angle 
 more than the name ordinarily imported, or he intended it should, when at 
 first he thought of his demonstration. This often happens, and is hardly 
 avoidable in very complex moral ideas, where the same name being retained, 
 one angle, i. e. one simple idea is left out or put in the complex one (still 
 called by the same name) more at one time than another. Secondly, from 
 the complexedness of the moral ideas, there follows another inconvenience, 
 viz. that the mind cannot easily retain those precise combinations, so exactly 
 and perfectly as is necessary in the examination of the habitudes a,nd corres- 
 pondences, agreements or disagreements, of several of them one with an 
 other; especially where it is to be judged of by long productions, and the 
 intervention of several other complex ideas, to show the agreement or dis- 
 agreement of two remote ones. 
 
 The great help against this which mathematicians find in diagrams and 
 figures, which remain unalterable in their draughts, is very apparent, and the 
 memory would often have great difficulty otherwise to retain them so exactly, 
 whilst the mind went over the parts of them, step by step, to examine their 
 several correspondences. And though in casting up a long sum either in ad- 
 dition, multiplication, or division, every part be only a progression of the 
 mind, taking a view of its own ideas, and considering the agreement or dis- 
 agreement ; and the resolution of the question be nothing but the result of 
 the whole, made up of such particulars, whereof the mind has a clear per- 
 ception : yet without setting down the several parts by marks, whose pre- 
 cise significations are known, and by marks that last and remain in view 
 when the memory had 'et them go, it would be almost impossible to carry so 
 
372 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 many different ideas in the mind, without confounding or letting slip some 
 parts of the reckoning, and thereby making all our reasonings about it useless. 
 In which case, the ciphers or marks help not the mind at all to perceive the 
 agreement of any two or more numbers, their equalities or proportions : that 
 the mind has only by intuition of its own ideas of the numbers themselves. 
 But the numerical characters are helps to the memory, to record and retain 
 the several ideas about which the demonstration is made, whereby a man 
 may know how far his intuitive knowledge, in surveying several of the par- 
 ticulars, has proceeded; that so he may without confusion go on to what is 
 yet unknown, and at last have in one view before him the result of all his 
 perceptions and reasonings. 
 
 Sect. 20. Remedies of those difficulties. — One part of these disadvan- 
 tages in moral ideas, which has made them be thought not capable of de- 
 monstration, may in a good measure be remedied by definitions, setting down 
 that collection of simple ideas, which every term shall stand for, and then 
 using the terms steadily and constantly for that precise collection. And 
 what methods algebra, or something of that kind, may hereafter suggest, to 
 remove the other difficulties, it is not easy to foretell. Confident I am, that 
 if men would in the same method, and with the same indifferency, search 
 after moral, as they do mathematical truths, they would find them have a 
 stronger connexion one with another, and a more necessary consequence from 
 our clear and distinct ideas, and to come nearer perfect demonstration than 
 is commonly imagined. But much of this is not to be expected, whilst the 
 desire of esteem, riches, or power, makes men espouse the well-endowed 
 opinions in fashion, and then seek arguments either to make good their 
 beauty, or varnish over and cover their deformity : nothing being so beautiful 
 to the eye as truth is to the mind ; nothing so deformed and irreconcileable 
 to the understanding as a lie. For though many a man can with satisfaction 
 enough own a no very handsome wife in his bosom ; yet who is bold enough 
 openly to avow, that he has espoused a falsehood, and received into his 
 breast so ugly a thing as a lie 7 Whilst the parties of men cram their tenets 
 down all men’s throats, whom they can get into their power, without permit- 
 ting them to examine their truth or falsehood, and will not let truth have fair 
 play in the world, nor men the liberty to search after it, what improvements 
 can be expected of this kind ] What greater light can be hoped for in the 
 moral sciences l The subject part of mankind, in most places might, instead 
 thereof, with Egyptian bondage expect Egyptian darkness, were not the can- 
 dle of the Lord set up by himself in men’s minds, which it is impossible for 
 the breath or power of man wholly to extinguish. 
 
 Sect. 21. 4. Of real existence ; we have an intuitive knowledge of our 
 own ; demonstrative, of God’s ; sensitive, of some few other things. — As to 
 the fourth sort of our knowledge, viz. of the real actual existence of things, 
 we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence ; and a demonstrative 
 knowledge of the existence of a God ; of the existence of any thing else, we 
 have no other but a sensitive knowledge, which extends not beyond the ob- 
 jects present to our senses. 
 
 Sect. 22 i _£hir ignorance great. — Our knowledge being so narrow, as I 
 have showed, it will perhaps give us some light into the present state of ou 
 minds, if we look a little into the dark side, and take a view of our ignorance ; 
 which, being infinitely larger than our knowledge, may serve much to the 
 quieting of disputes, and improvement of useful knowledge ; if discovering 
 how far we have clear and distinct ideas, we confine our thoughts within the 
 contemplation of those things that are within the reach of our understandings, 
 and launch not out into that abyss of darkness (where we have not eyes to 
 see, nor faculties to perceive any thing) out of a presumption that nothing is 
 beyond our comprehension. But to be satisfied of the folly of such a con- 
 ceit we need not go far. He that knows any thing, know this in the first 
 place, that he need not seek long for instances of his ignorance. The mean- 
 est and most obvious tilings that come in our way have dark sides, that the 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 373 
 
 quickest sight cannot penetrate into. The clearest and most enlarged un- 
 derstandings of thinking men find themselves puzzled, and at a loss, in every 
 particle of matter. We shall the less wonder to find it so, when we consid- 
 er the causes of our ignorance ; which, from what has been said, I suppose, 
 will be found to be these three : 
 
 ''First, Want of ideas. 
 
 Secondly, Want of a discoverable connexion between the ideas we have. 
 
 Thirdly, Wa nt of tracing and examining our ideas. 
 
 Sect. 23. First, one cause of it, want of ideas, either such as we have no 
 conception of, or such as particularly we have not. — First, There are some 
 things, and those not a few, that we are ignorant of, for want of ideas. 
 
 First ; all the simple ideas we have are confined (as I have shown) to those 
 we receive from corporeal objects by sensation, and from the operations of 
 our own minds as the objects of reflection. But how much these few and 
 narrow inlets are disproportionate to the vast whole extent of all beings, will 
 not be hard to persuade those, who are not so foolish as to think their span 
 the measure of all things. What other simple ideas it is possible the crea- 
 tures in other parts of the universe may have, by the assistance of senses and 
 faculties more, or perfecter, than we have, or different from ours, it is not for 
 us to determine. But to say or think there are no such, because we conceive 
 nothing of them, is no better an argument, than if a blind man should 
 be positive in it, that there was no such thing as sight and colours, because 
 he had no manner of idea of any such thing, nor could by any means frame to 
 himself any notions about seeing. The ignorance and darkness that is in us, 
 no more hinders nor confines the knowledge that is in others, than the blind- 
 ness of a mole is an argument against the quick-sightedness of an eagle. He 
 that will consider the infinite power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator ot 
 all things, will find reason to think it was not all laid out upon so incon- 
 siderable, mean, and impotent a creature, as he will find man to be ; who, in 
 all probability, is one of the lowest of all intellectual beings. What faculties 
 therefore other species of creatures have, to penetrate into the nature and 
 inmost constitution of things ; what ideas they may receive from them, far 
 different from ours ; we know not. This we know, and certainly find, that 
 we want several other views of them, besides those we have, to^nake discov- 
 eries of them more perfect. And we may be convinced that the ideas we can 
 attain to by our faculties, are very disproportionate to things themselves, 
 when a positive, clear, distinct one of substance itself, which is the founda- 
 tion of all the rest, is concealed from us. But want of ideas of this kind 
 being a part, as well as cause of our ignorance, cannot be described. Only 
 this, I think, I may confidently say of it, that the intellectual and sensible 
 world are in this perfectly alike ; that that part which we see of either of 
 them, holds no proportion with what we see not ; and whatsoever we can 
 reach with our eyes, or our thoughts, of either of them, is but a point, almost 
 nothing in comparison of the rest. 
 
 Sect. 24. Because of their remoteness; or. Secondly, another great cause 
 of ignorance is the want of ideas we are capable of. As the want of ideas, 
 which our faculties are not able to give us, shuts us wholly from those views 
 of things which it is reasonable to think other beings, perfecter than we, 
 have, of which we know nothing, so the want of ideas I now speak of keeps 
 us in ignorance of things we conceive capable of being known to us. Bulk, 
 figure, and motion, we have ideas of. But though we are not without ideas 
 of these primary qualities of bodies in general, yet not knowing what is the 
 particular bulk, figure, and motion, of the greatest part of the bodies of the 
 universe, we are ignorant of the several powers, efficacies, and ways of ope- 
 ration, whereby the effects, which we daily see, are produced. These are 
 hid from us in some things, by being too remote ; and in others, by being too 
 minute. When we consider the vast distance of the known and visible parts 
 of the u orld, and the reasons we have to think that what lies within our ken 
 is bui s small part of the universe, we shall then discover a huge abyss of ig- 
 
374 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Rook 4 . 
 
 norance. What are the particular fabrics of the great masses of matter, 
 which make up the whole stupendous frame of corporeal beings, how far 
 they are extended, what is their motion, and how continued or communi- 
 cated, and what influence they have one upon another, are contemplations 
 that at first glimpse our thoughts lose themselves in. If we narrow our con- 
 templations, and confine our thoughts to this little canton, I mean this sys- 
 tem of our sun, and the grosser masses of matter that visibly move about it ; 
 what several sorts of vegetables, animals, and intellectual corporeal beings, 
 infinitely different from those of our little spot of earth, may there probably 
 be in the other planets, to the knowledge of which, even of their outward 
 figures and parts, we can no way attain, whilst we are confined to this earth; 
 there being no natural means, either by sensation or reflection, to convey 
 their certain ideas in our minds'! They are out of the reach of those inlets 
 of all our knowledge : and what sorts of furniture and inhabitants those man- 
 sions contain in them we cannot so much as guess, much less have clear and 
 distinct ideas of them. 
 
 Sect. 25. Or, because of their minuteness . — If a great, nay, far the great- 
 est part of the several ranks of bodies in the universe, escape our notice by their 
 remoteness, there are others that are no less concealed from us by their mi- 
 nuteness. These insensible corpuscles being the active parts of matter, and 
 the great instruments of nature, on which depend not only all their second- 
 ary qualities, but also most of their natural operations ; our want of precise 
 distinct ideas of their primary qualities keeps us in an incurable ignorance of 
 what we desire to know about them. I doubt not but if we could discover 
 the figure, size, texture, and motion of the minute constituent parts of any 
 two bodies, we should know without trial several of their operations one 
 upon another, as we do now the properties of a square or a triangle. Did we 
 know the mechanical affections of the particles of rhubarb, hemlock, opium, 
 and a man ; as a watchmaker does those of a watch, whereby it performs its 
 operations, and of a file, which, by rubbing on them will alter the figure of 
 any of the wheels ; we should be able to tell beforehand, that rhubarb will 
 purge, hemlock kill, and opium make a man sleep ; as well as a watchmaker 
 can, that a little piece of paper laid on the balance will keep the watch from 
 going, till it be removed ; or that, some small part of it being rubbed by a 
 file, the machine would quite lose its motion, and the watch go no more. 
 The dissolving of silver in aqua fortis, and gold in aqua regia, and not vice 
 versa, would be then perhaps no more difficult to know, than it is to a smith 
 to understand why the turning of one key will open a lock, and not the turn- 
 ing of another. But whilst we are destitute of senses acute enough to discover 
 the minute particles of bodies, and to give us ideas of their mechanical affec- 
 tions, we must be content to be ignorant of their properties and ways of ope- 
 ration ; nor can we be assured about them any farther than some few trials 
 we make are able to reach. But whether they will succeed again another 
 time we cannot be certain. This hinders our certain knowledge of universal 
 truths concerning natural bodies ; and our reason carries us herein very little 
 aeyond particular. matter of fact. 
 
 Sect. 26. Hence no science of bodies.— And therefore I am apt to doubt, 
 that how far soever human industry may advance useful and experimental 
 philosophy in physical things, scientifical will still be out of our reach ; be 
 cause we want perfect and adequate ideas of those very bodies which are 
 nearest to us, and most under our command. Those which we have ranked 
 >nto classes under names, and we think ourselves best acquainted with, we 
 have but very imperfect and incomplete ideas of. Distinct ideas of the seve- 
 ral sorts of bodies that fall under the examination of our senses perhaps we 
 may have ; but adequate ideas, I suspect, we have not of any one among 
 khein. And though the former of these will serve us for common use and 
 discourse, yet whilst we want the latter, we are not capable of scientific^, 
 knowledge ; nor shall ever be able to discover general, instructive, unques- 
 lionable truths concerning them. Certainty and demonstration are things 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 3? 5 
 
 we must not, in these matters, pretend to. By the colour, figure, taste, and 
 smell, and other sensible qualities, we have as clear and distinct ideas of 
 sage and hemlock, as we have of a circle and a triangle : but having no ideas 
 of the particular primary qualities of the minute parts of either of these 
 plants, nor of other bodies which we would apply them to, we cannot tell 
 what effects they will produce ; nor when we see those effects can we so 
 much as guess, much less know, their manner of production. Thus having 
 no ideas of the particular mechanical affections of the minute parts of bodies 
 that are within our view and reach, we are ignorant of their constitutions, 
 powers, and operations : and of bodies more remote we are yet more ignor- 
 ant, not knowing so much as their very outward shapes, or the sensible and 
 grosser parts of their constitutions. 
 
 Sect. 27.Mu&hle$s of spirits. — This, at first, will show us how dispro- 
 portionate' our knowledge is to the whole extent even of material beings ; to 
 which, if we add the consideration of that infinite number of spirits that may 
 be, and probably are, which are yet more remote from our knowledge, 
 whereof we have no cognizance, nor can frame to ourselves any distinct ideas 
 of their several ranks and sorts, we shall find this cause of ignorance conceal 
 from us, m an impenetrable. obscurity, alm ost the wjjole intellectual world-; a 
 greaterFertainty, and more beautiful world than the material.- Pot bating 
 some very few,- and those, if I may so call them, superficial ideas of spirit, 
 which by reflection we get of our own, and from thence the best we can col- 
 lect of the Father of all spirits, the eternal independent Author of them, and 
 us, and all things ; we have no certain information, so much as of the exist- 
 ence of other spirits, but by revelation. Angels of all sorts are naturally be- 
 yond our discovery: and all those intelligences whereof it is likely there are 
 more orders than corporeal substances, are things whereof our natural facul- 
 ties give us no certain account at all. That there are minds and thinking 
 beings in other men as well as himself, every man has a reason, from their 
 words and actions, to be satisfied : and the knowledge of his own mind can- 
 not suffer a man, that considers, to be ignorant that there is a God. But that 
 there are degrees of spiritual beings between us and the great God, who is 
 there that by his own search and ability can come to know 1 Much less have 
 we distinct ideas of their different natures, conditions, states, powers, and 
 several constitutions, wherein they agree or differ from one another, and from 
 us. And therefore in what concerns their different species and properties, 
 we ar e under an absolute ignorance. 
 
 Sect. 28. Secondly, want of a discoverableconnexion between ideas we 
 have. — Secondly, what a small part of the substantial^eingiTEat^aTe— m~tbe- 
 umverseTTlie -\v ant of ideas leaves open to our knowledge, we have seen. In 
 the next place, another cause of ignorance, of no less moment, is a want of a 
 discoverable connexion between those ideas we have. For wherever we want 
 that, we are utterly incapable of universal and certain knowledge ; and are, 
 in the former case, left only to observation and experiment: which, how nar- 
 row and confined it is, how far from general knowledge, we need not be told. 
 I shall give some few instances of this cause of our ignorance, and so leave 
 it. It is evident that the bulk, figure, and motion of several bodies about us, 
 produce in us several sensations, as of colours, sounds, tastes, smells, plea- 
 sure and pain, &c. These mechanical affections of bodies having no affinity at 
 all with those ideas they produce in us (there being no conceivable connexion 
 between any impulse of any sort of body and any perception of a colour or 
 smell, which we find in our minds) we can have no distinct knowledge of 
 such operations beyond our experience ; and can reason no otherwise about 
 them than as effects produced by the appointment of an infinitely wise agent, 
 which perfectly surpass our comprehensions. As the ideas of sensible se- 
 condary qualities which we have in our minds, can by us be no ways deduced 
 from, bodily causes, nor any correspondence or connexion be found between 
 them and those primary qualities which (experience shows us) produce them 
 m us ; so, on the other side, the operation of our minds upon our bodies is aa 
 
376 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 inconceivable. How any thought should produce a motion in body is as re- 
 mote from the nature of our ideas, as how any body should produce any 
 thought in the mind. That it is so, if experience did not convince us, the 
 consideration of the things themselves would never be able in the least to dis- 
 cover to ue. These, and the like, though they have a constant and regular 
 connexion, in the ordinary course of things ; yet that connexion being not dis- 
 coverable in the ideas themselves, which appearing to have no necessary de- 
 pendence one on another, we can attribute their connexion to nothing else 
 but the arbitrary determination of that all-wise agent, who has made them to 
 be, and to operate as they do, in a way wholly above our weak understand- 
 ings to conceive. 
 
 Sect. 29r Instances . — In some of our ideas there are certain relations, 
 habitudes, and connexions, so visibly included in the nature of the ideas them- 
 selves, that we cannot conceive them separable from them by any power 
 whatsoever. And in these only we are capable of certain and universal know- 
 ledge. Thus the idea of a right-lined triangle necessarily carries with it an 
 equality of its angles to two right ones. Nor can we conceive this relation, 
 this connexion, or these two ideas, to be possibly mutable, or to depend on any 
 arbitrary power, which of choice made it thus, or could make it otherwise. 
 But the coherence and continuity of the parts of matter ; the production of sen- 
 sation in us of colours and sounds, &c. by impulse and motion; nay, the origi- 
 nal rules and communication of motion being such, wherein we can discover 
 no natural connexion with any ideas we have; we cannot but ascribe them 
 to the arbitrary will and good pleasure of the wise architect. I need not, I 
 think, here mention the resurrection of the dead, the future state of this globe 
 of earth, and such other things, which are by every one acknowledged to de- 
 pend wholly on the determination of a free agent. The things that, as far 
 as our observation reaches, we constantly find to proceed regularly, we may 
 conclude, do act by a law set them; but yet by a law that we knownot: where- 
 by, though causes work steadily, and effects constantly flow from them, yet 
 their connexion and dependences being not discoverable in our ideas, we can 
 have but an experimental knowledge of them. From all which it is easy to 
 perceive what a darkness we are involved in, how little it is of being, 
 and the things that are, that we are capable to know. And therefore 
 we shall do no injury to our knowledge, when we modestly think with our- 
 selves, that we are so far from being able to comprehend the whole nature of 
 the universe, and all the things contained in it, that we are not capable of a 
 philosophical knowledge of the bodies that are about us, and make a part of 
 us: concerning their secondary qualities, powers, and operations, we can have 
 no universal certainty. Several effects come every day within the notice of 
 our senses, of which we have so far sensitive knowledge; but the causes, 
 manner and certainty of their production, for the two foregoing reasons, we 
 must be content to be very ignorant of. In these we can go no farther than 
 particular experience informs us of matter of fact, and by analogy to guess 
 what effects the like bodies are, upon other trials, like to produce. But as 
 to a perfect science of natural bodies (not to mention spiritual beings) we 
 are, I think, so far from being capable of any such thing, that I conclude it 
 lost labour to seek after it. 
 
 Sect. 30. Thirdly, want o f tracing our ideas. — Thirdly, where we have 
 adequate ideas, and where there is a certain and discoverable connexion be- 
 tween them, yet we are often ignorant, for want of tracing those ideas which 
 we have, or may have, and for want of finding out those intermediate ideas, 
 which may show us what habitude of agreement or disagreement they have 
 one with another. And thus many are ignorant of mathematical truths, not 
 out of any imperfection of their faculties, or uncertainty in the things them- 
 selves, but for want of application in acquiring, examining, and by due ways 
 comparing those ideas. That which has most contributed, to. hind©” the due 
 tracing of our ideas, and finding out their relations, and agreements or disa- 
 greements one with another, has been, I suppose, the ill use of words. It is 
 
Ch. 3. 
 
 EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 377 
 
 impossible that men should ever truly seek, or certainly discover the agree- 
 ment oi disagreement of ideas themselves, whilst their thoughts flutter about 
 or stick only in sounds of doubtful and uncertain significations. Mathema- 
 ticians abstracting their thoughts from names, and accustoming themselves to 
 set before their minds the ideas themselves that they would consider, and not 
 sounds instead of them, have avoided thereby a great part of that perplexity, 
 puddering, and confusion, which have so much hindered men’s progress in 
 other parts of knowledge. For whilst they stick in words of undetermined 
 and uncertain signification, they are unable to distinguish true from false, 
 certain from probable, consistent from inconsistent, in their own opinions. 
 This having been the fate or misfortune of a great part of men of letters, the 
 increase brought into the stock of real knowledge has been very little, in pro- 
 portion to the schools, disputes, and writings, the world has been filled with ; 
 whilst students, being lost in the great wood of words, knew not whereabout 
 they were, how far their discoveries were advanced, or what was wanting 
 in their own or the general stock of knowledge. Had men, in the discove- 
 ries of the material, done as they have in those of the intellectual world, in- 
 volved in all the obscurity of uncertain and doubtful ways of talking, volumes 
 writ of navigation and voyages, theories and stories of zones and tides, mul- 
 tiplied and disputed ; nay, ships built, and fleets sent out, would never have 
 taught us the way beyond the line ; and the antipodes would be still as much 
 unknown as when it was declared heresy to hold there were any. But hav- 
 ing spoken sufficiently of words, and the ill or careless use that is commonly 
 made of them, I shall not sav any thing more of it here. 
 
 Sect. "31. tlx tent in respect to universality. — Hitherto we have examined 
 the extent of our knowledge, in respect of the several sorts of beings that 
 are. There is another extent of it, in respect of universality, which will also 
 deserve to be considered ; and in this regard, our knowledge follows the na- 
 ture of our ideas. If the ideas are abstract, whose agreement or disagreement 
 we perceive, our knowledge is universal. For what is known of such gene- 
 ral ideas, will be true of every particular thing, in whom that essence, i. e. that 
 abstract idea, is to be found ; and what is once known of such ideas will be 
 perpetually and forever true. So that as to all general knowledge, we must 
 search and find it only in our minds, and it is only the examining of our own 
 ideas that furnisheth us with that. Truths belonging to essences of tilings, 
 (that is, to abstract ideas) are eternal, and are to be found out by the contem- 
 plation only of those essences: as the existences of things are to be known 
 only from experience. But having more to say of this in the chapters where 
 I shall speak of general and real knowledge, this may here suffice as to the 
 universality of our knowledge in general. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF THE REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 Sect. 1. Objection. Knowledge placed in ideas, may be attbare msion.^ 
 I doubt not but my reader by this time may be apt to think, that 1 have been 
 all this while only building a castle in the air ; and be ready to say to ir° . “ ta 
 what purpose all this stir 1 Knowledge, say you, is only the perceptio.. 
 the agreement or disagreement of our own ideas: but who knows what thos 
 ideas may be 1 Is there any thing so extravagant as the imaginations of 
 men’s brains 1 Where is the head that has no chimeras in it? Or, if there 
 be a sober and a wise man, what difference will there be, by your rules, be- 
 tween his knowledge and that of the most extravagant fancy in the world 1 
 They both have their ideas, and perceive their agreement and disagreement 
 one with another. If there be any difference between them, the advantage 
 will be on the warm-headed man’s side, as having the more ideas, and the 
 2 X 
 
S78 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Rook 4. 
 
 more lively : and so, by your rules, he will be the more knowing. If it be 
 true that all knowledge lies only in the perception of the agreement or disa 
 greement of our own ideas, the visions cf an enthusiast, and the reasonings 
 of a sober man, will be equally certain. It is no matter how things are ; so 
 a man observe but the agreement of his own imaginations, and talk confoiv 
 mably, it is all truth, all certainty. Such castles in the air will be as strong 
 holds of truth, as the demonstrations of Euclid. That a harpy is not a cen- 
 taur is by this way as certain knowledge, and as much a truth, as that a 
 square is not a circle. 
 
 “ But of what use is all this fine knowledge of men’s own imaginations to 
 a man that inquires after the reality of things 1 It matter’s not what men’s 
 fancies are ; it is the knowledge of things that is only to be prized : it is this 
 alone gives a value to our reasonings, and preference to one man’s knowledge 
 over another’s ; that it is of things as they really are, and not of dreams and 
 fancies.” 
 
 Sect. 2. Answer, Not so, where ideas agree with things. — To which I 
 answer, that if ourlknowledge of our Ideas terminate in them, and reach no 
 farther, where there is something farther intended, our most serious thoughts 
 will be of little more use than the reveries of a crazy brain ; and the truths 
 built thereon of no more weight than the discourses of a man, who sees things 
 clearly in a dream, and with great assurance utters them. But I hope, before 
 I have done, to make it evident, that this way of certainty^by-the knowledge 
 of our own ideas, goes a little farther than bare imagination: and I believe it 
 will appear that all the certainty of general truths a man has, lies in nothing 
 else. 
 
 Sect. 3. — It is evident the mind knows not things immediately, but only 
 by the intervention of the ideas it has of them. Our knowledge therefore is 
 real, only so far as there is a conformity between our ideas and the reality 
 of things. But what shall be here the criterion 1 How shall the mind, when 
 it perceives nothing but its own ideas, know that they agree with things 
 themselves 1 This, though it seems not to want difficulty, yet I think, 
 there be two sorts of ideas, that, we may be assured, agree with things. 
 
 Sect. 4. As 1. All simple ideas do. — First, the first are simple ideas, 
 which, since the mind, as has been shown, can by no means make to itself 
 must necessarily be the product of things operating on the mind in a natural 
 way, and producing therein those perceptions which by the wisdom and will 
 of our Maker they are ordained and adapted to. From whence it follows, 
 that simple ideas are no fictions of our fancies, but the natural and regular 
 productions of things without us, really operating upon us, and so carry with 
 them all the conformity which is intended, or which our state requires; for 
 they represent to us things, under those appearances which they are fitted to 
 produce in us, whereby we are enabled to distinguish the sorts of particular 
 substances, to discern the states they are in, and so to take them for our ne- 
 cessities, and to apply them to our uses. Thus the idea of whiteness, or 
 bitterness, as it is in the mind, exactly answering that power which is in any 
 body to produce it there, has all the real conformity it can, or ought to have 
 with things without us. And this conformity between our simple ideas, and 
 the existence of things, is sufficient for real knowledge. 
 
 Sect. 5. 2. All complex ideas, except of substances. — Secondly, all our 
 
 complex ideas, except those of substances, being archetypes of the mind’s 
 own making, not intended to be the copies of any thing, nor referred to the 
 existence of any thing, as to their originals, cannot want any conformity 
 necessary to real knowledge. For that which is not designed to represent 
 any thing but itself, can never be capable of a wrong representation, nor 
 mislead us from the true apprehension of any thing, by its dislikeness to it; 
 and such, excepting those of substances, are all our complex ideas; which, as 
 1 have shown in another place, are combinations of ideas, which the mind, 
 by its free choice, puts together, without considering any connexion they 
 have in nature. And hence it is, that in all these sorts the ideas themselves 
 
Ch. 4. 
 
 REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 379 
 
 are considered as the archetypes, and things no otherwise regarded, but as 
 they are conformable to them. So that we cannot but be infallibly certain, 
 that all the knowledge we attain concerning these ideas is real, and reaches 
 things themselves ; because in all our thoughts, reasonings, and discourses 
 of this kind, we intend things no farther than as they are conformable to our 
 ideas. So that in these we cannot miss of a certain and undoubted reality. 
 
 Sect. 6. Hence the reality of mathematical knowledge. — I doubt not but 
 it will be easily granted, that the knowledge we have of mathematical truths 
 is not only certain, but real-knowledge ; and not the bare empty vision of vain 
 insignificant chimeras cf the brain : and yet, if we will consider, we shall find 
 that it is only of our own ideas. The mathematician considers the truth and 
 properties belonging to a rectangle, or circle, only as they are in idea in his 
 own mind. For it is possible he never found either of them existing mathema- 
 tically, i. e. precisely true, in his life. But yet the knowledge he has of any 
 truths or properties belonging to a circle, or any other mathematical figure, are 
 nevertheless true and certain, even of real things existing ; because real things 
 are no farther concerned, nor intended to be meant by any such propositions, 
 than as things really agree to those archetypes in his mind. Is it true of the 
 idea of a triangle, that its three angles are equal to two right ones 1 It is true 
 also of a triangle, wherever it really exists. Whatever other figure exists, 
 that is not exactly answerable to the idea of a triangle in his mind, is not at 
 all concerned in that proposition : and therefore he is certain all his know- 
 ledge concerning such ideas is real knowledge ; because intending things 
 no farther than they agree with those his ideas, he is sure what he knows 
 concerning those figures, when they have barely an ideal existence in his 
 mind, will hold true of them also, when they have a real existence in matter ; 
 his consideration being barely of those figures, which are the same, where- 
 ever or .however they exist. 
 
 Sect- -7. -And-of moral.— And hence itfellows, that m'OraTkriowledge is 
 as capable' nf real certainty as mathematics. For certainty being but the per- 
 ception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas ; and demonstration 
 nothing but the perception of such agreement, by the intervention of othei 
 ideas, or mediums; our moral ideas, as well as mathematical, being arche- 
 types themselves, and so adequate and complete ideas ; all the agreement oi 
 disagreement which we shall find in them will produce real knowledge, as 
 well as in mathematical figures. 
 
 Sect. 8. Existence not required to make it real. — For the attaining of 
 knowledge arid certainty, it is requisite that we have determined ideas ; and, 
 to make our knowledge real, it is requisite that the ideas answer their arche- 
 types. Nor let it.be wondered, that I place the certainty of our knowledge 
 m tKeYiorisideration of our ideas, with so little care and regard (as it may 
 seem) to the real existence of things ; since most of those discourses, which 
 take up the thoughts, and engage the disputes of those who pretend to make 
 it their business to inquire after truth and certainty, will, I presume, upon ex- 
 amination, be found to be general propositions, and notions in which exist- 
 ence is not at all concerned. All the discourses of the mathematicians about 
 the squaring of a circle, conic sections, or any other part of mathematics, con- 
 cern not the existence of any of those figures ; but their demonstrations, 
 which depend on their ideas, are the same, whether there be any square or 
 circle existing in the world or no. In the same manner the truth and cer- 
 tainty of moral discourses abstracts from the lives of men, and the existence 
 of those virtues in the world whereof they treat. Nor are Tully’s Offices 
 less true, because there is nobody in the world that exactly practices his 
 rules, and lives up to that pattern of a virtuous man which he has given us, 
 and which existed nowhere, when he writ, but in idea. If it be true in 
 speculation, i. e. in idea, that murder deserves death, it will also be true in 
 reality of any action that exists conformable to that idea of murder. As for 
 other actions, the truth of that proposition concerns them not. And thus it 
 is of all other species of things, which have no other essences but those ideas 
 which are in the minds of men. 
 
380 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 Sect. 9. Nor will it be less true or certain, because moral ideas are of 
 our own making and naming. — But it will here be said, that if moral know- 
 ledge be placed in the contemplation of our own moral ideas, and those, as 
 other modes, be of our own making, what strange notions will there be of jus- 
 tice and temperance ! What confusion of virtues and vices, if every one 
 may make what ideas of them he pleases 1 No confusion nor disorder in the 
 things themselves, nor in the reasonings about them : no more than (in mathe- 
 matics) there would be a disturbance in the demonstration, or a change in 
 the properties of figures, and their relations one to another, if a man should 
 make a triangle with four corners, or a trapezium with four right angles ; that 
 
 is, in plain English, change the names of the figures, and call that by one 
 name which mathematicians call ordinarily by another. For let a man make 
 to himself the idea of a figure with three angles,- whereof one is a right one, 
 and call it, if he please, equilaterum, or trapezium, or any thing else, the pro- 
 perties of and demonstrations about that idea will be the same, as if he called 
 it a rectangular triangle. I confess the change of the name, by the impro- 
 priety of speech, will at first disturb him, who knows not what idea it stands 
 for ; but as soon as the figure is drawn, the consequences and demonstration 
 are plain and clear. Just the same is it in moral knowledge ; let a man have 
 the idea of taking from others, without their consent, what their honest in- 
 dustry has possessed them of, and call this justice if he please. He that 
 
 ' takes the name here without the idea put to it, will be mistaken, by joining 
 another idea of his own to that name : but strip the idea of that name, or take 
 
 it, such as it is, in the speaker’s mind, and the same things will agree to it, as 
 if you had called it injustice. Indeed, wrong names in moral discourses breed 
 usually more disorder, because they are not so easily rectified as in mathe- 
 matics, where the figure, once drawn and seen, makes the name useless ana 
 of no force. For what need of a sign, when the thing signified is present 
 and in view! But in moral names that cannot be so easily and shortly done, 
 because of the many decompositions that go to the making up the complex 
 ideas of those modes. But yet for all this, miscalling of any of those ideas, 
 contrary to the usual signification of the words of that language, hinders not 
 but that we may have certain and demonstrative knowledge of their several 
 agreements and disagreements, if we will carefully, as in mathematics, keep 
 to the same precise ideas, and trace them in their several relations one to 
 another, without being led away by their names. If we but separate the idea 
 under consideration from the sign that stands for it, our knowledge goes 
 equally on in the discovery of real truth and certainty, whatever sounds we 
 make use of. 
 
 Sect. 10. Misnaming disturbs not the certainty of the knowledge. — One 
 thing more we are -to take notice of, that where God, or any other lawmaker, 
 hath defined any moral names, there they have made the essence of that spe- 
 cies to which that name belongs ; and there it is not safe to apply or use 
 them otherwise : but in other cases it is bare impropriety of speech to applv 
 them contrary to the common usage of the country. But yet even this too 
 disturbs not the certainty of that knowledge, which is still to be had by a due 
 contemplation and comparing of those even nicknamed ideas. 
 
 Sect. 11. Ideas of substances have their archetypes without us. — Thirdly 
 there is another sort of complex ideas, which, being referred to archetypes 
 without us, may differ from them, and so our knowledge about them may 
 come short of being real. Such are our ideas of substances, which consist- 
 ing of a collection of simple ideas, supposed taken from the works of nature, 
 may yet vary from them, by having more or different ideas united in them, 
 than are to be found united in the things themselves. From whence it comes 
 to pass, that they may, and often do, fail of being exactly conformable to things 
 themselves. 
 
 Sect. 12. So far as they agree with those, so far our knowledge concern- 
 ing them is real. — I say, then, that to have ideas of substances, which, by 
 neing conformable to things, may afford us real knowledge, it is not enough, 
 
Ch. 4. 
 
 REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 381 
 
 as in modes, to put together such ideas as have no inconsistence, though they 
 did never before so exist : v. g. the ideas of sacrilege or perjury, &c. were as 
 real and true ideas before as after the existence of any such fact. But our 
 ideas of substances being supposed copies, and referred to archetypes with- 
 out us, must still be taken from something that does or has existed ; they 
 must not consist of ideas put together at the pleasure of our thoughts, with- 
 out any real pattern they were taken from, though we can perceive no incon- 
 sistence in such a combination. The reason whereof is, because we know- 
 ing not what real constitution it is of substances, whereon our simple ideas 
 depend, and which really is the cause of the strict union of some of them one 
 with another, and the exclusion of others ; there are very few of them that 
 we can be sure are, or are not, inconsistent in nature, any farther than ex- 
 perience and sensible observation reach; — Herein^hereforejJs founded the 
 reality of our knowledge concerning substances, that all our complex ideas 
 of them must be such, and such only, as are made up of such simple ones as 
 have beenl discovered to coexist in nature. - And our ideas being thus true, 
 though not, perhaps, very exact copies, are yet the subjects of real (as far as 
 we have arty) knowledge of them. Which (as has been already shown) will 
 noTbe found to reach very far : but so far as it does, it will still be real know- 
 ledge. Whatever ideas we have, the agreement we find they have with 
 others will still be knowledge. If those ideas be abstract, it will be general 
 knowledge. But to make it real concerning substances, the ideas must be 
 taken from the real existence of things. Whatever simple ideas have been 
 found to coexist in any substance, these we may with confidence join toge- 
 ther again, and so make abstract ideas of substances. For whatever have 
 once had a union, in nature, may be united again. 
 
 Sect. 13. In our inquiries about substances, we must consider ideas, and 
 not confine our thoughts to names, or species supposed set out by names . — 
 This, if we rightly consider, and confine not our thoughts and abstract ideas 
 to names, as if there were or could be no other sort of things than what 
 known names had already determined, and as it were set out; we should think 
 of things with greater freedom and less confusion than perhaps we do. It 
 would possibly be thought a bold paradox, if not a very dangerous falsehood, 
 if I should say, that some changelings, who have lived forty years together 
 without any appearance of reason, are something between a man and a beast: 
 which prejudice is founded upon nothing else but a false supposition, that 
 these two names, man and beast, stand for distinct species so set out by real 
 essences, that there can come no other species between them : whereas, if 
 we will abstract from those names, and the supposition of such specific es- 
 sences made by nature, wherein all things of the same denominations did 
 exactly and equally partake ; if we would not fancy that there were a cer- 
 tain number of these essences, wherein all things, as in moulds, were cast 
 and formed, we should find that the idea of the shape, motion, and life of a 
 man without reason, is as much a distinct idea, and makes as much a distinct 
 sort of things from man and beast, as the idea of the shape of an ass with 
 reason would be different from either that of man or beast, and be a species 
 of animal between or distinct from both. 
 
 Sect. 14. Objection against a changeling being something between a 
 man and beast, answer edi— Here every body will be ready to ask, if change- 
 lings^ may be supposed something between man and beast, pray what are 
 they ! I answer changelings, which is as good a word to signify something 
 different from the signification of man or beast, as the names man and beast 
 are to have significations different one from the other. This, well consid 
 ered, would resolve this matter, and show my meaning without any mort 
 ado. But I am not so unacquainted with the zeal of some men, which en- 
 ables them to spin consequences, and to see religion threatened whenever 
 any one vertures to quit their forms of speaking, as not to foresee what names 
 such a proposition as this is like to be charged with: and* without doubt it 
 will be asked, if changelings are something between man and beast, what will 
 
362 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 become of them in the other work 1 . 1 To which answer, first, it concerns 
 me not to know or inquire. To their own Master tney stand or fall. It will 
 make their state neither better nor worse, whether we determine any thing 
 of it or no. They are in the hands of a faithful Creator and a bountiful 
 Father, who disposes not of his creatures according to our narrow thoughts 
 or opinions, nor distinguishes them according to names and species of our 
 contrivance. And we, that know so little of this present world we are in, 
 may, I think, content ourselves without being peremptory in defining the differ- 
 ent states which creatures shall come into when they go off this stage. It 
 may suffice us, that he hath made known to all those who are capable of 
 instruction, discoursing, and reasoning, that they shall come to an account, 
 and receive according to what they have done in this body. 
 
 Sect. 15. But, secondly, I answer, the force of these men’s questions (viz. 
 will you deprive changelings of a future state?) is founded on one of these 
 two suppositions, which are both false. The first is, that all things that 
 have the outward shape and appearance of a man, must necessarily be de- 
 signed to an immortal future being after this life : or, secondly, that whatever 
 is of human birth must be so. Take away these imaginations, and such 
 questions will be groundless and ridiculous. I desire then those who think 
 there is no more but an accidental difference between themselves and change- 
 lings, the essence in both being exactly the same, to consider whether they 
 can imagine immortality annexed to any outward shape of the body 1 The 
 very proposing of it is, I suppose, enough to make them disown it. No one 
 yet, that ever I heard of, how much soever immersed in matter, allowed that 
 excellency to any figure of the gross sensible outward parts, as to affirm eter- 
 nal life due to it, or a necessary consequence of it; or that any mass of mat- 
 ter should, after its dissolution here, be again restored hereafter to an ever- 
 lasting state of sense, perception, and knowledge, only because it was 
 moulded into this or that figure, and had such a particular frame of its visible 
 parts. Such an opinion as this, placing immortality in a certain superficial 
 figure, turns out of doors all consideration of soul or spirit, upon whose ac- 
 count alone some corporeal beings have hitherto been concluded immortal, 
 and others not. This is to attribute more to the outside than inside of things ; 
 and to place the excellency of a man more in the external shape of his body, 
 than internal perfections of his soul : which is but little better than to annex 
 the great and inestimable advantage of immortality and life everlasting, which 
 he has above other material beings, — to annex it, I say, to the cut of his 
 beard, or the fashion of his coat. For this or that outward mark of our bo- 
 dies no more carries with it the hope of an eternal duration, than the fashion 
 of a man’s suit gives him reasonable grounds to imagine it will never wear 
 out, or that it will make him immortal. It will perhaps be said, that nobody 
 thinks tiiat the shape makes any thing immortal, but it is the shape is the 
 sign of a rational soul within, which is immortal. I wonder who made it the 
 sign of any such thing : for barely saying it will not make it so. It would 
 require some proofs to persuade one of it. No figure that I know speaks 
 any such language. For it may as rationally be concluded, that the dead 
 body of a man, wherein there is to be found no more appearance or action of 
 life than there is in a statue, has yet nevertheless a living soul in it, because 
 of its shape, as that there is a rational soul in a changeling, because he has 
 the outside of a rational creature ; when his actions carry far less marks » ’ 
 reason with them, in the whole course of his life, than what are to be found 
 in many a beast. 
 
 Sect. 16. Monsters . — But it is the issue of rational parents, and must, 
 therefore be concluded to have a rational soul. I know not by what logic 
 you must so conclude. I am sure this is a conclusion that men nowhere allow 
 of. For if they did, they would not make bold, as every where they do, to de- 
 stroy ill-formed and misshaped productions. Ay, but these are monsters. Let 
 them be so ; what will your drivelling, unintelligent, intractable changeling 
 be ? Shall a defect in the body make a monster ; a defect in the mind (the 
 
Ch. 4. 
 
 REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 383 
 
 far more noble, and, in the common phrase, the far more essential part), not I 
 Shall the want of a nose, or a neck, make a monster, and put such issue out 
 of the rank of men ; the want of reason and understanding, not I This is to 
 bring all back again to what was exploded just now : this is to place all in 
 the shape, and to take the measure of a man only by his outside. To show 
 that, according to the ordinary way of reasoning in this matter, people do 
 lay the whole stress on the figure, and resolve the whole essence of the spe- 
 cies of man (as they make it) into the outward shape, how unreasonable 
 soever it be, and how much soever they disown it, we need but trace their 
 thoughts and practice a little farther, and then it will plainly appear. The 
 well-shaped changling is a man, has a rational soul, though it appear not ; 
 this is past doubt, say you. Make the ears alittle longer, and more pointed, 
 and the nose a little flatter than ordinary, and then you begin to boggle : make 
 the face yet narrower, flatter, and longer, and then you are at a stand : add 
 still more and more of the likeness of a brute to it, and let the head be per- 
 fectly that of some other animal, then presently it is a monster ; and it is de- 
 monstration with you that it hath no rational soul, and must be destroyed. 
 Where now, I ask, shall be the just measure of the utmost bounds of that 
 shape, that carries with it a rational soul 1 For since there have been human 
 foetuses produced, half beast, and half man ; and others three parts one, and 
 one part the other ; and so it is possible they may be in all the variety of ap- 
 proaches to the one or the other shape, and may have several degrees of mixture 
 of the likeness of a man or a brute ; I would gladly know what are those precise 
 lineaments, which, according to this hypothesis, are, or are not capable of a 
 rational soul to be joined to them. What sort of outside is the certain sign 
 that there is, or is not such an inhabitant within 1 For till that be done, we 
 talk at random of man : and shall always, I fear, do so, as long as we give 
 ourselves up to certain sounds, and the imaginations of settled and fixed spe- 
 cies in nature, we know not what. But after all, I desire it may be consid- 
 ered, that those who think they have answered the difficulty by telling us, 
 that a misshaped fastus is a monster, run into the same fault they are arguing 
 against, by constituting a species between man and beast. For what else, 
 
 I pray, is their monster in the case (if the word monster signifies any thing 1 
 at all) but something neither man nor beast, but partaking somewhat of 
 either 1 And just so is the changeling before-mentioned. So necessary is it 
 to quit the common notion of species and essences, if we will truly look into 
 the.nature of things, and examine them, by what our faculties can discover 
 ' 'in them as they exist, and not by groundless fancies, that have been taken up 
 about them. ------ 
 
 Sect. 17. Words and species. — I have mentioned this here, because I 
 think we canncrtlJSTtstr'caxrtiotis-thatwords and species, in the ordinary no- 
 tions which we have been used to of them, impose not on us. For I am apt 
 to think, therein lies one great obstacle to our clear and distinct knowledge, 
 especially in reference to substances ; and from thence has risen a great part 
 of the difficulties about truth and certainty. Would we accustom ourselves 
 to separate our contemplations and reasonings from words, we might, in a 
 great measure, remedy this inconvenience within our own thoughts ; but yet 
 it would still disturb us in our discourse with others, as long as we retained 
 the opinion, that species and their essences were any thing else but our-<ab=--- 
 stract ideas (such as they are) with names annexed to them, to be the signs of 
 them. _ 
 
 Sect. 18. Recajaifvlafion . — Wherever we perceive the agreement or dis- 
 agre em e nt o f~Snyof our ideas, there is certain knowledge : and wherever we L-r 
 are sura _tk.nse_ jdeas agree with the reality of things, theis -is certain real 
 knowledge. OFwEicE agreement of our ideas, with the reality of things, 
 having here given the marks, I think I have shown wherein it is, that cer- 
 tain! v, -ea. certainty, consists : which, whatever it was to others, was, I con- 
 fess, to me, neretofore, one of those desiderata which I found great want of 
 
384 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 OF TRUTH IN GENERAL. 
 
 Sect. 1. What truth is. — What is truth? was an inquiry many ages since 
 and it being that which all mankind either do, or pretend to search after, it 
 cannot but be worth our while carefully to examine wherein it consists, and 
 so acquaint ourselves with the nature of it, as to observe how the mind dis- 
 tinguishes it from falsehood. 
 
 Sect. 2. A right joining or separating of signs, i. e. ideas or words . — 
 Truth, then, seems to me, in the proper import of the word, to signify no- 
 thing but the joining or separating of signs, as the things signified by them 
 do agree or disagree one with another. The joining or separating of signs, 
 here meant, is what by another name we call jiroposition. So that truth 
 properly belongs only to propositions ; whereof there are two sorts, viz. men- 
 tal- and verbal ; as there are two sorts of signs commonly made use of, viz. 
 ideas and words. 
 
 Sect. 3. Which make mental or verbal propositions. — To form a clear 
 notion of truth, it is very necessary to consider truth of thought and truth of 
 words, distinctly one from another : but yet it is very difficult to treat of them 
 asunder; because it is unavoidable, in treating of mental propositions, to 
 make use of words; and then the instances given of mental propositions 
 cease immediately to be barely mental, and become verbal. For a mental 
 proposition being nothing but a bare consideration of the ideas, as they are 
 in our minds, stripped of names, they lose the nature of purely mental pro- 
 positions, as soon as they are put into words. 
 
 Sect. 4. Mental propositions are very hard to be treated of. — And that 
 which makes it yet harder to treat of mental and verbal propositions sepa- 
 rately is, That most men, if not all, in their thinking and reasonings within 
 themselves, make use of words instead of ideas ; at least when the subject 
 of their meditations contains in it complex ideas. Which is a great evidence 
 of the imperfection and uncertainty of our ideas of that kind, and may, if 
 attentively made use of, serve for a mark to show us what are those things 
 we have clear and perfect established ideas of, and what not. For if we will 
 curiously observe the way our mind takes in thinking and reasoning, we shall 
 find, I suppose, that when we make any propositions within our own thoughts 
 about white or black, sweet or bitter, a triangle or a circle, we can and often 
 do frame in our minds the ideas themselves, without reflecting on the names. 
 But when we would consider, or make propositions about the more complex 
 ideas, as of a man, vitriol, fortitude, glory, we usually put the name for the 
 idea : because the ideas these names stand for, being for the most part imper- 
 fect, confused, and undetermined, we reflect on the names themselves, be- 
 cause they are more clear, certain, and distinct, and readier occur to our 
 thoughts than the pure ideas; and so we make use of these words instead of 
 the ideas themselves, even when we woulft meditate and reason within our- 
 selves, and make tacit mental propositions. In substances, as has been 
 already noticed, this is occasioned by the imperfection of our ideas; we 
 making the name stand for the real essence, of which we have no idea at all. 
 In modes, it is occasioned by the great number of simple ideas that go to the 
 making them up. For many of them being compounded, the name occurs 
 much easier than the complex idea itself, which requires time and attention 
 to be recollected, and exactly represented to the mind, even in those men 
 w ho have formerly been at the pains to do it ; and is utterly impossible to be 
 done by those, who, though they have ready in their memory the greatest 
 part of the common words of that language, yet perhaps never troubled 
 themselves in all their lives to consider what precise deas the most of them 
 
Ch. 5. 
 
 TRUTH IN GENERAL. 
 
 583 
 
 stood for. Some confused or obscure notions have served the’. .' turns, and 
 many who talk very much of religion and conscience, of church and faith, 
 of power and right, of obstructions and humours, melancholy and choler, 
 would perhaps have little left in their thoughts and meditations, if one should 
 desire them to think only of the things themselves, and lay by those words, 
 with which they so often confound others, and not seldom themselves also. 
 
 Sect. 5u-— j Being nothing but the joining or separating ideas without 
 words*-^But to return to the consideration of truth: we must, I say, observe 
 . two sorts of propositions that we are capable of making. 
 
 First, mental, wherein the ideas in our understandings are without the use 
 of words put together, or separated by the mind, perceiving or judging of 
 their agreement or disagreement. 
 
 Secondly, verbal propositions, which are words, the signs of our ideas, 
 put together, or separated in affirmative or negative sentences, By which 
 way of affirming or denying, these signs, made by sounds, are,- as it were, put 
 together, or separated one from another. “--So- that proposition consists in 
 joinin g or s e p araljflg.jigns, and truth. . consis ts in. the putting together, or 
 separating'-thSse signs, according as the things which they stand for agree 
 or disagr ee. — 
 
 Sect. 6. T VKen mental propositions contain real truth, and when verbal. 
 — Every one’s experience will satisfy him, that the mind, either by perceiv- 
 ing or supposing the agreement or disagreement of any of its ideas, does 
 tacitly within itself put them into a kind of proposition affirmative or negative, 
 which I have endeavoured to express by the terms putting together and sepa- 
 rating. But this action of the mind, which is so familiar to every thinking 
 and reasoning man, is easy to be conceived by reflecting on what passes in us, 
 when we affirm or deny, than to be explained by words. When a man has 
 in his head the idea of two lines, viz. the side and diagonal of a square, 
 whereof the diagonal is an inch long, he may have the idea also of the divis- 
 ion of that line into a certain number of equal parts ; v. g. into five, ten, a 
 hundred, a thousand, or any other number, and may have the idea of that 
 inch line being divisible, or not divisible, into such equal parts, as a certain 
 number of them will be equal to the side-line. Now, whenever he perceives, 
 believes or supposes such a kind of divisibility to agree or disagree to his 
 idea of that line, he, as it were, joins or separates those two ideas, viz. the 
 idea of that line, and the idea of that kind of divisibility ; and so makes a men- 
 tal proposition, which is true or false, according as such a kind of divisibility, 
 a divisibility into such aliquot parts, does really agree to that line or no. 
 When ideas are so put together, or separated in the mind, as they, or the 
 things they stand fo r, do agree or not, that is, as I may call it, mental t ruth. But 
 truth of words is something more •; and that is the affirming or denying ol 
 words one of another, as the idea they stand for agree or ’disagree : and this 
 again in- -two fold ; cither purely verbal and trifling, which I shall speak of, 
 chap. viii. or real and instructive, which is the object of that real knowledge 
 which we have spoken of already. 
 
 SEf?Tr J ^--/ IZtiectiaa asrai nst verbal truth, that thus it may all be chimeri- 
 caL^Bui here again wmlTih apt to -oeeur-the same'doubt about truth, that did 
 "about knowledge : and it will be objected, that if truth be nothing but the join- 
 ingand separating of words in propositions, as the idea they stand for agree or 
 disagree in men’s minds, the knowledge of trutli is not so valuable a thing as 
 it is taken to be, nor worth the pains and time men employ in the search of 
 it ; since by this account it amounts to no more than the conformity of words 
 to the chimeras of men’s brains. Who knows not what odd notions many 
 men’s heads are filled with, and what strange ideas all men’s brains are capable 
 ofl B it if we rest here, we know the truth of nothing by this rule, but of 
 the visionary words in our own imaginations ; nor have other truth, but 
 what as much concerns harpies and centaurs as men and horses. For 
 those, and the like, may be ideas in our heads, and have their agreement 
 and disagreement there, as well as the ideas of real beings, and so have as 
 2 Y 
 
.386 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 true propositions made about them. And it will be altogether as true a pro- 
 position to say all centaurs are animals, as that all men are animals ; and the 
 certainty of one as great as the other. For in both the propositions, the 
 words are put together according to the agreement of the ideas in our minds ; 
 and the agreement of the idea of animal with that of centaur, is as clear and 
 visible to the mind, as the agreement of the idea of animal with that of man : 
 and so these two propositions are equally true, equally certain. But of what 
 use is all such truth to us 1 
 
 Sect. 8. Answered, real truth is ahouiideas agreeing of things. — Though 
 what has been said ' in the foregoing chapter, to distinguish real from imagi- 
 nary knowledge, might suffice here, in answer to this doubt, to distinguish 
 real truth from chimerical, or, if you please, barely nominal, they depending 
 both on the same foundation ; yet it may not be amiss here again to consider, 
 that though our words signify nothing but our ideas, yet being designed by 
 them to signify things, the truth, they contain, when put into propositions, 
 will be -only verhal, when they stand for ideas in the mind, that have not an 
 agreement with the reality of things. And therefore truth, as well as know- 
 ledge, may well come under the distinction of \rrba ljmd.real ; that being only 
 verbal truth, wherein terms are joined according to the agreement or disa- 
 greement of the ideas they stand for, without regarding whether our ideas 
 are such as really have, or are capable of having, an existence in nature. But 
 then it is they contain real truth, when these signs are joined, as our ideas 
 agree ; and when our ideas are such as we know are capable of having an 
 existence in nature : which in substances we cannot know, but by knowing 
 that such have existed. 
 
 Sect. 9. Falsehood is the joining of names otherwise than their ideas 
 agree. — Truth is the marking down in words the agreement or disagreement 
 of ideas as it is. Falsehood is the marking down in words the agreement or 
 disagreement of ideas otherwise than it is. And so far as these ideas, thus 
 marked by sounds, agree to their archetypes, so far only is the truth real. The 
 knowledge of this truth consists in knowing what ideas the words stand for, 
 and the perception of the agreement or disagreement of those ideas, ac- 
 cording as it is marked by those words. 
 
 Sect. 10. General propositions to be treated of more at large. — But be- 
 cause words are looked on as the great conduits of truth and knowledge, and 
 that in conveying and receiving of truth, and commonly in reasoning about 
 it, we make use of words and propositions ; I shall more at large inquire, 
 wherein the certainty of real truths, contained in propositions, consists, and 
 where it is to be had ; and endeavour to show in what sort of universal pro 
 positions we are capable of being certain of their real truth or falsehood. 
 
 I shall begin with general propositions, as those which most employ out 
 thoughts, and exercise our contemplation. General truths are most looked 
 after by the mind, as those that most enlarge our knowledge ; and by their 
 comprehensiveness satisfying us at once of many particulars, enlarge our 
 view, and shorten our way to knowledge. 
 
 Sect. 11. Moral and metaphysical truth. — Besides truth, taken in the 
 strict sense before mentioned, there are other sorts of truth ; as, 1. Moral 
 truth, which is speaking of things according to the persuasion of our own 
 minds, though the proposition we speak agree not to the reality of things. 
 
 2. Metaphysical truth, which is nothing but the real existence of things, con- 
 formable to the ideas to which we have annexed their names. This, though 
 it seems to consist in the very beings of things, yet, when considered a little 
 nearly, will appear to include a tacit proposition, whereby the mind joins that 
 particular thing to the idea it had before settled with a name to it. But these 
 considerations of truth, either having been before taken notice of, or not be- 
 ing much to our present purpose, it may suffice here only to have mentioned 
 them. 
 
Ch. 6. 
 
 UNIVERSAL PROPOSITIONS. 
 
 387 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OF UNIVERSAL PROPOSITIONS, THEIR TRUTH AND CERTAINTY 
 
 Sect. 1. Treating o f w ords necessary to knowledge. — Though the ex 
 amining and judging of ideas by themselves, their names being quite laid 
 aside, be the best and surest way to clear and distinct knowledge ; yet, through 
 the prevailing custom of using sounds for ideas, T think it is very seldom 
 practised. Every one may observe how common it is for names to be 
 made use of, instead of the ideas themselves, even when men think and 
 reason within their own breasts ; especially if the ideas be very complex, and 
 made up of a great collection of simple ones. This makes the consideration 
 of words and propositions so necessary a part of the treatise of knowledge, 
 that it is very hard to speak intelligibly of the one without explaining the 
 other. 
 
 Sect. 2. General truths hardly to he understood, hut in verbal propo- 
 sitions. — All the knowledge we have, being only of particular or general 
 truths, it is evident that whatever may be done in the former of these, the 
 latter, which is that which with reason is most sought after, can never be 
 well made known, and is very seldom apprehended, but as conceived and 
 expressed in words. It is not therefore out of our way, in the examination 
 of our knowledge, to inquire into the truth and certainty of universal pro- 
 positions. 
 
 Sect. 3. Certainty twofold, of truth and of knowledge. — But that we 
 may not be-Tirrsfed^in' this case, by that which is the danger everywhere, d 
 mean by the doubtfulness of terms, it is fit to observe, that certainty is two- 
 fold ; certainty, of truth,, and certainty of knowledge. Certainty of truth is, 
 when words are so put together in propositions, as exactly to express the 
 agreement or disagreement of the ideas they stand for, as really it is. Cer- 
 tainty of knowledge is to perceive the agreement or disagreement of ideas, 
 as expressed in any proposition. This we usually call knowing, or being 
 certain of the truth of any proposition. 
 
 Sect. 4. No proposition can be known to he true, where the essence of 
 each species meritioned is not known. — Now because we cannot be certain 
 of the' truth' of any general proposition, unless we know the precise bounds 
 and extent of the species its terms stand for, it is necessary we should know 
 the essence of each species, which is that which constitutes and bounds it. 
 This, in all simple ideas and modes, is not hard to do. For in these, the 
 real and nominal essence being the same : or, which is all one, the abstract 
 idea which the general term stands for being the sole essence and boundary 
 that is or can be supposed of the species ; there can be no doubt how far 
 the species extends, or what things are comprehended under each term : 
 which, it is evident, are all that have an exact conformity with the idea it 
 stands for, and no other. But in substances, wherein a real essence distinct 
 from the nominal is supposed to constitute, determine, and bound the spe- 
 cies, the extent of the general word is very uncertain : because not know- 
 ing this real essence, we cannot know what is, or what is not of that species, 
 and consequently what may, or may not with certainty be affirmed of it. 
 And thus speaking of a man, or gold, or any other species of natural sub- 
 stances, as supposed constituted by a precise and real essence, which nature 
 regularly imparts to every individual of that kind, whereby it is made to be 
 of that species, we cannot be certain of the truth of any affirmation or nega- 
 tion made of it. For man, or gold, taken in this sense, and used for spe- 
 cies of things constituted by real essences, different from the complex idea 
 in the mind of the speaker, stand for we know not what ; and the extent of 
 these species, with such boundaries, are so unknown and undetermined, that 
 
S88 
 
 Oi- HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 tt is impossible with anj certainty to affirm, that all men are rational, or that 
 all gold is yellow. But where the nominal essence is kept to, as the boun- 
 dary of each species, and men extend the application of any general term 
 no farther than to the particular things in which the complex idea it stands 
 for is to be found, there they are in no danger to mistake the bounds of each 
 Species, nor can be in doubt, on this account, whether any propositions be 
 true or no. I have chosen to explain this uncertainty of propositions in this 
 scholastic way, and have made use of the terms of essen.ces.and species, on 
 purpose to show the absurdity and inconvenience there is to think of them 
 as of any other sort of realities than barely abstract ideas with names tc 
 them. To suppose that the species of things are any thing but the sorting 
 of them under general names, according as they agree to several abstract 
 ideas, of which we make those names the signs, is to confound truth, and 
 introduce uncertainty into all general propositions that can be made about 
 them. Though therefore these things might, to people not possessed with 
 scholastic learning, be treated of in a better and clearer way; yet those 
 wrong notions of essences or species, having got root in most people’s minds, 
 who have received any tincture from the learning which has prevailed in this 
 part of the world, are to be discovered and removed, to make way for that 
 use of words which should convey certainty with it. 
 
 Sect. 5. This more par ticularly concerns substances. — The names of 
 substances, then, whenever made to stand for species, which are supposed to 
 be constituted by real essences, which we know not, are not capable to con- 
 vey certainty to the understanding : of the truth of general propositions made 
 up of such terms, we cannot be sure. The reason whereof is plain : for how 
 can we be sure that this or that quality is in gold, when we know not what 
 is or is not gold 1 Since in this way of speaking nothing is gold but what 
 partakes of an essence, which we not knowing, cannot know where it is or 
 is not, and so cannot be sure that any parcel of matter in the world is, or is 
 not in this sense gold ; being incurably ignorant, whether it has or has not 
 that which makes any thing to be called gold, i. e. that real essence of gold 
 whereof we have no idea at all : this being as impossible for us to know, as 
 it is for a blind man to tell in what flower the colour of a pansy is or is not 
 to be found, whilst he has no idea of the colour of a pansy at all. Or if we 
 could (which is impossible) certainly know where a real essence, which we 
 know not, is ; v. g. in what parcels of matter the real essence of gold is ; 
 yet could we not. be sure, that this or that quality could with truth be affirmed 
 of gold ; since it is impossible for us to know, that this or that quality or 
 idea has a necessary connexion with a real essence, of which we have no 
 idea at all, whatever species that supposed real essence may be imagined to 
 constitute. 
 
 Sect. 6. The truth of few universal propositions, caneernthg substances 
 is to be known. — On the other side, the names of substances, when made 
 use of as they should be, for the ideas men have in their minds, though they 
 carry a clear and determinate signification with them, will not yet serve us 
 to make many universal propositions, of whose truth we can be certain. Not 
 because in this use of them we are uncertain what things are signified by 
 them, but because the complex ideas they stand for are such combinations of 
 simple ones, as carry not with them any discoverable connexion or repug- 
 nancy, but with a very few other ideas. 
 
 Segtt-7-. Because coexistence of ideas in few cases is to be known.— 
 The complex ideas, that our names of the species of substances properly 
 stand for, are collections of such qualities as have been observed to coexist 
 in an unknown substratum, which we call substance ; but what other qualities 
 necessarily coexist with such combinations we cannot certainly know, unless 
 we can discover their natural dependence ; which, in their primary qualities, 
 we can go but a very little way in ; and in all their secondary qualities we can 
 discover no connexion at all, for the reasons mentioned, chap. iii. ; viz. 1. 
 Because we know not the real constitutions of substances, on which each 
 
Oh. 6. 
 
 UNIVERSAL PROPOSITIONS. 
 
 389 
 
 secondary quality particularly depends. 2. Did we know that, it would serve 
 us only for experimental (not universal) knowledge ; and reach with certainty 
 no farther than that bare instance : because our understandings can discover 
 no conceivable connexion between any secondary quality and any modification 
 whatsoever of any of the primary ones. And therefore there are very few 
 general propositions to be made concerning substances, which can carry 
 with them undoubted certainty. 
 
 Sect. 8. Instance in gold. — All gold is fixed, is a proposition whose truth 
 we cannot be certain of, how universally soever it be believed. For if, ac- 
 cording to the useless imagination of the schools, any one supposes the term 
 gold to stand for a species of things, set out by nature, by a real essence 
 belonging to it, it is evident he knows not what particular substances are of 
 that species ; and so cannot, with certainty, affirm any thing universally of 
 gold. But if he makes gold stand for a species determined by its nominal 
 essence, let the nominal essence, for example, be the complex idea of a body, 
 of a certain yellow colour, malleable, fusible, and heavier than any other 
 known ; in this proper use of the word gold, there is no difficulty to know 
 what is or is not gold. But yet no other quality can with certainty be uni- 
 versally affirmed or denied of gold, but what hath a discoverable connexion 
 or inconsistency with that nominal essence. Fixedness, for example, having 
 no necessary connexion, that we can discover, with the colour, weight, or 
 any other simple idea of our ' complex one, or with the whole combination 
 together ; it is impossible that we should certainly know the truth of this 
 proposition, that all gold is fixed. 
 
 Sect. 9. As there is no discoverable connexion between fixedness and 
 the colour, weight, and other simple ideas of that nominal essence of gold ; 
 so if we make our complex idea of gold a body yellow, fusible, ductile, 
 weighty, and fixed, we shall be at the same uncertainty concerning solubility 
 in aqua regia, and for the same reason : since we can never, from considera- 
 tion of the ideas themselves, with certainty affirm or deny of a body, whose 
 complex idea is made up of yellow, very weighty, ductile, fusible, and fixed, 
 that it is soluble in aqua regia ; and so on, of the rest of its qualities. I would 
 gladly meet with one general affirmation concerning any quality of gold, that 
 any one can certainly know is true. It will, no doubt, be presently objected, 
 is not this a universal proposition, “ all gold is malleable 1” To which I an- 
 swer, it is a very certain proposition, if malleableness be a part of the complex 
 idea the word gold stands for. But then here is nothing affirmed of gold, but 
 that that sound stands for an idea in which malleableness is contained : and 
 such a sort of truth and certainty as this, it is to say a centaur is four-footed. 
 But if malleableness makes not a part of the specific essence the name of 
 gold stands for, it is plain, “ all gold is malleable” is not a certain proposi- 
 tion. Because let the complex idea of gold be made up of whichsover of its 
 other qualities you please, malleableness will not appear to depend on that 
 complex idea, nor follow from any simple one contained in it : the connexion 
 that malleableness has (if it has any) with those other qualities, being only 
 by the intervention of the real constitution of its insensible parts, which, 
 since we know not, it is impossible we should perceive that connexion, un- 
 less we could discover that which ties them together. 
 
 Sect. 10. As far as any such coexistence can he known, so far universal 
 propositions may he certain. Slit this will go but a little way, because- 1 — 
 The nTorerlndeed, of these coexisting qualities we unite into one complex 
 idea, under one name, the more precise and determinate we make the sig- 
 nification of that word ; but never yet make it thereby more capable of uni- 
 versal certainty, in respect of other qualities, not contained in our complex 
 idea ; since we perceive not their connexion or dependence on one another, 
 being ignorant both of that real constitution in which they are all founded, 
 and also how they flow from it. For the chief part of our knowledge con- 
 cerning substances is not, as in other things, barely of the relation of two 
 deas tbflt may exist separately ; but is of the necessary connexion and coex- 
 
390 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 istence of several distinct ideas in the same subject, or of their repugnancy 
 so to coexist. Could we begin at the other end, and discover what it was, 
 wherein that colour consisted, what made a body lighter or heavier, what 
 .exture of parts made it malleable, fusible, and fixed, and fit to be dissolved 
 in this sort of liquor, and not in another ; if, I say, we had such an idea as 
 this of bodies, and could perceive wherein all sensible qualities originally con- 
 sist, and how they are produced ; we might frame such ideas of them as 
 would furnish us with matter of more general knowledge, and enable us to 
 make universal propositions, that should carry general truth and certainty 
 with them. But whilst our complex ideas of the sorts of substances are so 
 remote from that internal real constitution, on which their sensible qualities 
 depend, and are made up of nothing but an imperfect collection of those ap- 
 parent qualities our senses can discover ; there can be few general proposi- 
 tions concerning substances, of whose real truth we can be certainly assured ; 
 since there are but few simple ideas, of whose connexion and necessary 
 coexistence we can have certain and undoubted knowledge. I imagine, 
 among all the secondary qualities of substances, and the powers relating to 
 them, there cannot any two be named, whose necessary coexistence, or re- 
 pugnance to coexist, can certainly be known, unless in those of the same 
 sense, which necessarily exclude one another, as I have elsewhere shown. 
 No one, I think, by the colour that is in any body, can certainly know what 
 smell, taste, sound, or tangible qualities it has, nor what alterations it is ca- 
 pable to make or receive, on or from other bodies. The same may be said of 
 the sound or taste, &c. Our specific names of substances standing for any 
 collections of such ideas, it is not to be wondered, that we can with them 
 make very few general propositions of undoubted real certainty. But yet, so 
 far as any complex idea, of any sort of substances, contains in it any simple 
 idea, whose necessary coexistence with any other may be discovered, so far 
 universal propositions may with certainty be made concerning it : v. g. could 
 any one discover a necessary connexion between malleableness, and the co- 
 lour or weight of gold, or any ot her part of the complex idea signified by that 
 name, he might make a certain universal proposition concerning gold in this 
 respect; and the real truth of this proposition, “that all gold is malleable,” 
 would be as certain as of this, “the three angles of all right-lined triangles 
 are equal to two right ones.” 
 
 Sect. 11. The qualities which make our complex ideas of substances, 
 depend mostly on external, remote, and unperceived causes. — Had'we such 
 ideas of substances, as to know what real constitutions produce those sensible 
 qualities we find in them, and how those qualities flowed from thence, we could, 
 by the specific ideas of their real essences in our own minds, more certainly 
 find out their properties, and discover what qualities they had or had not, than 
 we can now by our senses : and to know the properties of gold, it would be 
 no more necessary that gold should exist, and that we should make experi- 
 ments upon it, than it is necessary for the knowing the properties of a trian- 
 gle, that a triangle should exist in any matter ; the idea in our minds would 
 serve for the one as well as the other. But we are so far from being admitted 
 into the secrets of nature, that we scarce so much as ever approach the first 
 entrance toward them. For we are wont to consider the substances we meet 
 with, each of them as an entire thing by itself, having all its qualities in it- 
 self, and independent of other things ; overlooking, for the most part, the 
 operations of those invisible fluids they are encompassed with, and upon 
 whose motions and operations depend the greatest part of those qualities 
 which are taken notice of in them, and are made by us the inherent marks of 
 distinction, whereby we know and denominate them. Put a piece of gold 
 any where by itself, separate from the reach and influence of all other bodies, 
 it will immediately lose all its colour and weight, and perhaps rnalleableness 
 too ; which, for aught I know, would be changed into a perfect friability. 
 Water, in which to us fluidity is an essential quality, left to itself, would 
 cease to be fluid. But if inanimate bodies owe so much of their present state 
 
Ch. 6. 
 
 UNIVERSAL PROPOSITIONS. 
 
 391 
 
 to other bodies without them, that they would not be what they appear to us, 
 were those bodies that environ them removed ; it is yet more so in vegeta- 
 bles, which are nourished, grow, and produce leaves, flowers, and seeds in a 
 constant succession. And if we look a little nearer into the state of animals 
 we shall find that their dependence, as to life, motion, and the most con- 
 siderable qualities to be observed in them, is so wholly on extrinsical causes 
 and qualities of other bodies that make no part of them, that they cannot 
 subsist a moment without them : though yet those bodies on which they de- 
 pend are little taken notice of, and make no part of the complex ideas we 
 frame of those animals. Take the air- hut for a minute from the greatest 
 part of living creatures, and they presently lose sense, life, and motion. This 
 the necessity of breathing has forced into our knowledge. R ut, how many 
 other extrinsical, and possibly very remote bodies, do the springs of these~acUT 
 mirable machines depend on, which are not vulgarly observed, or so much as 
 thought on ; and how many are there, which the 'severest inquiry can never 
 discovert.- The inhabitants of this spot of the universe, though removed so 
 many millions of miles from the sun, yet depend so much on the duly tem- 
 pered motion of particles coming from, or agitated by it, that were this earth 
 removed but a small part of that distance out of its present situation, and 
 placed a little farther or nearer that source of heat, it is more than probable 
 that the greatest part of the animals in it would immediately perish : since 
 we find them so often destroyed by an excess or defect of the sun’s warmth, 
 which an accidental position, in some parts of this our little globe exposes 
 them to. The qualities observed in a loadstone must needs have their source 
 far beyond the confines of that body ; and the ravage made often on several 
 sorts of animals by invisible causes, the certain death (as we are told) of 
 some of them, by barely passing the line, or, as it is certain of others, by be- 
 ing removed into a neighbouring country ; evidently show that the concur- 
 rence and operations cf several bodies, with which they are seldom thought to 
 have any thing to do, is absolutely necessary to make them be what they ap- 
 pear to us, and to preserve those qualities by which we know and distinguish 
 them. We are then quite out of the way, when we think that things con- 
 tain within themselves the qualities that appear to us in them ; and we in 
 vain search for that constitution within the body of a fly, or an elephant, upon 
 which depend those qualities and powers we observe in them. For which, 
 perhaps, to understand them aright, we ought to look not only beyond this 
 our earth and atmosphere, but even beyond the sun, or remotest star our 
 eyes have yet discovered. For how much the being and operation of par- 
 ticular substances in this our globe depends on causes utterly beyond our 
 view, is impossible for us to determine. We see and perceive some of the 
 motions and grosser operations of things here about us ; but whence the 
 streams come that keep all these curious machines in motion and repair, how 
 conveyed and modified, is beyond our notice and apprehension : and the 
 great parts and wheels, as I may so say, of this stupendous structure of the 
 universe, may, for aught we know, have such a connexion and dependence in 
 their influence and operations one upon another, that perhaps things in this 
 our mansion would put on quite another face, and cease to be what they are, 
 if some one of the stars or great bodies, incomprehensibly remote from us, 
 should cease to be or move as it does. This is certain, things, however ab- 
 solute and entire they seem in themselves, are but retainers to other parts or 
 nature, for that which they are most taken notice of by us. Their observable 
 qualities, actions, and powers, are owing to something without them ; and 
 there is not so complete and perfect a part that we know of nature, which 
 does not owe the being it has, and the excellencies of it, to its neighbours ; 
 and we must not confine our thoughts within the surface of any body, but look 
 a great deal farther, to comprehend perfectly those qualities that are in it. 
 
 Sect. 12. If this be so, it is not to be wondered, that we have very imper- 
 fect ideas of substances ; and that the real essences, on which depend their 
 properties and operations, are unknown to us. We cannot discover so much 
 
892 
 
 CF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 as that size, figure, and texture of their minute and active parts, which is 
 really in them; much less the different motions and impulses made in and 
 upon them by bodies from without, upon which depends, and by which is 
 formed, the gi eatest and most remarkable part of those qualities we observe in 
 them, and of which our complex ideas of them are made up. This considera- 
 tion alone is enough to put an end to all our hopes of ever having the ideas of 
 their real essences ; which, whilst we want, the nominal essences w T e make 
 use of instead of them will be able to furnish us but very sparingly with any 
 general knowledge, or universal propositions capable of real certainty 
 
 Sect. 13. Judgment may reach farther, but that is not knowledge,- — We 
 are not therefore to wonder, if certainty he to be found in veiy few general 
 propositions made concerning substances : our knowledge of their qualities 
 and properties goes very seldom farther than our senses reach and inform us. 
 Possibly inquisitive and observing men m ay, by streng th of judgment, pene- 
 trate farther, and on probabilities taken from wary observation, arm hints well 
 laid together, often guess right at what experience has not yet discovered to 
 them. But this is but guessing still ; it amounts only to opinion, and has not 
 that-certainty which is requisite to knowledge. For all general knowledge 
 lies only in our own thoughts, and consists barely in the contemplation of our 
 own abstract ideas. Wherever we perceive any agreement or disagreement 
 among them, there we have general knowledge ; and, by putting the names 
 of those ideas together accordingly in propositions, can with certainty pro- 
 nounce general truths. But because the abstract ideas of substances, for 
 which their specific names stand, whenever they have any distinct and deter- 
 minate signification, have a discoverable connexion or inconsistency with but 
 a very few other ideas ; the certainty of universal propositions concerning 
 substances is very narrow and scanty in that part, which is our principal in- 
 quiry concerning them ; and there are scarce any of the names of substances, 
 let the idea it is applied to be what it will, of which we can generally and 
 with certainty pronounce, that it has or has not this or that other quality be- 
 longing to it, and constantly coexisting or inconsistent with that idea, where- 
 ever it is to be found. 
 
 Sect. 14. What is requisite for our knowledge of substances. — Before 
 we can have any tolerable knowledge of this kind, we must first know., what 
 changes the primary qualities of one body do regularly produce mtlifprimary 
 qualities of another, and how. Secondly, we must know what primary quali- 
 ties of any body produce certain sensations or ideas in us. This is in truth 
 no less than to know all the effects of matter, under its divers modifications 
 of bulk, figure, cohesion of parts, motion, and rest. Which, I think, every 
 body will allow, is utterly impossible to be known by us without revelation. 
 Nor if it were revealed to us, what sort of figure, bulk, and motion of corpus- 
 cles, would produce in us the sensation of a yellow colour, and what sort of 
 figure, bulk, and texture of parts, in the superficies of any body, were fit to 
 give such corpuscles their due motion to produce that colour; would that be 
 enough to make universal propositions with certainty, concerning the several 
 sorts of them, unless we had faculties acute enough to perceive the precise 
 bulk, figure, texture and motion of bodies in those minute parts, by which 
 they operate on our senses, so that we might by those frame our abstract 
 ideas of them. I have mentioned here only corporeal substances, whose 
 operations seem to lie more level to our understandings : for as to the opera- 
 tions of spirits, both their thinking and moving of bodies, we at first sight find 
 ourselves at a loss ; though, perhaps, when we have applied our thoughts a 
 little nearer to the consideration of bodies and their operations, and examined 
 how far our notions, even in these, reach, with any clearness, beyond sensible 
 matter of fact, we shall be bound to confess, that even in these too our dis- 
 coveries amount to very little beyond perfect ignorance and incapacity. 
 
 Sect. 15. Whilst our ideas of substances contain not their real consti- 
 tutions, we can make but few general certain propositions concerning them 
 , — This is evident, the abstract complex ideas of substancUsTfof^whlch thei 
 
Ch. 6. 
 
 UNIVERSAL PROPOSITIONS. 
 
 392 
 
 general names stand, not comprehending their real constitutions, can afford 
 us very little universal certainty. Because our ideas of them are not made 
 up of that, on which those qualities we observe in them, and would inform 
 ourselves about, do depend, or with which they have any certain connexion • 
 v. g. let the ideas to which we give the name man be, as it commonly is, a 
 body of the ordinary shape, with sense, voluntary motion, and reason joined 
 to it. This being the abstract idea, and consequently the essence of our 
 species man, we can make but very few general certain propositions concern- 
 ing man, standing for such an idea. Because not knowing the real consti- 
 tution on which sensation, power of motion, and reasoning, with that peculiar 
 shape, depend, and whereby they are united together in the same subject, 
 there are very few other qualities with which we can perceive them to have 
 a necessary connexion: and therefore we cannot with certainty affirm, that 
 all men sleep by intervals ; that no man can be nourished by wood or stones ; 
 that all men will be poisoned by hemlock ; because these idea's have no con- 
 nexion or repugnancy with this our nominal essence of man, with this abstract 
 idea that name stands for. We must in these and the like appeal to trial in 
 particular subjects, which can reach but a little way. We must content 
 ourselves with probability in the rest; but can have no general certainty, 
 whilst our specific idea of man contains that real constitution, which is the 
 root, wherein all his inseparable qualities are united, and from whence they 
 flow. Whilst our idea, the word man stands for, is only an imperfect col- 
 lection of some sensible qualities and powers in him, there is no discernible 
 connexion or repugnance between our specific idea and the operation of 
 either the parts of hemlock or stones upon his constitution. There are ani- 
 mals that safely eat hemlock, and others that are nourished by wood and 
 stones : but as long as we want ideas of those real constitutions of different 
 sorts of animals, whereon these and the like qualities and powers depend, 
 we must not hope to reach certainty in universal propositions concerning 
 them. Those few ideas only, which have a discernible connexion with our 
 nominal essence, or any part of it, can afford us such propositions. But 
 these are so few, and of so little moment, that we may justly look on our 
 certain general knowledge of substances as almost none at all. 
 
 Sect. 16. Wherein lies the general certainty of •propositions . — To con- 
 clude; general propositions, of what kind soever, are then only capable of 
 certainty, when the terms used.- in them stand for such ideas, whose agree- 
 meSJ^r^sagrsemerrfj'asThere expressed, is capable to be discovered by us. 
 AnffweZagjth gm egtoia- of their truth or falsehood, when we perceive the 
 ideas the termsstandTor to iigRitJ or nor agree, ''according as they are affirmed 
 or denied' one-ef another. Whence we may take notice, that .general cer- 
 tainty is never to ~be found hut in our ideas.) Whenever we gottrseek it 
 elsewhere in experiment, or observations without us, our knowledge goes not 
 beyond particulars. 'Tt~1s - theTrmitemplatiau.£>f our own abstract - ideas that 
 alone is able to afford us general knowledge. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OF MAXIMS. 
 
 Sect. l.JIhey are self-evident . — There are a sort of propositions, which 
 under the name of maxims and axioms have passed for principles of science ; 
 and because they are self-evident, have been supposed innate, although 
 nobody (that I know)' ever went about to show the reason and foundation of 
 their clearness or cogency. It may, however, be worth while to inquire into 
 the reason of their evidence, and see whether it be peculiar to them alone, 
 and also examine how far they influence and govern our other knowledge. 
 
 Sect. 2. Wherein that self-evidence consists. — Knowledge, as has been 
 — — - 
 
S94 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 shown, consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas : 
 now where that agreement or disagreement is perceived immediately by itself, 
 without the intervention or help of any other, there our knowledge is self- 
 evident. This will appear to be so to any one, who will but consider any of 
 those propositions, which, without any proof, he assents to at first sight : for 
 in all of them he will find, that the reason of his assent is from that agree- 
 ment or disagreement, which the mind, by an immediate comparing them, 
 finds in those ideas answering the affirmation or negation in the proposition. 
 
 Sect. 3. Self-evidence not peculiar to received axioms. — This being so, 
 in the next place let us consider, whether this self-evidence be peculiar only 
 to those propositions which commonly pass under the name of maxims, 
 and have the dignity of axioms allowed them. And here it is plain, that 
 several other truths, not allowed to be axioms, partake equally with them in 
 this self-evidence. This we shall see, if we go over these several sorts of 
 agreement or disagreement of ideas, which I have above mentioned, viz. 
 identity, relation, coexistence, and real existence ; which will discover to us, 
 that not only those few propositions, which have had the credit of maxims, 
 are self-evident, but a great many, even almost an infinite number of other 
 propositions are such. 
 
 Sect. 4. 1. As to identity and diversity, all propositions are equally 
 
 self-evident. — For, first, the immediate perception of the agreement or dis- 
 agreement of identity, being founded in the mind’s having distinct ideas, this 
 affords us as many self-evident propositions as we have distinct ideas. 
 Every one, that has any knowledge at all, has, as the foundation of it, various 
 and distinct ideas : and it is the first act of the mind (without which it can 
 never be capable of any knowledge) to know every one of its ideas by itself, 
 and distinguish it from others. Every one finds in himself, that he knows 
 the ideas he has ; that he knows also when any one is in his understanding, 
 and what it is ; and that when more than one are there, he knows them dis- 
 tinctly and unconfusedly one from another. Which always being so (it being 
 impossible but that he should perceive what he perceives) he can never be in 
 doubt when any idea is in his mind, that it is there, and is that idea it is ; 
 and that two distinct ideas, when they are in his mind, are there, and are 
 not one and the same idea. So that all such affirmations and negations are 
 made without any possibility of doubt, uncertainty, or hesitation, and must 
 necessarily be assented to as soon as understood; that is, as soon as we have 
 in our minds determined ideas, which the terms in the proposition stand for. 
 And therefore whenever the mind with attention considers any proposition, 
 so as to perceive the two ideas signified by the terms, and affirmed or denied 
 one of the other, to be the same or different ; it is presently and infallibly 
 certain of the truth of such a proposition ; and this equally, whether these 
 propositions be in terms standing for more general ideas, or such as are less 
 so, v. g. whether the general idea of being be affirmed of -itself, as in this 
 proposition, whatsoever is, is ; or a more particular idea be affirmed of itself, 
 as a man is a man ; or, whatsoever is white is white ; or whether the idea of 
 being in general be denied of not being, which is the only, (if I may so call 
 it) idea different from it, as in this other proposition, it is impossible for the 
 same thing to be, and not to be ; or any idea of any particular being be denied 
 of another different from it, as, a man is not a horse ; red is not blue. The 
 difference of the ideas, as soon as the terms are understood, makes the truth 
 of the proposition presently visible, and that with an equal certainty and 
 easiness in the less as well as the more general propositions, and all for the 
 same reason, viz. because the mind perceives, in any ideas that it has, the 
 same ideas to be the same with itself; and two different ideas to be different, 
 and not the same. And this it is equally certain of, whether these ideas be 
 more or less general, abstract, and comprehensive. It is not therefore alone 
 to these two general propositions, whatsoever is, is ; and it is impossible for 
 the same thing to be, and not to be ; that this sort of self-evidence belongs 
 by any peculiar right. The perception of being, or not being, belongs no 
 
Ch. 7. 
 
 MAXIMS. 
 
 .395 
 
 more to these vague ideas, signified by the terms whatsoever and thing, than 
 it does to any other ideas. These two general maxims, amounting to no 
 more in short but this, that the same is the same, and same is not different, 
 are truths known in more particular instances, as well as in these general 
 maxims, and known also in particular instances, before these general maxims 
 are ever thought on, and draw all their force from the discernment of the 
 mind employed about particular ideas. There is nothing more visible than 
 that the mind, without the help of any proof, or reflection on either of these 
 general propositions, perceives so clearly, and knows so certainly, that the 
 idea of white is the idea of white, and not the idea of blue; and that the idea 
 of white, when it is in the mind, is there, and is not absent ; that the consi- 
 deration of these axioms can add nothing to the evidence or certainty of its 
 knowledge. Just so it is (as every one may experiment in himself) in all 
 the ideas a man has in his mind : he knows each to be itself, and not to 
 be another ; and to be in his mind, and not away when it is there, with a 
 certainty that cannot be greater ; and therefore the truth of no general pro- 
 position can be known with a greater certainty, nor add any thing to this. 
 So that in respect of identity, our intuitive knowledge reaches as far as our 
 deas ; and we are capable of making as many self-evident propositions as 
 tve have names for distinct ideas. And I appeal to every one’s own mind, 
 fv’hether this proposition, a circle is a circle, be not as self-evident a propo- 
 sition, as that consisting of more general terms, whatsoever is, is 7 and again, 
 whether this proposition, blue is not red, be not a proposition that the mind 
 ;an no more doubt of, as soon as it understands the words, than it does of 
 Jiat axiom, it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be 1 and so 
 of all the like. 
 
 Sect. 5. 2. /« coexistcnce'we have few self-evident 'propositions. — Se- 
 tondly, asAcr coexistence, or such necessary connexion between two ideas, 
 .hat, in the subject where one of them is supposed, there the other must ne- 
 cessarily be also : of such agreement or disagreement as this the mind has an 
 immediate perception but in very few of them. And therefore in this sort we 
 have but very little intuitive knowledge ; nor are there to be found very many 
 propositions that are self-evident, though some there are ; v. g. the idea of 
 filling a place equal to the contents of its superficies, being annexed to our 
 idea of body, I think it is a self-evident proposition, that two bodies cannot be 
 in the same place. 
 
 Sect. 6. 3. In othev- reltUiaus ice.may have. — Thirdly, as to the relation 
 of modes, mathematicians have framed many axioms concerning that one re- 
 lation of equality. As, equals taken from equals, the remainder will be equal ; 
 which, with the rest of that kind, however they are received for maxims by 
 the mathematicians, and are unquestionable truths ; yet, I think, that any one 
 who considers them, will not find that they have a clearer self-evidence than 
 these, that one and one are equal to two, that if you take from the five fingers 
 of one hand two, and from the five fingers of the other hand two, the remain- 
 ing numbers will be equal. These and a thousand other such propositions 
 may be found in numbers, which, at the very first hearing, force the assent, 
 and carry with them an equal, if not greater clearness, than those mathema- 
 tical axioms. 
 
 Sejct. 7. 4. Concerning recti. existence we. have none.- — -Fourthly, as to 
 
 real existence)” since that has no connexion with any other of our ideas, but 
 that of ourselves, and of a first being, we have in that, concerning the real 
 existence of all other beings, not so much as demonstrative, much less a self- 
 evident knowledge ; and therefore concerning those there are no maxims. 
 
 Sect. 8. These axioms do not much, influence our other knowledge. — In 
 the next place let us consider what influence these received maxims have upon 
 the other parts of our knowledge. The rules established in the schools, that 
 all reasonings are ex prcecognitis et prceconcessis, seem to lay the foundation 
 of all other knowledge in these maxims, and to suppose them to be proecog- 
 nita : whereby, I think, are meant these two things : firstjjjiat'tffese axioms 
 
396 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4 
 
 are those truths that are first known to the mind. And, secondly, that upon 
 them the other parts of our knowledge depend. 
 
 Sect. 9. Because they are not the truths we first knew. — First, that they 
 are not the truths first known to the min'd’, is evident to experience, as we 
 have shown in another place, book i. chap, ii. Who perceives not that a 
 child certainly knows that a sltanger is not its mother, that its sucking-bottle 
 is not the rod, long before he knows that it is impossible for the same thing 
 t,o be and not to be 1 And how many truths are there about numbers, which it 
 is obvious to observe that the mind is perfectly acquainted with, and fully con- 
 vinced of, before it ever thought on these general maxims, to which mathema- 
 ticians, in their arguings, do sometimes refer them ! Whereof the reason is 
 very plain ; for that which makes the mind assent to such propositions being 
 nothing else but the perception it has of the agreement or disagreement of its 
 ideas, according as it finds them affirmed or denied one of another, in words 
 it understands ; and every idea being known to be what it is, and every two 
 distinct ideas being known not to be the same ; it must necessarily follow, that 
 such, self-evident truths must be first known, which consist of ideas that are 
 first in the mind: and the ideas first in the mind, it is evident, are those of 
 particular things, from whence, by slow-degrees, the understanding proceeds 
 to some few general ones ; which being taken from the ordinary and familiar 
 objects of sense, are settled in the mind, with general names to them. Thus 
 particular ideas are first received and distinguished, and so knowledge got 
 about them ; and next to them, the less general or specific, which are next to 
 particular : for abstract ideas are not so obvious or easy to children, or the 
 yet unexercised mind, as particular ones. If- they seem so to grown men,- it 
 is only because by constant and familiar use they are made so. For when we 
 nicely reflect upon them, we shall find, that general ideas are fictions and con- 
 trivances of the mind, that carry difficulty with them, and do not so easily offer 
 themselves as we are apt to imagine. For example, does it not require some 
 pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle (which is yet none of the 
 most abstract, comprehensive, and difficult)'! for it must be neither oblique 
 nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon; but all and none 
 of these at once. In effect, it is something imperfect, that cannot exist ; an 
 idea wherein some parts of several different and inconsistent ideas are put 
 together. It is true, the mind, in this imperfect state, has need of such ideas, 
 and makes all the haste to them it can, for the conveniency of communication 
 and enlargement of knowledge ; to both which it is naturally very much in- 
 clined. But yet one has reason to suspect such ideas are marks of our im- 
 perfection ; at least this is enough to show, that the most abstract and general 
 ideas are not those that the mind iafirst and most easily acquainted with, not 
 such as its earliest knowledge is conversant about. 
 
 Sect. 10. Because on them the other parts of our knowledge do not de- 
 pend— Secondly, from what has been said, it plainly follows, that these mag- 
 nified maxims are not the principles and foundations of all our other know- 
 ledge. For, if there be a great many other truths, which have as much self- 
 evidence as they, and a great many that we know before them, it is impossible 
 they should be the principles from which we deduce all other truths. Is it im- 
 possible to know that one and two are equal to three, but by virtue of this or 
 some such axiom, viz. the whole is equal to all its parts taken together! Many 
 a one knows that one and two are equal to three, without having heard or 
 thought on that, or any other axiom, by which it might be proved: and knows 
 it as certainly as any other man knows that the whole is equal to all its parts, 
 or any other maxim, and all from the same reason of self-evidence; the 
 equality of those ideas being as visible and certain to him without that, oi 
 any other axiom, as with it, it needing no proof to make it perceived. Nor 
 after the knowledge, that the whole is equal to all its parts, does he know 
 that one and two are equal to three, better or more certainly than he did be- 
 fore. For if there be any odds in those ideas, the whole and parts are more 
 obscure, or at least more difficult to be settled in the mind, than those of one, 
 
Ch. 7. 
 
 MAXIMS. 
 
 397 
 
 two, and three. And indeed, I think, I may ask these men, who will needs 
 have all knowledge, besides those general principles themselves, to depend 
 on general, innate, and self-evident principles, what principle is requisite to 
 prove, that one and one are two, that two and two are four, that three times 
 two are six'? Which being known without any proof do evince, that either 
 all knowledge does not depend on certain praicognita, or general maxims 
 called principles, or else that these are principles ; that if these are to be 
 counted principles, a great part of numeration will be so. To which if we 
 add all the self-evident propositions, which may be made about all our distinct 
 ideas, principles will be almost infinite, at least, innumerable, which men ar- 
 rive to the knowledge of at different ages : and a great many of these innate 
 principles they never come to know all their lives. But whether they come 
 in view of the mind earlier or later, this is true of them, that they are all known 
 by their native evidence, are wholly independent, receive no light, nor are 
 capable of any proof one from another; much less the more particular from 
 the more general ; or the more simple from the more compounded : the more 
 simple and less abstract being the most familiar, and the easier and earlier ap- 
 prehended. But which ever be the clearest ideas, the evidence and certainty 
 of all such propositions is in this, that a man sees the same idea to be the 
 same idea, and infallibly perceives two different ideas to be different ideas. 
 For when a man has in his understanding the ideas of one and of two, the 
 idea of yellow, and the idea of blue, he cannot but certainly know, that the 
 idea of one is the idea of one, and not the idea of two ; and that the idea of 
 yellow is the idea of yellow, and not the idea of blue. For a man cannot con- 
 found the ideas in his mind, which he has distinct: that would be to have them 
 confused and distinct at the same time, which is a contradiction : and to have 
 none distinct is to have no use of our faculties, to have no knowledge at all. 
 And therefore what idea soever is affirmed of itself, or whatsoever two entire 
 distinct ideas are denied one of another, the mind cannot but assent to such a 
 proposition, as infallibly true, as soon as it understands the terms, without 
 hesitation or need of proof, or regarding those made in more general terms, 
 and called maxims. . — 
 
 Sect. IK , What u ss- tkese 'general maxims have. — What shall we then 
 say? Are these general maxims of no use? By no means, though perhaps 
 their use is not that which it is commonly taken to be. But since doubting 
 in the least of what hath been by some men ascribed to these maxims may be 
 apt to be cried out against, as overturning the foundations of all the sciences ; 
 it may be worth while to consider them, with respect to other parts of our 
 knowledge, and examine more particularly to what purposes they serve, and 
 to what not. 
 
 1. evident from what has been already said, that they are of no use to 
 ^'''-pi&ve'or confirm less general self-evident propositions. 
 
 2. Iris as plain that they are not, nor have been, the foundations whereon 
 — ffny science hath been built. There is, I know, a great deal of talk, propa- 
 gated from scholastic men, of sciences and the maxims on which they are 
 built : but it has been my ill luck never to meet with any such sciences ; 
 much less any one built upon these two maxims, what is, is ; and it is im- 
 possible for the same thing to be and not to be. And I would be glad to be 
 shown where any such science, erected upon these or any other general 
 axioms, is to be found : and should be obliged to any one who would lay be- 
 fore me the frame and system of any science so built on these or any such 
 like maxims, that could not be shown to stand as firm without any considera- 
 tion of them. I ask, whether these general maxims have not the same use in 
 the study of divinity, and in theological questions, that they have in other 
 sciences 5 - They serve here too to silence wranglers, and put an end to dispute. 
 But I think that nobody will therefore say, that the Christian religion is built 
 upon these maxims, or that the knowledge we have of it is derived from these prin- 
 ciples. It i s from revelation we have received it, and without revelation these 
 maxims had never been »ble to help us to it. ^ When we find out an idea, bv 
 
398 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 whose intervention we discover the connexion of two others, this is a revelation 
 from God to us, by the voice of reason. For we then come to know a truth 
 that we did not know before. When God declares any truth to us, this is a 
 revelation to us by the voice of his Spirit, and we are advanced in our know- 
 ledge. But in neither of these do we receive our light or knowledge from 
 maxims. But in the one, the things themselves afford it, and we sec the truth 
 m them by perceiving their agreement or disagreement: in the other, God 
 himself aifords it immediately to us, and we see the truth of what he says in 
 his unerring veracity. 
 
 3. They are not of use to help men forward in the advancement of sciences, 
 or new discoveries of yet unknown truths. Mr Newton, in his never enough 
 to be admired book, has demonstrated several propositions, which are so many 
 new truths, before unknown to the world, and are farther advances in mathe- 
 matical knowledge; but, for the discovery of these, it was not the general 
 maxims, what is, is ; or, the whole is bigger than a part ; or the like, that helped 
 him. These were not the clues that led him into the discovery of the truth 
 and certainty of those propositions. Nor was it by them that he got the know 
 ledge of those demonstrations ; but by finding out intermediate ideas, that, 
 showed the agreement or disagreement of the ideas, as expressed in the pro 
 positions he demonstrated. This is the greatest exercise and improvement 
 of human understanding in the enlarging of knowledge, and advancing the 
 sciences ; wherein they are far enough from receiving any help from the con- 
 templation of these, or the like magnified maxims. Would those who have 
 this traditional admiration of these propositions, that they think no step can 
 be made in knowledge without the support of an axiom, no stone laid in the 
 building of the sciences without a general maxim, but distinguish between 
 the method of acquiring knowledge, and of communicating; between the 
 method of raising any science, and that of teaching it to others as far as it is 
 advanced : they would see that those general maxims were not the foundations 
 on which the first discoverers raised their admirable structures, nor the keys 
 that unlocked and opened those secrets of knowledge. Though afterward, 
 when schools were erected, and sciences had their professors to teach what 
 others had found out, they often made use of maxims, i. e. laid down certain 
 propositions which were self-evident, or to be received for true; which being 
 settled in the minds of their scholars, as unquestionable verities, they on oc- 
 casion made use of, to convince them of truths in particular instances, that 
 were not so familiar to their minds as those general axioms which had before 
 been inculcated to them, and carefully settled in their minds. Though these 
 particular instances, when well reflected on, are no less self-evident to the 
 understanding than the general maxims brought to confirm them ; and it was 
 in those particular instances that the first disceverer found the truth, without 
 the help of the general maxims : and so may any one else do, who with atten- 
 tion considers them. 
 
 To come therefore to the use that is made of maxims. 
 
 1. They are of use, as has been observed, in the ordinary methods of teach- 
 ing sciences as far as they are advanced; but of little or none in advancing 
 them farther. 
 
 2. They are of use in disputes, for the silencing of obstinate wranglers, and 
 bringing those contests to some conclusion. Whether a need of them to that 
 end came not in, in the manner following, I crave leave to inquire. The 
 schools having made disputation the touchstone of men’s abilities, and the 
 criterion of knowledge, adjudged victory to him that kept the field : and he 
 that had the last word was concluded to have the better of the argument, if 
 not of the cause. But because by this means there was like to be no decision 
 between skilful combatants, whilst one never failed of a medius terminus to 
 prove any proposition ; and the other could as constantly, without or with a 
 distinction, deny the major or minor ; to prevent, as much as could be, run- 
 ning out of disputes into an endless train of syllogisms, certain general pro- 
 positions, most of them indeed self-evident, were introduced into the schools • 
 
Ch. 7. 
 
 MAXIMS. 
 
 399 
 
 which being such, as all men allowed and agreed in, were, looked on as general 
 measures of truth, and served instead of principles (where the disputants had 
 not laid down any other between them) beyond whicli there was no going, and 
 which must not he receded from by either side. And thus these maxims get. 
 ting the name of principles, beyond which men in dispute could not retreat, 
 were by mistake taken to be originals and sources, from whence all know- 
 ledge began, and the foundation whereon the sciences were built. Because 
 when in their disputes they came to any of these, they stopped there, and 
 went no farther ; the matter w T as determined. But how much this is a mistake 
 hath been already shown. 
 
 This method of the schools, which have been thought the fountains of know- 
 ledge, introduced, as I suppose, the like use of these maxims into a great part 
 of conversation out of the schools, to stop the mouths of cavillers, whom any 
 one is excused from arguing any longer with, when they deny these general 
 self-evident principles received by all reasonable men, who have once thought, 
 of them : but yet their use herein is but to put an end to wrangling. They, 
 in truth, when urged in such cases, teach nothing : that is already done by 
 the intermediate ideas made use of in the debate, whose connexion may be 
 seen without the help of those maxims, and so the truth knowm before the 
 maxim is produced, and the argument brought to a first principle. Men would 
 give off a wrong argument before it came to that, if in their disputes they 
 proposed to themselves the finding and embracing of truth, and not a contest 
 for victory. And thus maxims have their use to put a stop to their perverse- 
 ness, whose ingenuity should have yielded sooner. But the method of the 
 schools having allowed and encouraged men to oppose and resist evident truth 
 till they are baffled, i. e. till they are reduced to contradict themselves or some 
 established principle; it is no wonder that they should not in civil conversa- 
 tion be ashamed of that, which in the schools is counted a virtue and a glory ; 
 obstinately to maintain that side of the question they have chosen, whether 
 true or false, to the last extremity, even after conviction : a strange way to 
 attain truth and knowledge, and that, which I think the rational part of man- 
 kind, not corrupted by education, could scarce believe should ever be admitted 
 among the lovers of truth, and the students of religion or nature, or intro- 
 duced into the seminaries of those who are to propagate the truths of religion 
 or philosophy among the ignorant and unconvinced. How much such a way 
 of learning is like to return young men’s minds from the sincere search and 
 love of truth, nay, and to make them doubt whether there is any such thing, 
 or at least worth the adhering to, I shall not now inquire. This I think, that 
 bating those places which brought the peripatetic philosophy into their schools, 
 where it continued many ages, without teaching the world any thing but the 
 art of wrangling; these maxims were nowhere thought the foundations on 
 which the sciences were built, nor the great helps to the advancement of 
 knowledge. 
 
 As to these general maxims, therefore, they are, as I have said, of great use 
 in disputes, to stop the mouths of wranglers : but not of much use to the dis- 
 covery of unknown truths, or to help the mind forward in its search after 
 knowledge. For who ever began to build his knowledge on this general pro- 
 position, what is, is; or, it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to 
 be : and from either of these, as from a principle of science, deduced a system 
 of useful knowledge 1 Wrong opinions often involving contradictions, one 
 of these maxims, as a touchstone, may serve well to show whither they lead. 
 But yet, however fit to lay open the absurdity or mistake of a man’s reason- 
 ing or opinion, they are of very little use for enlightening the understanding : 
 and it will not be found, that the mind receives much help from them in its pro- 
 gress in knowledge^ which would be neither less, nor less certain, were these 
 two general propositions never thought on. It is true, as I have said they 
 sometimes serve in argumentation to stop a wrangler’s mouth, by showing 
 the absurdity of what he saith, and by exposing him to the shame of contradict- 
 ing what all the world knows, and he himself cannot but own to be true. 
 
400 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 But it is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put 
 him in possession of truth ; and I would fain know what truths these two 
 propositions are able to teach, and by their influence make us know, which we 
 did not know before, or could not know without them. Let^is reason from 
 them as well as we can, they are only about identical predications ; and in- 
 fluence, if any at all, none but such. Each particular proposition concerning 
 identity or diversity is as clearly and certainly know'll in itself, if attended 
 to, as either of these general ones : only these general ones, as serving in all 
 cases, are therefore more inculcated and insisted on. As to other less general 
 maxims, many of them are no more than bare verbal propositions, and teach 
 ut i nothing but the respect and import of names one to another. “ The whole 
 is equal to all its parts what real truth, I beseech you, does it teach us 7 
 What more is contained in that maxim than what the signification of the 
 word totum, or the whole, does of itself import 7 And he that knows that the 
 word whole stands for what is made up of all its parts, knows veiy little less 
 than that the whole is equal to all its parts. And upon the same ground, I 
 think that this proposition, a hill is higher than a valley, and several the like, 
 may also pass for maxims. But yet masters of mathematics, when they 
 would, as teachers of what they know, initiate others in that science, do not 
 without reason place this, and some other such maxims, at the entrance of 
 their systems ; that their scholars, having in the beginning perfectly acquaint- 
 ed their thoughts with these propositions made in such general terms, may be 
 used to make such reflections, and have these more general propositions, as 
 formed rules and sayings, ready to apply to all particular cases. Not that, if 
 they be equally weighed, they are more clear and evident than the particular 
 instances they are brought to confirm : but that, being more familiar to the 
 mind, the very naming them is enough to satisfy the understanding. But this, 
 I say, is more from our custom of using them, and the establishment they 
 have got in our minds, by our often thinking of them, than from the different 
 evidence of the things. But before custom has settled methods of think- 
 ing and reasoning in our minds, I am apt to imagine it is quite otherwise; and 
 that the child, when a part of his apple is taken away, knows it better in that 
 particular instance than by this general proposition, the whole is equal to all 
 its parts ; and that if one of these have need to be confirmed to him by the 
 other, the general has more need to be let into his mind by the particular, 
 than the particular by the general. For in particulars our knowledge begins, 
 and so spreads itself by degrees to generals. Though afterward the mind 
 takes the quite contrary course, and having drawn its knowledge into as ge- 
 neral propositions as it can, makes those familiar to its thoughts, and accus- 
 toms itself to have recourse to them, as to the standards of truth and falsehood. 
 By which familiar use of them, as rules to measure the truth of other propo- 
 sitions, it comes in time to be thought, that more particular propositions have 
 their truth and evidence from their conformity to these more general ones, 
 which in discourse and argumentation are so frequently urged, and constantly 
 admitted. And this I think to be the reason why, among so many self-evident 
 propositions, the most general only have had the title of maxims. 
 
 Sect. 12. Maxims, ifeare be not taken in the use of words, may prove 
 contradictions .- — One thing farther, I think; it -may. not be amiss to observe 
 concerning these general maxims, that they are so far from improving or 
 establishing our minds in true knowledge, that if our notions be wrong, loose, 
 and unsteady, and we resign up our thoughts to the sounds of words, rather 
 than fix them on settled determinate ideas of things; 1 say, these general 
 maxims will serve to conform us in mistakes ; and in such a way of use of 
 words, which is most common, will serve to prove contradictions ; v. g. he 
 that, with Des Cartes, shall frame in his mind an idea of what he calls body 
 to be nothing but extension, may easily demonstrate that there is no vacuum, 
 i. e. no space void of body, by this maxim, what is, is. For the idea to which 
 he annexes the name body being bare extension, his knowledge, that space 
 cannot be without body, is certain. For he knows his own idea of extension 
 
Ch. 7. 
 
 MAXIMS. 
 
 401 
 
 clearly and distinctly, and knows that it is what it is, and not anotl.?r idea 
 though it be called by these three names, extension, body, space. Which 
 three words, standing for one and the same idea, may no doubt, with the same 
 evidence and certainty, be affirmed one of another, as each of itself : and it is 
 as certain, that whilst I use them all to stand for one and the same idea, this 
 predication is as true and identical in its signification, that space is body, as 
 this predication is true and identical, that body is body, both in signification 
 and sound. 
 
 Sect. 13 Instance in. vacuum. — But if another should come, and make to 
 “himself another idea, different from Des Cartes’s, of the thing, which yet, 
 with Des Cartes, he calls by the same name body ; and make his idea, which 
 he expresses by the word body, to be of a thing that hath both extension and 
 solidity together; he will as easily demonstrate that there may be a vacuum 
 or space without a body, as Des Cartes demonstrated the contrary. Because 
 the idea to which he gives the name space being barely the simple one of ex 
 tension ; and the idea to which he gives the name body being the complex idea 
 of extension and resistibility, or solidity, together in the same subject ; these 
 two ideas are not exactly one and the same, but in the understanding as dis- 
 tinct as the ideas of one and two, white and black, or as of corporiety and 
 humanity, if I may use those barbarous terms: and therefore the predication 
 of them in our minds, or in words standing for them, is not identical, but the 
 negation of them one of another, viz. this proposition, extension or space is 
 not body, is as true and evidently certain, as this maxim, it is impossible for 
 the same thing to be, and not to be, can make any proposition. 
 
 Sect. 14. They prove not the existence of things without us. — But yet, 
 though both these propositions (as you see) may be equally demonstrated, viz. 
 that there may be a vacuum, and that there cannot be a vacuum, by these two 
 certain principles, viz. what is, is ; and the same thing cannot be, and not be ; 
 yet neither of these principles will serve to prove to us, that any, or what bo- 
 dies do exist ; for what we are left to our senses, to discover to us as far as 
 they can. Those universal and self-evident principles, being only our con- 
 stant, clear, and distinct knowledge of our own ideas, more general or com- 
 prehensive, can assure us of nothing that passes without the mind ; their cer- 
 tainty is founded only upon the knowledge we have of each idea by itself, and of 
 its distinction from others ; about which we cannot be mistaken whilst they are 
 in our minds, though we may be, and often are mistaken when we retain the 
 names without the ideas; or use them confusedly, sometimes for one, and 
 sometimes for another idea. In which cases the force of these axioms reach- 
 ing only to the sound, and not the signification of the words, serves only to 
 lead us into confusion, mistake, and error. It is to show men that these 
 maxims, however cried up for the great guards of truth, will not secure them 
 from error in a careless loose use of their words, that I have made this re- 
 mark. In all that is here suggested concerning their little use for the improve- 
 ment of knowledge, or dangerous use in undetermined ideas, I have been far 
 enough from saying or intending they should be laid aside, as some have been 
 too forward to charge me. I affirm them to be truths, self-evident truths ; 
 and so cannot be laid aside. As far as their influence will reach, it is in vain 
 to endeavour, nor will I'attempt to abridge it. But yet, without any injury 
 to truth or knowledge, I may have reason to think their use is not answerable 
 to the great stress which seems to be laid on them ; and I may warn men not 
 to make an ill use of them, for the confirming themselves in errors. 
 
 Sect. 15. Their application dangerous about complex ideas. — -But let 
 them be of what u&eJliey. will in verbal propositions they cannot discover or 
 prove to us the least knowledge of The nature of substances, as they are found 
 and exist without us, any 'fartherjthan grounded on experience. And though 
 the consequence of these two propositions, called principles, be very clear, 
 and their use not dangerous or hurtful, in the probation of such things where- 
 in there is no need at all of them for proof, but such as are clear by them- 
 selves without them, viz. where our ideas are determined, and known by the 
 3 A 
 
402 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 names that stand for them: yet when these principles, viz. what is, is; and 
 t is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be ; are made use of in 
 the probation of propositions, wherein are words standing for complex ideas ; 
 v. g. man, horse, gold, virtue; there they are of infinite danger, and most 
 commonly make men receive and retain falsehood for manifest truth, and un- 
 certainty for demonstration : upon which follow error, obstinacy, and all the 
 mischiefs that can happen from wrong reasoning. The reason whereof is 
 not that these principles are less true, or of less force in proving propositions 
 made of terms standing for complex ideas ; than where the propositions are 
 about simple ideas ; but because men mistake generally, thinking that where 
 the same terms are preserved, the propositions are about the same things, 
 though the ideas they stand for are in truth different : therefore these maxims 
 are made use of to support those, which in sound and appearance are contra- 
 dictory propositions; as is clear in the demonstrations above mentioned about 
 a vacuum. So that whilst men take words for things, as usually they do, 
 these maxims may and do commonly serve to prove contradictory proposi- 
 tions : as shall yet be farther made manifest. 
 
 Sect. 16- Instance in man. — For instance, let man be that concerning 
 which you would by -these first principles demonstrate any thing, and we shall 
 see, that so far as demonstration is by these principles, it is only verbal, and 
 gives us no certain universal true proposition or knowledge of any being 
 existing without us. First, a child having framed the idea of a man, it is 
 probable that his idea is just like that picture, which the painter makes of the 
 visible appearances joined together ; and such a complication of ideas to- 
 gether in his understanding makes up the simple complex idea which he calls 
 man, whereof white or flesh-colour in England being one, the child can de- 
 monstrate to you that a negro is not a man, because white colour was one of 
 the constant simple ideas of the complex idea he calls man : and therefore he 
 can demonstrate by the principle, it is impossible for the same thing to be, 
 and not to be, that a negro is not a man ; the foundation of his certainty be- 
 ing not that universal proposition, which perhaps he never heard nor thought 
 of, but the clear distinct perception he hath of his own simple ideas of black 
 and white, which he cannot be persuaded to take, nor can ever mistake one 
 for another, whether he knows that maxim or no : and to this child, or any 
 one who hath such an idea, which he calls man, can you never demonstrate 
 that a man hath a soul, because his idea of man includes no such notion or 
 idea in it. And therefore, to him, the principle of what is, is, proves not 
 this matter; but it depends upon collection and observation, by which he is 
 to make his complex idea called man. 
 
 Sect. 17. Secondly, another that hath gone farther in framing and col- 
 lecting the idea he calls man, and to the outward shape adds laughter and 
 rational discourse, may demonstrate that infants and changelings are no men, 
 by this maxim, it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be ; and 1 
 have discoursed with very rational men, who have actually denied that they 
 are men. 
 
 Sect. 18. Thirdly, perhaps another makes up the complex idea which he 
 calls man only out of the ideas of body in general, and the powers of lan- 
 guage and reason, and leaves out the shape wholly : this man is able to de- 
 monstrate, that a man may have no hands, but be quadrupeds, neither o'/ 
 those being included in his idea of man ; and in whatever body or shape he 
 found speech and reason joined, that was a man : because having a clear 
 knowledge of such a complex idea, it is certain that what is, is. 
 
 Sect. 19. Little use of these maxims in proofs where we have clear and 
 distinct ideas. — So that, if rightly considered, I think we may say, that where 
 our ideas are determined in our minds, and have annexed to them by us 
 known and steady names under those settled determinations, there is little 
 need or no use at all of these maxims, to prove the agreement or disagree- 
 ment cf any of them. He that cannot discern the truth or falsehood of such 
 propositions, without the help of these and the like maxims, will not be <ielped 
 
Ch. 7. 
 
 MAXIMS. 
 
 403 
 
 by these maxims to do it ; since he cannot be supposed to know the truth of 
 these maxims themselves without proof, if he cannot know the truth of others 
 without proof, which are as self-evident as these. Upon this ground it is, that 
 intuitive knowledge neither requires nor admits any proof, one part of it more 
 than another. He that will suppose it does, takes away the foundation of all 
 knowledge and certainty : and he that needs any proof to make him certain, 
 and give his assent to this proposition, that two are equal to two, will also 
 have need of a proof to make him admit, that what is, is. He that needs a 
 probation to convince him, that two are not three, that white is not black, 
 that a triangle is not a circle, &e. or any other two determined distinct ideas 
 are not one and the same, will need also a demonstration to convince him, 
 that it is jrnppssible for the same thing to be, and not to be. 
 
 Sect. 20. Their use dangerous where our ideas are confused. — And 
 as these maxims are of little use where we have determined ideas, so they 
 are, as I have shown, of dangerous use where our ideas are not determined ; 
 and where we use words that are not annexed to determined ideas, but such 
 as are of a loose and wandering signification, sometimes standing for one, and 
 sometimes for another idea; from which follow mistake and error, which these 
 maxims (brought as proofs to establish propositions, wherein the terms stand 
 for undetermined ideas') do by their authority confirm and rivet. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OF TRIFLING PROPOSITIONS. 
 
 Sect. 1 . Some propositions bring no increase to our knowledge . — 
 Whether the maxims treated of in the foregoing chapter be of that use to real 
 knowledge as is generally supposed, I leave to be considered. This, I think, 
 may confidently be affirmed, that there are universal propositions, which 
 though they be certainly true, yet they add no light to our understandings, 
 bring no increase to our knowledge. Such are, 
 
 Sect. 2. As ., first, identical propositions. — First, all purely identical pro- 
 ■ positions. These obviously, and at first blush, appear to contain no instruc- 
 
 tion in them. For when we affirm the said term of itself, whether it be barely 
 verbal, or whether it contains any clear and real idea, it shows us nothmgbut 
 what we must certainly know before, whether such a proposition be either 
 made by or proposed to us. Indeed, that most general one, what is, is, may 
 serve sometimes to show a man the absurdity he is guilty of, when by circum- 
 locution, or equivocal terms, he would, in particular instances, deny the same 
 thing of itself; because nobody will so openly bid defiance to common sense, 
 as to affirm visible and direct contradictions in plain words ; or if he does, a 
 man is excused if he breaks off any farther discourse with him. But yet, I 
 think I may say, that neither that received maxim, nor any other identical 
 proposition teaches us any thing: and though in such kind of propositions 
 this great and magnified maxim, boasted to be the foundation of demonstra- 
 tion, may be and often is made use of to confirm them; yet all it proves 
 amounts to no more than this, that the same word may with great certainty 
 be affirmed of itself, without any doubt of the truth of any such proposition ; 
 and .et me add also, without any real knowledge. 
 
 Se©-t-JL „For at this rate, any very ignorant person, who can but make a 
 proposition, and knows what he means when he-says aye or no, may make a 
 million of propositions, of whose truths he may be infallibly certain, and yet 
 not know one thing in the world thereby; v. g. what is a soul, is a soul; or 
 a soul is a soul; a spirit is a spirit.; a fetiche is a fetiche, &c. These all 
 being equivalent to this proposition, viz. what is, is, i. e. what hath existence, 
 hath exisience ; or who hath a soul, hath a soul. What is this more than 
 'rifling with words 1 It is but like a monkey shifting his oyster from one 
 
404 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 hand to .ne otner ; and had he but words, might, no doubt, have said, “ oyster 
 in right hand is subject, and oyster in left hand is predicate and so might 
 have made a self-evident proposition of oyster, i. e. oyster is oyster ; and yet, 
 with all this, not have been one whit the wiser or more knowing : and that 
 way of handling the matter would much at once have satisfied the monkey’s 
 hunger, or a man’s understanding ; and they would have improved in know- 
 ledge and bulk together. 
 
 I know there are some who, because identical propositions are self-evident, 
 show a great concern for them, and think they do great service to philosophy 
 by crying them up, as if in them was contained all knowledge, and the 
 understanding were led into all truth by them only. I grant as forwardly as 
 any one, that they are all true and self-evident. I grant farther, that the 
 foundation of all our knowledge lies in the faculty we have of perceiving the 
 same idea to be the same, and of discerning it from those that are different, 
 as I have shown in the foregoing chapter. But how that vindicates the 
 making use of identical propositions, for the improvement of knowledge, from 
 the imputation of trifling, I do not see. Let any one repeat, as often as he 
 pleases, that the will is the will, or lay what stress on it he thinks fit ; of 
 what use is this, and an infinite the like propositions, for the enlarging our 
 knowledge] Let a man abound, as much as the plenty of words which he 
 has will permit, in such propositions as these ; a law is a law, and obligation 
 is obligation ; right is right, and wrong is wrong : will these and the like ever 
 help him to an acquaintance with ethics] or instruct him or others in the 
 knowledge of morality ] Those who know not, nor perhaps ever will know, 
 what is right and what is wrong, nor the measures of them, can with as much 
 assurance make, and infallibly know the truth of these and all such proposi- 
 tions, as he that is best instructed in morality can do. But what advance do 
 such propositions give in the knowledge of any thing necessary or useful for 
 their conduct] 
 
 He would be thought to do little less than trifle, who, for the enlightening 
 the understanding in any part of knowledge, should be busy with identical 
 propositions, and insist on such maxims as these : substance is substance, and 
 body is body ; a vacuum is a vacuum, and a vortex is a vortex ; a centaur is a 
 centaur, and a chimera is a chimera, &c. For these, and all such are equally 
 true, equally certain, and equally self-evident. But yet they cannot but be 
 counted trifling, when made use of as principles of instruction, and stress laid 
 on them, as helps to knowledge: since they teach nothing but what every 
 one, who is capable of discourse, knows, without being told ; viz. that the 
 same term is the same term, and the same idea the same idea. And upon 
 this account it was that I formerly did, and do still think, the offering and in- 
 culcating such propositions, in order to give the understanding any new light 
 or inlet into the knowledge of things, no better than trifling. 
 
 Instruction -lies .in -something very different; and he that would enlarge his 
 own, or another’s mind, to truth he does not yet know, must find out inter- 
 mediate ideas, and then lay them in such order one by another, that the 
 understanding may see the agreement or disagreement of those in question. 
 Propositions that do this are instructive ; but they are far from such as affirm 
 the same term of itself : which is noway to advance one’s self or others in any 
 sort of knowledge. It no more helps to that, than it would help any one in 
 his learning to read, to have such propositions as these inculcated to him. 
 An A is an A, and a B is a B, which a man may know as well as any school- 
 master, and yet never be able to read a word as long as he lives. Nor do 
 these, or any such identical propositions, help him one jot forward in the skill 
 of reading, let him make what use of them he can. 
 
 If those who blame my calling them trifling propositions had but read, and 
 been at the pains to understand, what I had above writ in very plain English, 
 they could not but have seen that by identical propositions I mean only such, 
 wherein the same term, importing the same idea, is affirmed of itself: which 
 ' take to be the proper signification of identical propositions: and concerning 
 
Ch S. 
 
 TRIFLING PROPOSITIONS. 
 
 40a 
 
 all such, 1 think I may continue safely to say, that to propose them as instruc- 
 tive is no better than trifling. For no one who has the use of reason can 
 miss them, where it is necessary they should be taken notice of: nor doubt of 
 their truth, when he does take notice of them. 
 
 But if men will call propositions identical, wherein the same term is not 
 affirmed of itself, whether they speak more properly than I, others must judge ; 
 this is certain, all that they say of propositions that are not identical in my 
 sense, concerns not me, nor what I have said ; all that I have said relating to 
 those propositions wherein the same term is affirmed of itself. And I would 
 fain see an instance, wherein any such can be made use of, to the advantage 
 and improvement of any one’s knowledge. Instances of other kinds, what- 
 ever use may be made of them, concern not me, as not being such as I call 
 identical. 
 
 'SEerr 4rr~&ecimiMy, token a part of any complex idea is predicated o f the 
 whole. — Secondly, another sort of trifling propositions is, when a part of the 
 complex idea is predicated of the name of the whole ; a part of the definition 
 oFttie word defined. Such are all propositions wherein the genus is predi- 
 cated of the species, or more comprehensive of less comprehensive terms : for 
 what information, what knowledge carries this proposition in it, viz. lead is 
 a metal, to a man who knows the complex idea the name lead stands for ! all 
 the simple ideas that go to the complex one signified by the term metal, being 
 nothing but what he before comprehended, and signified by the name lead. 
 Indeed, to a man that knows the signification of the word metal, and not of 
 ihe word lead, it is a shorter way to explain the signification of the word lead, 
 by saying it is a metal, which at once expresses several of its simple ideas, 
 than to enumerate them one by one, telling him it is a body very heavy, fusi- 
 ble, and malleable. 
 
 Sect. At' As part of the definition of the term defined. — Alike trifling it 
 is, to predicate any other part hf the definition of the term defined, or to affirm 
 any one of the simple ideas of a complex one of the name of the whole com- 
 plex idea ; els, all gold is fusible. For fusibility being one of the simple ideas 
 that goes to the making up the complex one the sound gold stands for, what 
 can it be but playing with sounds, to affirm that of the name gold, which is 
 comprehended in its received signification ! It would be thought little better . 
 than ridiculous, to affirm gravely as a truth of moment, that gold is yellow ; 
 and I see not how it is any jot more material to say, it is fusible, unless that 
 quality be left out of the complex idea, of which the sound gold is the mark 
 in ordinary speech. What instruction can it carry with it to tell one that 
 which he hath been told already, or he is supposed to know before! For I 
 am supposed to know the signification of the word another uses to me, or else 
 he is to tell me. And if I know that the name gold stands for this complex 
 idea of body, yellow, heavy, fusible, malleable, it will not much instruct me to 
 put it solemnly afterward in a proposition, and gravely say, all gold is fusible- 
 Such propositions can only serve to show the disingenuity of one, who will gc 
 from the definition of his own terms, by reminding him sometimes of it ; but 
 carry no knowledge with them, but of the signification of words, however 
 certain they be. 
 
 Sect. 6. Instance, - man and palfrey. — Every man is an animal, or living 
 body, is as certain a proposition as can Ife7 but no more conducing to the 
 knowledge of things, than to say, a palfrey is an ambling horse, or a neighing 
 ambling animal, both being only about the signification of words, and make 
 me know but this ; that body, sense, and motion, or power of sensation and 
 moving, are three of those ideas that I always comprehend and signify by the 
 word man : and where they are not to be found together, the name man be- 
 longs not to that thing: and so of the other, that body, sense, and a certain 
 way of going, with a certain kind of voice, are some of those ideas which I 
 always comprehend and signify by the word palfrey ; and when they are not 
 to be found together, the name palfrey belongs not to that thing. It is just 
 (he same, and to the same purpose, when any term standing for any one or 
 
406 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 more of the simple ideas, that all together make up that complex idea which 
 is called man, is affirmed of the term man : v. g. suppose a Roman signified 
 by the word homo all these distinct ideas united in one subject, “ corporietas, 
 sensibilitas, potentia se movendi, rationalitas, visibilitas;” he might, no 
 doubt, with great certainty, universally affirm, one, more, or all of these to- 
 gether of the word homo, but did no more than say that the word homo, in 
 his country, comprehended in its signification all these ideas. Much like a 
 romance knight, who by the word palfrey signified these ideas ; body of a 
 certain figure, four-legged, with sense, motion, ambling, neighing, white, used 
 to have a woman on his back: might with the same certainty universally 
 affirm also any or all of these of the word palfrey ; but did thereby teach no 
 more, but that the word palfrey, in his or romance language, stood for all 
 these, and was not to be applied to any thing where any of these were want- 
 ing. But he that shall tell me, that in whatever thing sense, motion, reason, 
 and laughter, were united, that thing had actually a notion of God, or would 
 be cast into a sleep by opium, made indeed an instructive proposition ; be- 
 cause neither having the notion of God, nor being cast into sleep by opium, 
 being contained in the idea signified by the word man, we are by such propo- 
 sitions taught something more than barely what the word man stands for; 
 and therefore the knowledge contained in it is more than verbal. 
 
 Sect. 7. For this teaches but the signification of words. — Before a man 
 makes any proposition, he is supposed to understand the terms he uses in it, 
 or else he talks like a parrot, only making a noise by imitation, and framing 
 certain sounds, which he has learnt of others ; but not as a rational creature, 
 using them for signs of ideas which he has in his mind. The hearer also is 
 supposed to understand the terms as the speaker uses them, or else he talks 
 jargon, and makes an unintelligible noise. And therefore he trifles with words 
 who makes such a proposition, which, when it is made, contains no more 
 than one of the terms does, and which a man was supposed to know before ; 
 v. g. a triangle hath three sides, or saffron is yellow. And this is no farther 
 tolerable, than where a man goes to explain his terms to one who is supposed 
 or declares himself not to understand him : and then it teaches only the sig- 
 nification of that word, and the use of that sign. 
 
 Sect. 8. But no real knowledge. — We can know then the truth of two 
 *s.orts of propositions with perfect certainty ; the one is, of those trifling pro- 
 positions which have a certainty in them, but it is only a verbal certainty, but 
 not instructive. And, secondly, we can know the truth, ani so may be cer- 
 tain in propositions, which affirm something of another, which is a necessary 
 consequence of its precise complex idea, but not contained in it ; as that the 
 external angle of all triangles is bigger than either of the opposite internal 
 angles ; which relation of the outward angle to either of the opposite internal 
 angles making no part of the complex idea signified by the name triangle, this 
 is a real truth, and conveys with it instructive real knowledge. 
 
 Sect. 9. General propositions concerning substances are- oftenrt rifling. 
 — We have little or no knowledge of what combinations there be of simple 
 ideas existing together in substances, but by our senses, we cannot make any 
 universal certain propositions concerning them, any farther than our nominal 
 essences lead us : which being to a very few and inconsiderable truths, in 
 respect of those which depend on their real constitutions, the general pro- 
 positions that are made about substances, if they are certain, are for the most 
 part but trifling; and if they are instructive, are uncertain, and such as 
 we can have no knowledge of their real truth, how much soever constant 
 observation and analogy may assist our judgment in guessing. Hence it 
 comes to pass, that one may often meet with very clear and coherent dis- 
 courses, that amount yet to nothing. For it is plain, that names of substan- 
 tial beings, as well as others, as far as they have relative significations affixed 
 to them, may, with great truth, be joined negatively and affirmatively in pro- 
 positions, as their relative definitions make them fit to be so joined ; and 
 propositions consisting of such terms, may, with the same clearness, be de- 
 
Ch. i. 
 
 TRIFLING PROPOSITIONS. 
 
 407 
 
 duced one from another, as those that convey the most real truths : and all 
 this without any knowledge of the nature or reality of things existing- with- 
 out us. By this method one may make demonstrations and undoubted pro- 
 positions in words, and yet thereby advance not one jot in the knowledge of 
 the truth of things ; v. g. he that having learnt these following words, with 
 their ordinary mutually relative acceptations annexed to them : v. g. sub- 
 stance, man, animal, form, soul, vegetative, sensitive, rational, may make 
 several undoubted propositions about the soul, without knowing at all what 
 the soul really is ; and of this sort, a man may find an infinite number of 
 propositions, reasonings, and conclusions, in books of metaphysics, school 
 divinity, and some sort of natural philosophy ; and, after all, know as little 
 of God, spirits, or bodies, as he did before he set out. 
 
 Sect. 10. And why.— He that hath liberty to define, i. e. to determine 
 the . Eigmfi.ca.tion of his names of substances (as certainly every one does in 
 effect, who makes them stand for his own ideas) and makes their significa- 
 tions at a venture, taking them for his own or other men’s fancies, and not 
 from an examination or inquiry into the nature of things themselves ; may, 
 with little trouble, demonstrate them one of another, according to those sev- 
 eral respects and mutual relations he has given them one to another ; wherein, 
 however things agree or disagree in their own nature, he needs mind nothing 
 but his own notions, with the names he hath bestowed upon them : but thereby 
 no more increases his own knowledge, than he does his riches, who, taking 
 a bag of counters, calls one in a certain place a pound, another in another 
 place a shilling, and a third in a third place a penny ; and so proceeding, 
 may undoubtedly reckon right, and cast up a great sum, according to his 
 counters so placed, and standing for more or less as he pleases, without being 
 one jot the richer, or without even knowing how much a pound, shilling, 
 or penny is, but only that one is contained in the other twenty times, and 
 contains the other twelve : which a man may also do in the signification of 
 words, by making them, in respect of one another, more, or less, or equally 
 comprehensive. 
 
 Sect. 11. Thirdly, using words variously is trifling with them. — Though 
 yet concerning most words used in discourses, equally argumentative and 
 controversial, there is this more to be complained of, which is the worst sort 
 of trifling, and which sets us yet farther from the certainty of knowledge we 
 hope to attain by them, or find in them ; viz. that most writers are so far 
 from instructing us in the nature and knowledge of things, that they use 
 their words loosely and uncertainly, and do not, by using them constantly 
 and steadily in the same significations, make plain and clear deductions of 
 words one from another, and make their discourses coherent and clear (how 
 little soever they were instructive); which were not difficult to do, did they 
 not find it convenient to shelter their ignorance or obstinacy under the ob- 
 scurity and complexedness of their terms : to which, perhaps, inadvertency 
 and ill custom do in many men much contribute. 
 
 Sect. 12. Marks of ver bal pro pos itions. — To conclude ; barely verbal 
 propositions may be known by these following marks : 
 
 1. Predication in abstract. — First, all propositions, wherein two abstract 
 terms are affirmed one of another, are barely about the signification of sounds. 
 For since no abstract idea can be the same with any other but itself, when 
 its abstract name is affirmed of any other term, it can signify no more but 
 this, that it may or ought to be called by that name, or that these two names 
 signify the same idea. Thus, should any one say, that parsimony is frugality, 
 that gratitude is justice, that this or that action is or is not temperate ; how- 
 ever specious these and the like propositions may at first sight seem, yet 
 when we come to press them, and examine nicely what they contain, we 
 shall find that it all amounts to nothing but the signification of those terms. 
 
 Sect. 13. 2. A part of the definition predicated of any term. — Sec- 
 ondly, all propositions, wherein a part of the complex idea which any term 
 stands for is predicated of that term, are only verbal • v. g. to say that gold 
 
403 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 ,s a metal, or heavy. And thus all propositions, wherein more comprehen 
 sive words called genera are affirmed of subordinate or less comprehensive, 
 called species, or individuals, are barely verbal. 
 
 When by these two rules we have examined the propositions that make 
 up the discourses we ordinarily meet with, both in and out of books, we shall, 
 perhaps, find that a greater part of them, than is usually suspected, are purely 
 about the signification of words, and contain nothing in them but the use and 
 application of these signs. 
 
 This, I think, I may lay down for an infallible rule, that wherever the dis- 
 tinct idea any word stands for is not known and considered, and something 
 not contained in the idea is not affirmed or denied of it ; there our thoughts 
 stick wholly in sounds, and are able to attain no real truth or falsehood. 
 This, perhaps, if well heeded, might save us a great deal of useless amuse- 
 ment and dispute, and very much shorten our trouble and wandering, in the 
 search of real and true knowledge. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF EXISTENCE. 
 
 Sect. 1. General certain propositions concern not existence. — Hitherto 
 we have only considered the essences of things, which "being only abstract 
 ideas, and thereby removed in our thoughts from particular existence (that 
 being the proper operation of the mind, in abstraction, to consider an idea 
 under no other existence, but what it has in the understanding) gives us no 
 knowledge of real existence at all. Where by the way we may take notice, 
 that universal propositions, of whose truth or falsehood we can have certain 
 knowledge, concern not existence ; and farther, that all particular affirma- 
 tions or negations, that would not be certain if they were made general, are 
 only concerning existence ; they declaring only the accidental union or sepa- 
 ration of ideas in things existing, which, in their abstract natures, have no 
 known necessary union or repugnancy. 
 
 Sect. 2. A threefold knowledge of existence. — But, leaving the nature of 
 propositions and different ways of predication to be considered more at large 
 in another place, let us now proceed to inquire concerning our knowledge of 
 the existence of things, and how we come by it. I say then, that we have 
 the knowledge of our own existence by intuition ; of the existence of God 
 by demonstration ; and of other things by sensation. 
 
 Sect. 3. Our knowledge of our own existence is intuitive . — As for our 
 own existence, we perceive it so plainly, and so certainly, that it neither 
 needs nor is capable of any proof. /For nothing can be more evident to us 
 than our own existence; I think, I reason, I feel pleasure and pain : can any 
 of these be more evident to me than my own existence]^ If I doubt of all 
 other things, that very doubt makes me perceive my own existence, and will 
 not suffer me to doubt of that. For if I know I feel pain, it is evident I have 
 as certain perception of my own existence, as of the existence of the pain I 
 feel : or if I know I doubt, I have as certain perception of the existence of 
 the thing doubting, as of that thought which I call doubt. Experience then 
 convinces us that we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence, and 
 an internal infallible perception that we are. In every act of sensation, rea- 
 soning, or thinking, we are conscious to ourselves of our own being ; and, in 
 tins matter, come not short of the highest degree of certainty. 
 
Ch. 10 
 
 EXISTENCE OF A GOD. 
 
 409 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXISTENCE OF A GOD. 
 
 Sect. 1. We are capable of knowing certainly that there is a God . — 
 Though God has given us no innate ideas of himself ; though he has stamped 
 no original characters on our minds, wherein we may read his being ; yet 
 having furnished us with those faculties our minds are endowed with, he hath 
 not left himself without witness : since we have sense, perception, and rea- 
 son, and cannot want a clear proof of him, as long as we carry ourselves 
 about us. Nor can we justly complain of our ignorance in this great point, 
 since he has so plentifully provided us with the means to discover and know 
 him, so far as is necessary to the end of our being, and the great concernment 
 of our happiness. But though this be the most obvious truth that reason dis- 
 covers ; and though its evidence be (if I mistake not) equal to mathematica. 
 certainty ; yet it requires thought and attention, and the mind must apply 
 itself to a regular deduction of it from some part of our intuitive knowledge; 
 or else we shall be as uncertain and ignorant of this as of other propositions 
 which are in themselves capable of clear demonstration. To show therefore 
 that we are capable of knowing, i. e. being certain that there is a God, anc 
 how we may come by this certainty, I think we need go no farther than our- 
 selves, and that undoubted knowledge we have of our own existence. 
 
 Sect. 2. Man knows that he himself is. — I think it beyond question, that 
 man 'has a "clear idea of his own being ; he knows certainly that he exists, 
 and that he is something. He that can doubt, whether he be any thing or 
 no, I speak not to, no more than I would argue with pure nothing, or endeav- 
 our to convince nonentity that it were something. If any one pretends to 
 be so sceptical as to deny his own existence (for really to doubt of it is mani- 
 festly impossible), let him for me enjoy his beloved happiness of being 
 nothing, until hunger, or some other pain, convince him of the contrary. 
 This then, I think, I may take for a truth, which every one’s certain know- 
 ledge assures him of, beyond the liberty of doubting, viz. that he is something 
 that actually exists. 
 
 Sect. 3. He knows also that nothing cannot produce a being, therefore 
 sometMngeternal. — In the next place, man knows by an intuitive certainty, 
 that bare nothing can no more produce any real being than it can be equal 
 to two right angles. If a man knows not that nonentity, or the absence of ah 
 being, cannot be equal to two right angles, it is impossible he should know 
 any demonstration in Euclid. If therefore we know there is some real being, 
 and that nonentity cannot produce any real being, it is an evident demonstra- 
 tion, that from eternity there has been something ; since what was not from 
 eternity had a beginning ; and what had a beginning must be produced by 
 something else. 
 
 Sect. 4. That eternal being must be most powerful. — Next, it is evident, 
 that what had its being and beginning from another, must also have all that 
 which is in, and belongs to its being, from another too. All the powers it 
 has must be owing to, and received from, the same source. This eternal 
 source then of all being must also be the source and original of all power , 
 and so this eternal being must be also the most powerful. 
 
 Sect. 5. And most knowing. — Again, a man finds in himself perceptior 
 and knowledge. We have then got one step farther ; and we are certair 
 now, that there is nett - only some be ing^Jmt some knowing intelligent being ir 
 the world. ~ " ™_ 
 
 There was a time, then, when there was no knowing being, and when 
 knowledge began to be ; or else there has been also a knowing being from 
 eternity. If it be said, there was a time when no being had any knowledge, 
 3 B 
 
410 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 when that eternal being was void of all understanding ; I reply, that then it 
 was impossible there should ever have been any knowledge : it being as im- 
 possible that things wholly void of knowledge, and operating blindly, and 
 without any perception, should produce a knowing being, as it is impossible 
 that a triangle should make itself three angles bigger than two right ones 
 For it is as repugnant to the idea of senseless matter, that it should put into 
 itself sense, perception and knowledge, as it is repugnant to the idea of a 
 triangle, that it should put into itself greater angles than two right ones. \/ 
 
 Sect. 6. And therefore God. — Thus from the consideration of ourselves, 
 end what we infallibly find in our own constitutions, our reason leads us to the 
 knowledge of this certain and evident truth, that there is an eternal, most 
 powerful, and most knowing being ; which whether any one will please to call 
 God, it matters not. The thing is evident; and from this idea, duly consid- 
 ered, will easily be deduced all those other attributes which we' ought to as- 
 cribe to this eternal being. If nevertheless any one should be found so 
 senselessly arrogant as to suppose man alone knowing and wise, but yet the 
 product of mere ignorance and chance ; and that all the rest of the universe 
 acted only by that blind hap-hazard : — I shall leave with him that very ra- 
 tional and emphatical rebuke of Tully, 1. ii. De Leg. to be considered at his 
 leisure : “ What can be more sillily arrogant and misbecoming than for a man 
 to think that he has a mind and understanding in him, but yet in all the uni- 
 verse beside there is no such thing] Or that those things, which with the 
 utmost stretch of his reason he can scarce comprehend, should be moved and 
 managed without any reason at all I” “Quid est enim verius, quamneminem 
 esse oportere tain stulte arrogantem, ut in se mentem et rationem putet 
 inesse, in coelo mundoque non putet I Aut ea quse vix summa ingenii ratione 
 comprehendat, nulla ratione moveri putet 1” 
 
 From what has been said it is plain to me, we have a more certain know- 
 ledge of the existence of a God, than of any thing our senses have not im- 
 mediately discovered to us. Nay, I presume I may say, that we more cer- 
 tainly know that there is a God, than that there is any thing else without us. 
 When I say we know, I mean there is such a knowledge within our reach, 
 which we cannot miss, if we will but apply our minds to that, as we do to 
 several other inquiries. 
 
 Sect. 7. Our idea of a most perfect being not the sole proof of a God . — 
 How far the idea of a most perfect being; which a man may frame in his 
 mind, does or does not prove the existence of a God, I will not here ex- 
 amine. For in the different make of men’s tempers and application of their 
 thoughts, some arguments prevail more on one, and some on another, for 
 the confirmation of the same truth. But yet, I think, this I may say, that it 
 is an ill way of establishing this truth, and silencing atheists, to lay the 
 whole stress of so important a point as this upon that sole foundation ; and 
 take some men’s having that idea of God in their minds (for it is evident 
 some men have none, and some worse than none, and the most very differ- 
 ent) for the only proof of a deity : and out of an over-fondness of that darling 
 invention cashier, or at least endeavour to invalidate all other arguments, 
 and forbid us to hearken to those proofs, as being weak or fallacious, which 
 our own existence and the sensible parts of the universe offer so clearly and 
 so cogently to our thoughts, that I deem it impossible for a considering man 
 to withstand them. For I judge it as certain and clear a truth, as can any 
 where be delivered, that the invisible things of God are clearly seen from the 
 creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made, even 
 his eternal power and Godhead. Though our own being furnishes us, as I 
 have shown, with an evident and incontestible proof of a deity, — and I be- 
 lieve nobody can avoid the cogency of it, who will but as carefully attend to 
 it, as to any 7 other demonstration oi so many parts ; — yet this being so funda 
 mental a truth, and of that consequence, that all religion and genuine mora’i- 
 ity depend thereon, I doubt not but I shall be forgiven by my reader, if I go 
 over some parts of this argument again, and enlarge a little more upon them. 
 
 Sect. 8. Something from eternity. — There is no truth more evident, thaD 
 
Ch. 10, 
 
 EXISTENCE OF A GOD. 
 
 411 
 
 that something 1 must be from eternity. I never yet heard of any one so un- 
 reasonable, or that could suppose so manifest a contradiction, as a time where- 
 in there was perfectly nothing : this being' of all absurdities the greatest, to 
 imagine that pure nothing, the perfect negation and absence of all beings, 
 should ever produce any real existence. 
 
 It being then unavoidable for all rational creatures to conclude, that some- 
 thing has existed from eternity ; let us next see what kind of thing that must be. 
 
 Sect. 9. Two sorts of beings, cogitative and incogitative. — There are Du* 
 two sorts of beings in the world, that man knows or conceives. 
 
 First, such as are purely material, without sense, perception, or thought, a? 
 the clippings of our beards, and parings of our nails. 
 
 "Secondly, sensible, thinking, perceiving beings, such as we find ourselves 
 to be, which, if you please, we will hereafter call cogitative and incogitative 
 beings; which to our present purpose, if for nothing else, are, perhaps better 
 terms than material and immaterial. 
 
 Sect. 10. Incogitative beings cannot produce a cogitative. — If then there 
 must be something eternal, let us see what sort of being it must be. And to 
 that, it is very obvious to reason, that it must necessarily be a cogitative being. 
 For it is as impossible to conceive, that ever bare incogitative matter should 
 produce a thinking intelligent being, as that nothing should of itself produce 
 matter. Let us suppose any parcel of matter eternal, great or small, we shall 
 find it, in itself, able to produce nothing. For example, let us suppose the 
 matter of the flext pebble we meet with eternal, closely united, and 
 the parts firmly at rest together; if there were no other being in the world, 
 must it not eternally remain so, a dead inactive lump 1 Is it possible to con- 
 ceive it can add motion to itself, being purely matter, or produce any thing! 
 Matter, then, by its own strength, cannot produce in itself so much as mo- 
 tion : the motion it has must also be from eternity, or else be produced and 
 added to matter by some other being more powerful than matter; matter, as 
 is evident, having not power to produce motion in itself. But let us suppose 
 motion eternal too ; yet matter, incogitative matter and motion, whatever 
 changes it might produce of figure and bulk, could never produce thought: 
 knowledge will still be as far beyond the power of motion and matter to pro- 
 duce, as matter is beyond the power of nothing or nonentity to produce. 
 And I appeal to every one’s own thoughts, whether he cannot as easily con- 
 ceive matter, produced by nothing, as thought to be produced by pure matter, 
 when before there was no such thing as thought, or an intelligent being ex- 
 isting! Divide matter into as minute parts as you will (which we are apt to 
 imagine a sort of spiritualizing, or making a thinking thing of it) ; vary the 
 figure and motion of it as much as you please ; a globe, cube, cone, prism, 
 cylinder, &c. whose diameters are about 1000000th part of a gry(a), will ope- 
 rate no otherwise upon other bodies of proportionable bulk than those of an 
 inch or foot diameter; and you may as rationally expect to produce sense, 
 thought, and knowledge, by putting together, in a certain figure and motion, 
 gross particles of matter, as by those that are the very minutest that do any 
 where exist. They knock, impel, and resist one another, just as the greater do, 
 and that is all they can do. So that if we will suppose nothing first, or eter- 
 nal, matter can never begin to be : if we suppose bare matter, without motion, 
 eternal motion can never begin to be : we suppose only matter and motion 
 first, or eternal ; thought can never begin to be. For it is impossible to con- 
 ceive that matter, either with or without motion, could have originally in 
 and from itself sense, perception, and knowledge ; as is evident from hence, 
 
 (a) A gry is 1-1 0th of aline, a line l-10th of an inch, an inch l-10th of a philosophical 
 foot, a philosophical foot l-3d of a pendulum, whose diadroms, in the latitude of 45 
 degrees, are each equal to one second of time or l-60thof a minute. I have affect- 
 edly made use of this measure here, and the parts of it, under a decimal division, 
 with names to them ; because, I think, it would be of general convenience that this 
 should he the common measure, in the commonwealth of letters. 
 
412 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 that then sense, perception, and knowledge must be a property eternally in- 
 separable from matter and every particle of it. Not to add that though our 
 general or specific conception of matter makes us speak of it as one thing, 
 yet really all matter is not one individual thing, neither is there any such 
 thing existing as one material being, or one single body that we know or can 
 conceive. And therefore if matter were the eternal first cogitative being, there 
 would not be one eternal infinite cogitative being, but an infinite number of 
 eternal finite cogitative beings, independent one of another, of limited force 
 and distinct thoughts, which could never produce that order, harmony, and 
 beauty which are to be found in nature. Since therefore whatsoever is the 
 first eternal being must necessarily be cogitative; and whatsoever is first of all 
 things must necessarily contain in it and actually have, at least, all the per- 
 fections that can ever after exist; nor can it ever give to another any perfec- 
 tion that it hath not, either actually in itself, or at least, in a higher degree ; 
 it necessarily follows, that the first eternal being cannot be matter. 
 
 Sect. 11. Therefore there has been an eternal wisdom. — If therefore it be 
 evident, that something necessarily must exist from eternity, it is also as evi- 
 dent, that that something must necessarily be a cogitative being : for it is as 
 impossible tha. incogitative matter should produce a cogitative being, as that 
 nothing, or the negation of all being, should produce a positive being or 
 matter. 
 
 Sect. 12. Though this discovery of the necessary existence of an eternal 
 mind does sufficiently lead us into the knowledge of God ; since it will hence 
 follow, that all other knowing beings that have a beginning must depend on 
 him, and have no other ways of knowledge, or extent of power, than what he 
 gives them ; and therefore if he made those, he made also the less excellent 
 pieces of this universe, all inanimate beings, whereby his omniscience, power, 
 and providence will be established, and all his other attributes necessarily fol- 
 low : yet to clear up this a little farther, we will see what doubts can be raised 
 against it. 
 
 Sect. 13. Whether material or no. — First, perhaps it will be said, that 
 though it be as clear as demonstration can make it, that there must be an 
 eternal being, and that being must also be knowing ; yet it does not follow, 
 but that thinking being may also be material. Let it be so ; it equally still 
 follows, that there is a God. For if there be an eternal, omniscient, omnipo- 
 tent being, it is certain that there is a God, whether you imagine that being 
 to be material or no. But herein, I suppose, lies the danger and deceit of 
 that supposition : there being no way to avoid the demonstration, that there 
 is an eternal knowing being, men, devoted to matter, would willingly have it 
 granted, that this knowing being is material ; and then letting slide out of 
 their minds, or the discourse, the demonstration whereby an eternal knowing 
 being was proved necessarily to exist, would argue all to be matter, ana so 
 deny a God, that is, an eternal cogitative being ; whereby they are so far from 
 establishing, that they destroy their own hypothesis. For if there can be, in 
 their opinion, eternal matter, without any eternal cogitative being, they mani- 
 festly separate matter and thinking, and suppose no necessary connexion of 
 the one with the other, and so establish the necessity of an eternal spirit, but 
 not of matter, since it has been proved already, that an eternal cogitative 
 being is unavoidably to be granted. Now if thinking and matter may be 
 separated, the eternal existence of matter will not follow from the eternal 
 existence of a cogitative being, and they suppose it to no purpose. 
 
 Sect. 14. Not material, 1. Because every particle of matter is not cogi- 
 tative. — But now let us suppose they can satisfy themselves or others, that 
 this eternal thinking being is material. 
 
 First, I would ask them, whether they imagine, that all matter, every 
 particle of matter, thinks 1 This, I suppose, they will scarce say ; since then 
 there would be as many eternal thinking beings as there are particles of mat 
 ier, and so an infinity of gods. And yet if they will not allow matter as mat 
 t er, that is, every particle of matter, to be as well cogitative as extended, the*. 
 
Cli. LC, 
 
 EXISTENCE OF A GOD. 
 
 413 
 
 will have as hard a task to make out to their own reasons a cogitative being 
 out of incogitative particles, as an extended being out of unextended parts, it 
 I may so speak. 
 
 Sect. 15. 2. One particle alone of matter cannot be cogitative. — Second- 
 ly, if all matter does not think, I next ask, “ Whether it be only one atom 
 that does so V’ This has as many absurdities as the other ; for then this atom 
 of matter must be alone eternal or not. If this alone be eternal, then this 
 alone, by its powerful thought or will, made all the rest of matter. And so 
 we have the creation of matter by a powerful thought, which is that the ma- 
 terialists stick at. For if they suppose one single thinking atom to have 
 produced all the rest of matter, they cannot ascribe that pre-eminency to it 
 upon any other account than that of its thinking, the only supposed difference. 
 But allow it to be by some other way, which is above our conception, it must 
 still be creation, and these men must give up their great maxim, ex nihilo nil 
 fit. If it be said, that all the rest of matter is equally eternal, as that thinking 
 atom, it will be to say any thing at pleasure, though ever so absurd : for to 
 suppose all matter eternal, and yet one small particle in knowledge and power 
 infinitely above all the rest, is without any the least appearance of reason to 
 frame an hypothesis. Every particle of matter, as matter, is capable of all 
 the same figures and motions of any other; and I challenge any one, in his 
 thoughts, to add any thing else to one above another. 
 
 Sect. 16. 3. A system of incogitative matter cannot be cogitative. — If 
 then neither one peculiar atom alone can be this eternal thinking being ; nor 
 all matter as matter, i. e. every particle of matter, can be it ; it only remains, 
 that it is some certain system of matter duly put together, that is this thinking 
 eternal being. This is that which, I imagine, is that notion which men are 
 aptest to have of God, who would have him a material being, as most readily 
 suggested to them, by the ordinary conceit they have of themselves, and other 
 men, which they take to be material thinking beings. But this imagination, 
 however more natural, is no less absurd than the other ; for to suppose the 
 eternal thinking being to be nothing else but a composition of particles of 
 matter, each whereof is incogitative, is to ascribe all the wisdom and know- 
 ledge of that eternal being only to the juxta-position of parts; than which 
 nothing can be more absurd. For unthinking particles of matter, however put 
 together, can have nothing thereby added to them, but a new relation of posi- 
 tion, which it is impossible should give thought and knowledge to them. 
 
 Sect. 17. Whether in motion or at rest. — But farther, this corporeal sys- 
 tem either has all its parts at rest, or it is a certain motion of the parts wherein 
 its thinking consists. If it be perfectly at rest, it is but one lump, and so can 
 have no privileges above one atom. 
 
 If it be the motion of its parts on which its thinking depends, all the 
 thoughts there must be unavoidably accidental and limited ; since all the par- 
 ticles that by motion cause thought, being each of them in itself without any 
 thought, cannot regulate its own motions, much less be regulated by the 
 thought of the whole ; since that thought is not the cause of motion (for then 
 it must be antecedent to it, and so without it) but the consequence of it, 
 whereby freedom, power, choice, and all rational and wise thinking or acting, 
 will be quite taken away : so that such a thinking being will be no better nor 
 wiser than pure blind matter ; since to resolve all into the accidental unguided 
 motions of blind matter, or into thought depending on unguided motions of 
 blind matter, is the same thing; not to mention the narrowness of such 
 thoughts and knowledge that must depend on the motion of such parts. But 
 there needs no enumeration of any more absurdities and impossibilities in this 
 hypothesis (however full of them it be) than that before-mentioned ; since let 
 this thinking system be all, or a part of the matter of the universe, it is im- 
 possible that any one particle should either know its own or the motion of 
 any other particle, or the whole know the motion of every particle ; and so 
 'egulate its own thoughts or motions, or indeed have any thought resulting 
 from such motion. 
 
414 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 Sect. 18. Matter not coeternal with an eternal mind . — Others would have 
 matter to be eternal, notwithstanding that they allow an eternal, cogitative, 
 immaterial being. This, though it take not away the being of a God, yet 
 since it denies one and the first great piece of his workmanship, the creation, 
 let us consider it a little. Matter must be allowed eternal. Why? because 
 you cannot conceive how it can be made out of nothing. Why do you not 
 also think yourself eternal! You will answer, perhaps, because about twenty 
 or forty years since you began to be. But if I ask you what that yon is., 
 which began then to be, you can scarce tell me. The matter, whereof you 
 are made, began not then to be ; for if it did, then it is not eternal : but it be- 
 gan to be put together in such a fashion and frame as makes up your body , 
 but yet that frame of particles is not you, it makes not that thinking thing 
 you are ; (for I have now to do with one who allows an eternal, immaterial, 
 thinking being, but would have unthinking matter eternal too) therefore when 
 did that thinking thing begin to be! If it did never begin to be, then have 
 you always been a thinking thing from eternity ; the absurdity whereof I need 
 not confute, till I meet with one who is so void of understanding as to own it. 
 If therefore you can allow a thinking thing to be made out of nothing (as all 
 things that are not eternal must be) why also can you not allow it possible 
 for a material being to be made out of nothing, by an equal power, but that 
 you have the experience of the one in view, and not of the other! though, 
 when well considered, creation of a spirit will be found to require no less 
 power than the creation of matter. Nay, possibly, if we would emancipate 
 ourselves from vulgar notions, and raise our thoughts as far as they would 
 reach, to a closer contemplation of things, we might be able to aim at some 
 dim and seeming conception how matter might at first be made, and begin to 
 exist by the power of that eternal first being: but to give beginning and being 
 to a spirit, would be found a more inconceivable effect of omnipotent power. 
 But this being what would perhaps lead us too far from the notions on which 
 the philosophy now in the world is built, it would not be pardonable to deviate 
 so far from them ; or to inquire, so far as grammar itself would authorize, if 
 the common settled opinion opposes it: especially in this place, where the 
 received doctrine serves well enough to our present purpose, and leaves this 
 past doubt, that the creation or beginning of any one substance out of nothing 
 being once admitted, the creation of all other, but the Creator himself, may. 
 with the same ease, be supposed. 
 
 Sect. 19. — But you will say, is it not impossible to admit of the making 
 any thing out of nothing, since we cannot possibly conceive it! I answer, 
 No: 1. Because it is not reasonable to deny the power of an infinite being, 
 because we cannot comprehend its operations. We do not deny other effects 
 upon this ground, because we cannot possibly conceive the manner of their 
 production. We cannot conceive how any thiqg but impulse of body can 
 move body; and yet that is not a reason sufficient to make us deny it impos- 
 sible, against the constant experience we have of it in ourselves, in all our 
 voluntary motions, which are produced in us only by the free action or 
 tho-ught of our own minds ; and are not, nor can be the effects of the impulse 
 or determination of the motion of blind matter in or upon our own bodies ; 
 for then it could not be in our power or choice to alter it. For example : my 
 right hand writes, whilst my left hand is still. What causes rest in one, and 
 motion in the other! Nothing but my will, a thought of my mind; my 
 thought only changing, the right hand rests, and the left hand moves. This 
 is matter of fact, which cannot be denied. Explain this, and make it intelli- 
 gible, and then the next step will be to understand creation. For the giving 
 a new determination to the motion of the animal spirits (which some make 
 use of to explain voluntary motion) clears not the difficulty one jot: to alter 
 the determination of motion being in this case no easier nor less than to give 
 motion itself; since the new determination given to the animal spirits must 
 be either immediately by thought, or by some other body put in their way by 
 thought, which was not in their way before, and so must owe its motion to 
 
Ch. 10. 
 
 EXISTENCE OF A GOD. 
 
 415 
 
 thought: either of which leaves voluntary motion as unintelligible as it was 
 before. In the mean time it is an overvaluing ourselves to reduce all to the 
 narrow measure of our capacities, and to conclude all things impossible to 
 be done, whose manner of doing exceeds our comprehension. This is to 
 make our comprehension infinite, or God finite, when what he can do is 
 limited to what we can conceive of it. If you do not understand the opera- 
 tions of your own finite mind, that thinking thing within you, do not deem it 
 strange that you cannot comprehend the operations of that eternal infinite 
 mind, who made and governs all things, and whom the heaven of heavens 
 cannot contain. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXISTENCE OF OTHER THINGS. 
 
 Sect. 1. Ii is to be had only by sensation. — The knowledge of our own 
 being "weTiuve-hy intuition. The existence of a God reason clearly makes 
 known us, as has been shown. 
 
 The knowledge of the existence of any other thing we can have only by 
 sensation : for there being no necessary connexion of real existence with any 
 idea a man hath in his memory, nor of any other existence but that of God, 
 with the existence of any particular man ; no particular man can know the 
 existence of any other being, but only when by actual operating upon him it 
 makes itself perceived by him. For the having the idea of any thing in our 
 mind no more proves the existence of that thing, than the picture of a man 
 evidences his being in the world, or the visions of a dream make thereby a 
 true history. 
 
 S E'oTr-iJ.- Instance, whiten ess of this paper. — It is therefore the actual 
 receiving of ideas from without, that gives us notice of the existence of othei 
 things, and makes us know that something doth exist at that time without 
 us, which causes that idea in us, though perhaps we neither know nor con. 
 sider how it does it : for it takes not from the certainty of our senses, and 
 the ideas we receive by them, that we know not the manner wherein they 
 are produced, v. g. whilst I write this I have, by the paper affecting my 
 eyes, that idea produced in my mind which, whatever object causes, I call 
 white ; by which I know that that quality or accident {i. e. whose appearance 
 before my eyes always causes that idea) doth really exist, and hath a being 
 without me. And of this, the greatest assurance I can possibly have, and to 
 which my faculties can attain, is the testimony of my eyes, which are the 
 proper and sole judges of this thing, whose testimony I have reason to rely 
 on as so certain, that I can no more doubt, whilst I write this, that I see 
 white and black, and that something really exists, that causes that sensation 
 in me, than that I write or move my hand : which is a certainty as great as 
 human nature is capable of, concerning the existence of any thing but a 
 man’s self alone, and of God. 
 
 Sect. 3. This, though not so certain as demonstration, yet may be called 
 knowledge, and proves the existence of things without us. — The notice we 
 have by our senses of the existing of things without us, though it be not 
 altogether so certain as our intuitive knowledge, or the deductions of our 
 reason, employed about the clear abstract ideas of our own minds ; yet it is 
 an assurance that deserves the name of knowledge. If we persuade our- 
 selves that our faculties act and inform us right, concerning the existence of 
 those objects that affect them, it cannot pass for an ill-grounded confidence: 
 for I think nobody can, in earnest, be so sceptical as to be uncertain of the 
 existence of those things which he sees and feels. At least, he that can 
 ■loubt so far (whatever he may have with his own thoughts) will never hav 9 
 
416 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 any controversy with me; since he can never be sure I say any thing con- 
 trary to his own opinion. As to myself, I think God has given me assurance 
 enough of the existence of things without me ; since by their different appli- 
 cation I can produce in myself both pleasure and pain, which is one great 
 concernment of my present state. This is certain, the confidence that our 
 faculties do not herein deceive us is the greatest assurance we are capable 
 of, concerning the existence of material beings. For we cannot act any 
 thing but by our faculties ; nor talk of knowledge itself, but by the helps of 
 those faculties which are fitted to apprehend even what knowledge is. But 
 besides the assurance we have from our senses themselves, that they do not 
 err in the information they give us, of the existence of things without us, 
 when they are affected by them, we are farther confirmed in this assurance 
 by other concurrent reasons. 
 
 Sect. 4. 1. Because we cannot have them hut by the inlet of the senses — 
 
 First, it is plain those perceptions are produced in us by exterior causes 
 affecting our senses : because those that want the organs of any sense never 
 can have the ideas belonging to that sense produced in their minds. This is 
 too evident to be doubted : and therefore we cannot but be assured that they 
 come in by the organs of that sense, and no other way. The organs them- 
 selves, it is plain, do not produce them ; for then the eyes of a man in the 
 dark would produce colours, and his nose smell roses in the winter : but we 
 see nobody gets the relish of a pine-apple till he goes to the Indies, where it 
 is, and tastes it. 
 
 Sect. 5. 2. Because an idea from actual sensation, and another from 
 
 memory, are very distinct perceptions. — Secondly, because sometimes I find 
 that I cannot avoid the having those ideas produced in my mind. For though 
 when my eyes are shut, or windows fast, I can at pleasure recall to my mind 
 the ideas of light, or the sun, which former sensations had lodged in my 
 memory ; so I can at pleasure lay by that idea, and take into my view that 
 of the smell of a rose, or taste of sugar. But if I turn my eyes at noon 
 towards the sun, I cannot avoid the ideas which the light, or sun, then pro- 
 duces in me. So that there is a manifest difference between the ideas laid 
 up in my memory (over which, if they were there only, I should have con- 
 stantly the same power to dispose of them, and lay them by at pleasure) and 
 those which force themselves upon me, and I cannot avoid having. And 
 therefore it must needs be some exterior cause, and the brisk acting of some 
 objects without me, whose efficacy I cannot resist, that produces those ideas 
 in my mind, whether I will or no. Besides, there is nobody who doth not 
 perceive the difference in himself between contemplating the sun, as he hath 
 the idea of it in his memory, and actually looking upon it ; of which two his 
 perception is so distinct, that few of his ideas are more distinguishable one 
 from another. And therefore he hath certain knowledge, that they are not 
 both memory, or the actions of his mind, and fancies only within him ; but 
 that actual seeing hath a cause without. 
 
 Sect. 6. 3. Pleasure or pain which accompanies actual sensation, ac- 
 
 companies not the returning of those ideas without the external objects . — 
 Thirdly, add to this, that many of those ideas are produced in us with pain, 
 which afterward we remember without the least offence. Thus the pain of 
 heat or cold, when the idea of it is revived in our minds, gives us no disturb- 
 ance ; which, when felt, was very troublesome, and is again, when actually 
 repeated ; which is occasioned by the disorder the external object causes in 
 our bodies when applied to it. And we remember the pains of hunger, thirst, 
 or the headach, without any pain at all ; which would either never disturb us, or 
 else constantly do it, as often as we thought of it, were there nothing more but 
 ideas floating in our minds, and appearances entertaining our fancies, without 
 the real existence of things affecting us from abroad. The same may be 
 said of pleasure accompanying several actual sensations, and though mathe- 
 matical demonstrations depend not upon sense, yet the examining them by 
 diagrams gives great credit to the evidence of our sight, and seems to give it 
 
EXISTENCE OF OTHER THINGS. 
 
 Oh. 11. 
 
 117 
 
 a certainty approaching to that, of demonstration itself. For it would be very 
 strange that a man should allow it for an undeniable truth, that two angles of 
 a figure, which he measures by lines and angles of a diagram, should be bigger 
 one than the other ; and yet doubt of the existence of those lines and angles, 
 which by looking on he makes use of to measure that by. 
 
 Sect. 7. 4. Our senses assist one another's testimony of the existence 
 
 of outward things. — Fourthly, our senses in many cases bear witness to the 
 truth of each other’s report, concerning the existence of sensible things 
 without us. He that sees a fire may, if he doubt whether it be any thing 
 more than a bare fancy, feel it too ; and be convinced by putting his hand 
 in it : which certainly could never be put into such exquisite pain by a bare 
 idea or phantom, unless that the pain be a fancy too, which yet he cannot, 
 when the burn is well, by raising the idea of it, bring upon himself again. 
 
 Thus I see, whilst I write this, I can change the appearance of the paper : 
 and by designing the letters tell beforehand what new idea it shall exhibit the 
 very next moment, by barely drawing my pen over it : which will neither 
 appear (let me fancy as much as I will) if my hands stand still ; or though 
 I move my pen, if my eyes be shut : nor, when those characters are once 
 made on the paper, can I choose afterward but see them as they are : that is, 
 have the ideas of such letters as I have made. Whence it is manifest, that 
 they are not barely the sport and play of my own imagination, when I find 
 that the characters that were made at the pleasure of my own thought, do 
 not obey them ; nor yet cease to be, whenever I shall fancy it ; but continue 
 to affect the senses constantly and regularly, according to the figures I made 
 them. To which if we will add, that the sight of those shall, from another 
 man, draw such sounds as I beforehand design they shall stand for; there 
 will be little reason left to doubt that those words I write do really exist 
 without me, when they cause a long series of regular sounds to affect my 
 ears, which could not be the effect of my imagination, nor could my memory 
 retain them in that order. 
 
 Sect. 8. Thisjiextamtyis as great as our condition needs. — But yet, if 
 aftj^aHAhisTrfiy one will be so sceptical as to distrust his senses, and to affirm 
 that all we see and hear, feel and taste, think and do, during our whole being, 
 is but the series and deluding appearances of a long dream, whereof there is 
 no reality ; and therefore will question the existence of all things,, or our 
 knowledge of any thing ; I must desire him to consider, that, if all be a dream, 
 then he doth but dream that he makes the question ; and so it is not much 
 matter that a waking man should answer him. But yet, if he pleases, he 
 may dream that I make him this answer, that the certainty of things existing 
 in rerum natura, when we have the testimony of our senses for it, is not only 
 as great as our frame can attain to, but as our condition needs. For our 
 faculties being suited not to the full extent of being, nor to a perfect, clear, 
 comprehensive knowledge of things, free from all doubt and scruple ; but to 
 the preservation of us, in whom they are, and accommodated to the use of 
 life ; they serve to our purpose well enough, if they will but give us certain 
 notice of those things which are convenient or inconvenient to us. For he 
 that sees a candle burning, and hath experimented the force of its flame, by 
 putting his finger in it, will little doubt that this is something existing without 
 him, which does him harm, and puts him' to great pain : which is assurance 
 enough, when no man requires greater certainty to govern his actions by than 
 what is as certain as his actions themselves. And if our dreamer pleases to 
 tiy whether the glowing heat of a glass furnace be barely a wandering ima- 
 gination in a drowsy man’s fancy ; by putting his hand into it he may perhaps 
 be wakened into a certainty greater than he could wish, that it is something 
 more than bare imagination. So that this evidence is as great as we can 
 desire, being as certain to us as our pleasure or pain, i. e. happiness or 
 misery ; beyond which we have no concernment, either of knowing or being. 
 Such an assurance of the existence of things without us is sufficient to direct 
 as in the attaining the good, and avoiding the evil, which is caused by them; 
 
418 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 which is the important concernment we have of being made acquainted witn 
 tnem. 
 
 Sect. 9. But reaches no farther than actual sensation. — In fine, then, 
 when our senses do actually, convey into our understandings any idea, we 
 ^ — cannot but be -satisfied that there doth something at that time really exist 
 without us, which doth affect our senses, and by them give notice of itself to 
 our apprehensive faculties, and actually produce that idea which we then 
 perceive : and we cannot so far distrust their testimony as to doubt, that such 
 collections of simple ideas, as we have observed by our senses to be united 
 together, do really exist together. But this knowledge extends as far as the 
 present testimony of our senses, employed about particular objects that do then 
 affect them, and no farther. For if I saw such a collection of simple ideas, 
 as is wont to be called man, existing together one minute since, and am now 
 alone, I cannot be certain that the same man exists now, since there is no 
 necessary connexion of his existence a minute since with his existence now : 
 by a thousand ways he may cease to be, since T had the testimony of my 
 senses for his existence. And if I cannot be certain that the man I saw last 
 to-day is now in being, I can less be certain that he is so, who hath been 
 longer removed from my senses, and I have not seen since yesterday, or since 
 the last year : and much less can I be certain of the existence of men that 1 
 never saw. And therefore, though it be highly probable that millions of men 
 do now exist, yet, whilst I am alone writing this, I have not that certainty of 
 it which we strictly call knowledge ; though the great likelihood of it puts 
 me past doubt, and it be reasonable for me to do several things upon the con- 
 fidence that there are men (and men also of my acquaintance, with whom I 
 have to do) now in the world : but this is but probability, not knowledge. 
 
 Sect. 10. Folly to expect "demonstration in every thing. — Whereby yet 
 we may observe, how foolish and vain a thing it is for a man of a narrow 
 knowledge, who having reason given him to judge of the different evidence 
 and probability of things, and to be swayed accordingly; how vain, I say, it 
 is to expect demonstration and certainty in things not capable of it, and refuse 
 o.ssent to very rational propositions, and act contrary to very plain and clear 
 truths, because they cannot be made out so evident as to surmount eveiy (I 
 will not say reason but) pretence of doubting. He that in the ordinary 
 affairs of life would admit of nothing but direct plain demonstration, would 
 be sure of nothing in this world, but of perishing quickly. The wholesome- 
 ness of his meat or drink would not give him reason to venture on it: and I 
 would fain know, what it is he could do upon such grounds as are capable of 
 no doubt, no objection. 
 
 Sect. 11. Past existence is known by memory. — As when our senses are 
 actually employed about any object, we 'do "know that it does exist ; so by our 
 memory we may be assured, that heretofore things that affected our senses 
 have existed. And thus we have knowledge of the past existence of several 
 things, whereof our senses having informed us, our memories still retain the 
 ideas ; and of this we are past all doubt, so long as we remember well. But 
 this knowledge also reaches no farther than our senses have formerly assured 
 us. Thus seeing water at this instant, it is an unquestionable truth to me 
 th.at water doth exist : and remembering that I saw it yesterday, it will also 
 be always true, and, as long as my memory retains it, always an undoubted 
 proposition to me, that water did exist on the 10th of July 1688, as it will also 
 be equally true, that a certain number of very fine colours did exist, which at 
 the same time I saw upon a bubble of that water: but, being now quite out 
 of the sight both of the water and bubbles too, it is no more certainly known 
 to me that the water doth now exist, than that the bubbles or colours therein 
 do so ; it being no more necessary that water should exist to-day, because it 
 existed yesterday, than that the colours or bubbles exist to-day because they 
 existed yesterday ; though it be exceedingly much more probable, because 
 water hath been observed to continue long in existence, but bubbles and the 
 colours on them quickly cease to be. 
 
Ch. 11. 
 
 EXISTENCE OF OTHER THINGS. 
 
 419 
 
 Sect. 12. The existence of spirits not knowable. — What ideas we have 
 Td r ^pTnTs7"an<riiow we come by them, I have already shown. But though 
 we have those ideas in our minds, and know we have them there, the having 
 he ideas of spirits does not make us know that any such things do exist 
 without us, or that there are any finite spirits, or any other spiritual beings 
 out the eternal God. We have ground from revelation, and several other 
 reasons, to believe with assurance that there are such creatures : but, our 
 senses not being able to discover them, we want the means of knowing their 
 particular existences. For we can no more know, that there are finite spirits 
 really existing, by the idea we have of such beings in our minds, than by the 
 ideas any one has of fairies, or centaurs, he can come to know that things 
 answering those ideas do really exist. 
 
 And therefore concerning the existence of finite spirits, as well as several 
 other things, we must content ourselves with tne evidence of faith; but uni- 
 versal certain propositions concerning this matter are beyond our reach. For 
 however true it may be, v. g. that all the intelligent spirits that God ever 
 created do still exist ; yet it can never make a part of our certain knowledge 
 These and the like propositions we may assent to as highly probable, but are 
 not, I fear, in this state capable of knowing. We are not then to put others 
 upon demonstrating, nor ourselves upon search of universal certainty, in all 
 those matters, wherein we are not capable of any other knowledge, but what 
 our senses give us in this or that particular. 
 
 Sect. 13. Particular propositions concerning existence are knowahle ■ — 
 By which it appears, that there are two sorts of propositions, 1. There is 
 one sort of propositions concerning the existence of any thing answerable 
 to such an idea : as having the idea of an elephant, phoenix, motion, or an 
 angel, in my mind, the first and natural inquiry is, whether such a thing 
 does anywhere exist 1 And this knowledge is only of particulars. No exist- 
 ence of any thing without us, but only of God, can certainly be known farther 
 than our senses inform iiSi — -2. There is another sort of propositions, wherein 
 is expressed the agreement or disagreement of our abstract ideas, and their 
 dependence on one another. Such propositions may be universal and certain. 
 So having the idea of God and myself, of fear and obedience, I cannot but 
 be sure that God is to be feared and obeyed by me ; and this proposition will 
 be certain, concerning rrian in general, if I have made an abstract idea of 
 such a species, whereof I am one particular. But yet this proposition, how 
 certain soever, that men ought to fear and obey God, proves not to me the 
 existence of men in t’.e world, but will be true of all such creatures, when- 
 ever they do exist : which certainty cf such general propositions, depends on 
 the agreement or disagreement to be discovered in those abstract ideas. 
 
 ~ Sect. 14. And general propositions concerning abstract ideas. — In the 
 former case, our knowledge is the consequence of the existence of things 
 producing ideas in our minds by our senses : in the latter knowledge is the 
 consequence of the ideas (be they what they will) that are in our minds, 
 producing there general certain propositions. Many of these are called 
 ceternce veritates, and all of them indeed are so ; not from being written all 
 or any of them in the minds of all men, or that they were any of them pro- 
 positions in one’s mind till he, having got the abstract ideas, joined or sepa- 
 rated them by affirmation or negation. But wheresoever we can suppose 
 such a creature as man is, endowed with such faculties, and thereby furnished 
 with such ideas as we have, we must conclude, he must needs, when he ap 
 plies his thoughts to the consideration of his ideas, know the truth of certain 
 propositions, that will arise from the agreement or disagreement which he 
 will perceive in his own ideas. Such propositions are therefore called eternal 
 truths, not because they are eternal propositions actually formed, and ante- 
 cedent to the understanding, that at any time maxes them ; nor because they 
 are imprinted on the mind from any-patterns, that are anywhere out of the 
 mind, and existed before : but because being once made about abstract ideas, 
 so as to be true, they will whenever they can be supposed to be made again 
 
420 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 at any time past or to come, by a mind having those ideas, always actually 
 be true. For names being supposed to stand perpetually for the same ideas, 
 and the same ideas having immutably the same habitudes one to another, pro- 
 positions concerning any abstract ideas, that are once true, must needs be 
 eternal verities. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 OF THE IMPROVEMENT OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Sect. 1. Knowledge is not from maxims. — It having been the common 
 received opinion ainong'men of letters, that maxims were the foundation of 
 all knowledge ; and that the sciences were each of them built upon certain 
 pracognita, from whence the understanding was to take its rise, and by 
 which it was to conduct itself, in its inquiries into the matters belonging to 
 that science ; the beaten road of the schools has been, to lay down in the 
 beginning one or more general propositions, as foundations whereon to build 
 the knowledge that was to be had of that subject. These doctrines, thus 
 laid down for foundations of any science, were called principles, as the be- 
 ginnings from which we must set out, and look no farther backwards in our 
 inquiries, as we have already observed. 
 
 Sect. 2. ( The occasion of that opinion .) — One thing which might proba- 
 bly give an occasion in this way of proceeding in other sciences, was (as I 
 suppose) the good success it seemed to have in mathematics, wherein men 
 being observed to attain a great certainty of knowledge, these sciences came 
 by pre-eminence to be called MctflnjuaTa., and Ma6»o-K, learning, or things 
 learned, thoroughly learned, as having of all others the greatest certainty, 
 clearness, and evidence in them. 
 
 Sect. 3. But from the comparing clear and distinct ideas. — But if any 
 one will consider, he will (I guess) find, that the great advancement and cer- 
 tainty of real knowledge, which men arrived to in these sciences, was not 
 owing to the influence of these principles, nor derived from any peculiar ad- 
 vantage they received from two or three general maxims, laid down in the 
 beginning ; but from the clear, distinct, complete ideas their thoughts were 
 employed about, and the relation of equality and excess so clear between 
 some of them, that they had an intuitive knowledge, and by that a way to 
 discover it in others, and this without the help of those maxims. For I ask, 
 is it not possible for a young lad to know, that his whole body is bigger than 
 his little finger, but by virtue of this axiom, that the whole is bigger than a 
 part ; nor be assured of it, till he has learned that maxim J Or cannot a 
 country wench know, that having received a shilling from one that owes her 
 three, and a shilling also from another that owes her three, the remaining 
 debts in each of their hands are equal 1 Cannot she know this, I say, unless 
 she fetch the certainty of it from this maxim, that if you take equals from 
 equals, the remainder will be equals, a maxim which possibly she never heard 
 or thought of] I desire any one to consider, from what has been elsewhere 
 said, which is known first and clearest by most people, the particular instance, 
 or the general rule ; and which it is that gives life and birth to the other I 
 These general rules are but the comparing our more general and abstract 
 ideas, which are the workmanship of the mind made, and names given to 
 them, for the easier despatch in its reasonings, and drawing into comprehen- 
 sive terms, and short rules, its various and multiplied observations. But 
 knowledge began in the mind, and was founded on particulars; though after- 
 ward, perhaps no notice be taken thereof : it being natural for the mind (for- 
 ward still to enlarge its knowledge) most attentively to lay up those general 
 notions, and make the proper use of them, which is to disburden the memor 
 
Ch. 12. 
 
 IMPROVEMENT OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 421 
 
 of the cumbersome load of particulars. For I desire it may be considered 
 what more certainty there is to a child, or any one, that his body, little finger 
 and all, is bigger than his little finger alone, after you have given to his body 
 the name whole, and to his little finger the name part, than he could have had 
 before ; or what new knowledge concerning his body can these two relative 
 terms give him, which he could not have without them 1 Could he not know 
 . hat his body was bigger than his little finger, if his language were yet so 
 .mperfect, that he had no such relative terms as whole and part 1 I ask 
 farther, when he has got these names, how is he more certain that his body 
 is a whole, and his little finger a part, than he was or might be certain, before 
 he learnt those terms, that his body was bigger than his little finger ! Any 
 one may as reasonably doubt or deny that his little finger is a part of his 
 body, as that it is less than his body. And he that can doubt whether it be 
 less, will as certainly doubt whether it be a part. So that the maxim, the 
 whole is bigger than a part, can never be made use of to prove the little finger 
 less than the body, but when it is useless, by being brought to convince one 
 of a truth which he knows already. For he that does not certainly know 
 that any parcel -of matter with another parcel of matter joined to it, is bigger 
 than either of them alone, will never be able to know it by the help of these 
 two relative terms whole and part, make of them what maxim you please. 
 
 Sect. 4. Dangerous to build upon precarious principles. — But be it in 
 the mathematics as it will, whether it be clearer, that taking an inch from a 
 black line of two inches, and an inch from a red line of two inches, the re- 
 maining parts of the two lines will be equal, or that if you take equals from 
 equals, the remainder will be equals : which, I say, of these two is the clearer 
 and first known, I leave it to any one to determine, it not being material to 
 my present occasion. That which I have here to do, is to inquire, whether 
 if it be the readiest way to knowledge to begin with general maxims, and 
 build upon them, it be yet a safe way to take the principles which are laid 
 down in any other science as unquestionable truths ; and so receive them 
 without examination, and adhere to them, without suffering them to be 
 doubted of, because mathematicians have been so happy, or so fair, to use 
 none but self-evident and undeniable. If this be so, I know not what may 
 not pass for truth in morality, what may not be introduced and proved in 
 natural philosophy. 
 
 Let that principle of some of the philosophers, that all is matter, and that 
 there is nothing else, be received for certain and indubitable, and it will be 
 easy to be seen, by the writings of some that have revived it again in our 
 days, what consequences it will lead us into. Let any one, with Polemo, 
 take the world ; or with the stoics, the sether, or the sun ; or with Anaximenes, 
 the air, to be God ; and what a divinity, religion, and worship must we needs 
 have ! Nothing can be so dangerous as principles thus taken up without ques- 
 tioning or examination ; especially if they be such as concern morality, which 
 influence men’s lives, and give a bias to all their actions. Who might not 
 justly expect another kind of life in Aristippus, who placed happiness in 
 bodily pleasure ; and in Antisthenes, who made virtue sufficient to felicity ! 
 And he who, with Plato, shall place beatitude in the knowledge of God, will 
 have his thoughts raised to other contemplations than those who look not be- 
 yond this spot of earth, and those perishing things which are to be had in it. 
 He that, with Archelaus, shall lay it down as a principle, that right and 
 wrong, honest and dishonest, are defined only by laws, and not by nature, will 
 have other measures of moral rectitude and pravity than those who take it for 
 -granted, that we are under obligations antecedent to all human constitutions. 
 
 Sect. 5 ~ThtTis no certain way to truth. — If therefore those that pass 
 for principles are not certain (which we must have some way to know, that 
 we may be able to distinguish them from those that are doubtful) but are only 
 made so to us by our blind assent, we are liable to be misled by them ; and 
 instead of being guided into truth, we shall, by principles, be only confirmed 
 n mistake and err. r. 
 
422 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 Sect. G. But to compare clear complete ideas under steady names. — But 
 since the knowledge of the certainty of principles, as well as of all other 
 truths, depends only upon the perception we have of the agreement or dis- 
 agreement of our ideas, the way to improve our knowledge is not, I am sure, 
 blindly, and with an implicit faith, to receive and swallow principles ; but is, 
 I think, to get and fix in our minds clear, distinct, and complete ideas, as far 
 as they are to be had, and annex to them proper and constant names. And 
 thus, perhaps, without any other principles but barely considering those ideas, 
 and by comparing them one with another, finding their agreement and disa- 
 greement, and their several relations and habitudes ; we shall g'et more true 
 and clear knowledge, by the conduct of this one rule, than by taking up prin- 
 ciples, and thereby putting our minds into the disposal of others. 
 
 Sect. 7. The true method of advancing in knowledge is by considering 
 our abstract ideas. — We must, therefore, if we will proceed as reason 
 advises, adapt our methods of inquiry to the nature of the ideas we examine, 
 and the truth we search after. General and certain truths are only founded 
 in the habitudes and relations of abstract ideas. A sagacious and methodical 
 application of our thoughts, for the finding out these relations, is the only way 
 to discover all that can be put with truth and certainty concerning them into 
 general propositions. By what steps we are to proceed in these is to be 
 teamed in the schools of the mathematicians, who from very plain and easy 
 beginnings, by gentle degrees, and a continued chain of reasonings, proceed 
 to the discovery and demonstration of truths, that appear at first sight beyond 
 numan capacity. The art of finding proofs, and the admirable methods they 
 nave invented for the singling out, and laying in order, those intermediate 
 ideas that demonstratively show the equality or inequality of inapplicable 
 quantities, is that which has carried them so far, and produced such wonderful 
 and unexpected discoveries : but whether something like this, in respect of 
 other ideas, as well as those of magnitude, may not in time be found out, I 
 will not determine. This, I think, I may say, that if other ideas, that are 
 the real as well as nominal essences of their species were pursued in the way 
 familiar to mathematicians, they would carry our thoughts farther, and with 
 greater evidence and clearness, than possibly we are apt to imagine. 
 
 Sect. 8. By which morality also may be made clearer. — This gave me 
 the confidence to advance that conjecture, which I suggest, chap. iii. viz. that 
 morality is capable of demonstration as well as mathematics. For the ideas 
 that ethics are conversant about being all real essences, and such as I imagine 
 have a discoverable connexion and agreement one with another : so far as 
 we can find their habitudes and relations, so far we shall be possessed of cer- 
 tain real and general truths ; and I doubt not, but, if a right method were 
 taken, a great part of morality might be made out with that clearness, that 
 could leave, to a considering man, no more reason to doubt, than he could 
 have to doubt of the truth of propositions in mathematics, which have been 
 demonstrated to him. 
 
 Sect. 9. But knowledge of bodies is to be improved only by experience . — 
 In our search after the knowledge of substances, our want of ideas, -that are 
 suitable to such a way of proceeding, obliges us to a quite different method. 
 We advance not here, as in the other (where our abstract ideas are real as 
 well as nominal essences) by contemplating our ideas, and considering their 
 relations and correspondences ; that helps us very little, for the reasons that, 
 in another place, we have at large set down. By which I think it is evident, 
 that substances afford matter of very little general knowledge ; and the bare 
 contemplation of their abstract ideas will carry us but a very little way in 
 the search of truth and certainty. What then are we to do for the improve- 
 ment of our knowledge in substantial beings ? Here we are to take quite a 
 contrary course ; the want of ideas of their real essences sends us from our 
 own thoughts to the things themselves as they exist. Experience here must 
 teach me what reason cannot : and it is by trying alone that I can certainly 
 know what other Qualities coexist with those of my complex idea, v. g 
 
Ch. 12. 
 
 IMPROVEMENT OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 423 
 
 whether that yellow, heavy, fusible body I call gold, be malleable or no ; 
 which experience (which way ever it prove in that particular body I examine) 
 makes me not certain that it is so in all, or any other yellow, heavy, fusible 
 bodies, but that which I have tried. Because it is no consequence one way 
 or the other from my complex idea ; the necessity or inconsistence of mallea- 
 bility hath no visible connexion with the combination of that colour, weight, 
 and fusibility in any body. What I have here said of the nominal essence 
 of gold, supposed to consist of a body of such a determinate colour, weight, 
 and fusibility, will hold true, if malleableness, fixedness, and solubility in 
 aqua regia be added to it. Our reasonings from these ideas will carry us but 
 a little way in the certain discovery of the other properties in those masses 
 of matter wherein all these are to be found. Because the other properties 
 of such bodies depending not on these, but on that unknown real essence on 
 which these also depend, we cannot by them discover the rest ; we can go no 
 farther than the simple ideas of our nominal essence will carry us, which is 
 very little beyond themselves ; and so afford us but very sparingly any certain, 
 universal, and useful truths. For upon trial having found that particular 
 piece (and all others of that colour, weight, and fusibility that I ever tried) 
 malleable, that also makes now perhaps a part of my complex idea, part of 
 my nominal essence of gold : whereby though I make my complex idea, to 
 which I affix the name gold, to consist of more simple ideas than before, yet 
 still, it not containing the real essence of any species of bodies, it helps me 
 not, certainly, to know (I say, to know, perhaps it may to conjecture) the 
 other remaining properties of that body, farther than they have a visible con- 
 nexion with some or all of the simple ideas that make up my nominal essence. 
 For example, I cannot be certain from this complex idea whether gold be 
 fixed or no ; because, as before, there is no necessary connexion or incon- 
 sistence to be discovered betwixt a complex idea of a body yellow, heavy, 
 fusible, malleable — betwixt these, I say, and fixedness ; so that I may cer- 
 tainly know, that in whatsoever body these are found, there fixedness is sure 
 to be. Here again for assurance 1 must apply myself to experience ; as far 
 as that reaches I may have certain knowledge, but no farther. 
 
 Seg>t.-40. 'This may procure us convenience, not science . — I deny not but 
 a man, accustomed to rational and#regular experiments, shall be able to see 
 farther into the nature of bodies, and guess righter at their yet unknown pro- 
 perties, than one that is a stranger to them : but yet, as I have said, this is 
 but judgment and opinion, not knowledge and certainty. This way of getting 
 and improving our knowledge in substances only by experience and history, 
 which is all that the weakness of our faculties in this state of mediocrity we 
 are in in this world can attain to, makes me suspect that natural philosophy 
 is not capable of being made a science. We are able, I imagine, to reach 
 very little general knowledge concerning the species of bodies, and their 
 several properties. Experiments and historical observations we may have, 
 from which we may draw advantages of ease and health, and thereby increase 
 our stock of conveniencies for this life ; but beyond this, I fear, our talents 
 reach not, nor are our faculties, as I guess, able to advance. 
 
 Sect. 11. We are fitted for moral knowledge and natural improvements . — 
 From whence it is obvious to conclude that since our faculties are not fitted 
 to penetrate into the internal fabric and real essences of bodies ; but yet 
 plainly discover to us the being of a God, and the knowledge of ourselves, 
 enough to lead us into a full and clear discovery of our duty and great con- 
 cernment: it will become us, as rational creatures, to employ those faculties 
 we have about what they are adapted to, and follow the direction of nature, 
 where it seems to point us out the way. For it is rational to conclude that 
 our employment lies in those inquiries, and in that sort of knowledge, which 
 is most suited to our natural capacities, and carries in it our greatest interest, 
 i. e. the condition of our eternal estate. Hence I think I may conclude, that 
 morality is-tke^proper science and business of mankind in general (who are 
 both concerned and fitted to search out their surnmum bonum ), as several arts. 
 
424 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 conversant about several parts of nature, are the lot and private talent of 
 particular men, for the common use of human life, and their own particular 
 subsistence in this world. Of what consequence the discovery of one natural 
 body, and its properties, may be to human life, the whole great continent of 
 America is a convincing instance ; whose ignorance in useful arts, and want 
 of the greatest part of the conveniences of life, in a country that abounded 
 with all sorts of natural plenty, I think may be attributed to their ignorance 
 of what was to be found in a very ordinary despicable stone, I mean the 
 mineral of iron. And whatever we think of our parts or improvements in 
 this part of the world, where knowledge and plenty seem to vie with each 
 other ; yet to any one that will seriously reflect on it, I suppose it will appear 
 past doubt, that were the use of iron lost among us, we should in a few ages 
 be unavoidably reduced to the wants and ignorance of the ancient savage 
 Americans, whose natural endowments and provisions come no way short of 
 those of the most flourishing and polite nations. So that he who first made 
 known the use of that one contemptible mineral may be truly styled the 
 father of arts, and author of plenty. 
 
 Sect. 12. But must beware of hypothesis and wrong principles . — I 
 would not therefore be thought to disesteem or dissuade the study of nature. 
 I readily agree the contemplation of his works gives us occasion to admire, 
 revere, and glorify their Author : and, if rightly directed, may be of greater 
 benefit to mankind than the monuments of exemplary charity, that have at 
 so great charge been raised by the founders of hospitals and almshouses. 
 He that first invented printing, discovered the use of the compass, or made 
 public the virtue and right use of kin kina, did more for the propagation of 
 knowledge, for the supply and increase of useful commodities, and saved 
 more from the grave, than those who built colleges, workhouses, and hos- 
 pitals. All that I would say is, that we should not be too forwardly possessed 
 with the opinion or expectation of knowledge, where it is not to be had, or 
 by ways that will not attain to it ; that we should not take doubtful systems 
 for complete sciences, nor unintelligible notions for scientifieal demonstra- 
 tions. In the knowledge of bodies, we must be content to glean what we 
 can from particular experiments ; since we cannot, from a discovery of their 
 real essences, grasp at a time whole sheaves, and in bundles comprehend the 
 nature and properties of whole species together. Where our inquiry is con- 
 cerning coexistence, or repugnancy to coexist, which by contemplation of our 
 ideas we cannot discover ; there experience, observation, and natural history 
 must give us by our senses, and by retail, an insight into corporeal substances. 
 The knowledge of bodies we must get by our senses, warily employed in 
 taking notice of their qualities and operations on one another : and what we 
 hope to know of separate spirits in this world we must, I think, expect only 
 from revelation. He that shall consider how little general maxims, precarious 
 principles, and hypotheses laid down at pleasure, have promoted true know- 
 ledge, or helped to satisfy the inquiries of rational men after real improve- 
 ments ; how little, I say, the setting out at the end has, for many ages 
 together, advanced men’s progress towards the knowledge of natural philo- 
 sophy ; will think we have reason to thank those, who in this latter age 
 have taken another course, and have trod out to us, though not an easier 
 way to learned ignorance, yet a surer way to profitable knowledge. 
 
 Sect. 13. The true use of hypotheses. — Not that we may not, to explain 
 any phenomena of nature, make-use of any probable hypothesis whatsoever: 
 hypotheses, if they are well made, are at least great helps to the memory, 
 and often direct us to new discoveries. But my meaning is, that we should 
 not take up any one too hastily (which the mind that would always penetrate 
 into the causes of things, and have principles to rest on, is very apt to do) 
 till we have very well examined particulars, and made several experiments in 
 that thing which we would explain by our hypothesis, and see whether it will 
 ao-ree to them all ; whether our principles will carry us quite through, and 
 not be as inconsistent with one phenomenon of nature as they seem to ac- 
 
Ch. 12. 
 
 IMPROVEMENT OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 425 
 
 commodate and explain another. And at least that we take care, that 
 the name of principles deceive us not, nor impose on us, by making us 
 receive that for an unquestionable truth which is really at best but a very 
 doubtful conjecture, such as are most (I had almost said all) of the hypotheses 
 in natural philosophy. 
 
 Sect. 14. Clear and distinct ideas with settled names, and the finding 
 of those ivhich show their agreement or disagreement are the ways to en- 
 large ou” knowledge. — But whether natural philosophy be capable of cer- 
 tainty or no, the ways to enlarge our knowledge, as far as we are capable, 
 seem to me, in short, to be these two : 
 
 First, The first is to get and settle in our minds determined ideas of those 
 things, whereof we have general or specific names ; at least, of so many of 
 them as we would consider and improve our knowledge in, or reason about. 
 Ana if they be specific ideas of substances, we should endeavour also to 
 make them as complete as we can, whereby I mean that we should put 
 together as many simple ideas as, being constantly observed to coexist, may 
 perfectly determine the species : and each of those simple ideas, which are 
 the ingredients of our complex ones, should be clear and distinct in our 
 minds. For it being evident that our knowledge cannot exceed our ideas, 
 as far as tney are either imperfect, confused, or obscure, we cannot expect 
 to have certain, perfect, or clear knowledge. 
 
 Secondly, The Other is the art of finding out those intermediate ideas, which 
 may show us the agreement or repugnancy of other ideas, which cannot be 
 immediately compared. 
 
 Sect. 15. Mathematics an instance of it. — That these two (and not the 
 relying on these maxims, and drawing consequences from some general pro- 
 positions) are the right methods of improving our knowledge in the ideas of 
 other modes besides those of quantity, the consideration of mathematical 
 knowledge will easily inform us. Where first we shall find that he, that has 
 not a perfect knowledge and clear idea of those angles or figures of which 
 he desires to know any thing, is utterly incapable of any knowledge about 
 them. Suppose but a man not to have a perfect exact idea of a right angle, 
 a scalenum, or trapezium ; and there is nothing more certain than that he 
 will in vain seek any demonstration about them. Farther, it is evident, that 
 it was not the influence of those maxims, which are taken from principles in 
 mathematics, that have led the masters of that science into those wonderful 
 discoveries they have made. Let a man of good parts know all the maxims 
 generally made use of in mathematics ever so perfectly, and contemplate 
 their extent and consequences as much as he pleases, he will, by their assist- 
 ance, I suppose, scarce ever come to know that the square of the hypothenuse 
 in a right-angled triangle is equal to the squares of the two other sides. The 
 knowledge that the whole is equal to all its parts, and if you take equals from 
 equals, the remainder will be equal, &c. helped him not, I presume, to this 
 demonstration : and a man may, I think, pore long enough on those axioms, 
 without ever seeing one jot the more of mathematical truths. They have 
 been discovered by the thoughts otherwise applied : the mind had other 
 objects, other views before it, far different from those maxims, when it first 
 got the knowledge of such truths in mathematics, which men well enough 
 acquainted with those received axioms, but ignorant of their method who 
 first made these demonstrations, can never sufficiently admire. And who 
 knows what methods, to enlarge our knowledge in other parts of science, 
 may hereafter be invented, answering that of algebra in mathematics, which 
 so readily finds out the ideas of quantities to measure others by ; whose 
 equality or proportion we could otherwise very hardly or perhaps never come 
 to know! 
 
426 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 SOME FARTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING OUR KNOW 
 
 LEDGE. 
 
 Sect. 1. Our knowledge •partly necessary, partly voluntary. — Our know- 
 ledge, as in other things, so in this, has so great a conformity with our sio-ht, 
 that it is neither wholly necessary, nor wholly voluntary. If our knowle'do-e 
 were altogether necessary, all men’s knowledge would not only be alike, but 
 every man wouldknow all that is knowable : and if it were wholly voluntary, 
 some men so little regard or value it, that they would have extreme little, or 
 none at all. Men that have senses cannot choose but receive some ideas bv 
 them ; and if they have memory, they cannot but retain some of them ; and 
 if they have any distinguishing faculty, cannot but perceive the agreement or 
 disagreement of some of them one with another : as he that has eyes, if he 
 will open them by day, cannot but see some objects, and perceive a difference 
 in them. But though a man with his eyes open in the light, cannot but see, 
 yet there be certain objects, which he may choose whether he will turn his 
 eyes to ; there may be in his reach a book containing pictures and discourses, 
 capable to delight or instruct him, which yet he may never have the will to 
 open, never take the pains to look into. 
 
 Sect. 2. The application voluntary ; but we know as things are, not as 
 we please. — There is also another thing in a man’s power, and that is, though 
 he turns his eyes sometimes toward an object, yet he may choose whether he 
 will curiously survey it, and with an intent application endeavour to observe 
 accurately all that is visible in it. But yet what he does see, he cannot see 
 otherwise than he does. It depends not on his will to see that black which 
 appears yellow; nor to persuade himself, that what actually scalds him feels 
 cold. The earth will not appear painted with flowers, nor the fields covered 
 with verdure, whenever he has a mind to it : in the cold winter he cannot 
 help seeing it white and hoary, if he will look abroad. Just thus is it with 
 our understanding ; all that is voluntary in our knowledge is the employing 
 or withholding any of our faculties from this or that sort of objects, and a 
 more or less accurate survey of them : but, they being employed, our will 
 hath no power to determine the knowledge of the mind one way or other; 
 that is done only by the objects themselves, as far as they are clearly disco- 
 vered. And therefore, as far as men’s senses are conversant about external 
 objects, the mind cannot but receive those ideas which are presented by them, 
 and be informed of the existence of things without : and so far as men’s 
 thoughts converse with their own determined ideas, they cannot but, in some 
 measure, observe the agreement or disagreement that is to be. found among 
 some of them, which is so far knowledge : and if they have names for those 
 ideas which they have thus considered, they must needs be assured of the 
 truth of those propositions which express that agreement or disagreement 
 they perceive in them, and be undoubtedly convinced of those truths. For 
 what a man sees, he cannot but see ; and what he perceives, he cannot but 
 know that he perceives. 
 
 Sect— 3. Instance, in numhers. — Thus he that has got the ideas of num- 
 bers, and hath taken the pains to'cbmpare one, two, and three to six, cannot 
 choose but know that they are equal : he that hath got the idea of a triangle, 
 and found the ways to measure its angles, and their magnitudes, is certain 
 that its three angles are equal to two right ones ; and can as little doubt of 
 that as of this truth, “that it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not 
 to be.” 
 
 In natural religion. — He also that hath the idea of an intelligent, but 
 frail and weak being, made by, and depending on, another, who is eternal, 
 
Oh. 13. 
 
 FARTHER CONSIDERATIONS. 
 
 4 , 1 ? 
 
 omnipotent, perfectly wise and good, will as certainly know that man is to 
 honour, fear, and obey God, as that the sun shines when he sees it. For il 
 he hath but the ideas of two such beings in his mind, and will turn his 
 thoughts that way, and consider them, he will as certainly find that the infe- 
 rior, finite, and dependent, is under an obligation to obey the supreme and 
 infinite, as he is certain to find that three, four, and seven are less than 
 fifteen, if he will consider and compute those numbers ; nor can he be surer 
 in a clear morning that the sun is risen, if he will but open his eyes, and turn 
 them that way. But yet these truths, being ever so certain, ever so clear, 
 he may be ignorant of either, or of all of them, who will never take the pains 
 to employ his faculties, as he should, to inform himself about them. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 OF JUDGMENT. 
 
 Sect— 1. Our knowledge being short, we want something else. — The un- 
 derstanding faculties being given to man, not barely for speculation, but also 
 for the conduct of his life, man would be at a great loss if he had nothing to 
 direct him but what has the certainty of true knowledge. For that being 
 very short and scanty, as we have seen, he would be often utterly in the dark, 
 and, in most of the actions of his life, perfectly at a stand, had be nothing 
 to guide him in the absence of clear and certain knowledge. He that will 
 not eat till he has demonstration that it will nourish him ; he that will not 
 stir till he infallibly knows the business he goes about will succeed ; will have 
 little else to do but to sit still and perish. 
 
 Sect. 2. What use to be made of this twilight state. — Therefore as God 
 has set some things in broad day-light ; as he has given us some certain 
 knowledge, though limited to a few things in comparison, probably, as a taste 
 of what intellectual creatures are capable of, to excite in us a desire and en- 
 deavour after a better state ; so in the greatest part of our concernments he 
 has afforded us only the twilight, as I may so say, of probability ; suitable, I 
 presume, to that state of mediocrity and probationership he has been pleased 
 to place us in here ; wherein, to check our over-confidence and presumption, 
 we might by every day’s experience be made sensible of our short-sightedness, 
 and liableness to error ; the sense whereof might be a constant admonition 
 to us, to spend the days of this our pilgrimage with industry and care, in the 
 search and following of that way, which might lead us to a state of greater 
 perfection: it being highly rational to think, even were revelation silent in 
 the case, that as men employ those talents God has given them here, they 
 shall accordingly receive their rewards at the close of the day, when their 
 sun shall set, and night shall put an end to their labours. 
 
 Sect. 3. Judgment supplies the want of knowledge. — The faculty which 
 God has given man to supply the want of clear and certain knowledge, in 
 cases where that cannot be had, is judgment ; whereby the mind takes its 
 ideas to agree or disagree ; or, which is the same, any proposition to be true 
 or false, without perceiving a demonstrative evidence in the proofs. The 
 mind sometimes exercises this judgment out of necessity, where demonstrative 
 proofs and certain knowledge are not to be had; and sometimes out of lazi- 
 ness, unskilfulness, or haste, even where demonstrative and certain proofs 
 are to be had. Men often stay not warily to examine the agreement or dis- 
 agreement of two ideas, which they are desirous or concerned to know ; but, 
 either incapable of such attention as is requisite in a long train of gradations, 
 or impatient of delay, lightly cast their eyes on, or wholly pass by, the proofs ; 
 and so without making out the demonstration, determine of the agreement 
 or disagreement of two ideas as it were by a view of them as they are at a 
 
428 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 distance, and take it to be the one or the other, as seems most likely to them 
 upon such a loose survey. This faculty of the mind, when it is exercised 
 immediately about things, is called judgment ; when about truths delivered in 
 .vords, is most commonly called assent or dissent: which being the most 
 usual way wherein the mind has occasion to employ this faculty, I shall under 
 these terms treat of it, as least liable in our language to equivocation. 
 
 Sect. 4. Judgment is the presuming things to be so, without perceiving 
 it. — Thus the mind has two faculties, conversant about truth and falsehood. 
 
 First, Knowledge, whereby it certainly perceives, and is undoubtedly satis- 
 fied of, the agreement or disagreement of any ideas. 
 
 Secondly, Judgment, which is the putting ideas together, or separating 
 them from one another in the mind, when their certain agreement or disa- 
 greement is not perceived, but presumed to be so ; which is, as the word im- 
 ports, taken to be so before it certainly appears. And if it so unites, or 
 separates them, as in reality things are, it is right judgment. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 OF PROBABILITY. 
 
 Sect. 1. Probability _ is the. appearance of agreement upon fallible 
 proofs.— ^AsF demonstration is the showing the agreement or disagreement of 
 two ideas, by the intervention of one or more proofs, which have a constant, 
 immutable, and visible connexion one with another ; so probability is nothing 
 but the appearance of such an agreement or disagreement, by the interven- 
 tion of proofs, whose connexion is not constant and immutable, or at least is 
 not perceived to be so, but is or appears for the most part to be so, and is 
 enough to induce the mind to judge the proposition to be true or false, rather 
 than the contrary. For example : in the demonstration of it a man per- 
 ceives the certain immutable connexion there is of equality between the 
 three angles of a triangle, and those intermediate ones which are made use 
 of to show their equality to two right ones ; and so by an intuitive knowledge 
 of the agreement or disagreement of the intermediate ideas in each step of 
 the progress, the whole series is continued with an evidence which clearly 
 shows the agreement or disagreement of those three angles in equality to 
 two right ones : and thus he has certain knowledge that it is so. But another 
 man, who never took the pains to observe the demonstration, hearing a 
 mathematician, a man of credit, affirm the three angles of a triangle to be 
 equal to two right ones, assents to it, i. e. receives it for true. In which case 
 the foundation of his assent is the probability of the thing, the proof being 
 such as for the most part carries truth with it : the man on whose testimony 
 he receives it not being wont to affirm any thing contrary to, or besides his 
 knowledge, especially in matters of this kind. So that that which causes 
 his assent to this proposition, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to 
 two right ones, that which makes him take these ideas to agree, without 
 knowing them to do so, is the wonted veracity of the speaker in other cases, 
 or his supposed veracity in this. 
 
 Sect. 2. It is to supply the want of knowledge. — Our knowledge, as has 
 been shown, being very narrow, and we not happy enough to find certain 
 truth in every thing which we have occasion to consider ; most of the pro- 
 positions we think, reason, discourse, nay act upon, are such, as we cannot 
 have undoubted knowledge of their truth : yet some of them border so near 
 upon certainty, that we make no doubt at all about them ; but assent to them 
 as firmly, and act, according to that assent, as resolutely, as if they were 
 infallibly demonstrated, and that our knowledge of them was perfect and cer- 
 tain. But there being degrees herein from the very neighbourhood of eer- 
 
Ch. 15. 
 
 PROBABILITY. 
 
 429 
 
 tainty and demonstration, quite down to improbability and unlikeness, even 
 to the confines of impossibility; and also degrees of assent from full assurance 
 and confidence, quite down to conjecture, doubt, and distrust : I shall come 
 now (having, as I think, found out the bounds of human knowledge and cer- 
 tainty), in the next place, to consider the several degrees and grounds of pro- 
 bability, and assent or faith. 
 
 Sect. JL Being-ihaLwJi ic h makes us presume things to he true before we 
 KnouTtKern to be so. — Probability is likeliness to be true, the very notation 
 ofjhe word signifying such a proposition, for which there be arguments or 
 proofs to make it pass or be received for true. The entertainment the mind 
 gives to this sort of propositions is called belief, assent, or opinion, which is 
 the admitting or receiving any proposition for true, upon arguments or proofs 
 that are found to persuade us to receive it as true, without certain knowledge 
 thatr-it-Hrso. "And herein lies the difference between probability and certainty, 
 fait h and knowledge, that in all the parts of knowledge there is intuition ; 
 each immediate idea, each step has its visible and certain connexion : in 
 belief, not so. That which makes me believe something extraneous to the 
 thing T believe ; something not evidently joined on both sides to, and so not 
 manifestly showing the agreement or disagreement of those ideas that are 
 under consideration. 
 
 Sect. 4. The grounds of probability are two : conformity with our own 
 experience, or the testimony of others' experience. — Probability, then, being 
 to supply the defect of our knowledge, and to guide us where that fails, is 
 always conversant about propositions, whereof we have no certainty, but only 
 some inducements to receive them for true. The grounds of it are, in short, 
 these two following : 
 
 Pirst, The conformity of any thing with our own knowledge, observation, 
 and experience. 
 
 Secondly, The testimony of others, vouching their observation and expe- 
 rience. In the testimony of others is to be considered, 1. The number. 
 2. The integrity. 3. The skill of the witnesses. 4. The design of the 
 author, where it is a testimony out of a book cited. 5. The consistency of 
 the parts and circumstanees-of the relation. 6. Contrary testimonies. 
 
 Sect. 5. In this all the arguments pro and con. ought to be examined 
 before we come to a judgment. — Probability wantitrg that intuitive evidence, 
 which infallibly determines the understanding, and produces certain know- 
 ledge, the mind, if it would proceed rationally, ought to examine all the 
 grounds of probability, and see how they make more or less for or against 
 any proposition, before it assents to, or dissents from it ; and upon a due 
 balancing the whole, reject or receive it with a more or less firm assent, pro- 
 portionally to the preponderancy of the greater grounds of probability on 
 one side or the other. For example : 
 
 If I myself see a man walk on the ice, it is past probability, it is know- 
 ledge ; but if another tells me he saw a man in England, in the midst of a 
 sharp winter, walk upon water hardened with cold ; this has so great con- 
 formity with what is usually observed to happen, that I am disposed by the 
 nature of the thing itself to assent to it, unless some manifest suspicion 
 attend the relation of that matter of fact. But if the same thing be told to 
 one born between the tropics, who never saw nor heard of any such thing 
 before, there the whole probability relies on testimony : and as the relators 
 are more in number, and of more credit, and have no interest to speak con- 
 trary to the truth ; so that matter of fact is like to find more or less belief. 
 Though to a man, whose experience has been always quite contrary, and who 
 has never heard of any thing like it, the most untainted credit of a witness 
 will scarce be able to find belief. As it happened to a Dutch ambassador, 
 who entertaining the king of Siam with the particularities of Holland, which 
 he was inquisitive after, among other things told him, that the wacer in his 
 country would sometimes, in cold weather, be so hard, that men walked upon 
 it, and that it would bear an elephant if he were there. To which the king 
 
430 
 
 OP HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 replied, “ Hitherto I have believed the strange things you have told me, be- 
 cause I looked upon you as a sober, fair man ; but now I am sure you he.” 
 Sect. 6. They being capable of great variety. — Upon these grounds de- 
 pends the probability of any proposition : and as the conformity of our know- 
 ledge, as the certainty of observations, as the frequency and constancy of 
 experience, and the number and credibility of testimonies, do more or less 
 agree or disagree with it, so is any proposition in itself more or less probable. 
 There is another, I confess, which, though by itself it be no true ground of 
 probability, yet is often made use of for one, by which men most commonly 
 regulate their assent, and upon which they pin their faith more than any 
 thing else, and that is the opinion of others : though there cannot be a more 
 dangerous thing to rely on, nor more likely to mislead one ; since there is 
 much more falsehood and error among men than truth and knowledge. And 
 if the opinions and persuasions of others, whom we know and think well of, 
 be a ground of assent, men have reason to be Heathens in Japan, Maho- 
 metans in Turkey, Papists in Spain, Protestants in England, and Lutherans 
 in Sweden. But of this wrong ground of assent I shall have occasion to 
 speak more at large in another place. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 OF THE DEGREES OF ASSENT. 
 
 'Sect. L Our assent ought- laJxejregulated by the grounds of probability . 
 — The grounds of probability we have laid 'dov7n~Tm~the foregoing-chapter ; 
 as they are the foundations on which our assent is built, so they are also the 
 measure whereby its several degrees are or ought to be regulated : only we 
 are to take notice, that whatever grounds of probability there may be, they 
 yet operate no farther on the mind, which searches after truth, and endeavours 
 to judge right, than they appear : at least in the first judgment or search that 
 the mind makes. I confess, in the opinions men have, and firmly stick to, in 
 the world, their assent is not always from an actual view of the reasons that 
 at first prevailed with them ; it being in many cases almost impossible, and 
 in most very hard, even for those who have very admirable memories, to retain 
 all the proofs which upon a due examination, made them embrace that side of 
 the question. It suffices that they have once with care and fairness sifted the 
 matter as far they could, and that they have searched into all the particulars 
 that they could imagine to give any light to the question, and with the best 
 of their skill cast up the account upon the whole evidence ; and thus, having 
 once found on which side the probability appeared to them, after as full and 
 exact an inquiry as they can make, they lay up the conclusion in their memo- 
 ries as a truth they have discovered ; and for the future they remain satisfied 
 with the testimony of their memories, that this is the opinion that, by the 
 proofs they have once seen of it, deserves such a degree of their assent ns 
 they afford it. 
 
 Sect. 2. These cannot always be actually in view, and then ice must con- 
 tent ourselves with the remembrance that we once saw ground for such a 
 degree of assent. — This is all that the greatest part of men are capable of 
 doing, in regulating their opinions and judgments ; unless a man will exact 
 of them either to retain distinctly in their memories all the proofs concerning 
 any probable truth, and that too in the same order and regular deduction of 
 consequences in which they have formerly placed or seen them, which some- 
 times is enough to fill a large volume on one single questio n ; or else they 
 must require a man, for every opinion that he embraces, every day to examine 
 the proofs ; both which are impossible. It is unavoidable therefore that the 
 memory be relied on in the case, and that men be persuaded of several 
 
Ch. 16. 
 
 DEGREES OF ASSENT. 
 
 431 
 
 opinions, whereof the proofs are not actually in their thoughts ; nay, which 
 perhaps they are not able actually to recall. Without this the greatest part 
 of men must be either very sceptics, or change every moment, and yield 
 themselves up to whoever, having lately studied the question, offers them 
 arguments, which, for want of memory, they are not able presently to answer. 
 
 Sect. ,3. The ill consequence of this, if our former judgments were not 
 rightly made. — I cannot but own, that men’s sticking to their past judgment, 
 and adhering firmly to conclusions formerly made, is often the cause of great 
 obstinacy in error and mistake. But the fault is not that they rely on their 
 memories for what they have before well judged, but because they judged be- 
 fore they had well examined. May we not find a great number (not to say 
 the greatest part) of men that think they have formed right judgments of 
 several matters, and that for no other reason but because they never thought 
 otherwise 1 who imagine themselves to have judged right only because they 
 never questioned, never examined their own opinions 1 Which is indeed to 
 think they judged right because they never judged at all : and yet these of 
 all men hold their opinions with the greatest stiffness ; those being generally 
 the most fierce and firm in their tenets who have least examined them. What 
 we once know, we are certain is so ; and we may be secure that there are 
 no latent proofs undiscovered, which may overturn our knowledge or bring it 
 in doubt. But, in matters of probability, it is not in every case we can be 
 sure that we have all the particulars befcfre us that any way concern the 
 question ; and that there is no evidence behind, and yet unseen, which may 
 cast the probability on the other side, and outweigh all that at present seems 
 to preponderate with us. Who almost is there that hath the leisure, patience, 
 and means, to collect together all the proofs concerning most of the opinions 
 he has, so as safely to conclude that he hath a clear and full view, and that 
 there is no more to be alleged for his better information 1 And yet we are 
 forced to determine ourselves on the one side or other. The conduct of our 
 lives, and the management of our great concerns, will not bear delay : for 
 those depend, for the most part, on the determination of our judgment in 
 points wherein we are not capable of certain and demonstrative knowledge, 
 and wherein it is necessary for us to embrace the one side or the other. 
 
 Sect. 4. T kerifTii use of it, is mutual charity and forbearance. — Since 
 therefore it is unavoidable to the greatest part of men, if not all, to have 
 several opinions without certain and induHtable proofs of their truth, and it 
 carries too great an imputation of ignorance, lightness, or folly, for men to 
 quit and renounce their former tenets presently upon the offer of an argument 
 which they cannot immediately answer, and show the insufficiency of ; it 
 would methinks become all men to maintain peace, and the common offices 
 of humanity and friendship, in the diversity of opinions ; since we cannot 
 reasonably expect that any one should readily and obsequiously quit his own 
 opinion, and embrace ours with a blind resignation to an authority which the 
 understanding of man acknowledges not. For however it may often mistake, 
 it can own no other guide but reason, nor blindly submit to the will and dic- 
 tates of another. If he, you would bring over to your sentiments, be one that 
 examines before he assents, you must give him leave at his leisure to go over 
 the account again, and, recalling what is out of his mind, examine all the 
 particulars, to see on which side the advantage lies : and if he will not think 
 our arguments of weight enough to engage him anew in so much pains, it is 
 but what we of on do ourselves in the like case ; and we should take it amiss 
 if others should prescribe to us what points we should study. And if he be 
 one who takes bis opinions upon trust, how can we imagine that he should 
 renounce those tenets which time and custom have so settled in his mind, 
 that he thinks them self-evident, and of an unquestionable certainty ; or 
 which he takes t,o be impressions he has received from God himself, or from 
 men sent by him 1 How can we expect, I say, that opinions thus settled 
 should be given up to the arguments or authority of a stranger or adversary; 
 especially if there be any suspicion of interest or design, as there never fails 
 
432 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Boob 4. 
 
 to be where men find themselves ill treated! We should do well to com 
 miserate our mutual ignorance, and endeavour to remove it in all the gentle 
 and fair ways of information ; and not instantly treat others ill, as obstinate 
 and perverse, because they will not renounce their own, and receive our 
 opinions, or at least those we would force upon them, when it is more than 
 probable that we are no less obstinate in not embracing some of theirs. For 
 where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he 
 holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns ; or can say, that he has ex- 
 amined to the bottom of his own or other men’s opinions! The necessity 
 of believing without knowledge, nay, often upon very slight grounds, in this 
 fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy 
 and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others. At least those who 
 have not thoroughly examined to the bottom all their own tenets, must con- 
 fess they are unfit to prescribe to others ; and are unreasonable in imposing 
 that as truth on other men’s belief which they themselves have not searched 
 into, nor weighed the arguments of probability on which they should receive 
 or reject it. Those who have fairly and truly examined, and are thereby got 
 past doubt in all the doctrines they profess and govern themselves by, would 
 have a juster pretence to require others to follow them : but these are so few 
 in number, and find so little reason to be magisterial in their opinions, that 
 nothing insolent and imperious is to be expected from them : and there is 
 reason to think that, if men wene better instructed themselves, they would 
 be less imposing on others. 
 
 Sect. 5. Probability is either of matter of fact or speculation. — But to 
 return to the grounds of assent, and the several degrees of it; we are to 
 t ake notice, that the propositions we receive upon inducements of probability 
 are of two sorts ; either concerning some, particular existence, or, as it is 
 usually termed, matter of fact, which falling under observation, is capable of 
 human testimony ; or else concerning things which, being beyond the disco- 
 very of our senses, are not capable of any such testimony. 
 
 Sect. 6. The concurrent experience of all other men with ours produces 
 assurance approaching to knowledge. — Concerning the- -first of "these, viz. 
 particular matter of fact. 
 
 First, Where any particular thing, consonant to the constant observation of 
 ourselves and others in the like case, comes attested by the concurrent reports 
 of all that mention it, we receive it as easily, and build as firmly upon it, as 
 if it were certain knowledge ; and we reason and act thereupon with as little 
 doubt as if it were perfect demonstration. Thus, if all Englishmen who 
 have occasion to mention it, should affirm that it froze in England the last 
 winter, or that there were swallows seen there in the summer ; I think a man 
 could almost as little doubt of it as that seven and four are eleven. The first, 
 therefore, and highest degree of probability is, when the general consent of all 
 men, in all ages, as far as it can be known, concurs with a man’s constant 
 and never-failing experience in like cases, to confirm the truth of any par- 
 ticular matter of fact attested by fair witnesses : such are all the stated con- 
 stitutions and properties of bodies, and the regular proceedings of causes and 
 effects in the ordinary course of nature. This we call an argument from the 
 nature of things themselves. For what our own and other men’s constant 
 observation has found always to be after the same manner, that we with 
 reason conclude to be the effect of steady and regular causes, though they 
 come not within the reach of our knowledge. Thus, that fire warmed a man. 
 made lead fluid, and changed the colour or consistency in wood or charcoal ; 
 that iron sunk in water, and swam in quicksilver : these and the like propo- 
 sitions about particular facts, being agreeable to our constant experience, as 
 often as we have to do with these matters ; and being generally spoke of 
 (when mentioned by others) as things found constantly to be so, and therefore 
 not so much as controverted by any body ; we are put past doubt, that a 
 relation affirming any such thing to have been, or any predication that it will 
 happen again in the same manner, is very true. These probabilities rise so 
 
Ch. 16. 
 
 DEGREES OF ASSENT. 
 
 433 
 
 near to a certainty, that they govern our thoughts as absolutely, and influence 
 all our actions as fully, as the most evident demonstration ; and, in what con- 
 cerns us, we make little or no difference between them and certain know- 
 ledge. Our belief, thus grounded, rises to assurance. 
 
 SecY>-X._ Unquestionable testimony and experience for the most part pro- 
 duce confidence.— f Secondly, The next degree of probability is, when I find 
 by my own experience, and the agreement of all others that mention it, a 
 thing to be, for the most part, so ; and that the particular instance of it is 
 , attested by many and undoubted witnesses, v. g. history giving us such an 
 account of men in all ages, and my own experience, as far as I had an oppor- 
 tunity to observe, confirming it, that most men prefer their private advantage 
 to the public ; if all historians that write of Tiberius say that Tiberius did 
 so, it is extremely probable. And in this case our assent has a sufficient 
 foundation to raise itself to a degree which we may call confidence. 
 
 Sect. 8. Fair testimony, and the nature of the thing indifferent , produce 
 also confident belief . — Thirdly, In things that happen indifferently, as that a 
 bird should fly this or that way ; that it should thunder on a man’s right or 
 left hand, &c. when any particular matter of fact is vouched by the concur- 
 rent testimony of unsuspected witnesses, there our assent is also unavoidable. 
 Thus, that there is such a city in Italy as Rome ; that, about one thousand seven 
 hundred years ago, there lived in it a man called Julius Ctesar ; that he was 
 a general, and that he won a battle against another, called Pompey : this, 
 though in the nature of the thing there be nothing for nor against it, yet. being 
 related by historians of credit, and contradicted by no one writer, a man can- 
 not avoid believing it, and can as little doubt of it as he does of the being 
 and actions of his own acquaintance, whereof he himself is a witness. 
 
 Sect. 9. Expe^ienees''andl testimonies clashing, infinitely vary the de- 
 are es~oT proba oilitv. — Thus far the matter goes easy enough. Probability 
 upon such gToffnW'ttarries so much evidence with it, that it naturally deter- 
 mines the judgment, and leaves us as little libeity to believe or disbelieve, as a 
 demonstration does whether we will know or be ignorant. The difficulty is, 
 when testimonies contradict common experience, and the reports of history 
 and witnesses clash with the ordinary course of nature, or with one another ; 
 there it is where diligence, attention, and exactness are required, to form a 
 right judgment., and to proportion the assent to the different evidence and 
 probability of the thing; which rises and falls according as those two foun- 
 dations of credibility, viz. common observation in like cases, and particular 
 testimonies in that particular instance, favour or contradict it. These are 
 liable to so great a variety of contrary observations, circumstances, reports, 
 different qualifications, tempers, designs, oversights, &c. of the reporters, 
 that it is impossible to leduce to precise rules the various degrees wherein 
 men give their assent. This only may be said in general, that as the argu- 
 ments and proofs pro and con., upon due examination, nicely weighing every 
 particular circumstance, shall to any one appear upon the whole matter, in a 
 greater or less degree to preponderate on either side ; so they are fitted to 
 produce in the mind such different entertainment as we call belief, conjecture, 
 guess, doubt, wavering, distrust, disbelief, &c. 
 
 Sect. IQ. Traditional testimonies, the farther- -removed,- the less their 
 proofs. — This is wtet- concerns assent in matters wherein testimony is made 
 use of ^"concerning which, I think, it may not be amiss to take notice of a 
 rule observed in the law of England ; which is, that though the attested copy 
 of a record be good proof, yet the copy of a copy, ever so well attested, and 
 by ever so credible witnesses, will not be admitted as a proof in judicature. 
 This is so generally approved as reasonable, and suited to the wisdom and 
 caution to be used in our inquiry after material truths, that I never yet heard 
 of any one that blamed it. This practice, if it be allowable in the decisions 
 of right and wrong, carries this observation along with it, viz. that any testi- 
 mony, the farther off it is from the original truth, the less force and proof it 
 aas. The being and existence of the thing itself is what I call the origina 
 3 E 
 
434 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 truth, A credible man vouching his knowledge of it is a good proof : but if 
 another equally credible do witness it from his report, the testimony is 
 weaker; and a third that attests the hearsay of an hearsay, is yet less con- 
 siderable. So that, in traditional truths, each remove weakens the force ot 
 the proof : and the more hands the tradition has successively passed through, 
 the less strength and evidence does it receive from them. This I thought 
 necessary to be <?aken notice of, because I find among some men the quite 
 contrary commonly practised, who look on opinions to gain force by growing 
 older ; and what a thousand years since would not, to a rational man, con- 
 temporary with the first voucher, have appeared at all probable, is new urged 
 as certain beyond all question, only because several have since, from him, 
 said it one after another. Upon this ground, propositions, evidently false, or 
 doubtful enough in their first beginning, come by an inverted rule of proba- 
 bility, to pass for authentic truths ; and those which found or deserved little 
 credit from the mouths of their first authors, are thought to grow venerable 
 by age, and are urged as undeniable. 
 
 Sect. 11. — Yet history is of great use. — I would not be thought here to 
 lessen the credit and use of history ; it is all the light we have in many cases, 
 and we receive from it a great part of the useful truths we have, with a con- 
 vincing evidence. I think nothing more valuable than the records of an- 
 tiquity ; I wish we had more of them, and more uncorrupted. But this truth 
 itself forces me to say, that no probability can arise higher than its first 
 original. What has no other evidence than the single testimony of one only 
 witness, must stand or fall by his only testimony, whether good, bad, or indif- 
 ferent ; and though cited afterward by hundreds of others, one after another, 
 is so far from receiving any strength thereby, that it is only the weaker. 
 Passion, interest, inadvertenm- , mistake of his meaning, and a thousand odd 
 reasons, or capricios, men’o minds are acted by (impossible to be discovered) 
 may make one man quote another man’s words or meaning wrong. He that 
 has but ever so little examined the citations of writers cannot doubt how little 
 credit the quotations deserve, where the originals are wanting; and conse- 
 quently how much less quotations of quotations can be relied on. This is 
 certain, that what in one age was affirmed upon slight grounds, can never 
 after come to be more valid in future ages by being often repeated. But the 
 farther still it is from the original, the less valid it is, and has always less 
 force in the mouth or writing of him that last made use of it, than in his from 
 whom he received it. 
 
 Sect. YlfYntliings which sense cannot discover, analogy is the great 
 rule of ’probability . — The probabilities we have hitherto mentioned are only 
 ssjTchras concern matter of fact, and such things as are capable of observation 
 and testimony. There remains that other sort, concerning which men enter- 
 tain opinions with variety of assent, though the things be such that, failing 
 not under the reach of our senses, they are not capable of testimony. Such 
 are, 1. The existence, nature, and operations of finite immaterial beings 
 without us ; as spirits, angels, devils, &c. or the existence of material beings, 
 which, either for their smallness in themselves, or remoteness from us, our 
 senses cannot take notice of; as whether there be any plants, animals, and 
 intelligent inhabitants in the planets, and other mansions of the vast universe. 
 2. Concerning the manner of operation in most parts of the works of nature : 
 wherein, though we see the sensible effects, yet their causes are unknown, 
 and we perceive not the ways and manner how they are produced. We see 
 animals are generated, nourished, and move ; the loadstone draws iron ; and 
 the parts of a candle, successively melting, turn into flame, and give us both 
 light and heat. These and the like effects we see and know ; but the causes 
 that operate, and the manner they are produced in, we can only guess, and 
 probably conjecture. For these and the like, coming- not within the scrutiny 
 of human senses, cannot be examined by them, or bt attested by any body ; 
 and therefore can appear more or less probable, only as they more or less 
 agree to truths that are established in our minds, and as they hold proportion 
 
Ch. 16. 
 
 DEGREES OF ASSENT. 
 
 435 
 
 to other parts of our knowledge and observation. Analogy in these matters 
 is the only help we have, and it is from that alone we draw all our grounds 
 of probability. Thus observing that the bare rubbing of two bodies violently 
 one upon another produces heat, and very often fire itself, we have reason to 
 think that what we call heat and fire consists in a violent agitation of the 
 imperceptible minute parts of the burning matter : observing likewise that 
 the different refractions of pellucid bodies produce in our eyes the different 
 appearances of several colours, and also that the different ranging and laying 
 the superficial parts of several bodies, as of velvet, watered silk, &c. does 
 the like, we think it probable that the colour and shining of bodies is in them 
 nothing but the different arrangement and refraction of their minute and 
 insensible parts. Thus finding in all parts of the creation, that fall under 
 human observation, that there is a gradual connexion of one with another, 
 without any great or discernible gaps between, in all that great variety of 
 things we see in the world, which are so closely linked together, that in the 
 several ranks of beings it is not easy to discover the bounds betwixt them : 
 we have reason to be persuaded, that by such gentle steps things ascend up- 
 wards in degrees of perfection. It is a hard matter to say where sensible 
 and rational begin, and where insensible and irrational end : and who is there 
 quick-sighted enough to determine precisely which is the lowest species of 
 living things, and which is the first of those which have no life I Things, 
 as far as we can observe, lessen and augment as the quantity does in a regular 
 cone ; where, though there be a manifest odds betwixt the bigness of the 
 diameter at a remote distance, yet the difference between the upper and 
 under, where they touch one another; is hardly discernible. The difference 
 is exceeding great between some men and some animals ; but if we will 
 compare the understanding and abilities of some men and some brutes, we 
 shall find so little difference, that it will be hard to say, that that of the man 
 is either clearer or larger. Observing, I say, such gradual and gentle de- 
 scents downwards in those parts of the creation that are beneath man, the 
 rule of analogy may make it probable, that it is so also in things above us 
 and our observation ; and that there are several ranks of intelligent beings, 
 excelling us in several degrees of perfection, ascending upwards towards the 
 infinite perfection of the Creator, by gentle steps and differences, that are 
 every one at no great distance from the next to it. This sort of probability, 
 which is the best conduct of rational experiments, and the rise of hypothesis, 
 has also its use and influence : and a wary reasoning from analogy leads us 
 often into the discovery of truths and useful productions which would other- 
 wise lie concealed. 
 
 Sect. 13. One case where contrary experience lessens not the testi- 
 mony. — Though the common experience and the ordinary course of things 
 have justly a mighty influence on the minds of men, to make them give or 
 refuse credit to any thing proposed to their belief ; yet there is one case, 
 wherein the strangeness of the fact lessens not the assent to a fair testimony 
 given of it. For where such supernatural events are suitable to ends aimed 
 at by him, who has the power to change the course of nature, there, under 
 such circumstances, they may be fitter to procure belief, by how much the 
 more they are beyond or contrary to ordinary observation. This is the 
 proper case of miracles, which well attested do not only find credit them- 
 selves, but give it also to other truths, which need such confirmation. 
 
 Sect. 14. The bare testimony of revelation is the highest certainty . — 
 Besides those we have hitherto mentioned, there is one sort of propositions 
 that challenge the highest degree of our assent upon bare testimony, whether 
 the thing proposed agree or disagree with common experience, and the ordi- 
 nary course of things, or no. The reason whereof is, because the testimony 
 is of such an one as cannot deceive, nor be deceived, and that is of God 
 himself. This carries with it an assurance beyond doubt, evidence beyond 
 exception. This is called by a peculiar name, revelation ; and our assent to 
 it, faith- which as absolutely determines our minds, and as perfectly excludes 
 
436 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 $ 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 all wavering, as our knowledge itself ; and we may as well doubt of our own 
 beings as we can whether any revelation from God be true. So that faith is 
 a settled and sure principle of a?sent and assurance, and leaves no manner 
 of room for doubt or hesitation. Only we must be sure that it be a divine 
 revelation, and that we understand it right : else we shall expose ourselves 
 to all the extravagancy of enthusiasm, and all the error of wrong principles, 
 f we have faith and assurance in what is not divine revelation. And there- 
 fore in those cases, our assent can be rationally no higher than the evidence 
 of its being a revelation, and that this is the meaning of the expressions it 
 is delivered in. If the evidence of its being a revelation, or that this is its 
 true sense, be only on probable proofs ; our assent can reach no higher than 
 an assurance or diffidence, arising from the more or less apparent probability 
 of the proofs. But of faith, and the precedency it ought to have before other 
 arguments of persuasion, I shall speak more hereafter, where I treat of it as 
 it is ordinarily placed, in contradistinction to reason ; though in truth it be 
 nothing else but an assent founded on the highest reason. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 OF REASON. 
 
 Sect. 1. Various significations of the word reason . — The word reason 
 in the English language has different significations : sometimes it is taken 
 for true and clear principles ; sometimes for clear and fair deductions from 
 those principles ; and sometimes for the cause, and particularly the final 
 cause. But the consideration I shall have of it here is in signification dif- 
 ferent from all these; and that is, as it stands for a faculty -in man, that 
 faculty whereby man is supposed to be distinguished from beasts, and wherein 
 it is evident he much surpasses them. 
 
 Sect. 2. Wherein reasoning consists . — If general knowledge, as has 
 been shown, consists in a perception of the agreement or disagreement of 
 our own ideas ; and the knowledge of the existence of all things without us 
 (except only of a God, whose existence every man may certainly know and 
 demonstrate to himself from his own existence) be had only by our senses : 
 what room is there for the exercise of any other faculty, but outward sense 
 and inward perception! What need is there of reason! Very much ; both 
 for the enlargement of our knowledge, and regulating our assent : for it hath 
 to do both in knowledge and opinion, and is necessary and assisting to all 
 our other intellectual faculties, and indeed contains two of them, viz. sagacity 
 and illation. By the one, it finds out ; and by the other, it so orders the in- 
 termediate ideas, as to discover what connexion there is in each link of the 
 chain, whereby the extremes are held together ; and thereby, as it were, to 
 draw into view the truth sought for, which is that which we call illation or 
 inference, and consists in nothing but the perception of the connexion there 
 is between the ideas, in each step of the deduction, whereby the mind comes 
 to see either the certain agreement or, disagreement of any two ideas, as in 
 demonstration, in which it arrives at knowledge; or their probable connexion, 
 on which it gives or withholds its assent, as in opinion. Sense and intuition 
 reach but a very little way. The greatest part of our knowledge depends 
 upon deductions and intermediate ideas : and in those cases, where we are 
 fain to substitute assent instead of knowledge, and take propositions for true, 
 without being certain that they are so, we have need to find out, examine, 
 and compare the grounds of their probability. Tn both these cases, the fa- 
 culty which finds out the means, and rightly applies them to discover certainty 
 in the one, and probability in the other, is that which we call reason. For 
 as reason perceives the necessary and indubitable connexion of all the ideas 
 
Ch. 17. 
 
 REASON. 
 
 497 
 
 or proofs one to another, in each step of any demonstration that produces 
 knowledge ; so it likewise perceives the probable connexion of all the ideas 
 or proofs one to another, in every step of a discourse, to which it will think 
 assent due. This is the lowest degree of that which can be truly called rea- 
 son. For where the mind does not perceive this probable connexion ; where 
 it does not discern whether there be any such connexion or no ; there men’s 
 opinions are not the product of judgment, or the consequence of reason, but 
 t the effects of chance and hazard, of a mind floating at all adventures, with- 
 out choice and without direction. 
 
 __ Sect. 3. Its jour parts. — So that we may in reason consider these four 
 degrees ; the first and highest is the discovering and finding out of truths ; 
 the second, the regular and methodical disposition of them, and laying them 
 in-a-clear and fit order, to make their connexion and force be plainly and 
 easily perceived ; the third is the perceiving their connexion ; and the fourth, 
 a making a right conclusion. These several degrees maybe observed in any 
 mathematic alcle mo rist rat io n ; it being one thing to perceive the connexion 
 of each part, as the demonstration is made by another ; another, to perceive 
 the dependence of the conclusion on all the parts; a third, to make out a 
 demonstration clearly and neatly one’s self ; and something different from all 
 these, to have first found out these intermediate ideas or proofs by which it 
 is made. 
 
 >Srot.-4-, Syllogism not the great instrument of reason. — There is one 
 thing more, which I shall desire to be considered concerning reason ; and 
 that is, whether syllogism, as is generally thought, be the proper instrument 
 of it, and the most useful way of exercising this faculty. The causes I have 
 to doubt are these : 
 
 Eiret; -Because syllogism serves our reason but in one only of the foremen- 
 tioned parts of it ; and that is, to show the connexion of the proofs in any 
 one instance, and no more : but in this it is of no great use, since the mind 
 can conceive such connexion where it really is, as easily, nay, perhaps better, 
 without it. 
 
 If we will observe the actings of our own minds, we shall find that we 
 reason best and clearest when we only observe the connexion of the proof, 
 without reducing our thoughts to any rule of syllogism. And therefore we 
 may take notice, that there are many men that reason exceeding clear and 
 rightly, who know not how to make a syllogism. He that will look into 
 many parts of Asia and America, will find men reason there perhaps as 
 acutely as himself, who yet never heard of a syllogism, nor can reduce any 
 one argument to those forms : and I believe scarce any one makes syllogisms 
 in reasoning within himself. Indeed, syllogism is made use of on occasion, 
 to discover a fallacy hid in a rhetorical flourish, or cunningly wrapt up in a 
 smooth period ; and, stripping an absurdity of the cover of wit and good 
 language, show it in its naked deformity. But the weakness or fallacy of 
 such a loose discourse it shows, by the artificial form it is put into, only to 
 those who have thoroughly studied mode and figure, and have so examined 
 the many ways that three propositions may be put together, as to know 
 which of them does certainly conclude right, and which not, and upon what 
 grounds it is that they do so. All who have so far considered syllogism, as 
 to see the reason why in three propositions laid together in one form the 
 conclusion will be certainly right, but in another, not certainly so ; I grant 
 are certain of the conclusion they draw from the premises in the allowed 
 modes and figures. But they who have not so far looked into those forms, 
 are not sure, by virtue of syllogism, that the conclusion certainly follows 
 from the premises ; they only take it to be so by an implicit faith in their 
 teachers, and a confidence in those forms of argumentation ; but this is still 
 out believing, not being certain. Now if, of all mankind, those who can 
 make syllogisms are extremely few in comparison of those who cannot ; and 
 if, of those few who have been taught logic, there is but a very small number 
 •vho do any more than believe that syllogisms in the allowed modes and 
 
438 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 figures do conclude right, without knowing certainly that they do so ; if syl 
 logisms must be taken for the only proper instrument of reason and means 
 of knowledge ; it will follow, that before Aristotle there was not one man 
 that did or could know any thing by reason ; and that since the invention of 
 syllogisms, there is not one of ten thousand that doth. 
 
 But God has not been so sparing tc men to make them barely two-legged 
 creatures, and left it to Aristotle to make them rational, i. e. those few of 
 them that he could get so to examine the grounds of syllogisms, as to see, 
 that in above threescore ways, that three propositions may be laid together, 
 there are but about fourteen wherein one may be sure that the conclusion is 
 right ; and upon what grounds it is, that in these few the conclusion is cer- 
 tain, and in the other not. God has been more bountiful to mankind than 
 so. He has given them a mind that can reason, without being instructed in 
 methods of syllogizing: the understanding is not taught to reason by these 
 rules ; it has a native faculty to pferc’eive the coherence or incoherence of its 
 ideas, and can range them right, without any such perplexing repetitions. I 
 say not this any way to lessen Aristotle, whom I look on as one of the 
 greatest men among the ancients ; whose large views, acuteness, and pene- 
 tration of thought, and strength of judgment, few have equalled : and who 
 ;n this very invention of forms of argumentation, wherein the conclusion 
 may be shown to be rightly inferred, did great service against those who 
 were not ashamed to deny any thing. And I readily own, that all right 
 reasoning maybe reduced to his forms of syllogism. But yet I think, without 
 any diminution to him, I may truly say, that they are not the only, nor the 
 best way of reasoning, for the leading of those into truth who are willing to 
 find it, and desire to make the best use they may of their reason, for the 
 attainment of knowledge. And he himself, it is plain, found out some forms 
 to be conclusive, and others not, not by the forms themselves, but by the 
 original way of knowledge, i. e. by the visible agreement of ideas. Tell a 
 country gentlewoman that the wind is southwest, and the weather lowering, 
 and like to rain, and she will easily understand it is not safe for her to go 
 abroad thin clad, in such a day, after a fever : she clearly sees the probable 
 connexion of all these, viz. southwest wind, and clouds, rain, wetting, taking 
 cold, relapse, and danger of death, without tying them together in those arti- 
 ficial and cumbersome fetters of several syllogisms, that clog and hinder the 
 mind, which proceeds from one part to another quicker and clearer without 
 them ; and the probability which she easily perceives in things thus in their 
 native state would be quite lost, if this argument were managed learnedly, 
 and proposed in mode and figure. For it very often confounds the con- 
 nexion : and, I think, every one will perceive in mathematical demonstra- 
 tions, that the knowledge gained thereby comes shortest and clearest without 
 syllogisms. 
 
 Inference is looked on as the great act of the rational faculty, and so it is 
 when it is rightly made ; but the mind, either very desirous to enlarge its 
 knowledge, or very apt to favour the sentiments it has once imbibed, is very 
 forward to make inferences, and therefore often makes too much haste, be- 
 fore it perceives the connexion of the ideas that must hold the extremes 
 together. 
 
 To infer is nothing but, by virtue of one proposition laid down as true, to draw 
 in another as true, i. e. to see or suppose such a connexion of the two ideas 
 of the inferred proposition, v. g. let this be the proposition laid down, 
 “ men shall be punished in another world,” and from thence be inferred this 
 other, “ then men can determine themselves.” The question now is to know 
 whether the mind has made this inference right or no; if it has made it by 
 finding out the intermediate ideas, and taken a view of the connexion of 
 them, placed in a due order, it has proceeded rationally, and made a right 
 inference. If it has done it without such a view, it has not so much made 
 an inference that will hold, or an inference of right reason, as shown a wil- 
 lingness to have it be, or be taken for such. But in neither case is it eyllo- 
 
Ch. 17. 
 
 REASON. 
 
 439 
 
 gism that discovered those ideas, or showed the connexion of them, for they 
 must be both found out, and the connexion every where perceived, before 
 they can rationally be made use of in syllogism; unless it can be said, that 
 any idea, without considering what connexion it hath with the two other, 
 whose agreement should be shown by it, will do well enough in a syllogism, 
 and may be taken at a venture for the medius terminus, to prove any con- 
 clusion. But this nobody will say, because it is by virtue of the perceived 
 agreement of the intermediate idea with the extremes, that the extremes are 
 concluded to agree ; and therefore each intermediate idea must be such as in 
 the whole chain hath a visible connexion with those two it lias been placed 
 between, or else thereby the conclusion cannot be inferred or drawn in : for 
 wherever any link of the chain is loose, and without connexion, there the 
 whole strength of it is lost, and it hath no force to infer or draw in any 
 thing. In the instance above mentioned, what is it shows the force of the 
 inference, and consequently the reasonableness of it, but a view of the con- 
 nexion of all the intermediate ideas that draw in the conclusion or proposi- 
 tion inferred! v. g. men shall be punished God the punisher -just 
 
 punishment the punished guilty could have done otherwise 
 
 freedom self-determination : by which chain of ideas thus visibly linked 
 
 together in train, i. e. each intermediate idea agreeing on each side with 
 those two it is immediately placed between, the ideas of men and self-deter- 
 mination appear to be connected, i. e. this proposition, men can determine 
 themselves, is drawn in, or inferred from this, that they shall be punished in 
 the other world. For here the mind, seeing the connexion there is between 
 the idea of men’s punishment in the other world and the idea of God’s pun- 
 ishing ; between God punishing and the justice of the punishment ; between 
 justice of the punishment and guilt ; between guilt and the power to do other- 
 wise ; between a power to do otherwise and freedom ; and between freedom 
 and self-determination ; sees the connexion between men and self-deter- 
 mination. 
 
 Now I ask whether the connexion of the extremes be not more clearly 
 seen in this simple and natural disposition, than in the perplexed repetitions 
 and jumble of five or six syllogisms'? I must beg pardon for calling it jumble, 
 till somebody shall put these ideas into so many syllogisms, and then say 
 that they are less jumbled, and their connexion more visible, when they are 
 transposed and repeated, and spun out to a greater length in artificial forms 
 than in that short and natural plain order they are laid down in here, wherein 
 every one may see it ; and wherein they must be seen before they can be put 
 into a train of syllogisms. For the natural order of the connecting ideas 
 must direct the order of the syllogisms ; and a man must see the connexion 
 of each intermediate idea with those that it connects, before he can with rea- 
 son make use of it in a syllogism. And when all those syllogisms are made, 
 neither those that are, nor those that are not logicians will see the force of 
 the argumentation, i. e. the connexion of the extremes, one jot the better. 
 [For those that are not men of art, not knowing the true forms of syllogism, 
 nor the reasons of them, cannot know whether they are made in right and 
 conclusive modes and figures or no, and so are not at all helped by the forms 
 they are put into ; though by them the natural order, wherein the mind could 
 judge of their respective connexion, being disturbed, renders the illatation 
 much more uncertain than without them.] And as for the logicians themselves, 
 they see the connexion of each intermediate idea with those it stands be- 
 tween (on which the force of the inference depends) as well before as after 
 the syllogism is made, or else they do not see it at all. For a syllogism 
 neither shows nor strengthens the connexion of any two ideas immediately 
 put together, but only by the connexion seen in them shows what connexion 
 the extremes have one with another. But what connexion the intermediate 
 ■ has with either of the extremes in that syllogism, that no syllogism does or 
 ^.caji show. That the mind only doth or can perceive as they stand there in 
 that juxta-position only by its own view, to which the syllogistical form it 
 
440 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 happens to be in gives no help or light at all ; it only shows that if the inter- 
 mediate idea agrees with those it is on both sides immediately applied to, 
 then those two remote ones, or as they are called extremes, do certainly 
 agree, and therefore the immediate connexion of each idea to that which it 
 is applied to on each side, on which the force of the reasoning depends, is as 
 well seen before as after the syllogism is made, or else he that makes the 
 syllogism could never see it at all. This, as has been already observed, is 
 seen only by the eye, or the perceptive faculty of the mind, taking a view ot 
 them laid together in a juxta-position ; which view of any two it has equally, 
 whenever they are laid together in any proposition, whether that proposition 
 be placed as a major, or a minor in a syllogism or no. 
 
 Of what use then are syllogisms ? I answer, their chief and main use is in 
 the schools, where men are allowed without shame to deny the agreement of 
 ideas that do manifestly agree ; or out of the schools, to those who from 
 thence have learned without shame to deny the connexion of ideas, which 
 even to themselves is visible. But to an ingenious searcher after truth, who 
 has no other aim but to find it, there is no need of any such form to force the 
 allowing of the inference : the truth and reasonableness of it is better seen in 
 ranging of the ideas in a simple and plain order: and hence it is, that men, 
 in their own inquiries after truth, never use syllogisms to convince them- 
 selves, [or in teaching others to instruct willing learners.] Because, before 
 they can put them into a syllogism, they must see the connexion that is be- 
 tween the intermediate idea and the two other ideas it is set between and 
 applied to, to show their agreement ; and when they see that, they see whe- 
 ther the inference be good or no, and so syllogism comes too late to settle 
 it. For to make use again of the former instance, I ask whether the mind, 
 considering the idea of justice, placed as an intermediate idea between the 
 punishment of men and the guilt of the punished, (and, till it does so con- 
 sider it, the mind cannot make use of it as a medms terminus ) does not as 
 plainly see the force and strength of the inference as when it is formed into 
 a syllogism? To show it in a very plain and easy example, let animal be 
 the intermediate idea of medius terminus that the mind makes use of to show 
 the connexion of homo and vivens : I ask, whether the mind does not more 
 readily and plainly see that connexion in the simple and proper position of 
 the connecting idea in the middle ; thus, 
 
 Homo Animal Vivens. 
 
 than in this perplexed one, 
 
 Animal Vivens Homo Animal : 
 
 which is the position these ideas have in a syllogism, to show the connexion 
 between homo and vivens by the intervention of animal. 
 
 Indeed, syllogism is thought to be of necessary use, even to the lovers of 
 truth, to show them the fallacies that are often concealed in florid, witty, or 
 involved discourses. But that this is a mistake will appear if we consider, 
 that the reason why sometimes men, who sincerely aim at truth, are imposed 
 upon by such loose, and as they are called, rhetorical discourses, is, that 
 their fancies being struck with some lively metaphorical representations, they 
 neglect to observe, or do not easily perceive, what are the true ideas upon 
 which the inference depends. Now to show such men the weakness of such 
 an argumentation, there needs no more but to strip it of the superfluous ideas, 
 which, blended and confounded with those on which the inference depends, 
 seems to show a connexion where there is none ; or at least to hinder the 
 discovery of the want of it; and then to lay the naked ideas, on which the 
 force of the argumentation depends, in their due order, in which position the 
 mind, taking a view of them, sees what connexion they have, and so is able 
 to judge of the inference without any need of a syllogism at all. 
 
 I grant that mode and figure is commonly made use of in such cases, as if 
 the detection of the incoherence of such loose discourses were wholly owing 
 to the syilogistical form; and so I myself formerly thought, till upon a stricter 
 examination I now find, that laying the intermediate ideas naked in their 
 
Ch. 17. 
 
 REASON. 
 
 441 
 
 due order shows the incoherence of the argumentation better than syllogism ; 
 not only as subjecting each link of the chain to the immediate view of the 
 mind in its proper place, whereby its connexion is best observed ; but also 
 because syllogism shows the incoherence only to those (who are not one of 
 ten thousand) who perfectly understand mode and figure, and the reason 
 upon which those forms are established: whereas a due and orderly placing 
 of the ideas upon which the inference is made makes every one, whether 
 logician or not logician, who understands the terms, and hath the faculty to 
 perceive the agreement or disagreement of such ideas (without which, in or 
 out of syllogism, he cannot perceive the strength or weakness, coherence or 
 incoherence, of the discourse) see the want of connexion in the argumenta- 
 tion, and the absurdity of the inference. 
 
 And thus I have known a man unskilful in syllogism, who at first hearing 
 could perceive the weakness and inconclusiveness of a long, artificial, and 
 plausible discourse, wherewith others better skilled in syllogism have been 
 misled. And I believe there are few of my readers who do not know such. 
 And indeed if it were not so, the debates of most princes’ counsels, and the 
 business of assemblies, would be in danger to be mismanaged, since those 
 who are relied upon, and have usually a great stroke in them, are not always 
 such who have the good luck to be perfectly knowing in the forms of syllo- 
 gism, or expert in mode and figure. And if syllogism were the only or so 
 much as the surest way to detect the fallacies of artificial discourses, I do 
 not think that all mankind, even princes, in matters that concern their 
 crowns and dignities, are so much in love with falsehood and mistake, 
 that they would every where have neglected to bring syllogism into the 
 debates of moment, or thought it ridiculous so much as to offer them in affairs 
 of consequence ; a plain evidence to me, that men of parts and penetration, 
 who were not idly to dispute at their ease, but were to act according to the 
 result of their debates, and often pay for their mistakes with their heads 
 or fortunes, found those scholastic forms were of little use to discover truth 
 or fallacy, whilst both the one and the other might be shown, and better 
 shown, without them, to those who would not refuse to see what was visibly 
 shown them. 
 
 ^Secondly, Another reason that makes me doubt whether syllogism be the 
 only proper instrument of reason in the discovery of truth is, that of what- 
 ever use mode and figure is pretended to be in the laying open of fallacy 
 (which has been above considered) those scholastic forms of discourse are 
 not less liable to fallacies than the plainer ways of argumentation ; and for 
 this I appeal to common observation, which has always found these artificial 
 methods of reasoning more adapted to catch and entangle the mind, than to 
 instruct and inform the understanding. And hence it is that men, even when 
 they are baffled and silenced in this scholastic way, are seldom or never con- 
 vinced, and so brought over to the conquering side ; they perhaps acknow 
 ledge their adversary to be the more skilful disputant, but rest nevertheless 
 persuaded of the truth on their side ; and go away, worsted as they are, with 
 the same opinion they brought with them, which they could not do if this 
 way of argumentation carried light and conviction with it, and made men 
 see where the truth lay. And therefore syllogism has been thought more 
 proper for the attaining victory in dispute, than for the discovery or confirma- 
 tion of truth in fair inquiries. And if it be certain that fallacies can be 
 couched in syllogism, as it cannot be denied, it must be something else, and 
 not syllogism, that must discover them. 
 
 I have had experience how ready some men are, when all the use which 
 they have been wont to ascribe to any thing is not allowed, to cry out, that 
 I am for laying it wholly aside. But, to prevent such unjust and groundless 
 imputations, I tell them, that I am not for taking away any helps to the un- 
 derstanding, in the attainment of knowledge. And if men skilled in, and 
 used to syllogisms, find them assisting to their reason in the discovery of 
 truth, I think they ought to make use of them. All that I aim at is, that 
 3 F 
 
442 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 they should not ascribe more to those forms than belongs to them ; and think 
 that men have no use, or not so full an use of their reasoning faculty without 
 them. Some eyes want spectacles to see things clearly and distinctly; but 
 let not those that use them therefore say, nobody can see clearly without 
 them : those who do so will be thought in favour of art (which perhaps they 
 are beholden to) a little too much to depress and discredit nature. Reason, 
 by its own penetration, where it is strong and exercised, usually sees quicker 
 and clearer without syllogism. If use of those spectacles has so dimmed 
 its sight that it cannot without them see consequences or inconsequences in 
 argumentation, I am not so unreasonable as to be against using them. Every 
 one knows what best fits his own sight. But let him not thence conclude all 
 in the dark, who use not just the same helps that he finds a need of. 
 
 Sect. 5. Helps little in demonstration, less in probability. — But however 
 it be in knowledge, I think I may truly say, it is of far less, or no use at all 
 in probabilities. For, the assent there being to be determined by the prepon- 
 derancy, after due weighing of all the proofs, with all circumstances on both 
 sides, nothing is so unfit to assist the mind in that as syllogism ; which run- 
 ning away with one assumed probability, or one topical argument, pursues 
 that till it has led the mind quite out of sight of the thing under considera- 
 tion ; and forcing it upon some remote difficulty, holds it fast there, entangled 
 perhaps, and as it were manacled in tne chain of syllogisms, without allow- 
 ing it the liberty, much less affording it the helps, requisite to show on which 
 6ide, all things considered, is the greater probability. 
 
 Sect. 6. Serves not to increase our knowledge, but fence with it. — But 
 let it help us (as perhaps may be said) in convincing men of their errors and 
 mistakes: (and yet I would fain see the man that was forced out of his 
 opinion by dint of syllogism) yet still it fails our reason in that part, which, 
 if not its highest perfection, is yet certainly its hardest task, and that which 
 we most need its help in ; and that is the finding out of proofs, and making 
 new discoveries. The rules of syllogism serve not to furnish the mind with 
 those intermediate ideas that may show the connexion of remote ones. This 
 way of reasoning discovers no new proofs, but is the art of marshalling and 
 ranging the old ones we have already. The forty-seventh proposition of the 
 first book of Euclid is very true ; but the discovery of it, I think, not owing 
 to any rules of common logic. A man knows first, and then he is able to 
 prove syllogistically. So that syllogism comes after knowledge, and then a 
 man has l i title nr no need of it. But it is chiefly by the finding out those ideas 
 that show the connexion of distant ones, that our stock of knowledge is in- 
 creased, and that useful arts and sciences are advanced. Syllogism at best 
 is bat the art of fencing with the little knowledge we have, without making 
 any addition to it. And if a man should employ his reason all this way, he 
 will not do much otherwise than he, who having got some iron out of the 
 bowels of the earth, should have it beaten up all into swords, and put into 
 his servants’ hands to fence with, and bang one another. Had the king of 
 Spain employed the hands of his people, and his Spanish iron so, he had 
 brought to light but little of that treasure that lay so long hid in the entrails 
 of America. And I am apt to think, that he who shall employ all the force 
 of his reason only in brandishing of syllogisms, will discover very fit tie of 
 that mass of knowledge which lies yet concealed in the secret recesses of 
 nature ; and which, I am apt to think, native rustic reason (as it formerly has 
 done) is likelier to open a way to, and add to the common stock of mankind, 
 rather than any scholastic proceeding by the strict rules of mode and figure. 
 
 Sect. 7. Other helps should be sought. — I doubt not, nevertheless, but 
 there are ways to be found out to assist our reason in this most useful part ; 
 and this the judicious Hooker encourages me to say, who in his Eccl. Pol. 
 1. i. \ 6, speaks thus : “ If there might be added the right helps of true art 
 and learning (which helps, I must plainly confess, this age of the world, car- 
 rying the name of a learned age, doth neither much know, nor genera.iy 
 regard) there would undoubtedly be almost as much difference in maturity 
 
Ch. 17. 
 
 REASON. 
 
 443 
 
 of judgment between men therewith inured, and that which men now are, as 
 between men that are now and innocents.” I do not pretend to have found, 
 or discovered here any of those right helps of art this gTeat man of deep 
 tnought mentions ; but this is plain, that syllogism, and the logic now in use, 
 which were as well known in his days, can be none of those he means. It 
 is sufficient for me, if by a discourse, perhaps something out of the way, I 
 am sure as to me wholly new and unborrowed, I shall have given occasion 
 to others to cast about for new discoveries, and to seek in their own thoughts 
 for those right helps of art, which will scarce be found, I fear, by those who 
 servilely confine themselves to the rules and dictates of others. For beaten 
 tracks lead this sort of cattle (as , an observing Roman calls them) whose 
 thoughts reach only to imitation, non quo eundum est, sed quo itur. But I 
 can be bold to say, that this age is adorned with some men of that strength 
 of judgment, and largeness of comprehension, that if they would employ 
 their thoughts on this subject, could open new and undiscovered ways to the 
 advancement of knowledge. 
 
 Sect. 8. We reason about particulars . — Having here had an occasion to 
 Speak of syllogism in general, and the use of it in reasoning, and the improve- 
 ment of our knowledge, it is fit, before I leave this subject, to take notice of 
 one manifest mistake in the rules of syllogism, viz. that no syllogistical rea- 
 soning can be right and conclusive, but what has at least one general propo- 
 sition in it. As if we could not reason, and have knowledge about particu- 
 lars : whereas, in truth, the matter rightly considered, the immediate object 
 of all our reasoning and knowledge is nothing but particulars. Every 
 man’s reasoning and knowledge is only about the ideas existing in his own 
 mind, which are truly, every one of them, particular existences ; and our 
 knowledge and reason about other things is only as they correspond with 
 those of our particular ideas. So that the perception of the agreement or 
 disagreement of our particular ideas is the whole and utmost of all our know- 
 ledge. Universality is but accidental to it, and consists only in this, that the 
 particular ideas about which it is are such, as more than one particular thing 
 can correspond with, and be represented by. But the perception of the 
 agreement or disagreement of any two ideas, consequently our own know- 
 ledge is equally clear and certain, whether either, or both, or neither of those 
 ideas be capable of representing more real beings than one, or no. One thing 
 more I crave leave to offer about syllogism, before I leave it, viz. may one 
 not upon just ground inquire, whether the form syllogism now has is that 
 which in reason it ought to have ] For the medius terminus being to join the 
 extremes, i. e. the intermediate idea by its intervention, to show the agree 
 ment or disagreement of the two in question : would not the position of the 
 medius terminus be more natural, and show the agreement and disagreement 
 of the extremes clearer and better, if it were placed in the middle between 
 them'! which might be easily done by transposing the propositions, and 
 making the medius terminus the predicate of the first, and the subject of the 
 second. As thus, 
 
 “ Omnis homo est animal, 
 
 Omne animal est vivens, 
 
 Ergo omnis homo est vivens. 
 
 “ Omne corpus est extension et solidum, 
 
 Nullum extensum et solidum est pura extensio, 
 
 Ergo corpus non est pura extensio.” 
 
 I need not trouble my reader with instances in syllogisms, whose conclusions 
 are particular. The same reason holds for the same form in them, as well 
 as in the general. 
 
 Sect. 9. 1 . Reason fails us for want of ideas. — Reason, though it pene- 
 
 trates into the depths of the sea and earth, elevates our thoughts as nigh as 
 
444 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 the stars, and leads us through the vast spaces and large rooms of Jiis mighty 
 fabric, yet it comes far short of the real extent of even corporeal being, and 
 there are many instances wherein it fails us : as, 
 
 First, It perfectly fails us where our ideas fail. It neither does nor can ex- 
 tend itself farther than they do. And therefore wherever we have no ideas, 
 our reasoning stops, and we are at an end of our reckoning ; and if at any 
 time we reason about words, which do not stand for any ideas, it is only 
 about those sounds, and nothing else. 
 
 Sect. 10. 2. Because of obscure and imperfect ideas. — Secondly, Our 
 reason is often puzzled and at a loss, because of the obscurity, confusion, or 
 imperfection of the ideas it is employed about ; and there we are involved in 
 difficulties and contradictions. Thus, not having any perfect idea of the 
 least extension of matter nor of infinity, we are at a loss about the divisibility 
 of matter ; but having perfect, clear, and distinct ideas of number, our reason 
 meets with none of those inextricable difficulties in numbers, nor finds itself 
 involved in any contradictions about them. Thus, we, having but imperfect 
 ideas of the operations of our minds, and of the beginning of motion or 
 thought how the mind produces either of them in us, and much more imperfect 
 yet of the operation of God; run into great difficulties about free created 
 agents, which reason cannot well extricate itself out of. 
 
 Sect. 11. 3. For want of intermediate ideas. — Thirdly, Our reason is 
 
 often at a stand, because it perceives not those ideas which could serve to 
 show the certain or probable agreement or disagreement of any other two 
 ideas ; and in this some men’s faculties far outgo others. Till algebra, that 
 great instrument and instance of human sagacity was discovered, men with 
 amazement looked on several of the demonstrations of ancient mathemati- 
 cians, and could scarce forbear to think the finding several 0 " those proofs to 
 be something more than human. 
 
 Sect. 12. 4. Because of wrong principles. — Fourthly, The mind, by 
 
 proceeding upon false principles, is often engaged in absurdities and difficul- 
 ties, brought into straits and contradictions, without knowing how to free 
 itself ; and in that case it is in vain to implore the help of reason, unless it 
 be to discover the falsehood and reject the influence of those wrong prin- 
 ciples. Reason is so far from clearing the difficulties which the building 
 upon false foundations brings a man into, that if he will pursue it, it entangles 
 him the more, and engages him deeper in perplexities. 
 
 Sect. 3. 5. Because of doubtful terms. — Fifthly, As obscure and imper- 
 fect ideas often involve our reason, so, upon the same ground, do dubious 
 words, and uncertain signs, often in discourses and arguings, when not 
 warily attended to, puzzle men’s reason, and bring them to a nonplus. But 
 these two latter are our fault, and not the fault of reason. But yet the con- 
 sequences of them are nevertheless obvious ; and the perplexities or errors 
 they fill men’s minds with are every where observable. 
 
 Sect. 14. Our highest degree -of knowledge is intuitive, without reason- 
 ing. — Some of the ideas that are in the mind are so there, that they can be 
 by themselves immediately compared one with another : and in these the mind 
 is able to perceive that they agree or disagree as clearly as that it has them. 
 Thus the mind perceives that an arch of a circle is less than the whole circle, 
 as clearly as it does the idea of a circle ; and this, therefore, as has been 
 said, I call intuitive knowledge, which is certain, beyond all doubt, and needs 
 no probation, nor can have any ; this being the highest of all human cer- 
 tainty. In this consists the evidence of all those maxims, which nobody has 
 any doubt about, but every man (does not, as is said, only assent to, but) 
 knows to be true as soon as ever they are proposed to his understanding. In 
 the discovery of, and assent to these truths, there is no use of the discursive 
 faculty, no need of reasoning, but they are known by a superior and higher 
 degree of evidence. And such, if I may guess at things unknown, I arn apt 
 to think that angels have now, and the spirits of just men made perfect shall 
 
Oh. 17. 
 
 REASON. 
 
 445 
 
 iiave, in a future state, of thousands of things, which now either wholly 
 escape our apprehensions, or which, our short sighted reason having got 
 some faint glimpse of, we in the dark grope after. 
 
 Sect. 15. The next is demonstration by reasoning. — But though we have, 
 here and there, a little of this clear light, some sparks of bright knowledge ; 
 yet the greatest part of our ideas are such, that we cannot discern their 
 agreement or disagreement by an immediate comparing them. And in all 
 these we have need of reasoning, and must, by discourse and inference, 
 make our discoveries. Now of these there are two sorts, which I shall take 
 the liberty to mention here again. 
 
 First, Those whose agreement or disagreement, though it cannot be seen 
 by an immediate putting them together, yet may be examined by the inter- 
 vention of other ideas which can be compared with them. In this case, when 
 the agreement or disagreement of the intermediate idea, on both sides with 
 those which we would compare, is plainly discerned, there it amounts to a 
 demonstration, whereby knowledge is produced ; which, though it be certain, 
 yet it is not so easy nor altogether so clear as intuitive knowledge. Be- 
 cause in that there is barely one simple intuition, wherein there is no room 
 for any the least mistake or doubt ; the truth is seen all perfectly at once. In 
 demonstration, it is true, there is intuition too, but not altogether at once; for 
 there must be a remembrance of the intuition of the agreement of the me- 
 dium, or intermediate idea, with that we compared it with before, when we 
 compare it with the other; and where there may be many mediums, there 
 the danger of the mistake is the greater. For each agreement or disagree- 
 ment of the ideas must be observed and seen in each step of the whole train, 
 and retained in the memory just as it is ; and the mind must be sure that no 
 part of what is necessary to make up the demonstration is omitted or over- 
 looked. This makes some demonstrations long and perplexed, and too hard 
 for those who have not strength of parts distinctly to perceive, and exactly 
 carry, so many particulars orderly in their heads. And even those who are 
 able to master such intricate speculations are fain sometimes to go over them 
 again, and there is need of more than one review before they can arrive at 
 certainty. But yet where the mind clearly retains the intuition it had of the 
 agreement of any idea with another, and that with a third, and that with a 
 fourth, &c. there the agreement of the first and the fourth is a demonstra- 
 tion, and produces certain knowledge, which may be called rational know- 
 ledge, as the other is intuitive. 
 
 Sect. 16. To supply the narrowness of this, we have nothing but judg- 
 ment upon probable reasoning. — Secondly, There are other ideas, whose 
 agreement or disagreement can no otherwise be judged of but by the inter- 
 ventiomof others, which have not a certain agreement with the extremes, but 
 an usual or likely one ; and in these it is that the judgment is properly exer- 
 cised, which is the acquiescing of the mind, that any ideas do agree, by com- 
 paring them with such probable mediums. This, though it never amounts to 
 knowledge, no not to that which is the lowest degree of it; yet sometimes 
 the intermediate ideas tie the extremes so firmly together, and the probability 
 is so clear and strong, that assent as necessarily follows it as knowledge 
 does demonstration. The great excellency and use of the judgment is to 
 observe right, and take a true estimate of the force and weight of each pro- 
 bability; and then, casting them up all right together, choose the side which 
 has the overbalance. 
 
 Sect. 17. Intuition, demonstration, judgment. — Intuitive knowledge is 
 the perception of the. certain agreement or disagreement of two ideas imme- 
 diately compared together. 
 
 Rational knowledge is the perception of the certain agreement or disagree- 
 ment of any two ideas, by the intervention of one or more other ideas. 
 
 Judgment is the thinking or taking two ideas to agree or disagree, by the 
 intervention of one or more ideas, whose certain agreement or disagreement 
 with them it does not perceive, but hath observed to be frequent and usual. 
 
446 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 Sect. 18. Consequences of words, and consequences of ideas. — Though 
 the deducing one proposition from another, or making inferences in words, 
 be a great part of reason, and that which it is usually employed about; yet 
 the principal act of ratiocination is the finding the agreement or disagree- 
 ment of two ideas one with another, by the intervention of a third. As 
 a man, by a yard, finds two houses to be of the same length, which could not 
 be brought together to measure their equality by ju.xta-position. Words have 
 their consequences, as the signs of such ideas : and things agree or disagree, 
 as really they are ; but we observe it only by our ideas. 
 
 Sect. 19. Four sorts of arguments. — Before we quit this subject, it may 
 be worth our while a little to reflect on four sorts of arguments that men, in 
 their reasonings with others, do ordinarily make use of to prevail on their 
 assent: or at least so to awe them, as to silence their opposition. 
 
 1. Ad verecundiam. — First, the first is to allege the opinions of men, 
 whose parts, learning, eminency, power, or some other cause— gained a 
 name, and settled a reputation in the common esteem with some kind of 
 authority. When men are established in any kind of dignity, it is thought a 
 breach of modesty for others to derogate any way from it, and question the 
 authority of men who are in possession of it. This is apt to be censured, as 
 carrying with it too much of pride, when a man does not readily yield to the 
 determination of approved authors, which is wont to be received with respect 
 and submission by others ; and it is looked upon as insolence for a man to set 
 up and adhere to his own opinion against the current stream of antiquity ; or 
 to put it in the balance against that of some learned doctor, or otherwise ap- 
 proved writer. Whoever backs his tenets with such authorities, thinks he ought 
 thereby to carry the cause, and is ready to style it impudence in any one who 
 shall stand out against them. This, 1 think, may be called argumentum ad 
 verecundiam. 
 
 Sect. 20 2. Ad ignorantiam. — Secondly, Another way that men ordi- 
 
 narily use to drive others, and force them to submit to their judgments, and 
 receive the opinion in debate, is to require the adversary to admit what they 
 allege as a proof, or to assign a better. And this I call argumentum ad ig- 
 norantiam. 
 
 Sect. 21. 3. Ad hominem. — Thirdly, A third way is to press a man with 
 consequences drawn from his own principles or concessions. This is already 
 known under the name of argumentum ad hominem. 
 
 Sect. 22. 4. Ad judicium. — Fourthly, The fourth is the using of proofs 
 
 drawn from any of the foundations of knowledge or probability. This I call 
 argumentum ad judicium. This alone, of all the four, brings true instruc- 
 tion with it, and advances us in our way to knowledge. For, 1. It argues 
 not another man’s opinions to be right, because I, out of respect, or any other 
 consideration but that of conviction, will contradict him. 2. It proves not 
 another man to be in the right way, nor that I ought to take the same with 
 him, because I know not a better. 3. Nor does it follow that another man 
 is in the right way, because he has shown me that I am in the wrong. I 
 may be modest, and therefore not oppose another man’s persuasion : I may 
 be ignorant, and not be able to produce abetter : I may be in an error, and an- 
 other may show me that I am so. This may dispose me, perhaps, for the 
 reception of truth, but helps me not to it; that must come from proofs and 
 arguments, and light arising from the nature of things themselves, and not 
 from my shamefacedness, ignorance, or error. 
 
 Sect. 23. Above, contrary, and according to reason. — By what has been 
 before said of reason, we may be able to make some guess at the distinction 
 of things into those that are according to, above, and contrary to reason. 1. 
 According to reason are such propositions, whose truth we can discover by 
 examining and tracing those ideas we have from sensation and reflection, and 
 by natural deduction find to be true or probable. 2. Above reason are such 
 propositions, whose truth or probability we cannqt by reason derive from 
 those principles. 3. Contrary to reason are such propositions as are incon- 
 
Ch. 17. 
 
 REASON. 
 
 447 
 
 sistent with, or irreconcileable to, our clear and distinct ideas. Thus the 
 ^■existence of one Godis according to reason; the existence of more than one 
 God contrary to reason; the resurrection of the dead above reason. Farther 
 above reason may be taken in a double sense, viz. either as signifying above 
 probability, or above certainty; so in that large sense also, contrary to reason 
 is, I suppose, sometimes taken. 
 
 Sect. 24. Reason and faith not opposite . — There is another use of the 
 word reas on, wherein it is opposed to faith ; which, though it be in itself a 
 very improper way of speaking, yet common use has so authorized it, that it 
 would be folly either to oppose or hope to remedy it : only I think it may not 
 oe amiss to take notice, that however faith be opposed to reason, faith is 
 nothing but a firm assent of the mind : which, if it be regulated, as is our 
 duty, cannot be afforded to any thing but upon good reason ; and so cannot 
 be opposite to it. He that believes, without having any reason for believing, 
 may be in love with his own fancies; but neither seeks truth as he ought, 
 nor pays the obedience due to his Maker, who would have him use those dis- 
 cerning faculties he has given him, to keep him out of mistake and error. 
 He that does not this to the best of his power, however he sometimes lights 
 on truth, is in the right but by chance ; and I know not whether the lucki- 
 ness of the accident will excuse the irregularity of his proceeding. This at 
 least is certain, that he must be accountable for whatever mistakes he runs 
 into: whereas he that makes use of the light and faculties God has given 
 him, and seeks sincerely to discover truth by those helps and abilities he has, 
 may have this satisfaction in doing his duty as a rational creature, that, 
 though he should miss truth, he will not miss the reward of it. For he 
 governs liis assent right, and places it as he should, who, in any case or mat- 
 ter whatsoever, believes or disbelieves, according as reason directs him. He 
 that doth otherwise, transgresses against his own light, and misuses those 
 faculties which were given him to no other end but to search and follow 
 the clearer evidence and greater probability. But since reason and faith are 
 by some men opposed, we will so consider them in the following chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 OF FAITH AND REASON, AND THEIR DISTINCT PROVINCES. 
 
 _ Sect. 1. Necessary to know their boundaries . — It has been above shown, 
 1. That we are of necessity ignorant, ancTwant knowledge of all sorts, where 
 we want ideas. 2. That' we are ignorant, and want rational knowledge, 
 where we want proofs. 3. That We want general knowledge and certainty, 
 as far as we want clear N 'and' "determined specific ideas. 4. That we want 
 probability to direct our assent in matters where we have neither knowledge 
 of our own, nor testimony of other men, to bottom our reason upon. 
 
 From these things thus premised, I think we may come to lay down the 
 measures and boundaries between faith and reason; the want whereof may 
 possibly have been the cause, if not of great disorders, yet at least of great 
 disputes, and perhaps mistakes in the world. For till it be resolved how far 
 we are to be guided by reason, and how far by faith, we shall in vain dispute 
 and endeavour to convince one another in matters of religion. 
 
 Sect. 2. Faith and reason what, as contradistinguished . — I find every 
 sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly: and where it 
 fails them they cry out, it is matter of faith, and above reason. And I do not 
 see how they can argue with any one, or ever convince a gainsayer who 
 makes use of the same plea, without setting down strict boundaries between 
 faith and reason ; which ought to be the first point established in all ques- 
 tions, where faith has any thing to do. 
 
 Reason- Therefore 'here, as contradistinguished to faith, I take to be the 
 
448 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 discovery of the certainty or probability of such proposition or truths, which 
 the mind arrives at by deduction from such ideas which it has got by the use 
 of its natural faculties, viz. by sensation or reflection. 
 
 Faith, on the other side, is the assent to any proposition, not thus made 
 out by the deductions of reason ; but upon the credit of the proposer, as 
 coming from God, in some extraordinary way of communication. This way 
 of discovering truths to men we call revelation. 
 
 Sect. 3. No new simple idea can be conveyed by traditional revelation . — 
 First then I say, that no man inspired by God can by any revelation commu- 
 nicate to others any new simple ideas, which they had not before from sen- 
 sation or reflection. For whatsoever impressions he himself may have from 
 the immediate hand of God, this revelation, if it be of new simple ideas, 
 cannot be conveyed to another either by words or any other signs. Because 
 words, by their immediate operation on us, cause no other ideas but of their 
 natural sounds : and it is by the custom of using them for signs, that they 
 excite and revive in our minds latent ideas ; but yet only such ideas as were 
 there before. For words seen or heard recall to our thoughts those ideas 
 only which to us they have been wont to be signs of ; but cannot introduce 
 any perfectly new, and formerly unknown simple ideas. The same holds in 
 all other signs, which cannot signify to us things of which we have before 
 never had any idea at all. 
 
 Thus whatever things were discovered to St Paul, when he was rapt up 
 into the third heaven, whatever new ideas his mind there received, all the 
 description he can make to others of that place is only this, that there are 
 such things, “ as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered 
 into the heart of man to conceive.” And supposing God should discover to 
 any one supernaturally, a species of creatures inhabiting, for example, Jupiter 
 or Saturn, (for that it is possible there may be such nobody can deny) which 
 had six senses ; and imprint on his mind the ideas conveyed to theirs by that 
 sixth sense ; he could no more by words, produce in the minds of other men 
 those ideas, imprinted by that sixth sense, than one of us could convey the 
 idea of any colour by the sounds of words into a man, who, having the other 
 four senses perfect, had always totally wanted the fifth of seeing. For our 
 simple ideas then, which are the foundation and sole matter of all our notions 
 and knowledge, we must depend wholly on our reason, I mean our natural 
 faculties ; and can by no means receive them, or any of them, from traditional 
 revelation; I say traditional revelation, in distinction to original revelation. 
 By the one, I mean that first impression, which is made immediately by God, 
 on the mind of any man, to which we cannot set any bounds ; and by the 
 other, those impressions delivered over to others in words, and the ordinary 
 ways of conveying our conceptions one to another. 
 
 Sect. 4. Traditional revelation may make us know propositions know- 
 able also by reason , but not with the same certainty that reason doth . — 
 Secondly, I say that the same truths may be discovered,' and conveyed 
 down from revelation, which are discoverable to us by reason, and by those 
 ideas we naturally may have. So God might, by revelation, discover the 
 truth of any proposition in Euclid ; as well as men, by the natural use of 
 their faculties, come to make the discovery themselves. In all things of 
 this kind, there is little need or use of revelation, God having furnished us 
 with natural and surer means to arrive at the knowledge of them. For 
 whatsoever truth we come to the clear discovery of, from the knowledge and 
 contemplation of our own ideas, will always be more certain to us than those 
 which are conveyed to us by traditional revelation. For the knowledge we 
 have, that this revelation came at first from God, can never be so sure, as the 
 knowledge we have from the clear and distinct perception of the agreement 
 or disagreement uf our own ideas ; v. g. if it were revealed some ages since, 
 that the three angles of a triangle were equal to two right ones, I might assent 
 to the truth of that proposition, upon the credit of the tradition, that it was 
 revealed ; but that it would never amount to so great a certainly as the know- 
 
Ch. 18. 
 
 FAITH AND REASON. 
 
 449 
 
 ledge of it, upon the comparing and measuring my own ideas of two right 
 angles, and the three angles of a triangle. The like holds in matter of fact, 
 knowable by our senses; v. g. the history of the deluge is conveyed to us by 
 writings which had their original from revelation : and yet nobody, I think, 
 will say he has as certain and clear knowledge of the flood as Noah that saw 
 ft ; or that he himself would have had, had he then been alive and seen it. 
 
 For he has no greater assurance than that of his senses that it is writ in the 
 book supposed writ by Moses inspired : but he has not so great an assurance 
 that Moses writ that book, as if he had seen Moses write it. So that the 
 assurance of its being a revelation is less still than the assurance of his senses. 
 —Sect. 5. Revelation cannot be admitted against the clear evidence of 
 reason. — In propositions then, whose certainty is built upon the clear per- 
 — eepTTon of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, attained either by 
 immediate intuition, as in self-evident propositions, or by evident deductions 
 of reason in demonstrations, we need not the assistance of revelation, as 
 necessary to gain our assent, and introduce them into our minds. Because 
 the natural ways of knowledge could settle them there, or had aone it 
 already ; which is the greatest assurance we can possibly have of any thing, 
 unless where God immediately reveals it to us ; and there too our assurance 
 can be no greater than our knowledge is, that it is a revelation from God. 
 
 But yet nothing, I think, can, under that title, shake or overrule plain know- 
 ledge ; or rationally prevail with any man to admit it for true, in a direct con- 
 tradiction to the clear evidence of his own understanding. For since no- 
 evidence of our faculties, by which we receive such revelations, can exceed, 
 if equal, the certainty of our intuitive knowledge, we can never receive for 
 a truth any thing that is directly contrary to our clear and distinct know- 
 ledge : v. g. the ideas of one body and one place do so clearly agree, and the 
 mind has so evident a perception of their agreement, that we can never 
 assent to a proposition, that affirms the same body to be in two distant places 
 at once, however it should pretend to the authority of a divine revelation : 
 since the evidence, first, that we deceive not ourselves, in ascribing it to 
 God ; secondly, that we understand it right ; can never be so great as the 
 evidence of our own intuitive knowledge, whereby we discern it impossible 
 for the same body to be in two places at once. And therefore no proposition 
 can be received for divine revelation, or obtain the assent due to all such, if 
 it be contradictory to our clear intuitive knowledge. Because this would be 
 to subvert the principles and foundations of all knowledge, evidence, and 
 assent whatsoever ; and there would be left no difference between truth and 
 falsehood, no measures of credible and incredible in the world, if doubtful 
 propositions shall take place before self-evident, and what we certainly know 
 give way to what we may possibly be mistaken in. In propositions, therefore, 
 contrary to the clear perception of the agreement or disagreement of any of 
 our ideas, it will be in vain to urge them as matters of faith. They cannot 
 move our assent under that or any other title whatsoever. For faith can — 
 never convince us of any thing that contradicts our knowledge. Because 
 though faith be founded on the testimony of God (who cannot lie) revealing 
 any proposition to us ; yet we cannot have an assurance of the truth of its 
 being a divine revelation greater than our own knowledge ; since the whole 
 strength of the certainty depends upon our own knowledge that God revealed 
 it ; which in this case, where the proposition supposed revealed contradicts 
 our knowledge or reason, will always have this objection hanging to it, viz. 
 that we cannot tell how to conceive that to come from God, the bountiful 
 Author of our being, which, if received for true, must overturn all the prin- 
 ciples and foundations of knowledge he has given us ; render all our iacullies 
 useless ; wholly destroy the most excellent part of his workmanship, our 
 understandings ; and put a man in a condition, wherein he will have less 
 light, less conduct, than the beast that perisheth. For if the mind of man 
 can never have a clearer (and perhaps not so clear) evidence of any thing 
 to be a divine revelation, as it has of the principles of its own reascn, it can 
 3 G 
 
450 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.' 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 never have a ground to quit the clear evidence of its reason, to give a place 
 to a proposition, whose revelation has not a greater evidence than those 
 principles have. 
 
 Sect. 6. Traditional revelation much less. — Thus far a man has use of 
 reason, and ought to hearken to it, even in immediate and original revelation, 
 where it is supposed to be made to hirnself : but to all those who pretend not 
 to immediate revelation, but are required to pay obedience, and to receive ihe 
 truths revealed to others, which by the tradition of writings, or word of 
 mouth, are conveyed down to them ; reason has a great deal more to do, and 
 is that only which can induce us to receive them. For matter of faith being 
 only divine revelation, and nothing else; faith, as we use the word (called 
 commonly divine faith), has to do with no propositions but those which are 
 supposed to be divinely revealed. So that I do not see how those, who make 
 revelation alone the sole object of faith, can say, that it is a matter of faith, 
 and not of reason, to believe that such or such a proposition to be found in 
 such or such a book is of divine inspiration ; unless it be revealed, that that 
 proposition, or all in that book, was communicated by divine inspiration. 
 Without such a revelation, the believing or not believing that proposition or 
 book to be of divine authority can never be matter of faith, but matter of 
 reason ; and such as I must come to an assent to only by the use of my reason, 
 which can never require or enable me to believe that which is contrary tc 
 itself : it being impossible for reason ever to procure any assent to that, 
 which to itself appears unreasonable. 
 
 In all things, therefore, where we have clear evidence from our ideas, and 
 those principles of knowledge I have above mentioned, reason is the proper 
 judge ; and revelation, though it may in consenting with it confirm its dic- 
 tates, yet cannot in such cases invalidate its decrees : nor can we be obliged, 
 where we have the clear and evident sentence of reason, to quit it for the 
 contrary opinion, under a pretence that it is matter of faith ; which can have 
 no authority against the plain and clear dictates of reason. 
 
 Sect. 7. Things above reason. — But thirdly, there being many things, 
 wherein we have very imperfect notions, or none at all ; and other things, 
 of whose past, present, or future existence, by the natural use of our facul- 
 ties, we can have no knowledge at all ; these, as being beyond the discovery 
 of our natural faculties, and above reason, are, when revealed, tire proper 
 matter ofTaith. Thus, that part of the angels rebelled against God, and 
 thereby lost their first happy state ; and that the dead shall rise, and live 
 again : these, and the like, being beyond the discovery of reason, are purely 
 matters of faith, with which reason has directly nothing to do. 
 
 Sect; 8. Or-not xontrarif-to reason, if revealed, are matter of faith . — 
 But since God in giving us the light of reason has not thereby tied up his 
 own hands from affording us, when he thinks fit, the light of revelation in 
 any of those matters wherein our natural faculties are able to give a probable 
 determination ; revelation, where God has been pleased to give it, must carry 
 it against the probable conjectures of reason. Because the mind not being 
 certain of the truth of that it does not evidently know, but only yielding to 
 the probability that appears in it, is bound to give up its assent to such testi- 
 mony; which, it is satisfied, comes from one who cannot err, and will not 
 deceive. But yet it still belongs to reason to judge of the truth of its being 
 a revelation, and of the signification of the words wherein it is delivered. 
 Indeed, if any thing shall be thought revelation, which is contrary to the 
 plain principles of reason, and the evident knowledge the mind has of its 
 own clear and distinct ideas ; there reason must be hearkened to, as to a 
 matter within its province : since a man can never have so certain a know- 
 ledge, that a proposition, which contradicts the clear principles and evidence 
 of his own knowledge, was divinely revealed, or that he understands the 
 words rightly wherein it is delivered ; as he has, that the contrary is true : 
 and so is bound to consider and judge of it as a matter of reason, and not 
 swallow it, without examination, as a matter of faith 
 
Ch. 18. 
 
 FAITH AND REASON. 
 
 451 
 
 Sect. S. Revelation, in matters where reason cannot judge, or hut proba- 
 bly, ought to he hearkened to. — First, Whatever proposition is revealed, of 
 whose truth our mind, by its natural faculties and notions, cannot judge ; 
 that is purely matter of faith, and above reason. 
 
 Secondly.- All propositions, whereof the mind, by the use of its natural 
 fatrnTtlls, can come to determine and judge from naturally acquired ideas, are 
 • mdtter of reason ; with this difference still, that in those concerning which 
 it has 'but an uncertain evidence, and so is persuaded of their truth only upon 
 probable grounds, which still admit a possibility of the contrary to be true, 
 without doing violence to the certain evidence of its own knowledge, and 
 overturning the principles of its own reason ; in such probable propositions, 
 I say, an evident revelation ought to determine our assent even against pro- 
 bability. For where the principles of reason have not evidenced a propo- 
 sition to be certainly true or false, there clear revelation, as another principle 
 of truth, and ground of assent, may determine ; and so it may be matter of 
 faith, and be also above reason. Because reason, in that particular matter, 
 teing able to reach no higher than probability, faith gave the determination, 
 where reason came short ; and revelation discovered on which side the 
 truth lay. 
 
 Segt. 10. In matters where reason can afford certain knowledge, that is 
 to be hearkened to. — Thus far the dominion of faith reaches, and that with- 
 out any violence or hinderance to reason ; which is not injured or disturbed, 
 but assisted and improved, by new discoveries of truth coming from the 
 eternal .fountain of all knowledge. Whatever God hath revealed, is certainly 
 true ; no doubt can be made of it. This is the proper object of faith : but 
 whether it be a divine revelation or no, reason must judge ; which can never 
 permit the mind to reject a greater evidence, to embrace what is less evident, 
 nor allow it to entertain probability in opposition to knowledge and certainty. 
 There can be no evidence that any traditional revelation is of divine original, 
 in the words we receive it, and in the sense we understand it, so clear and 
 so certain as that of the principles of reason : and therefore nothing that is 
 contrary to, and inconsistent with, the clear and self-evident dictates of rea- 
 son, has a right to be urged or assented to as a matter of faith, wherein 
 reason hath nothing to do. Whatsoever is divine revelation ought to over- 
 rule all our opinions, prejudices, and interest, and hath a right to be received 
 with full assent. Such a submission as this, of our reason to faith, takes 
 not away the landmarks of knowledge : this shakes not the foundations of 
 reason, but leaves us that use of our faculties for which they were given us. 
 
 Sect. 11. If the boundaries be. not set between faith and reason, no en- 
 thusiasm- or extravagancy in religion can he contradicted.— If the pro- 
 vincesmf“f&ith-and.reascn are not kept distinct by these boundaries, there 
 will, in matters of religion, be no room for reason at all ; and those extrava- 
 gant opinions and ceremonies that are to be found in the several religions of 
 the world will not deserve to be blamed. For to this crying up of faith, in 
 opposition to reason, we may, I think, in good measure, ascribe those ab- 
 surdities that fill almost all the religions which possess and divide mankind. 
 For men having been principled with an opinion, that they must not consult 
 reason in the things of religion, however apparently contradictory to common 
 sense, and the very principles of all their knowledge, have let loose their 
 fancies and natural superstition ; and have been by them led into so strange 
 opinions, and extravagant practices in religion, that a considerate man cannot 
 but stand amazed at their follies, and judge them so far from being acceptable 
 to the great and wise Goa, that he cannot avoid thinking them ridiculous, 
 and offensive to a sober good man. So that, in effect, religion, which should 
 most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as 
 rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irra- 
 tional and more senseless than beasts themselves. “ Credo, quia impossibile 
 est I belief a, because it is impossible, might in a good man pass for a sally 
 of zeal ; but would prove a very ill rule for men to choose their opinions or 
 religion by. 
 
452 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 OF ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 Sec . 1. Love of truth necessary. — He that would seriously set upon the 
 search of trutn, ought, in the first place, to prepare his mind with a love of 
 it. For he that loves it not will not take much pains to get it, nor be much 
 concerned when he misses it. There is nobody in the commonwealth of 
 learning who does not profess himself a lover of truth; and there is not a 
 rational creature that would take it amiss to be thought otherwise of. And 
 yet, for all this, one may truly say, that there are very few lovers of truth 
 for truth-sake, even among those who persuade themselves that they are so. 
 How a man may know whether he be so in earnest, is worth inquiry : and I 
 think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. the not entertaining any proposi- 
 tion with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. 
 Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not truth 
 in the love of it ; loves not truth for truth-sake, but for some other by-end. 
 For the evidence that any proposition is true (except such as are self- 
 evident) lying only in the proofs a man has of it, whatsoever degrees of as- 
 sent he affords it beyond the degrees of that evidence, it is plain that all the 
 surplusage of assurance is owing to some other affection, and not to the love of 
 truth: it being as impossible that the love of truth should carry my" assent 
 above the evidence there is to me that it is true, as that the love of truth 
 should make me assent to any proposition for the sake of that evidence, 
 which it has not, that it is true ; which is, in effect, to love it as a truth be- 
 cause it is possible or probable that it may not be true. In any truth that 
 gets not possession of our minds by the irresistible light of self-evidence, or 
 by the force of demonstration, the arguments that gain it assent are the 
 vouchers and gage of its probability to us ; and we can receive it for no other 
 than such as they deliver it to our understandings. Whatsoever credit or 
 authority we give to any proposition, more than it receives from the prin- 
 ciples and proofs it supports itself upon, is owing to our inclinations that 
 way, and is so far a derogation from the love of truth as such; which, 
 as it can receive no evidence from our passions or interests, so it should re- 
 ceive no tincture from them. 
 
 Sect. 2. .4 forwardness to dictate, from. wh&ac&^-The assuming an 
 authority of dictating to others, and a forwardness to prescribe to their opi- 
 nions, is a constant concomitant of this bias and corruption of our judg- 
 ments. For how almost can it be otherwise, but that he should be ready to 
 impose on another’s belief, who has already imposed on his own 1 Who can 
 reasonably expect arguments and conviction from him, in dealing with others, 
 whose understanding is not accustomed to them in his dealing with himself 1 
 Who does violence to his own faculties, tyrannizes over his own mind, and 
 usurps the prerogative that belongs to truth alone, which is to command 
 assent by only its own authority, i. e. by and in proportion to that evidence 
 which it carries with it. 
 
 Sect. 3. Force of enthusiasm. — Upon this occasion I shall take the 
 liberty to consider a third ground~oF~assent, which with some men has the 
 same authority, and is as confidently relied on as either faith or reason ; 1 
 mean enthusiasm: which, laying by reason, would let up revelation without 
 it. Whereby, in effect, it takes away both reason and revelation, and sub- 
 stitutes in the room of it the ungrounded fancies of a man’s own brain, ana 
 assumes them for a foundation both of opinion and conduct. 
 
 Sect. 4. Reason and revelation. — Reason is natural revelation, whereby 
 the eternal Father of light, and fountain of all knowledge, communicates tc 
 mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their na- 
 
Oh. 19. 
 
 ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 453 
 
 tural faculties : revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of dis- 
 coveries communicated by God immediately, which reason vouches the truth 
 of, by the testimony and proofs it gives that they come from God. So that 
 he that takes away reason, to make way for revelation, puts out the light of 
 both, and does muchwhat the same as if he would persuade a man to put out 
 his eves, the better to receive the remote light of an invisible star by a 
 telescope. 
 
 Sect. 5. Rise of enthusiasm. — Immediate revelation being a much easier 
 way for men to establish their opinions, and regulate their conduct, than the 
 tedious and not always successful labour of strict reasoning, it is no wonder 
 that some have been very apt to pretend to revelation, and to persuade them- 
 selves that they are under the peculiar guidance of heaven in their actions 
 and opinions, especially in those of them which they cannot account for by 
 the ordinary methods of knowledge, and principles of reason. Hence we 
 see that in all ages men, in whom melancholy has mixed with devotion, oi 
 whose conceit of themselves has raised them into an opinion of a greater 
 familiarity with God, and a nearer admittance to his favour than is afforded 
 to ethers, have often flattered themselves with the persuasion of an imme- 
 diate Intercourse with the Deity, and frequent communications from the Di- 
 vine Spirit. God, I own, cannot be denied to be able to enlighten the 
 understanding by a ray darted into the mind immediately from the fountain 
 of light ; this they understand he has promised to do, and who then has so 
 good a title to expect it as those who are his peculiar people, chosen by him, 
 and depending on him? 
 
 Sect. 6. Enthusiasm . — Their minds being thus prepared, whatever 
 groundless opinion comes to settle itself strongly upon their fancies, is an 
 illumination from the spirit of God, and presently of divine authority : and 
 whatsoever odd action they find in themselves a strong inclination to do, that 
 impulse is concluded to be a call or direction from heaven, and must be 
 obeyed ; it is a commission from above, and they cannot err in executing it. 
 
 Sect. 7. This I take to be properly enthusiasm, which, though founded 
 neither on reason nor divine revelation, but rising from the conceits 
 of a warmed or overweening brain, works yet, where it once gets footing, 
 more powerfully on the persuasions and actions of men, than either of 
 those two, or both together : men being most forwardly obedient to the im- 
 pulses they receive from themselves ; and the whole man is sure to act more 
 vigorously, where the whole man is carried by a natural motion. For strong 
 conceit, like a new principle, carries all easily with it, when got above com- 
 mon sense, and freed from all restraint of reason, and check of reflection, it 
 is heightened into a divine authority, in concurrence with our own temper 
 and inclination. 
 
 Sect. 8. Enthusiasm mistaken for seeing and feeling . — Though the odd 
 opinions and extravagant actions enthusiasm has run men into were enough 
 to warn them against this wrong principle, so apt to misguide them both in 
 their belief and conduct ; yet the love of something extraordinary, the ease 
 and glory it is to be inspired, and be above the common and natural ways of 
 knowledge, so flatters many men’s laziness, ignorance, and vanity, that when 
 once they are got in this way of immediate revelatiorf, of illumination with- 
 out search, and of certainty without proof, and without examination, it is a 
 hard matter to get them out of it. Reason is lost upon them ; they are above 
 it : they see the light infused into their understandings, and cannot be mis- 
 taken ; it is clear and visible there, like the light of bright sunshine ; shows 
 ’tself, and needs no other proof but its own evidence: they feel the hand of 
 God moving them within, and the impulses of the Spirit, and cannot be mis 
 taken in what they feel. Thus they support themselves, and are sure reason 
 hath nothing to do with what they see and feel in themselves : what they have 
 a sensible experience of admits no doubt, needs no probation. Would he 
 not be ridiculous, who should require to have it proved to him that the light 
 shmes, and that he sees it 2 It is its own proof, and can have no other. When 
 
454 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 the Spirit brings light into our minds, it dispels darkness. We see it, as 
 we do that of the sun at noon, and need not the twilight of reason to show 
 it us. This light from heaven is strong, clear, and pure, carries its own de- 
 monstration with it ; and we may as rationally take a glow-worm to assist us 
 to discover the sun, as to examine the celestial ray by our dim candle, reason. 
 
 Sect. 9. Enthusiasm how to he discovered. — This is the way of talking 
 of these men : they are sure because they are sure : and their persuasions are 
 right, because they are strong in them. For, when what they say is stripped 
 of the metaphor of seeing and feeling, this is all it amounts to: and yet these 
 similes so impose on them, that they serve them for certainty in themselves, 
 and demonstration to others. 
 
 Sect. 10. But to examine a little soberly this internal light, and this 
 feeling on which they build so much. These men have, they say, clear 
 light, and they see; they have awakened sense, and they feel; this can- 
 not, they are sure, be disputed them. For when a man says he sees or feels, 
 nobody can deny it him that he does so. But here let me ask : this seeing, 
 is it the perception of the truth of the proposition, or of this, that it is a re- 
 velation from God! This feeling, is it a perception of an inclination or 
 fancy to do something, or of the Spirit of God moving that inclination ! 
 These are two very different perceptions, and must be carefully distinguished, 
 if we would not impose upon ourselves. I may perceive the truth of a pro- 
 position, and yet not perceive that it is an immediate revelation from God. 
 I may perceive the truth of a proposition in Euclid, without its being, or my 
 perceiving it to be a revelation : nay, I may perceive I came not by this know- 
 ledge in a natural way, and so may conclude it revealed, without perceiving 
 that it is a revelation from God ; because there be spirits, which, without 
 being divinely commissioned, may excite those ideas in me, and lay them in 
 such order before my mind, that I may perceive their connexion. So that 
 the knowledge of any proposition coming into my mind, I know not how, is 
 not a perception that it is from God. Much less is a strong persuasion 
 that it is true, a perception that it is from God, or so much as true. But 
 however it be called light and seeing, I suppose it is at most but belief and 
 assurance ; and the proposition taken for a revelation is not such as they 
 know to be true, but take to be true. For where a proposition is known to 
 be true, revelation is needless : and it is hard to conceive how there can be a 
 revelation to any one of what he knows already. If, therefore, it be a pro- 
 position which they are persuaded, but/ do not know, to be true, whatever 
 they may call it, it is not seeing, but believing. For these are two ways, 
 whereby truth comes into the mind, wholly distinct, so that one is not the 
 other. What I see, I know to be so by the evidence of the thing itself : 
 what I believe, 1 take to be so upon the testimony of another; but this testi- 
 mony I must know to be given, or else what ground have I of believing! 1 
 must see that it is God that reveals this to me, or else I see nothing. The 
 question then here is, how do I know that God is the revealer of this to me ; 
 that this impression is made upon my mind by his Holy Spirit, and that 
 therefore I ought to obey it! if I know not this, how great soever the as- 
 surance is that I am possessed with, it is groundless ; whatever light I pre- 
 tend to, it is but enthusiasm. For whether the proposition supposed to be 
 revealed be in itself evidently true, or visibly probable, or by the natural ways 
 of knowledge uncertain, the proposition that must be well grounded, and mani- 
 fested to be true, is this, that God is the revealer of it, and that what I take to 
 be a revelation is certainly put into my mind by him, and is not an illusion 
 dropped in by some other spirit, or raised by my own fancy. For if I mistake 
 not, these men receive it for frue, because they presume God revealed it. 
 Does it not then stand them upon, to examine on what grounds they pre- 
 sume it to be a revelation from God! or else all their confidence is mere pre- 
 sumption : and this light they are so dazzled with is nothing but an ignis 
 fatuus, that leads them constantly round in this circle: it is a revelation, be- 
 cause they firmly believe it, and they believe it because it is a revelation. 
 
Cil. 19. 
 
 ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 455 
 
 Sect. 11. Enthusiasm fails of evidence that the vroposition is from 
 God.- — In all that is- of divine revelation, there is need of no other proof but 
 that it >s an inspiration from God : for he can neither deceive nor be deceived. 
 But how shall it be known that any proposition in our minds is a truth infused 
 by God, a truth that is revealed to us by him, which lie declares to us, and 
 therefore we ought to believe! Here it is that enthusiasm fails of the evi- 
 dence it pretends to. For men thus possessed boast of a light whereby they 
 say they are enlightened, and brought into the knowledge of this or that 
 truth. But if they know it to be a truth, they must know it to be so, either 
 by its own self-evidence to natural reason, or by the rational proofs that make 
 it out to be so. If they see and know it to be a truth, either of these two 
 ways, they in vain suppose it to be a revelation. For they know it to be 
 true the same way that any other man naturally may know that it is so with- 
 out the help of revelation. For thus all the truths, of what kind soever, 
 that men uninspired are enlightened with, came into their minds, and are 
 established there. If they say they know it to be true, because it is a reve- 
 lation from God, the reason is good : but then it will be demanded how they 
 know it to be a revelation from God. If they say, by the light it brings with 
 it, which shines bright in their minds, and they cannot resist: I beseech them 
 to consider whether this be any more than what we have taken notice of 
 already, viz. that it is a revelation, because they strongly believe it to be true. 
 For all the light they speak of is but a strong, though ungrounded, persuasion 
 of their own minds, that it is a truth. For rational grounds from proofs that it 
 is a truth, they must acknowledge to have none ; for then it is not received 
 as a revelation, but upon the ordinary grounds that other truths are received : 
 and if they believe it to be true, because it is a revelation, and have no other 
 reason for its being a revelation, but because they are fully persuaded, with- 
 out any other reason, that it is true ; they believe it to be a revelation only 
 because they strongly believe it to be a revelation ; which is a very unsafe 
 ground to proceed on, either in our tenets or actions. And what readier way 
 can there be to run ourselves into the most extravagant errors and miscar- 
 riages, than thus to set up fancy for our supreme and sole guide, and to be- 
 lieve any proposition to be true, any action to be right, only because we 
 believe it to be so 1 The strength of our persuasions is no evidence at all 
 of their own rectitude : crooked things may be as stiff and inflexible as 
 straight: and men maybe as positive and peremptory in error as in truth. 
 How come else the untractable zealots in different and opposite parties 1 For 
 if the light, which every one thinks he has in his mind, which in this case is 
 nothing but the strength of his own persuasion, be an evidence that it is from 
 God, contrary opinions have the same title to inspirations ; and God will be 
 not only the father of lights, but of opposite and contradictory lights, leading 
 men contrary ways ; and contradictory propositions will be divine truths, if 
 an ungrounded strength of assurance be an evidence that any proposition is 
 a divine revelation. 
 
 Sect. 12. Firmness of persuasion no proof that any proposition is from 
 God. — This cannot be otherwise, whilst firmness of persuasion is made the 
 cause of believing, and confidence of being in the right is made an argument 
 of truth. St Paul himself believed he did well, and that he had a call to it 
 when he persecuted the Christians, whom he confidently thought in the 
 wrong: but yet it was he, and not they, who were mistak-m. Good men are 
 men still liable to mistakes ; and are sometimes warmly engaged in errors 
 which they take for divine truths, shining in their minds with the clearest 
 light. 
 
 Sect. 13. Light in the mind,_mhat , — Light, true light, in the mind is or 
 ^chn-teraotlimg-else -bu-t tlie evidence of the truth of any proposition ; and if 
 it be not a self-evident proposition, all the light it has, or can have, is from 
 the clearness and validity of those proofs upon which it is received. To talk 
 cf any other light in the understanding, is to put ourselves in the dark, or in 
 the power of the Prince of darkness, and by our own consent to give our- 
 
450 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 selves up to delusion, to believe a lie. For if strength of persuasion be the 
 light which must guide us ; I ask how shall any one distinguish between the 
 delusions of Satan and the inspirations of the Holy Ghost 1 He can trans- 
 form himself into an angel of light. And they who are led by this son of 
 the morning are as fully satisfied of the illumination, i. e. are as strongly 
 persuaded that they are enlightened by the Spirit of God, as any one who is 
 so ; they acquiesce and rejoice in it, are acted by it : and nobody can be 
 more sure, nor more in the right (if their own strong belief may be judge) 
 than they. 
 
 Sect. 14. Revelation must be judged of by reason. — He, therefore, that 
 will not give himself up to all the extravagancies of delusion and error, must 
 bring this guide of his light within to the trial. God, when lie makes the 
 prophet, does not unmake the man. He leaves all his faculties in the natural 
 state, to enable him to judge of his inspirations, whether they be of divine 
 original or no. When he illuminates the mind with supernatural light, he 
 does not extinguish that which is natural. If he would have us assent to 
 the truth of any proposition, he either evidences that truth by the usual 
 methods of natural reason, or else makes it known to be a truth which he 
 would have us assent to, by his authority ; and convinces us that it is from 
 him, by some marks which reason cannot be mistaken in. Reason must be 
 our last judge and guide in every thing. I do not mean that we must consult 
 reason, and examine whether a proposition revealed from God can be made 
 out by natural principles, and if it cannot, that then we may reject it : but 
 consult it we must, and by it examine whether it be a revelation from God or 
 no. And if reason finds it to be revealed from God, reason then declares for 
 it as much as for any other truth, and makes it one of her dictates. Every 
 conceit that thoroughly warms our fancies must pass for an inspiration, if 
 there be nothing but the strength of our persuasions, whereby to judge of 
 our persuasions : if reason must not examine their truth by something ex- 
 trinsical to the persuasions themselves, inspirations and delusions, truth and 
 falsehood, will have the same measure, and will not be possible to be dis- 
 tinguished. 
 
 Sect. 15. Belief no proof of revelation.— I? this internal light, or any 
 proposition which under that title we take for inspired, be conformable to the 
 principles of reason, or to the word of God, which is attested revelation, 
 reason warrants it, and we may safely receive it for true, and be guided by it 
 m our belief and actions : if it receive no testimony nor evidence from either 
 of these rules, we cannot take it for a revelation, or so much as for true, till 
 we have some other mark that it is a revelation besides our believing that it 
 is so. Thus we see the holy men of old, who had revelations from God, had 
 something else besides that internal light of assurance in their own minds, to 
 testify to them that it was from God. They were not left to their own per- 
 suasions alone, that those persuasions were from God; but had outward signs 
 to convince them of the author of those revelations. And when they were 
 to convince others, they had a power given them to justify the truth of their 
 commission from heaven, and by visible signs to assert the divine authority 
 of a message they were sent with. Moses saw the bush burn without being 
 consumed, and heard a voice out of it. This was something besides finding 
 an impulse upon his mind to go to Pharoah, that he might bring his brethren 
 out of Egypt : and yet he thought not this enough to authorize him to go 
 with that message, till God, by another miracle of his rod turned into a ser- 
 pent, had assured him of a power to testify his mission, by the same miracle 
 repeated before them, whom he was sent to. Gideon was sent by an angei 
 .o deliver Israel from the Midianites, and yet he desired a sign to convince 
 him that this commission was from God. These, and several the like in- 
 stances to be found among the prophets of old, are enough to show that they 
 thought not an inward seeing or persuasion of their own minds, without any 
 other proof, a. sufficient evidence that it was from God ; though the Scripture 
 does not every where mention their demanding or having such proofs. 
 
Ch. 19 
 
 ENTHUSIASM. 
 
 457 
 
 Sect. 16. In what I have said I am far from denying that God can or doth 
 sometimes enlighten men’s minds in the apprehending of certain truths, or 
 excite them to good actions by the immediate influence and assistance of the 
 Holy Spirit, without any extraordinary signs accompanying it. But in such 
 cases, too, we have reason and Scripture, unerring rules to know whether it 
 be from God or no! Where the truth embraced is consonant to the revela- 
 tion in the written word of God, or the action conformable to the dictates of 
 — Tigntn-Ft^rTe- or -holy-writ, we may be assured that we run no risk in enter- 
 taming it as such ^ because, though perhaps it be not an immediate revelation 
 from God, extraordinarily operating on our minds, yet we are sure it is war 
 ranted by that revelation which he has given us of truth. But it is not the 
 strength of our private persuasion within ourselves that can warrant it to be 
 a light or motion from heaven ; nothing can do that but the written word of 
 God without us, or that standard of reason which is common to us with all 
 men. Where reason or scripture is express for any opinion or action, we 
 may receive it as of divine authority; but it is not the strength of our per- 
 suasions which can by itself give it that stamp. The bent of our own minds 
 may favour it as much as we please ; that may show it to be a fondling of 
 our own, but will by no means prove it to be an offspring of heaven, and of 
 divine original. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 OF WRONG ASSENT, OR ERROR. 
 
 Sect. 1. Causes of error . — Knowledge being to be had only of visible 
 »"d certain truth, error- is . not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our 
 judgment, giving assent to that which is not true. 
 
 But if assent be grounded on likelihood, if the proper object and motive 
 of our assent be probability, and that probability consists in what is laid down 
 in the foregoing chapters, it will be demanded how men come to give their 
 assents contrary to probability. For there is nothing more common than 
 contrariety of opinions ; nothing more obvious than that one man wholly dis- 
 believes what another only doubts of, and a third steadfastly believes and 
 firmly adheres to. The reasons whereof, though they may be very various, 
 yet I suppose may all be reduced to these four : 
 
 ,1. Want of proofs. 
 
 2. Want of ability to use them. 
 
 3. Want of will to use them. 
 
 4. Wrong measures of probability. 
 
 Sect. 2. 1. Want o f proofs. — First, By want of proofs, I do not mean 
 
 only the want of those proofs which are nowhere extant, and so are nowhere 
 to be had ; but the want even of those proofs which are in being, or might 
 De procured. And thus men want proofs who have not the convenience or 
 opportunity to make experiments and observations themselves tending to the 
 proof of any proposition ; nor likewise the convenience to inquire into and 
 collect the testimonies of others: and in this state are the greatest part of 
 mankind, who given up to labour, and enslaved to the necessity of their 
 mean condition, whose lives are worn out only in the provisions for living. 
 These men’s opportunities of knowledge and inquiry are commonly as narrow 
 as their fortunes ; and their understandings are but little instructed, when all 
 their whole time and pains are laid out to still the croakings of their own bellies, 
 or the cries of their children. It is not to be expected that a man, who 
 drudges on all his life in a laborious trade, should be more knowing in the 
 variety of things done in the world than a pack-horse, who is driven con 
 stantly forward and backward in a narrow lane and dirty road only to market, 
 
 3 H 
 
458 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4 
 
 should be skilled in the geography of the country. Nor is it at all more pos- 
 sible, that he who wants leisure, books, and languages, and the opportunity of 
 conversing with variety of men, should be in a condition to collect those testi- 
 monies and observations which are in being, and are necessary to make out many, 
 nay most of the propositions that, in the societies of men, are judged of the 
 greatest moment ; or to find out grounds of assurance so great as the belief of 
 the points he would build on them is thought necessary. So that a ggeat part of 
 mankind are, by the natural and unalterable state of things in this world, and 
 the constitution of human affairs, unavoidably given over to invincible igno- 
 rance of those proofs on which others build, and which are necessary to es- 
 tablish those opinions : the greatest part of men, having much to do to get 
 the means of living, are not in a condition to look after those of learned and 
 laborious inquiries. 
 
 Sect. 3. Obj. What shall become of those who want them, answered . — 
 What shall we say then 1 Are the greatest part of mankind by the necessity 
 of their condition, subjected to unavoidable ignorance in those things which 
 are of greatest importance to them 1 (for of these it is obvious to inquire.) 
 Have the bulk of mankind no other guide but accident and blind chance to 
 conduct them to their happiness or misery 1 Are the current opinions and 
 licensed guides of every country sufficient evidence and security to every 
 man to venture his great concernments on, nay, his everlasting happiness or 
 misery"! Or can those be the certain and infallible oracles and standards of 
 truth, which teach one thing in Christendom and another in Turkey'! Or 
 shall a poor countryman be eternally happy for having the chance to be born 
 in Italy ; or a day-labourer be unavoidably lost because he had the ill luck to 
 be born in England! How ready some men may be to say some of these 
 things I will not here examine : but this I am sure, that men must allow one 
 or other of these to be true (let them choose which they please), or else 
 grant that God has furnished men with faculties sufficient to direct them in 
 the way they should take, if they will but seriously employ them that way, 
 when their ordinary vocations allow them the leisure. No man is so wholly 
 taken up with the attendance on the means of living, as to have no spare 
 time at all to think of his soul, and inform himself in matters of religion. 
 Were men as intent upon this as they are on things of lower concernment, 
 there are none so enslaved to the necessities of life who might not find many 
 vacancies that might be husbanded to this advantage of their knowledge. 
 
 Sect. 4. People hindered from inquiry. — Besides those whose improve- 
 ments and informations are straitened by the narrowness of their fortunes, 
 there are others whose largeness of fortune would plentifully enough supply 
 hooks and other requisites for clearing of doubts and discovering of truth : but 
 they are cooped in close by the laws of their countries, and the strict guards 
 of those whose interest it is to keep them ignorant, lest, knowing more, they 
 should believe the less in them. These are as far, nay farther from the 
 liberty and opportunities of a fair inquiry, than those poor and wretched labour- 
 ers we before spoke of. And, however they may seem high and great, are 
 confined to narrowness of thought, and enslaved in that which should be the 
 freest part of man, their understandings. This Is generally the case of all 
 those who live in places where care is taken to propagate truth without know- 
 ledge ; where men are forced, at a venture, to be of the religion of the coun- 
 try ; and must therefore swallow down opinions, as silly people do empirics’ 
 pills, without knowing what they are made of, or how they will work, and hav- 
 ing nothing to do but believe that they will do the cure : but in this are much 
 more miserable than they, in that they are not at liberty to refuse swallowing 
 what perhaps they had rather let alone ; or to choose the physician to whose 
 conduct they would trust themselves. 
 
 Uect. 5. _2. Want of shill to use them. — Secondly, those who want skill 
 to use those evidences they have of- probabilities, who cannot carry a train of 
 consequences in their heads, nor weigh exactly the preponderancy of coir 
 trary proofs and testimonies, making every circumstance its due allowance, 
 
Ch. 20. 
 
 WRONG ASSENT, OR ERROR. 
 
 459 
 
 may be easily misled to assent to positions that are not probable. There are 
 some men of one, some but of two syllogisms, and no more ; and others that 
 can but advance one step farther. These cannot always discern that side on 
 which the strongest proofs lie ; cannot constantly follow that which in itself 
 is the more probable opinion. Now that there is such a difference between 
 men, in respect of their understandings, I think nobody, who has had 
 any conversation with his neighbours, will question ; though he never was at 
 Westminster hall or the exchange, on the one hand; or at alms-houses or 
 bedlam on the other : which great difference in men’s intellectuals, whether 
 it rises from any defect in the organs of the body, particularly adapted to 
 thinking; or, in the dulness or untractableness of those faculties for want of 
 use ; or, as some think, in the natural differences of men’s souls themselves ; 
 or some or all of these together, it matters not here to examine : only this is 
 evident, that there is a difference of degrees in men’s understandings, appre- 
 hensions, and reasonings, to so great a latitude, that one may, without doing 
 injury to mankind, affirm, that there is a greater distance between some 
 men and others, in this respect, than between some men and some beasts. 
 But how this comes about is a speculation, though of great consequence, yet 
 not necessary to our present purpose. 
 
 Sect. 6. 3. Want of will to use them. — Thirdly, there are another sort 
 of people that want proofs, not because they are out of their reach, but be- 
 cause they will not use them ; who, though they have riches and leisure 
 enough, and want neither parts nor other helps, are yet never the better for 
 them. Their hot pursuit of leisure, or constant drudgery in business, engages 
 some men’s thoughts elsewhere : laziness and oscitancy in general, or a par- 
 ticular aversion for books, study, and meditation, keep others from any seri- 
 ous thoughts at all : and some out of fear that an impartial inquiry would not 
 favour those opinions which best suit their prejudices, lives, and designs, con- 
 tent themselves, without examination, to take upon trust what they find con- 
 venient and in fashion. Thus most men, even of those that might do otherwise, 
 pass their lives without an acquaintance with, much less a rational assent to, 
 probabilities they are concerned to know, though they lie so much within 
 their view, that to be convinced of them they need but turn their eyes that 
 way. We know some men will not read a letter which is supposed to bring 
 ill news ; and many men forbear to cast up their accounts, or so much as 
 think upon their estates, who have reason to fear their affairs are in no very 
 good posture. How men, whose plentiful fortunes allow them leisure to im- 
 prove their understandings, can satisfy themselves with a lazy ignorance, I 
 cannot tell : but methinks they have a low opinion of their souls, who lay out 
 all their incomes in provisions for the body, and employ none of it to procure 
 the means and helps of knowledge ; who take great care to appear always in 
 a neat and splendid outside, and would think themselves miserable in coarse 
 clothes, or a patched coat, and yet contentedly suffer their minds to appear 
 abroad in a pie-bald livery of coarse patches and borrowed shreds, such as it 
 has pleased chance or their country tailor (I mean the common opinion of 
 those they have conversed with) to clothe them in. I will not here mention 
 how unreasonable this is for men that ever think of a future state, and their 
 concernment in it, which no rational man can avoid to do sometimes ; nor 
 shall I take notice what a shame and confusion it is, to the greatest con- 
 temners of knowledge, to be found ignorant in things they are concerned to 
 know. But this at least is worth the consideration of those who call them- 
 selves gentlemen, that however they may think credit, respect, power, and 
 authority, the concomitants of their birth and fortune, yet they will find all 
 these still carried away from them by men of lower condition, who surpass 
 them in knowledge. They who are blind will always be led by those thal. 
 see, or else fall into the ditch : and he is certainly the most subjected, the 
 most enslaved, who is so in his understanding. In the foregoing instances, 
 some of the causes have been shown of wrong assent, and how it comes to 
 pass, that nrobable doctrines are not always received with an assent propo 
 
460 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 tionable to the reasons which are to be had for their probability : but hitherto 
 we have considered only such probabilities whose proofs do exist, but do not 
 appear to him who embraces the error. 
 
 Sect. 7. 4. Wrong measures of probability ; whereof, — Fourthly, There 
 remains yet the last sort, who, even where the real probabilities appear, and 
 are plainly laid before them, do not admit of the conviction, nor yield unto 
 manifest reasons, but do either s-o-e^eiv, suspend their assent, or give it to 
 the less probable opinion : and to this danger are those exposed who have 
 taken up wrong measures of probability ; which are, 
 
 1. Propositions that are not in themselves certain and evident, but doubtful 
 and false, taken up for principles. 
 
 2. Received hypotheses. 
 
 3. Predominant passions or inclinations. 
 
 4. Authority. 
 
 Sect. 8. 1. Doubtful propositions taken for principles. — First, The first 
 
 and firmest ground of probability is the conformity any thing has to our 
 knowledge, especially that part of our knowledge which we have embraced, 
 and continue to look on as principles. These have so great an influence 
 upon our opinions, that it is usually by them we judge of truth, and measure 
 probability to that degree, that what is inconsistent with our principles is so 
 far from passing for probable with us, that it will not be allowed possible. 
 The reverence borne to these principles is so great, and their authority so 
 paramount to all other, that the testimony not only of other men, but the evi- 
 dence of our own senses are often rejected, when they offer to vouch any 
 thing contrary to these established rules. How much the doctrine of innate 
 principles, and that principles are not to be proved or questioned, has con- 
 tributed to this, I will not here examine. This I readily grant, that one truth 
 cannot contradict another: but withal I take leave also to say, that every one 
 ought very carefully to beware what he admits for a principle, to examine it 
 strictly, and see whether he certainly knows it to be true of itself by its own 
 evidence, or whether he does only with assurance believe it to be so upon the 
 authority of others. For he hath a strong bias put into his understanding, 
 which will unavoidably misguide his assent who hath imbibed wrong prin- 
 ciples, and has blindly given himself up to the authority of any opinion in 
 itself not evidently true. 
 
 Sect. 9. There is nothing more ordinary than children’s receiving into 
 their minds propositions (especially about matters of religion) from their 
 parents, nurses, or those about them : which being insinuated into their un- 
 wary, as well as unbiassed understandings, and fastened by degrees, are at 
 last (equally whether true or false) riveted there by long custom and educa- 
 tion, beyond all possibility of being pulled out again. For men, when they 
 are grown up, reflecting upon their opinions, and finding those of this sort to 
 be as ancient in their minds as their very memories, not having observed 
 their early insinuation, nor by what means they got them, they are apt to re- 
 verence them as sacred things, and not to suffer them to be profaned, touched, 
 or questioned ; they look on them as the Urim and Thummim set up in their 
 minds immediately by God himself, to be the great and unerring deciders of 
 truth and falsehood and the judges to which they are to appeal in all man- 
 ner of controversies. 
 
 Sect. 10. This opinion of his principles (let them be what they wSl) being 
 once established in any one’s mind, it is easy to be imagined what reception 
 any proposition shall find, how clearly soever proved, that shall invalidate 
 their authority, or at all thwart with these internal oracles ; whereas the 
 grossest absurdities and improbabilities, being but agreeable to such prin- 
 ciples, go down glibly, and are easily digested. The great obstinacy that is 
 to be found in men firmly believing quite contrary opinions, though many times 
 equally absurd, in the various religions of mankind, are as evident a proof, 
 as they are an unavoidable consequence, of this way of reasoning from re- 
 ceived traditional principles. So that men will disbelieve their own eyes. 
 
Ch. 2a 
 
 WRONG ASSENT, OR ERROR. 
 
 461 
 
 renounce the evidence of their senses, and give their own experience the lie, 
 rather than admit of any thing disagreeing with these sacred tenets. Take 
 an intelligent Romanist, that from the first dawning of any notions in his 
 understanding, hath had this principle constantly inculcated, viz. that he 
 must believe as the church (i. e. those of his communion) believes, or that 
 the pope is infallible ; and this he never so much as heard questioned, till at 
 forty or fifty years old he met with one of other principles : how is he pre- 
 pared easily to swallow, not only against all probability, but even the clear 
 evidence of his senses, the doctrine of transubstantiation ! This principle 
 has such an influence on his mind, that he will believe that to be flesh which 
 he sees to be bread. And what way will you take to convince a man of any 
 improbable opinion he holds, who, with some philosophers, hath laid down 
 this as a foundation of reasoning, that he must believe his reason (for so men 
 improperly call arguments drawn from their principles) against his senses 1 
 Let an enthusiast be principled, that he or his teacher is inspired, and acted 
 by an immediate communication of the divine Spirit, and you in vain bring 
 the evidence of clear reasons against his doctrine. Whoever, therefore, have 
 imbibed wrong principles, are not, in things inconsistent with these prin- 
 ciples, to be moved by the most apparent and convincing probabilities, till 
 they are so candid and ingenuous to themselves as to be persuaded to ex- 
 amine even those very principles, which many never suffer themselves to do. 
 
 Sect. 11. 2. Received hypotheses. — Secondly, next to these are men 
 whose understandings are cast into a mould, and fashioned just to the size of 
 a received hypothesis. The difference between these and the former is, that 
 they will admit of matter of fact, and agree with dissenters in that ; but differ 
 only in assigning of reasons, and explaining the manner of operation. These 
 are not at that open defiance with their senses with the former: they can 
 endure to hearken to their information a little more patiently ; but will by no 
 means admit of their reports in the explanation of things ; nor be prevailed 
 on by probabilities, which would convince them that things are not brought 
 about just after the same manner that they have decreed within themselves 
 that they are. Would it not be an insufferable thing for a learned professor, 
 and that which his scarlet would blush at, to have his authority of forty years 
 standing, wrought out of hard rock Greek and Latin, with no small expense 
 of time and candle, and confirmed by general tradition and a reverend beard, 
 in an instant overturned by an upstart novelist 1 Can any one expect that he 
 should be made to confess, that what he taught his scholars thirty years ago 
 was all error and mistake ; and that he sold them hard words and ignorance 
 at a very dear rate 1 What probabilities, I say, are sufficient to prevail in 
 such a case? And who ever, by the most cogent arguments, will be prevailed 
 with to disrobe himself at once of all his old opinions, and pretences to know- 
 ledge and learning, which with hard study he hath all his time been labouring 
 for; and turn himself out stark naked, in quest afresh of new notions? Ail 
 the arguments that can be used will be as little able to prevail, as the wind did 
 with the traveller to part with his cloak, which he held only the faster. To 
 this of wrong hypothesis may be reduced the errors that may be occasioned 
 by a true hypothesis, or right principles, but not rightly understood. There 
 is nothing more familiar than this. The instances of men contending for 
 different opinions, which they all derive from the infallible truth of the scrip- 
 ture, are an undeniable proof of it. All that call themselves Christians allow 
 the text, that says, ,mst «vos7t£, to carry in it the obligation to a very weighty 
 duty. But yet how very erroneous will one of their practices be, who, un- 
 derstanding nothing but the French, take this rule with one translation to be 
 -repent ez vous, repent ; or with the other, faites penitence , do penance ! 
 
 Sect. 12. 3. Predominant passions. — Thirdly, Probabilities, which cross 
 
 men’s appetites and prevailing passions, run the same fate. Let ever so much 
 probablity hang on one side of a covetous man’s reasoning, and money on the 
 ol her ; it is easy to foresee which will outweigh. Earthly minds, like mud- 
 walls, resist the strongest batteries : and though perhaps sometimes the force 
 
462 
 
 OF TIIE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand 
 firm, and keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturb them. 
 Tell a man, passionately in love, that he is jilted ; bring a score of witnesses 
 of the falsehood of his mistress, it is ten to one but three kind words of her’s 
 shall invalidate all their testimonies. Quod volumus, facile credimus; what 
 suits our wishes is forwardly believed ; is, I suppose, what every one hath 
 more than once experimented: and though men cannot always openly gainsay 
 T or resist the force of manifest probabilities that make against them, yet yield 
 they not to the argument. Not but that it is the nature of the understanding 
 constantly to close with the more probable side ; but yet a man hath a power 
 to suspend and restrain its inquiries, and not permit a full and satisfactory 
 examination, as far as the matter in question is capable, and will bear it to 
 be made. Until that be done, there will be always these two ways left of 
 evading the most apparent probabilities. 
 
 Sect. 13. The means of evading probabilities : 1. Supposed fallacy . — - 
 First, That the arguments being (as for the most part they are) brought in 
 words, there may be a fallacy latent in them : and the consequences being, 
 perhaps, many in train, they may be some of them incoherent. There are 
 very few discourses so short, clear, and consistent, to which most men may 
 not, with satisfaction enough to themselves, raise this doubt ; and from whose 
 conviction they may not without reproach of disingenuity or unreasonableness, 
 set themselves free with the old reply, non persuadebis, etiamsi persuaseris ; 
 though I cannot answer, I will not yield. 
 
 Sect. 14. 2. Supposed arguments for the contrary. — Secondly, Manifest 
 probabilities may be evaded, and the assent withheld upon this suggestion, 
 that I know not yet all that may be said on the contrary side. And therefore, 
 though I be beaten, it is not necessary I should yield, not knowing what 
 forces there are in reserve behind. This is a refuge against conviction so 
 open and so wide, that it is hard to determine when a man is quite out of the 
 verge of it. 
 
 Sect. 15. What probabilities determine the assent. — But yet there is 
 some end of it ; and a man having carefully inquired into all the grounds of 
 probability and unlikeliness, does his utmost to inform himself in all particu- 
 lars fairly, and cast up the sum total on both sides, may in most cases come 
 to acknowledge, upon the whole matter, on which side the probability rests ; 
 wherein some proofs in matter of reason, being suppositions upon universal 
 experience, are so cogent and clear, and some testimonies in matter of fact 
 so universal, that he cannot refuse his assent. So that, I think, we may 
 conclude, that in propositions, where, though the proofs in view are of most 
 moment, yet there are sufficient grounds to suspect that there is either fallacy 
 in words, or certain proofs as considerable to be produced on the contrary 
 side ; their assent, suspense, or dissent, are often voluntary actions : but 
 where the proofs are such as make it highly probable, and there is not suffi- 
 cient ground to suspect that there is either fallacy of words (which sober and 
 serious consideration may discover) nor equally valid proofs, yet undiscovered 
 latent on the other side (which also the nature of the thing may, in some 
 cases, make plain to a considerate man) ; there, I think, a man who has 
 weighed them, can scarce refuse his assent to the side on which the greater 
 probability appears. Whether it be probable that a promiscuous jumble of 
 printing letters should often fall into a method and order, which should stamp 
 on paper a coherent discourse ; or that a blind fortuitous concourse of atoms, 
 not guided by an understanding agent, should frequently constitute the bodies 
 of any species of animals : in these, and the like cases, I think nobod 
 that considers them can be one jot at a stand which side to take, nor at al 
 waver in his assent. Lastly, when there can be no supposition (the thing in 
 its own nature indifferent, and wholly depending upon the testimony of wit- 
 nesses) that theie is as fair testimony against as for the matter of fact attest- 
 ed ; which by inquiry is to be learned, v. g. whether there was one thousand 
 seven hundred years ago such a man at Romr as Julius Csesar: in all such 
 
Ch. 20. 
 
 WRONG ASSENT, OR ERROR. 
 
 463 
 
 cases, I say, I think it is not in any rational man’s power to refuse his assent ; 
 but that it necessarily follows, and closes with such probabilities. In other 
 less clear cases, I think it is in a man’s power to suspend his assent : and per- 
 haps content himself with the proofs he has, if they favour the opinion that 
 suits with his inclination or interest, and so stop from farther search. But 
 that a man should afford his assent to that side on which the less probability 
 appears to him seems to me utterly impracticable, and as impossible as it is 
 to believe the same thing probable and improbable at the same time. 
 
 Sec t. 16 . Wkere it is in our power to suspend it. — As knowledge is no 
 more arbitrary than perception ; so, I think, assent is no more in our power 
 than knowledge. When the agreement of any two ideas appears to our 
 minds, whether immediately, or by the assistance of reason, I can no more 
 refuse to perceive, no more avoid knowing it, than I cam avoid seeing those 
 objects which I turn my eyes to, and look on in daylight : and what upon full 
 examination I find the most probable, I cannot deny my assent to. But 
 though we cannot hinder our knowledge, where the agreement is once per- 
 ceived, nor our assent, where the probability manifestly appears upon due 
 consideration of all the measures of it; yet we can hinder both knowledge 
 and assent, by stopping our inquiry, and not employing our faculties in the 
 search of any truth. If it were not so, ignorance, error, or infidelity could 
 not in any case be a fault. Thus in some cases we can prevent or suspend 
 our assent : but can a man, versed in modern or ancient history, doubt 
 whether there is such a place as Rome, or whether there was such a man 
 as Julius Csesari Indeed, there are millions of truths, that a man is not, or 
 may not think himself concerned to know ; as whether our king Richard the 
 Third was crooked, or no ; or whether Roger Bacon was a mathematician, 
 or a magician. In- these and such like cases, where the assent one way or 
 other is of no importance to the interest of any one ; no action, no concern- 
 ment of his,- following or depending thereon ; there it is not strange that the 
 mmd should give itself up to the common opinion, or render itself to the first 
 comer. These and the like opinions are of so little weight and moment, 
 that, like motes in the sun, their tendencies are very rarely taken notice of. 
 They are there, as it were, by chance, and the mind lets them float at liberty. 
 But where the mind judges that the proposition has concernment in it ; where 
 the assent or not assenting is thought to draw consequences of moment after 
 it, and good and evil to depend on choosing or refusing the right side ; and 
 the mind sets itself seriously to inquire and examine the probability ; there, 
 I think, it is not in our choice to take which side we please, if manifest odds 
 appear on either. The greater probability, I think, in that case will determine 
 the assent : and a man can no more avoid assenting, or taking it to be true, 
 where he perceives the greater probability, than he can avoid knowing it tc 
 be true, where he perceives the agreement or disagreement of any two ideas. 
 
 If this be so, the foundation of error will lie in wrong measures of proba- 
 bility ; as the foundation of vice in wrong measures of good. 
 
 Sect. 17. 4. Authority. — Fourthly, The fourth and last wrong measure 
 of pro bability I ohall - t ahm"m>tiee -crfy and which keeps in ignorance or error 
 more people than all the other together, is that which I mentioned in the 
 foregoing chapter; I mean, the giving up our assent to the common received 
 opinions, either of our friends or party, neighbourhood or country. How 
 many men have no other ground for their tenets than the supposed honesty, 
 ir learning, or number, of those of the same profession i As if honest or 
 bookish men could not err, or truth were to be established by the vote of the 
 multitude : yet this, with most men, serves the turn. The tenet has had the 
 attestation of reverend antiquity, it comes to me with the passport of former 
 ages, and therefore I am secure in the reception I give it: other men have 
 been and are of the same opinion (for that is all is said), and therefore it is 
 reasonable for me to embrace it. A man may more justifiably throw up 
 cross and pile for his opinions, than take them up by such measures. All 
 men are liable to error, and most men are in many points, by passion, or 
 
464 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Book 4. 
 
 interest under temptation to it. If we could but see the secret motives that 
 influenced the men of name and learning in the world, and the leaders of 
 parties, we should not always find that it was the embracing of truth for its 
 own sake that made them espouse the doctrines they owned and maintained. 
 This at least is certain, there is not an opinion so absurd, which a man«may 
 not receive upon this ground. There is no error to be named, which has not 
 had its professors : and a man shall never want crooked paths to walk in, if 
 he thinks that he is in the right way, wherever he has the footsteps of others 
 to follow. 
 
 Sect. 18. Men not in so many errors as imagined . — But notwithstanding 
 the great noise made in the world about errors and opinions, I must do 
 mankind that right as to say there are not so many men in errors and wrong 
 opinions as is commonly supposed. Not that I think they embrace the truth; 
 but, indeed, because concerning those doctrines they keep such a stir about, 
 they have no thought, no opinion at all. For if any one should a little cate- 
 chise the greatest part of the partizans of most of the sects in the world, he 
 would not find, concerning those matters they are so zealous for, that they 
 have any opinions of their own: much less would he have reason to think, 
 that they took them upon the examination of arguments, and appearance of 
 probability. They are resolved to stick to a party, that education or interest 
 has engaged them in ; and there, like the common soldiers of an army, show 
 their courage and warmth as their leaders direct, without ever examining, or 
 so much as knowing the cause they contend for. If a man’s life shows that 
 he has no serious regard for religion, for what reason should we think that 
 he beats his head about the opinions of his church, and troubles himself to 
 examine the grounds of this or that doctrine I It is enough for him to obey 
 his leaders, to have his hand and his tongue ready for the support of the 
 common cause, and thereby approve himself to those who cam give him 
 credit, preferment, or protection in that society. Thus men become profes- 
 sors of, and combatants for, those opinions they were never convinced of, 
 r.or proselytes to ; no, nor ever had so much as floating in their heads : and 
 though one cannot say, there are fewer improbable or erroneous opinions in 
 the world than there are; yet it is certain, there are fewer that actually assent 
 to them, and mistake them for truth, than is imagined. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 OF THE DIVISION OF THE SCIENCES. 
 
 Sect. 1. Three sorts . — All that can fall within the compass ofhuman un- 
 derstanding being either, firsUihenatuxe. of things, as they are in themselves, 
 their relations, and their mannerroFoperation : or, secondly, that which man 
 himself ought to do, as a rational and voluntary agent, for the attainment of 
 any end, especially happiness : or, thirdly, the ways and means whereby the 
 knowledge of both the one and the other of these is attained and communi- 
 cated: I think science may be divided properly into these three sorts. 
 
 Sect. 2. 1. Physica. — First, the knowledge of things, as they are in their 
 own proper beings, their constitution, properties, and operations ; whereby I 
 mean not only matter and body, but spirits also, which have their proper na- 
 tures, constitutions, and operations, as well as bodies. This, in a little more 
 enlarged sense of the word, I call Quo-mh, or natural philosophy. The end of 
 this is bare speculative truth ; and whatsoever can afford the mind of man 
 any such, falls under this branch, whether it be God himself, angels, spirits, 
 oodies, or any of their affections, as number and figure, etc. 
 
 Sect. 3. 2. Practica. — Secondly, k«, the skill of right applying 
 
 iir own powers and actions for the attainment of things good j.nd useful. 
 
Ch. 21. 
 
 DIVISION OF THE SCIENCES. 
 
 465 
 
 The most considerable under this head is ethics, which is the seeking out 
 those rules and measures of human actions which lead to happiness, and the 
 means to practise them. The end of this is not bare speculation, and the 
 knowledge of truth ; but right, and a conduct suitable to it. 
 
 Sect. 4. 3. ’Xn/j-uarun. — Thirdly, the third branch may be called 
 or the doctrine of signs, the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly 
 enough termed also Aoyuui, logic ; the business whereof is to consider the 
 nature of signs the mind makes use of for the understanding of things, or 
 conveying its knowledge to others. For since the things the mind contem- 
 plates are none of them, besides itself, present to the understanding, it is ne- 
 cessary that something else, as a sign or representation of the thing it con- 
 siders, should be present to it: and these are ideas. And because the scene 
 of ideas that makes one man’s thoughts, cannot be laid open to the imme- 
 diate view of another, nor laid up any where but in the memory, a no very 
 sure repository; therefore to communicate our thoughts to one another, as 
 well as record them for our own use, signs of our ideas are also necessary 
 Those which men have found most convenient, and therefore generally make 
 use of, are articulate sounds. The consideration then of ideas and words, as 
 the great instruments of knowledge, makes no despicable part of their con- 
 templation who would take a view of human knowledge in the whole extent 
 of it. And perhaps if it were distinctly weighed, and duly considered, they 
 would afford us another sort of logic and critic than what we have been 
 hitherto acquainted with. 
 
 Sect. 5. This is the first division of the objects of knowledge . — This 
 seems to me the first and most general, as well as natural division of the objects 
 of our understanding. For a man can employ his thoughts about nothing, 
 but either the contemplation of things themselves for the discovery of truth ; 
 or about the things in his power, which are his own actions, for the attainment 
 of his own ends ; or the signs the mind makes use of both in the one and the 
 other, and the right ordering of them for its clearer information: All which 
 
 three, viz. things as they are in themselves knowable ; actions as they depend 
 on us, in order to happiness ; and the right use of signs, in order to know- 
 ledge, being toto ccelo different, they seemed to me to be the three great pro- 
 vinces of the intellectual world, wholly separate and distinct one from 
 another. 
 
INDEX 
 
 TO 
 
 ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Abbot of St Martin, p. 297, § 26. 
 
 Abstraction, 107, § 9, 
 
 Puts a perfect distance betwixt men 
 and brutes, 108, § 10. 
 
 What, 107, § 9. 
 
 How, 110, § 1. 
 
 Abstract ideas, why made, 255, 256, § 
 6, 7, 8. 
 
 terms cannot be affirmed one of 
 
 another, 308, § 1. 
 
 Accident, 185, § 2. 
 
 Actions, the best evidence of men’s prin- 
 ciples, 53, § 7. 
 
 But two sorts of actions, 151, § 4; 
 182, § 11. 
 
 Unpleasant maybe made pleasant, and 
 how, 174, § 69. 
 
 Cannot be the same in different places, 
 207, § 2. 
 
 Considered as modes, or as moral, 240, 
 § 15. 
 
 Adequate ideas, 249, § 1, 2. 
 
 We have not of any species of sub- 
 stances, 374, § 26. 
 
 Affirmations are only in concrete, 308, 
 
 § 1 . 
 
 Agreement and disagreements of our 
 ideas fourfold, 337-340, § 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 
 
 Algebra, 425, § 15. 
 
 Alteration, 204, § 2. 
 
 Analogy, useful in natural philosophy, 
 434, § 12. 
 
 Anger, 149, § 12, 14. 
 
 Antipathy and sympathy, whenee, 262, 
 § 7. 
 
 Arguments of four sorts, 
 
 1. Ad vereeundiam, 446, § 19. 
 
 2. Ad ignorantiam, ib. § 20. 
 
 3. Ad hominem, ib. § 21. 
 
 4. Ad judicium, ib. § 22. This alone 
 right, ib. § 22. 
 
 Arithmetic: the use of ciphers in arith- 
 metic, 371, § 19. 
 
 Artificial things are most of them collec- 
 tive ideas, 202, § 3. 
 
 Why we are less liable to confusion, 
 about artificial things, than about 
 natural, 303, § 40 
 466 
 
 Have distinet species, 303, § 41. 
 
 Assent to maxims, 43, § 10. 
 
 Upon hearing and understanding the 
 terms, 46, § 17, 18. 
 
 Assent, a mark of self-evidence, 46, § 
 
 18 . 
 
 Not of innate, 46, § 18: 47, § 19, 20 
 70, § 19. 
 
 Assent to probability, 429, § 3. 
 
 Ought to be proportioned to the proofs, 
 457, § 1. 
 
 Association of ideas, 260, § I, &c. 
 
 This association how made, 261, § 6. 
 Ill effects of it, as to antipathies, 262, 
 § 7, 8: 263, § 15. 
 
 And this in sects of philosophy and 
 religion, 264, § 18. 
 
 Its ill influences as to intellectual ha- 
 bits, 263, § 17. 
 
 Assurance, 432, § 6. 
 
 Atheism in the world, 64, § 8. 
 
 Atom, what, 207, § 3. 
 
 Authority; relying on others’ opinions, 
 one great cause of error, 463, § 17. 
 
 Beings, but two sorts, 411, § 9. 
 
 The eternal Being must be cogitative, 
 ib. § 10. 
 
 Belief, what, 429, § 3. 
 
 To believe without reason, is against 
 our duty, 446, § 24. 
 
 Best in our opinion, not a rule of God’s 
 actions, 67, § 12. 
 
 Blind man, if made to see, would not 
 know which a globe, which a cube, by 
 his sight, though he knew them by his 
 touch, 100, § 8. 
 
 Blood, how it appears in a microscope, 
 191, § 11. 
 
 Brutes have no universal ideas, 108, § 
 
 10 , 11 . 
 
 Abstract not, ib. § 10. 
 
 Body. We have no more primary ideas 
 of body than of spirit, 194, § 16. 
 
 The primary ideas of body, ib. § 17. 
 The extension or cohesion of body, as 
 hard to be understood, as the think- 
 ing of spirit, 195, 196, § 23, 24, 25 
 26,27. 
 
I]\DEX. 
 
 467 
 
 Moving of body by body, as hard to be 
 conceived as by spirit, 196, § 28. 
 
 Operates only by impulse, 94, § 11. 
 
 What, 114, § 11. 
 
 The author’s notion ofhis body, 2 Cor. 
 ver. 10, 220, and of his own body, 1 
 Cor. xv. 35, &,c. 222. The meaning 
 of the same body, 218. Whether the 
 word body be a simple or complex 
 term, 221. This only a controversy 
 about the sense of a word, 228. 
 
 But, its several significations, 308, § 5. 
 
 Capacity, 112, § 3. 
 
 Capacities, to know their extent, useful, 
 34, § 4. 
 
 To cure scepticism and idleness, 35, §6. 
 
 Are suited to our present state, 35, § 5. 
 
 Cause, 204, § 1. 
 
 And effect, ib. 
 
 Certainty depends on intuition, 342, § 1. 
 
 Wherein it consists, 383, § 18. 
 
 Of truth, 384. 
 
 To be had in very few general proposi- 
 tions concerning substances, 392, § 
 
 13. 
 
 Where to be had, 393, § 16. 
 
 Verbal, 386, § 8. 
 
 Real, ib. 
 
 Sensible knowledge, the utmost cer- 
 tainty we have of existence, 415, § 2. 
 
 The author’s notion of it not danger- 
 ous, 336, &c. 
 
 How it differs from assurance, 432, § 6. 
 
 Changelings, whether men or no, 381, § 
 
 13, 14. 
 
 Clearness alone hinders confusion of 
 
 ideas, 106, § 3. 
 
 Clear and obscure ideas, 242, § 2. 
 
 Colours, modes of colours, 145, § 4. 
 
 Comments upon law, why infinite, 312, 
 
 § 9. 
 
 Complex ideas how made, 107, § 6: 110, 
 
 § 1 . 
 
 In these the mind is more than pas- 
 sive, ib. § 2. 
 
 Ideas reducible to modes, substances, 
 and relations, ib. § 3. 
 
 Comparing ideas, 106, § 4. 
 
 Herein men excel brutes, ib. § 5. 
 
 Compounding ideas, 107, § 6. 
 
 In this is a great difference between 
 men and brutes, ib. § 7. 
 
 Compulsion, 154, § 13. 
 
 Confidence, 433, § 7. 
 
 Confusion of ideas, wherein it consists, 
 243, § 5, 6, 7. 
 
 Causes of confusion in ideas, 243, 244, 
 § 7, 8, 9: 245, § 12. 
 
 Of ideas, grounded on a reference to 
 names, 244, 245, § 10, 11, 12. 
 
 Its remedy, 245, § 12. 
 
 Confused ideas, 243, § 4. 
 
 Conscience is our own opinion of our own 
 actions, 53, § 8. 
 
 Consciousness makes the same person, 
 211, § 10: 213, § 16. 
 
 Probably annexed to the same indi- 
 vidual, immaterial substance, 216, 
 § 25. 
 
 Necessary to thinking, 77, § 10, 11: 
 81, § 19. 
 
 What, ib. § 19. 
 
 Contemplation, 102, § 1. 
 
 Creation, 204, § 2. 
 
 Not to be denied, because we cannot 
 conceive the manner how, 41 4, § 19. 
 Definition, why the genus is used in de- 
 finitions, 271, § 10. 
 
 Defining of terms would cut off a great 
 part of disputes, 322, § 15. 
 Demonstration, 343, § 3. 
 
 Not so clear as intuitive knowledge, 
 343, § 4: 344, § 6, 7. 
 
 Intuitive knowledge necessary in each 
 step of a demonstration, 344, § 7. 
 Not limited to quantity, 344, § 9. 
 
 Why that has been supposed, ib. § 10. 
 Not to be expected in all cases, 418, 
 § 10 . 
 
 What, 428, § 1: 445, § 15. 
 
 Desire, 149, § 6. 
 
 Is a state of uneasiness, 159, 160, § 
 31, 32. 
 
 Is moved only by happiness, 163,' § 41. 
 How far, 164, § 43. 
 
 How to be raised, 165, § 46. 
 
 Misled by wrong judgment, 171, § 60. 
 Dictionaries, how to be made, 334, 335, 
 § 25. 
 
 Discerning, 105, § 1. 
 
 The foundation of some general max- 
 ims, ib. § 1. 
 
 Discourse cannot be between two men, 
 who have different names for the same 
 idea, or different ideas for the same 
 name, 89, § 5. 
 
 Despair, 149, § 11. 
 
 Disposition, 181, § 10. 
 
 Disputing. The art of disputing prejudi- 
 cial to knowledge, 319, 320, § 6,7, 8, 9. 
 Destroys the use of language, 320, § 10. 
 Disputes, whence, 127, § 28. 
 
 Disputes, multiplicity of them owing to 
 the abuse of words, 324, § 22. 
 
 Are most about the signification of 
 words, 329, § 7. 
 
 Distance, 112, § 3. 
 
 Distinct ideas, 243, § 4. 
 
 Divisibility of matter incomprehensible, 
 198, §31. 
 
 Dreaming, 146, § 1. 
 
 Seldom in some men, 79, § 14. 
 Dreams for the most part irrational, 80, 
 § 16. 
 
468 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 In dreams no ideas but of sensation, or 
 reflection, 80, § 17. 
 
 Duration, 120, § 1, 2. 
 
 Whence we get the idea of duration, 
 120, 121, § 3, 4, 5. 
 
 Not from motion, 123, § 16. 
 
 Its measure, ib. § 17, 18 
 
 Any regular periodical appearance, 
 124, § 19, 20. 
 
 None of its measures known to be ex- 
 act, 125, § 21. 
 
 We only guess them equal by the train 
 of our ideas, ib. § 21. 
 
 Minutes, days, years, &c. not neces- 
 sary to duration, 126, § 23. 
 
 Change of the measures of duration, 
 change not the notion of it, ib. § 23. 
 
 The measures of duration, as the revo- 
 lutions of the sun, may be applied 
 to duration before the sun existed, 
 126, 127, § 24, 25. 28. 
 
 Duration without beginning, 126, § 
 26. 
 
 How we measure duration, 127, § 27, 
 28, 29. 
 
 Recapitulation, concerning our ideas 
 of duration, time, and eternity, 128, 
 § 31. 
 
 Duration and expansion compared, 129, 
 
 § 1. 
 
 They mutually embrace each other, 
 133, § 12. 
 
 Considered as a line, ib. § 11. 
 
 Duration not conceivable by us with- 
 out succession, 133, § 12. 
 
 Education, partly the cause of unreason- 
 ableness, 261, § 3. 
 
 Effect, 204, § 1. 
 
 Enthusiasm, 452. 
 
 Described, 453, § 6, 7. 
 
 Its rise, ib. § 5. 
 
 Ground of persuasion must be exam- 
 ined, and how, 454, § 10. 
 
 Firmness of it, no sufficient proof, 455, 
 
 § 12, 13. 
 
 Fails of the evidence it pretends to, 
 ib. § 11. 
 
 Envy, 149, § 13, 14. 
 
 Error, what, 457, § 1. 
 
 Causes of error, ib. 
 
 1. Want of proofs, ib. § 2. 
 
 2. Want of skill to use them, 458, §5. 
 
 3. Want of will to use them, 459, 
 
 § 6 . 
 
 4. Wrong measures of probability, 
 460, § 7. 
 
 Fewer men assent to errors than is 
 supposed, 464, § 18. 
 
 Essence, real and nominal, 277, § 15. 
 
 Supposition of unintelligible, real es- 
 sences of species, of no use, ib. 
 
 § 17. 
 
 Real and nominal essences, in simple 
 ideas and modes always the same, in 
 substances always different, 378, § 
 18. 
 
 Essences, how ingenerable and incor- 
 ruptible, ib. § 19. 
 
 Specific essences of mixed modes are 
 of men’s making, and how, 284, § 3. 
 
 Though arbitrary, yet not at random, 
 285, § 7. 
 
 Of mixed modes, why called notions, 
 287, § 12. 
 
 What, 289, § 2. 
 
 Relate only to species, 290, § 4. 
 
 Real essences, what, 291, § 6. 
 
 We know them not, 292, § 9. 
 
 Our specific essences of substances are 
 nothing but collections of sensible 
 ideas, 295, § 21. 
 
 Nominal are made by the mind, 297, 
 § 26. 
 
 But not altogether arbitrarily, 298, 
 § 28. 
 
 Nominal essences of substances, how 
 made, ib. § 28, 29. 
 
 Are very various, 299, §30: 300, § 31. 
 
 Of species, are the abstract ideas the 
 names stand for, 273, § 12, 278, 
 § 19. 
 
 Are of man’s making, 273, § 12. 
 
 But founded in the agreement of 
 things, 276, § 13. 
 
 Real essences determine not our spe- 
 cies, 276, § 13. 
 
 Every distinct, abstract idea, with a 
 name, is a distinct essence of a dis- 
 tinct species, 276, § 14. 
 
 Real essences of substances, not to be 
 known, 391, § 12. 
 
 Essential, what, 289, § 2: 290, § 5. 
 
 Nothing essential to individuals, 290, 
 
 § 4. 
 
 But to species, 291, § 6. 
 
 Essential difference, what, 290, § 5. 
 
 Eternal verities, 419, § 14. 
 
 Eternity, in our disputes and reasonings 
 about it, why we are apt to blunder, 
 246, § 15. 
 
 Whence we get its idea, 127, § 27. 
 
 Evil, what, 163, § 42. 
 
 Existence, an idea of sensation and re- 
 flection, 91, § 7. 
 
 Our own existence we know intuitive- 
 ly, 408, § 3. 
 
 And cannot doubt of it, ib. 
 
 Of created things, knowable only by 
 our senses, 415, § 1. 
 
 Past existence known only by memi ry 
 418, § 11. 
 
 Expansion, boundless, 129, § 2. 
 
 Should be applied to space in general, 
 119, § 27. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 46*1 
 
 Experience often helps us, where we 
 think not that it does, 100, § 8. 
 
 Extasy, 146, § 1. 
 
 Extension: we have no distinct ideas of 
 very great, or very little extension, 
 246, § 16. 
 
 Of body, incomprehensible, 195, § 23, 
 &c. 
 
 Denominations, from place and exten- 
 sion, are many of them relatives, 
 206, § 5. 
 
 And body not the same thing, 114, 
 
 § n. 
 
 Its definition insignificant, 115, § 15. 
 
 Of body and of space how distinguish- 
 ed, 89, § 5: 196, § 27. 
 
 Faculties of the mind first exercised, 
 109, § 14. 
 
 Are but powers, 155, § 17. 
 
 Operate not, 155, 156, § 18, 20. 
 
 r ith and opinion, as distinguished from 
 knowledge, what, 428, 429, § 2, 3. 
 
 And knowledge, their difference, 429, 
 §3. 
 
 What, 435, § 14. 
 
 Not opposite to reason, 447, § 24. 
 
 As contra-distinguished to reason, 
 what, 447, § 2. 
 
 Cannot convince u"s of any thing con- 
 trary to our reason, 449, § 5, 6. 8. 
 
 Matter of faith is only divine revela- 
 tion, 451, § 9. 
 
 Things above reason are only proper 
 matters of faith, 550, § 7. 9. 
 
 Falsehood, what it is, 386, § 9. 
 
 Fancy, 104, § 8. 
 
 Fantastical ideas, 249, § 1. 
 
 Fear, 149, § 10. 
 
 Figure, 112, § 5, 6. 
 
 Figurative speech, an abuse of language, 
 327, § 34. 
 
 Finite, and infinite, modes of quantity, 
 137, § 1. 
 
 All positive ideas of quantity, finite, 
 139, § 8. 
 
 Forms, substantial forms distinguish not 
 species, 292, § 10. 
 
 Free, how far a man is so, 156, § 21. 
 
 A man not free to will, or not to will, 
 157, § 22, 23, 24. 
 
 Freedom belongs only to agents, 155, 
 
 § 19. 
 
 Wherein it consists, 158, § 27. 
 
 Free will, liberty belongs not to the will, 
 154, § 14. 
 
 Wherein consists that which is called 
 free will, 157, § 24: 165, § 47. 
 
 General ideas, how made, 107, § 9. 
 
 Knowledge, what, 377, § 31. 
 
 Propositions cannot be known to be 
 true, without knowing the essence 
 of the species, 387, § 4. 
 
 Words, how made, 268, § 6, 7, 8. 
 
 Belongs only to signs, 271, § 11. 
 
 Gentlemen should not be ignorant, 459, 
 
 § 6 . 
 
 Genus and species, what, 271, § 10. 
 
 Are but Latin names for sorts, 286, 
 § 9. 
 
 is but a partial conception of what is 
 in the species, 300, § 32. 
 
 And species adjusted to the end of 
 speech, 301, § 33. 
 
 And species are made in order to ge- 
 neral names, 302, § 39. 
 
 Generation, 204, § 2. 
 
 God immovable, because infinite, 194, 
 
 § 21 . 
 
 Fills immensity, as well as eternity, 
 129, § 3. 
 
 His duration, not like that of the crea- 
 tures, 133, 134, § 12. 
 
 An idea of God not innate, 64, § 8. 
 
 The existence of a God evident, and 
 obvious to reason, 65, ij 9. 
 
 TLe notion of a God once got is the 
 likeliest to spread and be continued, 
 66, § 9, 10. 
 
 Idea of God late and imperfect;, 68, 
 § 13. 
 
 Contrary, 68, 69, § 15, 16. 
 
 Inconsistent, 68, § 15. 
 
 The best notions of God got by thought 
 and application, 69, § 15. 
 
 Notions of God frequently not worthy 
 of him, 69, § 16. 
 
 The being of a God certain, ib. 
 proved, 409. 
 
 As evident as that the three angles of 
 a triangle are equal to two right 
 ones, 72, § 22. 
 
 Yea, as that two opposite angles are 
 equal, 69, § 16. 
 
 More certain than any other existence 
 without us, 410, § 6. 
 
 The idea of God not the only proof of 
 his existence, 410, § 7. 
 
 The being of a God the foundation of 
 morality and divinity, 410, § 7. 
 
 How we make our idea of God, 198, 
 199, § 33, 34. 
 
 Gold is fixed; the various significations 
 of this proposition, 306, § 50. 
 
 Water strained through it, 88, § 4. 
 
 Good and evil, what, 148, § 2: 163, § 
 42. 
 
 The greater good determines not the 
 will, 160, § 35: 162, § 38: 164, § 
 44. 
 
 Why, 164, § 44: 165, § 46: 170, &c. 
 
 § 59, 60. 64, 65. 69. 
 
 Twofold, 171, 61. 
 
 Works on the will only by desire, 165 
 
 § 46. 
 
470 
 
 GF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Desi/e of good how to be raised, 165, 
 
 § 46, 47. 
 
 Habit, 181, § 10. 
 
 Habitual actions pass often without our 
 notice, 100, § 10. 
 
 Hair, how it appears in a microscope, 
 191, § 11. 
 
 Happiness, what, 163, § 42. 
 
 What happiness men pursue, 164, § 
 43. 
 
 How we come to rest in narrow hap- 
 piness, 170, 171, § 59, 60. 
 
 Hardiness, what, 88, § 4. 
 
 Hatred, 148, § 5: 149, § 14. 
 
 Heat and cold, how the sensation of them 
 both is produced by the same water 
 at the same time, 96, § 21. 
 
 H istory, what history of most authority, 
 434, § 11. 
 
 Hope, 149, § 9. 
 
 Hypotheses, their use, 424, § 13. 
 
 Are to be built on matter of fact, 77, 
 
 § 10 . 
 
 Ice and water, whether distinct species, 
 294, § 13. 
 
 Idea, what, 93, § 8. 
 
 Ideas, their original in children, 62, § 2: 
 68, § 13. 
 
 None innate, 70, § 17. 
 
 Because not remembered, 71, § 20. 
 
 Are what the mind is employed about, 
 in thinking, 75, § 1. 
 
 All from sensation or reflection, ibid, 
 § 2, &c. 
 
 How this is to be understood, 349. 
 
 Their way of getting, observable in 
 children, 76, § 6. 
 
 Why some have more, some fewer 
 ideas, 76, § 7. 
 
 Of reflection got late, and in some very 
 negligently, 77, § 8. 
 
 Their beginning and increase in chil- 
 dren, 82, § 21,22, 23, 24. 
 
 Their original in sensation and reflec- 
 tion, 82, § 24. 
 
 Of one sense, 83, § 1. 
 
 Want names, 83, § 2. 
 
 Of more than one sense, 128, § 1. 
 
 Of reflection, 86, § 1. 
 
 Of sensation and reflection, 90, § 1. 
 
 As in the mind, and in things, must 
 be distinguished, 93, § 7. 
 
 Not always resemblances, 95, § 15. 
 
 Which are first, is not material to 
 know, 99, § 7. 
 
 Of sensation often altered by the judg- 
 ment, 100, § 8. 
 
 Principally those of sight, 100, § 9. 
 
 Of reflection, 109, § 14. 
 
 Simple ideas men agree in, 119, § 28. 
 
 Movingin a regular train in our minds, 
 122, § 9. 
 
 Such as have degrees want names, 145, 
 
 § 6 . 
 
 Why some have names and others not, 
 146, § 7. 
 
 Original, 178, § 73. 
 
 All complex ideas resolvable into 
 simple, 181, § 9. 
 
 What simple ideas have been most 
 modified, 181, § 10. 
 
 Our complex idea of God, and other 
 spirits, common in every thing but 
 infinity, 199, § 36. 
 
 Clear and obscure, 242, § 2. 
 
 Distinct and confused, 243, § 4. 
 
 May be clear in one part and obscure 
 in another, 245, § 13. 
 
 Real and fantastical, 247, § 1. 
 
 Simple are all real, 248, § 2. 
 
 And adequate, 249, § 2. 
 
 What ideas of mixed modes are fan- 
 tastical, 248, § 4. 
 
 What ideas of substances are fantasti- 
 cal, 249, § 5. 
 
 Adequate and inadequate, 249, § 1. 
 
 How said to be in things, 249, § 2. 
 
 Modes are all adequate ideas, 250, 
 §3. 
 
 Unless as referred to names, 250, 251, 
 § 4, 5. 
 
 Of substances inadequate, 253, § 11. 
 
 1. As referred to real essences, 351, 
 352, § 6, 7. 
 
 2. As referred to a collection of simple 
 ideas, 352, § 8. 
 
 Simple ideas are perfect saTiura, 254, 
 
 § 12 . 
 
 Of substances are perfect taTt/jra, 254, 
 § 14. 
 
 Of modes are perfect archetypes, 254, 
 § 14. 
 
 True or false, 254, § 14, &c. 
 
 When false, 259, 260, § 21, 22, 23, 
 24, 25. 
 
 As bare appearances in the mind, nei- 
 ther true nor false, 255, § 3. 
 
 As referred to other men’s ideas, or 
 to real existence, or to real essen- 
 ces, may be true or false, 255, § 
 4, 5. 
 
 Reason of such reference, 256, § 6, 
 7, 8. 
 
 Simple ideas referred to other men’s 
 ideas least apt to be false, 256, § 9. 
 
 Complex ones, in this respect, more 
 apt to be false, especially those ol 
 mixed modes, 256, § 10. 
 
 Simple ideas referred to existence are 
 all true, 257, § 14: 258, § 16. 
 
 Though they should be different in 
 different men, 258, § 15. 
 
 Complex ideas of modes are all true 
 258, § 17. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 471 
 
 Of substances when false, 259, § 21, 
 &c. 
 
 When right or wrong, 260, § 26. 
 
 That we are incapable of, 373, § 23. 
 
 That we cannot attain, because of their 
 remoteness, 373, § 24. 
 
 Because of their minuteness, 374, § 
 25. 
 
 Simple have a real conformity to 
 things, 378, § 4. 
 
 And all others but of substances, 378, 
 
 4 5 . 
 
 Simple cannot be got by definitions 
 of words, 281, § 11. 
 
 But only by experience, 282, § 14. 
 
 Of mixed modes why most compound- 
 ed, 287, § 13. 
 
 Specific, of mixed modes, how at first 
 made : instance in kinneah and 
 
 niouph, 304, § 44, 45. 
 
 Of substances: instance in zahab, 305, 
 § 46, 47. 
 
 Simple ideas and modes have all ab- 
 stract as well as concrete names, 
 309, § 2. 
 
 Of substances, have scarce any abstract 
 names, 309. 
 
 Different in different men, 313*, § 13. 
 
 Our ideas, almost all relative, 151, 
 § 3. 
 
 Particular are first in the mind, 311, 
 4 9. 
 
 General are imperfect, 311, § 9. 
 
 How positive ideas may be from pri- 
 vative causes, 93, § 4. 
 
 The use of this term not dangerous, 
 36, &c. It is fitter than the word 
 notion, 37. Other words as liable 
 to be abused as this, 38. Yet it is 
 condemned, both as new, and not 
 new. 39. The same with notion, 
 sense, meaning, &c. 338. 
 
 Identical propositions teach nothing, 403, 
 
 4 2 . 
 
 Identity not an innate idea, 62, 63, § 3, 
 4, 5. 
 
 And diversity, 206, § 1. 
 
 Of a plant, wherein it consists, 208, 
 4 4. 
 
 Of animals, 208, § 5. 
 
 Of a man, 208, § 6: 209, § 8. 
 
 Unity of substance does not always 
 make the same identity, 209, § 7. 
 
 Personal identity, 210, § 9. 
 
 Depends on the same consciousness, 
 
 211 , § 10 . 
 
 Continued existence makes identity, 
 218, § 29. 
 
 And diversity, in ideas the first per- 
 ception of the mind, 339, § 4. 
 
 Idiots and madmen, 108, § 12, 13. 
 
 Ignorance, our ignorance ir finitely ex- 
 ceeds our knowledge, 372, § 22. 
 
 Causes of ignorance, 373, § 23. 
 
 1. For want of ideas, S 73. 
 
 2. For want of a discoverable connex- 
 ion between the ideas we have, 375, 
 § 28. 
 
 3. For want of tracing the ideas we 
 have, 376, § 30. 
 
 Immensity, 112, § 4. 
 
 How this idea is got, 137, 4 3. 
 
 Immoralities, of whole nations, 54, 55, 
 4 9, 10. 
 
 Immortality not annexed to any shape, 
 382, § 15. 
 
 Impenetrability, 87, § 1. 
 
 Imposition of opinions unreasonable, 
 431, § 4. 
 
 Impossible est idem esse et non esse, 
 not the first thing known, 49, § 25. 
 
 Impossibility, not an innate idea, 62, 
 4 3. 
 
 Impression on the mind, what, 42, § 5. 
 
 Inadequate ideas, 249, § 1. 
 
 Incompatibility, how far knowable, 369, 
 § 15. 
 
 Individuationis principium, is existence, 
 207, § 3. 
 
 Infallible judge of controversies, 67, 
 
 § 12 . 
 
 Inference, what, 427, 428, § 2, 3, 4. 
 
 Infinite, ■S'hy the idea of infinite not 
 applicable to other ideas as well as 
 those of quantity, since they can 
 be as often repeated, 138, § 6. 
 
 The idea of infinity of space, or num- 
 ber, and of space, or number infi- 
 nite, must be distinguished, 139, § 7. 
 
 Our idea of infinite very obscure, ib. 
 
 § 8 . 
 
 Number furnishes us with the clearest 
 ideas of infinite, 140, § 9. 
 
 The idea of infinite, a growing idea, 
 ib. § 12. 
 
 Our idea of infinite, partly positive, 
 partly comparative, partly negative, 
 141, § 15. 
 
 Why some men think they have an 
 idea of infinite duration, but not of 
 infinite space, 143, § 20. 
 
 Why disputes about infinite are usual- 
 ly perplexed, 144, § 21. 
 
 Our idea of infinity has its original in 
 sensation and reflection, ib. § 22. 
 
 We have no positive idea of infinite, 
 141, § 13, 14: 142, § 16. 
 
 Infinity, why more commonly allowed 
 to duration than to expansion, 129, 
 § 4 . 
 
 How applied to God by us, 137, § 1. 
 
 How we get this idea, ib. § 2, 3. 
 
472 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 The infinity of number, duration, and 
 space, different ways considered, 
 133, §10, 11. 
 
 Innate truths must be first known, 49, 
 §26. 
 
 Principles to no purpose, if men can 
 be ignorant or doubtful of them, 56, 
 § 13. 
 
 Principles of my lord Herbert exam- 
 ined, 57, 58, § 15, &c. 
 
 Moral rules to no purpose, if efface- 
 able, or alterable, 59, § 20. 
 
 Propositions must be distinguished 
 from others by their clearness and 
 usefulness, 72, § 21. 
 
 Tlie doctrine of innate principles of 
 ill consequence, 73, § 24. 
 
 Instant, what, 122, § 10. 
 
 And continual change, 123, § 13, 14, 
 
 15. 
 
 Intuitive knowledge, 342, § 1. 
 
 Our highest certainty, 444, 445, § 14. 
 
 Invention, wherein it consists, 104, § 8. 
 
 Joy, 149, § 7. 
 
 Iron, of what advantage to mankind, 423, 
 
 § 11 - 
 
 Judgment, wrong judgments, in refer- 
 ence to good and evil, 170, § 58. 
 
 Right judgment, 318, § 4. 
 
 One cause of wrong judgment, 431, 
 §3. _ 
 
 Wherein it consists, 427, &c. 
 
 Knowledge has a great connexion with 
 words, 325, § 25. 
 
 The author’s definition of it explained 
 and defended, 339, note. How it 
 differs from faith, 429, § 2, 3: 339, 
 note. 
 
 What, 336, § 2. 
 
 How much our knowledge depends on 
 our senses, 333, § 23. 
 
 Actual, 341, § 8. 
 
 Habitual, ib. 
 
 Habitual, twofold, ib. § 9. 
 
 Intuitive, 342, § 1. 
 
 Intuitive, the clearest, ib. 
 
 Intuitive, irresistible, ib. 
 
 Demonstrative, 343, § 2. 
 
 Of general truths, is all either intui- 
 tive or demonstrative, 345, § 14. 
 
 Of particular existences, is sensitive, 
 ib. 
 
 Clear ideas do not always produce 
 clear knowledge, 346, § 15. 
 
 What kind of knowledge we have of 
 nature, 191, § 12. 
 
 Its beginning and progress, 109, § 15, 
 
 16, 17: 45, § 15, 16. 
 
 Given us, in the faculties to attain it, 
 67, 68, § 12. 
 
 Men’s knowledge according to the 
 
 employment of their faculties, 72, 
 
 § 22 . 
 
 To be got only by the application of 
 our own thought to the contempla- 
 tion of things, 73, § 23. 
 
 Extent of human knowledge, 347. 
 
 Our knowledge goes not beyond out- 
 ideas, ib. § 1. 
 
 Nor beyond the perception of their 
 agreement or disagreement, ib. § 2. 
 
 Reaches not to all our ideas, ib. § 3. 
 
 Much less to the reality of things, ib. 
 
 § 6 . 
 
 Yet very improvable, if right ways 
 were taken, ib. § 6. 
 
 Of coexistence very narrow, 367, 36S, 
 § 9, 10, 11. 
 
 And therefore of substances very nar- 
 row, 368, &c. § 14, 15, 16. 
 
 Of other relations indeterminable, 369, 
 § 18. 
 
 Of existence, 370, § 21. 
 
 Certain and universal, where to be 
 had, 376, § 29. 
 
 Ill use of words, a great hinderance of 
 knowledge, ib. § 30. 
 
 General, where to be got, 377, § 31. 
 
 Lies (ydy in our thoughts, 392, § 13. 
 
 Reality of our knowledge, 377. 
 
 Of mathematical ttuths, how real, 379, 
 §6. 
 
 Of morality, real, ib. § 7. 
 
 Of substances, how far real, 380, § 12. 
 
 What makes our knowledge real, 378, 
 § 3: 379, § 8. 
 
 Considering things, and not names, the 
 way to knowledge, 381, §13. 
 
 Of substances, wherein it consists, 380, 
 
 § 11 . 
 
 What required to any tolerable know- 
 ledge of substances, 392, § 14. 
 
 Self-evident, 393, § 2. 
 
 Of identity and diversity, as large as 
 our ideas, 367, § 8: 394, § 4. 
 
 Wherein it consists, ib. 
 
 Of coexistence, very scanty, 395, § 5. 
 
 Of relations of modes, not so scanty 
 ib. § 6. 
 
 Of real existence, none, ib, § 7. 
 
 Begins in particulars, 396, § 9. 
 
 Intuitive of our own existence, 408, 
 § 3. 
 
 Demonstrative of a God, ib. § 1. 
 
 Improvement of knowledge, 420. 
 
 Not improved by maxims, ib. § 1 
 
 Why so thought, ib. § 2. 
 
 Knowledge improved, only by per- 
 fecting and comparing ideas, 422, 
 
 § 6: 425, § 14. 
 
 And finding their relations, 422, § 7. 
 
 By intermediate ideas, 425, § 14. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 473 
 
 Ti. substances, how to be improved, 
 422, § 9. 
 
 Partly necessary, partly voluntary, 
 426, §1,2. 
 
 Why some, and so little, ib. § 2. 
 
 JIoKi ncreased, 432, § 6. 
 
 ' language, why it changes, 180, § 7. 
 
 Wherein it consists, 265, § 1, 2, 3. 
 
 Its use, 285, § 7. 
 
 Its imperfections, 309, § 1. 
 
 Double use, ibid. 
 
 The use of language destroyed by the 
 subtilty of disputing, 319, § 6, 7, 8. 
 
 Ends of language, 325, § 23. 
 
 Its imperfections, not easy to be cured, 
 328, § 2: ib. § 4, 5, 6. 
 
 The cure of them necessary to philo- 
 sophy, ib. § 3. 
 
 To use no word without a clear and 
 distinct idea annexed to it is one 
 remedy of the imperfections of lan- 
 guage, 329, § 8, 9. 
 
 Propriety in the use of words, another 
 remedy. 330, § 11. 
 
 Law of nature generally allowed, 53, § 6. 
 
 There is, though not innate, 56, § 13. 
 
 Its enforcement, 235, § 6. 
 
 Learning, the ill state of learning in these 
 latter ages, 309, &c. 
 
 Of the schools lies chiefly in the abuse 
 of words, 312, See. 319. 
 
 Such learning of ill consequence, 320, 
 § 10, &c. 
 
 Liberty, what, 153, 154, § 8, 9, 10, 11, 
 12: 154, § 15. 
 
 Belongs not to the will, ib. § 14. 
 
 To be determined by the result of our 
 own deliberation is no restraint of 
 liberty, 166, 167, § 48, 49, 50. 
 
 Founded in a power of suspending our 
 particular desires, 166, § 47. 
 
 Light, its absurd definitions, 280, § 10. 
 
 Light in the mind, what, 455, § 13. 
 
 Logic has introduced obscurity into lan- 
 guages, 319, § 6, 7. 
 
 And hindered knowledge, 319, § 7. 
 
 Love, 148, § 4. 
 
 Madness, 108, § 13. Opposition to rea- 
 son deserves that name, 261, § 4. 
 
 Magisterial, the most knowing are least 
 magisterial, 432, § 4. 
 
 Making, 204, § 2. 
 
 Man not the product of blind chance, 
 410, § 6. 
 
 The essence of man is placed in his 
 shape, 382, § 16. 
 
 We know not his real essence, 289, 
 
 § 3: 295, § 22: 298, § 27. 
 
 The boundaries of the human species 
 not determined, 298, § 27. 
 
 What makes the same individual man, 
 215, § 21: 213, § 29. 
 
 3 K 
 
 The same man may be different per- 
 sons, 214, § 19. 
 
 Mathematics, their methods, 422, § 7. 
 
 Improvement, 425, § 15. 
 
 Matter incomprehensible, both in its co- 
 hesion and divisibility, 19£, § 23: 
 197, 198, § 30, 31. 
 
 What, 321, § 15. 
 
 Whether it may think, is not to be 
 known, 348 — 358, § 6: 354, &c. 
 Cannot produce motion, or any thing 
 else, 411, § 10. 
 
 And motion cannot produce thought, 
 ib. 
 
 Not eternal, 414, § 18. 
 
 Maxims, 400, 401, § 12, 13, 14, 15. 
 
 Not alone self-evident, 394, § 3. 
 
 Are not the truths first known, 396, 
 
 § 9. 
 
 Not the foundation of our knowledge, 
 ib. § 10. 
 
 Wherein their evidence consists, ib. 
 Their use, 397 — 400, § 11, 12. 
 
 Why the most general self-evident 
 propositions alone, pass for maxims, 
 397, § 11. 
 
 Are commonly proofs, only where 
 there is no need of proofs, 401, § 15. 
 Of little use, with clear terms, 402, 
 § 19. 
 
 Ofdangerous use, with doubtful terms, 
 400, &c. § 12: 403, § 20. 
 
 When first known, 43, &e. § 9. 12, 
 13: 44, § 14. 16. 
 
 How they gain assent, 47, 48, § 21, 22. 
 Made for particular observations, ib. 
 Not in the understanding before they 
 are actually known, 48, § 22. 
 Neither their terms nor ideas fnnate, 
 ib. § 23. 
 
 Least known to children and illiterate 
 people, 50, § 27. 
 
 I Memory, 102, § 2. 
 
 Attention, pleasure, and pain, settle 
 ideas in the memory, ib. § 3. 
 
 And repetition, ib. § 4: 103, § 6. 
 Difference of memory, ib. § 4, 5. 
 
 In remembrance, the mind sometimes 
 active, sometimes passive, 104, § 7. 
 Its necessity, 103, § 5: 104, § S. 
 Defects, 104, § 8, 9. 
 
 In brutes, 105, § 10. 
 
 Metaphysics and school divinity filled 
 with uninstructive propositions, 406, 
 
 § 9. 
 
 Method used in mathematics, 422, § 7. 
 Mind, the quickness of its actions, 100, 
 
 § 10 . 
 
 Minutes, hours, days, not necessary to 
 duration, 126, § 23. 
 
 Miracles, the ground of assent to mira- 
 cles, 435, § 13. 
 
474 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Misery, what, 163, § 42. 
 
 Modes, mixed, 179, § 1. 
 
 Made by the mind, ib. § 2. 
 
 Sometimes got by the explication of 
 their names, ib. § 3. 
 
 Whence a mixed mode has its unity, 
 ib. § 4. 
 
 Occasion of mixed modes, 180, § 5. 
 
 Mixed modes, their ideas, how got, 181, 
 
 § 9. 
 
 Modes simple and complex. 111, § 5. 
 
 Simple modes, 112, § 1. 
 
 Of motion, 145, § 2. 
 
 Moral good and evil, what, 235, § 5. 
 
 Three rules whereby men judge of 
 moral rectitude, ib. § 7. 
 
 Beings, how founded on simple ideas 
 of sensation and reflection, 239, 240, 
 § 14, 15. 
 
 Rules not self-evident, 52, § 4. 
 
 Variety of opinions, concerning moral 
 rules, whence, 53, § 5, 6. 
 
 Rules, if innate, cannot with public al- 
 lowance be transgressed, 55, 56, &c. 
 § 11, 12, 13. 
 
 Morality, capable of demonstration, 370, 
 § 18: 422, § 8. 
 
 The proper study of mankind, 423, 
 
 § 11 . 
 
 Of actions, in their conformity to a 
 rule, 240, § 15. 
 
 Mistakes in moral notions, owing to 
 names, ib. § 16. 
 
 Discourses in morality, if not clear, it 
 is the fault of the speaker, 332, § 17. 
 
 Hinderances of demonstrative treating 
 of morality. 1. Want of marks. 
 2. Complexedness, 371, § 19. 3. 
 
 Interest, 372, § 20. 
 
 Change of names in morality, changes 
 not the nature of things, 380, § 9. 
 
 And mechanism, hard to be reconciled, 
 57, § 14. 
 
 Secured amidst men’s wrong judg- 
 ments, 175, § 70. 
 
 Motion, slow or very swift, why not per- 
 ceived, 122, § 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. 
 
 Voluntary, inexplicable, 414, § 19. 
 
 Its absurd definitions, 280, § 8, 9. 
 
 Naming of ideas, 107, § 8. 
 
 Names moral, established by law, are 
 not to be varied from, 380, § 10. 
 
 Of substances, standing for real essen- 
 ces, are not capable to convey cer- 
 tainty to the understanding, 388, 
 § 5. 
 
 Standing for nominal essences, will 
 make some, though not many, cer- 
 tain propositions, ib. § 6. 
 
 Why men substitute names for real 
 issences, which they know not, 323, 
 
 § 19 . 
 
 Two false suppositions, in such an use 
 of names, 324, § 21. 
 
 A particular name to every particular 
 thing impossible, 269, § 2. 
 
 And useless, ib. § 3. 
 
 Proper names, where used, ib. § 4, 5. 
 
 Specific names are affixed to the no- 
 minal essence, 277, § 16. 
 
 Of simple ideas and substances, refer 
 to things, 279, § 2. 
 
 What names stand for both real and 
 nominal essence, ib. § 3. 
 
 Of simple ideas not capable of defini- 
 tions, ib. § 4. 
 
 Why, 280, § 7. 
 
 Of least doubtful signification, 282, 
 § 15. 
 
 Have few ascents “ in linea prtedica- 
 mentali, ” 283, § 16. 
 
 Of complex ideas, may be defined, 
 282, § 12. 
 
 Of mixed modes, stand for arbitrary 
 ideas, 284, § 2, 3: 304, § 44. 
 
 Tie together the parts of their com- 
 plex ideas, 286, § 10. 
 
 Stand always for the real essence, 288, 
 § 14. 
 
 Why got, usually, before the ideas are 
 known, ib. § 15. 
 
 Of relations comprehended under 
 those of mixed modes, ib. § 16. 
 
 General names of substances stand for 
 sorts, 289, § 1. 
 
 Necessary to species, 302, § 39. 
 
 Proper names belong only to substan- 
 ces, 303, § 42. 
 
 Of modes in their first application, 304, 
 § 44, 45. 
 
 Of substances in their first application, 
 305, § 46, 47. 
 
 Specific names stand for different things 
 in different men, 306, § 48. 
 
 Are put in the place of the thing sup- 
 posed to have the real essence of 
 the species, ib. § 49. 
 
 Of mixed modes, doubtful often, be- 
 cause of the great composition of 
 the ideas they stand for, 310, § 6. 
 
 Because they want standards in nature, 
 
 311, § 7. 
 
 Of substances, doubtful, because re- 
 ferret! to patterns, that cannot be 
 known, or known but imperfectly 
 
 312, &c. § 11, 12, 13, 14. 
 
 In their philosophical use hard ta 
 have settled significations, 314, § 15 
 
 Instance, liquor, ib. § 16: gold, 315 
 § 17. 
 
 Of simple ideas, why least doubtful, 
 ib. § 18. 
 
 Least compounded ideas have the 
 least dubious names, 316, § 19. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 475 
 
 Natural philosophy, not capable of sci- 
 ence, 374, § 26: 423, § 10. 
 
 Yet very useful, 424, § 12. 
 
 How to be improved, ib. 
 
 What has hindered its improvement, 
 ib. 
 
 Necessity, 154, § 13. 
 
 Negative terms, 265, § 4. 
 
 Names signify the absence of positive 
 ideas, 93, § 5. 
 
 Newton (Mr) 398, § 11. 
 
 Nothing: that nothing cannot produce 
 any thing, is demonstration, 409, § 3. 
 
 Notions, 179, § 2. 
 
 Number, 134. 
 
 Mod es of number the most distinct 
 ideas, ib. § 3. 
 
 Demonstrations in numbers, the most 
 determinate, ib. § 4. 
 
 The general measure, 136, § 8. 
 
 Affords the clearest idea of infinity, 
 140, § 9. 
 
 Numeration, what, 135, § 5. 
 
 Names necessary to it, ib. § 5, 6. 
 
 And order, 136, § 7. 
 
 Why not early in children, and in 
 some never, ib. 
 
 Obscurity, unavoidable in ancient au- 
 thors, 312, § 10. 
 
 The cause of it, in our ideas, 242, § 3. 
 
 Obstinate, they are most,- who have least 
 examined, 431, § 3. 
 
 Opinion, what, 429, § 3. 
 
 Jlow opinions grow up to principles, 
 60, 61, &c. § 22, 23, 24, 25, 26. 
 
 Of others, a w rong ground of assent, 
 430, § 6: 463, § 17. 
 
 Organs: our organs suited to our state, 
 191, 192, &c. § 12, 13. 
 
 Pain, present, works presently, 172, § 64. 
 
 Its use, 208, § 4. 
 
 Parrot, mentioned by Sir W. T. 209, 
 § 8 - 
 
 Holds a rational discourse, ib. 
 
 Particles join parts, or whole sentences 
 together, 307, § 1. 
 
 In them lies the beauty of well-speak- 
 ing, ib. § 2. 
 
 How their use is to be known, ib. § 3. 
 
 They express some action, or posture 
 of the mind, ib. § 4. 
 
 Pascal, his great memory, 104, § 9. 
 
 Passion, 182, § 11. 
 
 Passions, how they lead us into error, 
 434, § 11. 
 
 Turn on pleasure and pain, 148, § 3. 
 
 Passions are seldom single, 160, § 39. 
 
 Perception threefold, 152, § 5. 
 
 In perception, the mind for the most 
 part passive, 98, § 1. 
 
 Is an impression made on the mind, 
 99 § 3 4. 
 
 In the womb, ib. § 5. 
 
 Difference between it and innate ideas, 
 ib. § 6. 
 
 Puts the difference between the animal 
 and vegetable kingdom, 101, § 11. 
 
 The several degrees of it show the 
 wisdom and goodness of the Maker, 
 ib. § 12. 
 
 Belongs to all animals, ib. § 12, 13, 
 14. 
 
 The first inlet of knowledge, 102, § 15 
 
 Person, what, 210, § 9. 
 
 A forensic term, 217, § 26. 
 
 The same consciousness alone makes 
 the same person, 212, § 13: 216, 
 § 23. 
 
 The same soul without the same con- 
 sciousness, makes not the same per- 
 son, 212, § 14, &c. 
 
 Reward and punishment follow- per- 
 sonal identity, 214, § 18. 
 
 Phantastical ideas, 247, § 1. 
 
 Place, 113, § 7, 8. 
 
 Use of place, 114, § 9. 
 
 Nothing but a relative position, ib. 
 
 § 10 . 
 
 Sometimes taken for the space a body 
 fills, ib. § 10. 
 
 Twofold, 130, § 6: 130, 131, § 6, 7. 
 
 Pleasure and pain, 148, § 1: 150, § 15 
 16. 
 
 Join themselves to most of our ideas, 
 90, § 2. 
 
 Pleasure, why joined to several actions, 
 90, § 3. 
 
 Power, how we come by its idea, 150, 
 
 § I- 
 
 Active and passive, 151, § 2. 
 
 No passive power in God, no active 
 power in matter; both active and 
 passive in spirits, ib. 
 
 Our idea of active power clearest from 
 reflection, ib. § 4. 
 
 Powers operate not on powers, 155, 
 § 18. 
 
 Make a great part of the ideas of sub- 
 stances, 190, § 7. 
 
 Why, ib. § 8. 
 
 An idea of sensation and reflection, 
 93, § 8. 
 
 Practical principles not innate, 51, § 1. 
 
 Not universally assented to, ib. § 2. 
 
 Are for operation, 52, § 3. 
 
 Not agreed, 57, § 14. 
 
 Different, 60, § 21. 
 
 Principles, not to be received without 
 strict examination, 421, § 4: 460, 
 § 8 . 
 
 The ill consequences of wrong princi- 
 ples, ib. § 9, 10. 
 
 None innate, 41. 
 
476 
 
 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 None universally assented to, ib. § 2, 
 S, 4. 
 
 How ordinarily got, 61), § 22, &c. 
 
 Are to be examined, 61, 62, § 26, 27. 
 
 Not innate, if the ideas they are made 
 up of are not innate, 62, § 1. 
 
 Privative terms, 265, § 4. 
 
 Probability, what, 428, 8tc. § 1. 3. 
 
 The grounds of probability, 429, § 4. 
 
 In matter of fact, 432, § 6. 
 
 How we are to judge, in probabilities, 
 429, § 5. 
 
 Difficulties in probabilities, 433, § 9. 
 
 Grounds of probability in speculation, 
 434, § 12. 
 
 Wrong measures of probability, 460, 
 
 § 7 - 
 
 How evaded by prejudiced minds, 
 462, § 13, 14. 
 
 Proofs, 343, § 3. 
 
 Properties of specific essences, not 
 known, 295, § 19. 
 
 Of things very numerous, 253, § 10: 
 259, § 24. 
 
 Propositions, identical, teach nothing, 
 403, § 2. 
 
 Generical, teach nothing, 405, § 4: 
 407, § 13. 
 
 Wherein a part of the definition is 
 predicated of the subject, teach 
 nothing, 405, § 5, 6. 
 
 But the signification of the word, 406, 
 § 7. 
 
 Concerning substances generally, 
 either trifling or uncertain, ib. § 9. 
 
 Merely verbal, how to be known, 
 407, § 12. 
 
 Abstract terms, predicated one of an- 
 other, produce merely verbal propo- 
 sitions, ib. 
 
 Or part of a complex idea, predicated 
 of the whole, 405, § 4: 407, § 13. 
 
 More propositions, merely verbal, 
 than is suspected, ib. 
 
 Universal propositions concern not ex- 
 istence, 408, § 1. 
 
 What propositions concern existence, 
 ib. 
 
 Certain propositions, concerning ex- 
 istence, are particular; concerning' 
 abstract ideas, may be general, 419, 
 § 13. 
 
 Mental, 384, § 3: 385, § 5. 
 
 Verbal, ib. 
 
 Mental, hard to be treated, 384, § 3,4. 
 
 Punishment, what, 235, § 5. 
 
 And reward, follow consciousness, 
 214, § 18: 217, § 26. 
 
 An unconscious drunkard, why pun- 
 ished, 215, § 22. 
 
 Q lal'ties: secondary qualities, their con- 
 
 nexion, or inconsistence, unknown, 
 368, § 11. 
 
 Of substances, scarce knowable, but 
 by experience, 368, 369, § 14. 16. 
 
 Of spiritual substances, less than of 
 corporeal, 370, § 17. 
 
 Secondary, have no conceivable con- 
 nexion with the primary, that pro- 
 duce them, 368, § 12, 13: 375, § 
 28. 
 
 Of substances, depend on remote 
 causes, 390, § 11. 
 
 Not to be known by descriptions, 333, 
 
 § 21 . 
 
 Secondary, how far capable of demon- 
 stration, 345, § 11, 12, 13. 
 
 What, 94, $ 10: 95, § 16. 
 
 How said to be in things, 249, § 2. 
 
 Secondary, would be other, if we 
 could discover the minute parts of 
 bodies, 191, § 11. 
 
 Primary qualities, 94, § 9. 
 
 How they produce ideas in us, ib. § 
 
 II, 12. 
 
 Secondary qualities, 94, 95, § 13, 14, 
 
 15. 
 
 Primary qualities resemble our ideas, 
 secondary not, 95, § 15, 16, &tc. 
 
 Three sorts of qualities in bodies, 97, 
 § 23. 
 
 i. e. primary, secondary, immediately 
 perceivable; and secondary, medi- 
 ately perceivable, 98, § 26. 
 
 Secondary qualities, are bare powers, 
 97, § 23, 24, 25. 
 
 Secondary qualities have no discerni- 
 ble connexion with the first, ib. § 25. 
 
 Quotations, how little to be relied on, 
 434, § 11. 
 
 Real ideas, 247, 248, § 1, 2. 
 
 Reason, its various significations, 436, 
 
 § 1 
 
 What, ib. § 2. 
 
 Reason is natural revelation, 452, § 4. 
 
 It must judge of revelation, 456, { 14, 
 
 15. 
 
 It must be our last guide in every 
 thing, ib. 
 
 Four parts of reason, 437, § 3. 
 
 Where reason fails us, 443, § 9. 
 
 Necessary in all but intuition, 445, 
 § 15. 
 
 As contra-distinguished to faith, what, 
 447, § 2. 
 
 Helps us not to the knowledge of in- 
 nate truths, 53, § 5, 6, 7, 8. 
 
 General ideas, general terms, and tea- 
 son, usually grow together, 45, § 15 
 
 Recollection, 146, § 1. 
 
 Reflection, 79, § 4. 
 
 Related, 201, § l. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 475 
 
 Relation, 201, § 1. 
 
 Relation proportional, 233, § 1. 
 
 Natural, ib. § 2. 
 
 Instituted, 234, § 3. 
 
 Moral, ib. § 4. 
 
 Numerous, 240, § 17. 
 
 Terminate in simple ideas, ib. § 18. 
 
 Our clear idea of relation, 241, § 19. 
 
 Names of relations doubtful, ib. 
 
 Without correlative terms, not so 
 commonly observed, 201, § 2. 
 
 Different from the things related, 202, 
 § 4. _ 
 
 Changes without any change in the 
 subject, ib. § 5. 
 
 Always between two, ib. § 6. 
 
 All things capable of relation, ib. § 7. 
 
 The idea of the relation often clearer 
 than of the things related, 203, § 8. 
 
 All terminate in simple ideas of sen- 
 sation and reflection, ib. § 9. 
 
 Relative, 201, § 1. 
 
 Some relative terms taken for external 
 denominations, ib. § 2. 
 
 Some for absolute, ib. § 3. 
 
 How to be known, 203, § 10. 
 
 Many words, though seeming abso- 
 lute, are relatives, 202, § 3, 4, 5. 
 
 Religion, all men have time to inquire 
 into, 458, § 3. 
 
 But in many places are hindered from 
 inquiring, ib. § 4. 
 
 Remembrance, of great moment, in com- 
 mon life, 104, § 8. 
 
 What, 71, § 20: 104, § 7. 
 
 Reputation, of great force, in common 
 life, 238, § 12. 
 
 Restraint, 154, § 13. 
 
 Resurrection, the author’s notion of it, 
 230, &c. 
 
 Not necessarily understood of the 
 same body, ib. &cc. The meaning 
 of his body, 2 Cor. v. 10, 220. 
 
 The same body of Christ arose, and 
 why, 221. 
 
 How the Scriptures constantly speaks 
 tl jut it, 226. 
 
 Revelation, an unquestionable ground of 
 assent, 435, § 14. 
 
 Belief, no proof it, 456, § 15. 
 
 Traditional revelation cannot convey 
 any new simple ideas, 448, § 3. 
 
 Not so sure as our reason, or senses, 
 .b. § 4. 
 
 In things of reason, no need of revela- 
 tion, 449, § 5. 
 
 Cannot overrule our clear knowledge, 
 ib.: 451, § 10. 
 
 Must overrule probabilities of reason, 
 450, 451, § 8, 9. 
 
 Reward, what, 235, § 5. 
 
 Rhetoric, an art of deceiving, 327, § 34. 
 
 Sagacity, 343, § 3. 
 
 Same, whether substance, mode or con- 
 crete, 218, § 28. 
 
 Sand, vdiite to the eye, pellucid in a mi- 
 croscope, 191, § 11. 
 
 Schools, wherein faulty, 319, § 6, &c. 
 
 Science, divided into a consideration of 
 nature, of operation, and of signs, 
 464. 
 
 No science of natural bodies, 376, § 29 
 
 Scripture: interpretations of Scripture 
 not to be imposed, 317, § 23. 
 
 Self, what makes it, 215, § 20: 216, § 
 23, 24, 25. 
 
 Self-love, 261, § 2. 
 
 Partly cause of unreasonableness in 
 us, ib. 
 
 Self-evident propositions, where to be 
 had, 393, &c. 
 
 Neither needed nor admitted proof, 
 402, § 19. 
 
 Sensation, 75, § 3. 
 
 Distinguishable from other percep- 
 tions, 345, § 14. 
 
 Explained, 96, § 21. 
 
 What, 146, § 1. 
 
 Senses, why we cannot conceive other 
 qualities, than the objects of our 
 senses, 85, § 3. 
 
 Learn to discern by exercise, 333, § 
 
 21 . 
 
 Much quicker would not be useful to 
 us, 191, § 12. 
 
 Our organs of sense suited to our state, 
 191, 192, § 12, 13. 
 
 Sensible knowledge is as certain as we 
 need, 417, § 8. 
 
 Sensible knowledge goes not beyond 
 the present act, 418, § 9. 
 
 Shame, 150, § 17. 
 
 Simple ideas, 83, § 1. 
 
 Not made by the mind, ib. § 2. 
 
 Power of the mind over them, 112, § 1. 
 
 The materials of all our knowledge, 
 
 92, § 10. 
 
 All positive, ib. § 1. 
 
 Very different from their causes, 92, 
 
 93, § 2, 3. 
 
 Sin, with different men, stands for diffe- 
 rent actions, 59, § 19. 
 
 Sceptical, no one so sceptical as to doubt 
 his own existence, 409, § 2. 
 
 Solidity, 87, § 1. 
 
 Inseparable from body, ib. 
 
 By its body fills space, ib. § 2. 
 
 This idea got by touch, ib. § 1. 
 
 How distinguished, from space ib. § 3. 
 
 How from hardness, 88, § 4. 
 
 Something from eternity demonstrated, 
 409, § 3: 410, § 8. 
 
 Sorrow, 149, § 8. 
 
 Soul thinks not always, 77, § 9, &tc. 
 
OF HUMAN UNDKuiSTANDING. 
 
 */8 
 
 Not in sound sleep, 78, § 11, kc. 
 
 Its immateriality, we know not, 348 — 
 367, § 6: 356', kc. 
 
 Religion, not concerned in the soul’s 
 immateriality, 348 — 367, § 6. 
 
 Our ignorance about it, 217, § 27. 
 
 The immortality of it, not proved by 
 reason, 358, kc. 
 
 It is brought to light by revelation, ib. 
 
 Sound, its modes, 145, § 3. 
 
 Space, its idea got by sight and touch, 
 
 112 , § 2 . 
 
 Its modifications, ib. § 4. 
 
 Not body, 114, 115, § 11, 12. 
 
 Its parts inseparable, 115, § 13. 
 
 Immovable, ib. § 14. 
 
 Whether body, or spirit, 117, § 16. 
 
 Whether substance, or accident, ib. § 
 17. 
 
 Infinite, 117, § 21: 137, § 4. 
 
 Ideas of space and body distinct, 118, 
 § 24, 25. 
 
 Considered as a solid, 133, § 11. 
 
 Hard to conceive any real being void 
 of spaee, ib. 
 
 Species: why changing one simple idea 
 of the complex one is thought to 
 change the species in modes, but 
 not in substances, 323, § 19. 
 
 Of animals and vegetables, mostly dis- 
 tinguished by figure, 298, § 29. 
 
 Of other things, by colour, 299, § 29. 
 
 Made by the understanding, for com- 
 munication, 286, § 9. 
 
 No species of mixed modes without a 
 name, 287, § 11. 
 
 Of substances, are determined by the 
 nominal essence, 291, kc. § 7, 8. 
 11. 13. 
 
 Not by substantial forms, 292, § 10. 
 
 Nor by the real essence, 295, § 18: 
 296, § 25. 
 
 Of spirits, how distinguished, 293, § 11. 
 
 More species of creatures above than 
 below us, ib. § 12. 
 
 Of creatures very gradual, 294, § 12. 
 
 What is necessary to the making of 
 species, by real essences, ib. § 14, 
 kc. 
 
 Of animals and plants, cannot be dis- 
 tinguished by propagation, 296, § 23. 
 
 Of animals and vegetables, distinguish- 
 ed principally by the shape and fi- 
 gure; of other things by the colour, 
 298, § 29. 
 
 Of man, likewise, in part, 297, § 26. 
 
 Instance, Abbot of St Martin, ib. 
 
 Is but a partial conception of what is 
 in the individuals, 300, § 32. 
 
 It is the complex idea, which the name 
 stands for, that makes the species, 
 301, § 35. 
 
 Man makes the species, or sorts, SOS, 
 § 36, 37. 
 
 The foundation of it is in the simili- 
 tude found in things, ib. 
 
 Every distinct, abstract idea makes a 
 different species, ib. § 38. 
 
 Speech, its end, 265, § 1, 2. 
 
 Proper speech, 268, § 8. 
 
 Intelligible, ib. 
 
 Spirits, the existence of spirits not 
 knowable, 419, § 12. 
 
 How it is proved, ib. 
 
 Operation of spirits on bodies not con- 
 ceivable, 375, § 28. 
 
 What knowledge they have of bodies, 
 
 333, § 23. 
 
 Separate, how their knowledge may 
 exceed. ours, 104, § 9. 
 
 We have as clear a notion of the sub- 
 stance of spirit as of body, 189, § 5. 
 
 A conjecture concerning one way of 
 knowledge wherein spirits excel 
 us, 192, § 13. 
 
 Our ideas of spirit, 193, § 15. 
 
 As clear as that of body, ib.: 194, 
 
 § 22 . 
 
 Primary ideas belonging to spirits, ib. 
 § 18. 
 
 Move, ib. § 19, 20. 
 
 Ideas of spirit and body compared, 
 ib, § 22: 197, § 30. 
 
 The existence of spirits, as easy to be 
 admitted, as that of bodies, 196, § 
 28. 
 
 We have no idea how spirits commu- 
 nicate their thoughts, 199, § 36. 
 
 How far we are ignorant of the being, 
 species, and properties of spirits, 
 375, § 27. 
 
 The word, spirit, does not necessarily 
 denote immateriality, 348. 
 
 The Scripture speaks of material spi- 
 rits, 349. 
 
 Stupidity, 104, § 8. 
 
 Substance, 183, § 1. 
 
 No idea of it, 70, § 18. 
 
 Not very knowable, ib. 
 
 Our certainty, concerning substances, 
 reaches but a little way, S68, § 11, 
 12: 392, § 15. 
 
 The confused idea of substance in 
 general, makes always a part of the 
 essence of the species of substances, 
 295, § 21. 
 
 In substances, we must rectify the sig- 
 nification of their names, by the 
 tilings, more than by definitions, 
 
 334, § 24. 
 
 Their ideas single or collective, 107, 
 
 § 6 . 
 
 We have no distinct idea of substance 
 116, § 18, 19. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 479 
 
 We hare no idea of pure substance, 
 
 184, 185, §2. 
 
 Our ideas of the sorts of substances, 
 186—189, § 3, 4: 189, § 6. 
 
 Observables, in our ideas of substances, 
 200, § 37. 
 
 Collective ideas of substances, ib. Sec. 
 
 They are single ideas, 201, § 2. 
 
 Three sorts of substances, 207, § 2. 
 
 The ideas of substances have' in the 
 mind a double reference, 251, § 6. 
 
 The properties of substances nume- 
 rous, and not all to be known, 253, 
 § 9, 10. 
 
 The perfectest ideas of substances, 
 190, § 7. 
 
 Three sorts of ideas make our com- 
 plex one of substances, ib. § 9. 
 
 Substance, not discarded by the essay, 
 
 185, Stc. note. 
 
 The author’s account of it as clear as 
 that of noted logicians, 186, Sec. note. 
 
 We talk like children about it, 184, 
 § 2: 187, note. 
 
 The author makes not the being of it 
 depend on the fancies of men, 183, 
 Stc. note. 
 
 Idea of it obscure, 348, Stc. note. 
 
 The author’s principles consist with 
 the certainty of its existence, 183, 
 note. 
 
 Subtilty, what, 319, § 8. 
 
 Succession, an idea got chiefly from the 
 train of our ideas, 92, § 9: 121, § 6. 
 
 Which train is the measure of it, 122, 
 
 § 12 . 
 
 Summum bonum, wherein it consists, 
 168, § 55. 
 
 Sun, the name of a species, though but 
 one, 289, § 1. 
 
 Syllogism, no help to reasoning, 437, § 4. 
 
 The use of syllogism, ib. 
 
 Inconveniences of syllogism, ib. 
 
 Of no use in probabilities, 442, § 5. 
 
 Helps not to new discoveries, ib. § 6. 
 
 Or the improvement of our knowledge, 
 ib. § 7. 
 
 Whether, in syllogism, the middle 
 terms may not be better placed, 
 443, § 8. 
 
 May be about particulars, ib. 
 
 Taste and smells, their modes, 145, § 5. 
 
 Testimony, how it lessens its force, 433, 
 434, § 10. 
 
 Thinking, 146. 
 
 Modes of thinking, ib. § 1: 147, § 2. 
 
 Men’s ordinary way of thinking, 384, 
 §4. 
 
 An operation of the soul, 77, § 10. 
 
 Without memory, useless, 79, § 15. 
 
 Time, what, 123, § 17, 18. 
 
 Not the measure of motion, 125, § 22. 
 
 And place, distinguishable portions of 
 infinite duration and expansion, 130, 
 § 5, 6. 
 
 Twofold, 130, 131, § 6, 7. 
 
 Denominations from time are relatives, 
 205, § 3. 
 
 Toleration, necessary in our state of 
 knowledge, 431, § 4. 
 
 Tradition, the older, the less credible, 
 433, 434, § 10. 
 
 Trifling propositions, 403. 
 
 Discourses, 406, 407, § 9, 10, 11. 
 
 Truth, what, 387, § 2: 388, § 5: 389, 
 §9. 
 
 Of thought, 384, § 3: 389, § 9. 
 
 Of words, 387, § 3. 
 
 Verbal and real, 389, § 8, 9. 
 
 Moral, 390, § 11. 
 
 Metaphysical, 255, § 2: 390, § 11. 
 
 General, seldom apprehended, but in 
 words, 387, § 2. 
 
 In what it consists, 385, § 5. 
 
 Love of it necessary, 387, § 1 . 
 
 How we may know we love it, ib. 
 
 Vacuum possible, 117, § 22. 
 
 Motion proves a vacuum, 1 8, § 23. 
 
 We have an idea of it, 87, § 3: 89, § 5. 
 
 Variety in men’s pursuits accounted for, 
 168, § 54, Stc. 
 
 Virtue, what, in reality, 58, § 18. 
 
 What in its common application, 55, § 
 
 10 , 11 . 
 
 Is preferable, under a bare possibility 
 of a future state, 175, 176, § 70. 
 
 How taken, 58, § 17, 18. 
 
 Vice lies in wrong measures of good, 
 463, § 16. 
 
 Understanding, what, 152, § 5, 6. 
 
 Like a dark room, 109, § 17. 
 
 When rightly used, 34, § 5. 
 
 Three sorts of perception in the under- 
 standing, 152, § 5. 
 
 Wholly passive in the reception of 
 simple ideas, 83, § 25. 
 
 Uneasiness alone determines the will to 
 a new action, 158, See. § 29. 31. 33, 
 Stc. 
 
 Why it determines the will, 161, § 36, 
 37. 
 
 Causes of it, 170, § 57, See. 
 
 Unity, an idea, both of sensation and re- 
 flection, 91, § 7. 
 
 Suggested by every thing, 134, § 1. 
 
 Universality, is only in signs, 271, § 11. 
 
 Universals, how made, 107, § 9. 
 
 Volition, what, 152, § 5: 154, § 15: 158, 
 § 28. 
 
 Better known by reflection than words, 
 159, § SO. 
 
 Voluntary, what, 152, § 5: 153, § 11: 
 158, § 27. 
 
480 
 
 OF HOMAN UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 What is, is, is not universally assented 
 to, 42, § 4. 
 
 Where and when, 131, § 8. 
 
 Whole bigger than its parts, its use, 
 397, § 11. 
 
 And part not innate ideas, 63, § 6. 
 
 Will, what, 152, § 5, 6: 155, § 16: 158, 
 § 29. 
 
 What determines the will, ih. § 29. 
 
 Often confounded with desire, 159, § 30. 
 
 Is conversant only about our own ac- 
 tions, ib. 
 
 Terminates in them, 163, § 40. 
 
 Is determined by the greatest, present 
 removable uneasiness, ib. 
 
 Wit and judgment, wherein different, 
 106, § 2. 
 
 Words, an ill use of words, one great 
 hinderance of knowledge, 376, § 30. 
 
 Abuse of words, 317. 
 
 Sects introduce words without signifi- 
 cation, ib. § 2. 
 
 The schools have coined multitudes of 
 insignificant words, ib. 
 
 And rendered others obscure, 319, § 6. 
 
 Often used without signification, 318, 
 § 3. 
 
 And why, ib. § 5. 
 
 Inconstancy in their use, an abuse of 
 words, ib. 
 
 Obscurity, an abuse of words, 319, § 6. 
 
 Taking them for things, an abuse of ; 
 words, 321, § 14, 15. 
 
 Who most liable to this abuse of words, 
 ib. 
 
 This abuse of words is a cause of ob- 
 stinacy in error, 322, § 16. 
 
 Making them stand for real essences, 
 which we know not, is an abuse of 
 words, 322, 323, § 17, 18. 
 
 The supposition of their certain, evi- 
 dent signification, an abuse of words, 
 324, § 22. 
 
 Use of words, is, 1. To communicate 
 ideas. 2. With quickness. 3. To 
 convey knowledge, 325, § 23, 24, 25. 
 
 How they fail in all these, ib. § 26, &c. 
 
 How in substances, 326, § 32. 
 
 How in modes and relations, ib. § 33. 
 
 Misuse of words, a great cause of er- 
 ror, 328, § 4. 
 
 Of obstinacy, ib. § 5. 
 
 And of wrangling, ib. § 6. 
 
 Signify one thing, in inquiries; and 
 another in disputes, 329, § 7. 
 
 The meaning of words is madvj known, 
 in simple ideas, by showing, 331, 
 § 14. 
 
 In mixed modes, by defining, ib. § 15. 
 
 In substances, by showing and defining 
 too, 332, § 19. 21, 22. 
 
 The ill consequence of learning words 
 first, and their meaning afterward, 
 334, § 24. 
 
 No shame to ask men the meaning of 
 their words, where they are doubt- 
 ful, ib. § 25. 
 
 Are to be used constantly in the same 
 sense, 335, § 26. 
 
 Or else to be explained, where the 
 context determines it not, ib. § 27. 
 
 How made general, 265, § 3. 
 
 Signifying insensible things, derived 
 from names of sensible ideas, ib. § 5. 
 
 Have no natural signification, 266, § 1. 
 
 But by imposition, £68, § 8. 
 
 Stand immediately for the ideas of the 
 speaker, 266, 267, § 1, 2, S. 
 
 Yet with a double reference. 
 
 1. To the ideas, in the hearer’s mind, 
 267, § 4. 
 
 2. To the reality of things, ib. § 5 
 
 Apt, by custom, to excite ideas, 268, 
 
 § 6 . 
 
 Often used without signification, ib. §7. 
 
 Most general, 269, § 1. 
 
 Why some words of one language can- 
 not be translated into those of an- 
 other, 286, § 8. 
 
 Why I have been so large on words, 
 288, § 16. 
 
 New words, or in new significations, 
 are cautiously to be used, 306, § 51. 
 
 Civil use of words, 318, § 3. 
 
 Philosophical use of words, 321, § 3. 
 
 These very different, ib. § 15. 
 
 Miss their end, when they excite not, 
 in the hearer, the same idea as in 
 the mind of the speaker, 318, § 4. 
 
 What words are most doubtful, and 
 why, 319, § 5, &e. 
 
 What unintelligible, ib. 
 
 Are fitted to the use of common life, 
 309, § 2. 
 
 Not translatable, 286, § 8. 
 
 Worship not an innate idea, 63, § 7. 
 
 Wrangle, when we wrangle about words, 
 313, § 13. 
 
 Writings ancient, why hardly to be pre- 
 cisely understood, 324, § 22. 
 
A TREATISE 
 
 THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN LOCKE GENT 
 
 Quid tam temerarium tamque indignum sapientis gravitate atque constantia, 
 quam aut falsum sentire, aut quod non satis explorate perceptum sit, et cognitum, 
 *ine ulla dubitatione defendere? — Cic. de JVatura Deorum, lib. 1. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Ct 
 
 ESSAY OF THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 
 
 Sect. 1. Introduction. 
 
 2. Parts. 
 
 3. Reasoning. 
 
 4. Of practice and habits. 
 
 5. Ideas. 
 
 6. Principles. 
 
 7. Mathematics. 
 
 8. Religion. 
 
 9. Ideas. 
 
 10. Prejudice. 
 
 11. Indifferency. 
 
 12. Examine. 
 
 13. Observations. 
 
 14. Bias. 
 
 15. Arguments. 
 
 16. Haste. 
 
 17. Desultory. 
 
 18. Smattering. 
 
 19. Universality. 
 
 20. Reading. 
 
 21. Intermediate principles. 
 
 22. Partiality. 
 
 23. Theology. 
 
 24. Partiality. 
 
 25. Haste. 
 
 26. Anticipation. 
 
 27. Resignation. 
 
 28. Practice. 
 
 29. Words. 
 
 30. Wandering. 
 
 31. Distinction. 
 
 32. Similes. 
 
 33. Assent. 
 
 34. 35. Indifferency. 
 
 36. Question. 
 
 37. Perseverance. 
 
 38. Presumption* 
 
 39. Despondency. 
 
 40. Analogy. 
 
 41. Association. 
 
 42. Fallacies. 
 
 43. Fundamental verities. 
 
 44. Bottoming. 
 
 45. Transferring of thoughts. 
 
 483 
 
OF THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDER- 
 STANDING. 
 
 Sect. 1 . Introduction . — The last resort a man has recourse to, in the con- 
 duct of himself, is his understanding: for though we distinguish the faculties 
 of the mind, and give the supreme command to the will, as to an agent ; yet 
 the truth is, the man who is the agent, determines himself to this or that 
 voluntary action, upon some precedent knowledge, or appearance of know- 
 ledge, in the understanding. No man ever sets himself about any thing but 
 upon some view or other, which serves him for a reason for what he does : 
 and whatsoever faculties he employs, the understanding, with such light as 
 it lias, well or ill informed, constantly leads ; and by that light, true or false, 
 all his operative powers are directed. The will itself, how absolute and un- 
 controllable soever it may be thought, never fails in its obedience to the dic- 
 tates of the understanding. Temples have their sacred images, and we see 
 what influence they have always had over a great part of mankind. But, in 
 truth, the ideas and images in men’s minds are the invisible powers that con- 
 stantly govern them ; and to these they all universally pay a ready submis- 
 sion. It is, therefore, of the highest concernment that great care should be 
 taken of the understanding, to conduct it right in the search of knowledge, 
 and in the judgments it makes. 
 
 The logic, now in use, has so long possessed the chair, as the only art 
 taught in the schools, for the direction of the mind, in the study of the arts 
 and sciences, that it would perhaps be thought an affectation of novelty to 
 suspect, that rules, that have served the learned world these two or three 
 thousand years, and which, without any complaint of defects, the learned 
 have rested in, are not sufficient to guide the understanding. And I should 
 not doubt but this attempt would be censured as vanity or presumption, did 
 not the great lord Yerulam’s authority justify it; who, not servilely thinking 
 learning could not be advanced beyond what it was, because for many ages 
 it had not been, did not rest in the lazy approbation and applause of what, 
 was, because it was ; but enlarged his mind to what it might be. In his pre- 
 face to his Novum Organum, concerning logic, he pronounces thus : “ Qui 
 summas dialectic© partes tribuerunt, atque inde fidissima scientiis prsesidia 
 comparari putarunt, verissime et optima viderunt intellectual humanum, sibi 
 permissum, ineritb suspectum esse debere. Verum infirmior omnino est 
 malo medicina ; nec ipsa mali expers. Siquidem dialectica, quee recepta est, 
 licet ad civilia et artes, quee in sermone et opinione posit© sunt, rectissiml; 
 adhibeatur; natural tamen subtilitatem longo intervallo non attingit, et pren- 
 sando quod non capit, ad errores potius stabiliendos et quasi figendos, quam 
 ad viam veritati aperiendam valuit.” 
 
 “ They,” says he, “ who attributed so much to logic, perceived very well 
 and truly, that it was not safe to trust the understanding to itself without the 
 guard of any rules. But the remedy reached not the evil, but became a part 
 of it : for the logic, which took place, though it might do well enough in civil 
 
486 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 1. 
 
 affairs, and the arts, which consisted in talk and opinion ; yet comes very 
 far short of subtlety, in the real performances of nature ; and, catching- at 
 what it cannot reach, has served to confirm and establish errors, rather than 
 eo open a way to truth.” And therefore a little after he says, “ That it is 
 absolutely necessary that a better and perfecter use and employment of the 
 mind and understanding should be introduced.” “ Necessarib requiritur ut 
 melior et perfectior mentis et intellectus humani usus et adoperatio intro- 
 ducatur.” 
 
 Sect. 2. Parts . — There is, it is visible, great variety in men’s understand- 
 ings, and their natural constitutions put so wide a difference between some 
 men, in this respect, that art and industry would never be able to master; 
 and their very natures seem to want a foundation to raise on it that which 
 other men easily attain unto. Among men of equal edutation there is great 
 inequality of parts. And the woods of America, as well as the schools of 
 Athens, produce men of several abilities in the same kind. Though this 
 be so, yet I imagine most men come very short of what they might at- 
 tain unto, in their several degrees, by a neglect of their understandings. A 
 few rules of logic are thought sufficient, in this case, for those who pretend 
 to the highest improvement ; whereas I think there are a great many natural 
 defects in the understanding, capable of amendment ; which are overlooked 
 and wholly neglected. And it is easy to perceive, that men are guilty of a 
 great many faults in the exercise and improvement of this faculty of the mind, 
 which hinder them in their progress, and keep them in ignorance and error 
 all their lives. Some of them I shall take notice of, and. endeavour to point 
 out proper remedies for, in the following discourse. 
 
 Sect. 3. Reasoning . — Besides the want of determined ideas, and of saga- 
 city, and exercise in finding out, and laying in order, intermediate ideas ; 
 there are three miscarriages that men are guilty of, in reference to their rea- 
 son, whereby this faculty is hindered in them from that service it might do, 
 and was designed for. And he that reflects upon the actions and discourses 
 of mankind, will find their defects in this kind very frequent, and very ob- 
 servable. 
 
 1. The first is of those who seldom reason at all, but do and think accord- 
 ing to the example of others, whether parents, neighbours, ministers, or who 
 else they are pleased to make choice of to have an implicit faith in, for the 
 saving of themselves the pains and trouble of thinking and examining for 
 themselves. 
 
 2. The second is of those who put passion in the place of reason, and, being 
 resolved that shall govern their actions and arguments, neither use their own, 
 nor hearken to other people’s reason, any farther than it suits their humour, 
 interest, or party; and these one may observe commonly content themselves 
 with words which have no distinct ideas to them, though, in other matters 
 that they come with an unbiassed indiffereney to, they want not abilities to 
 talk and hear reason, where they have no secret inclination that hinders 
 them from being intractable to it. 
 
 3. The third sort is of those who readily and sincerely follow reason ; but, 
 for want of having that which one may call large, sound, round-about sense, 
 have not a full view of all that relates to the question, and may be of moment 
 to decide it. We are all short-sighted, and very often see but one side of 
 the matter ; our views are not extended to all that has a connexion with it. 
 From this defect. I think no man is free. We see but in part, and we know but 
 in part, and therefore it is no wonder we conclude not right from our partial 
 views. This might instruct the proudest esteemer of his own parts, how 
 useful it is to talk and consult with others, even such as come short of him 
 in capacity, quickness, and penetration : for, since no one sees all, and we 
 generally have different prospects of the same thing, according to our dif- 
 ferent, as I may say, positions to it ; it is not incongruous to think, nor be- 
 neath any man to try, whether another may not have notions of things which 
 have escaped him, and which his reason would make use of if they came into 
 
Sect. 3. 
 
 REASONING. 
 
 48V 
 
 his mind. The faculty of reasoning seldom or never deceives those who 
 trust to it; its consequences, from what it builds on, are evident and certain; 
 but that which it oftenest, if not only, misleads us in, is, that the principles 
 from which we conclude the grounds upon which we bottom our reasoning, are 
 but a part, something is left out, which should go into the reckoning, to 
 make it just and exact. Here we may imagine a vast and almost infinite 
 advantage' that angels and separate spirits may have over us ; who, in their 
 several degrees of elevation above us, may be endowed with more compre- 
 hensive faculties : and some of them, perhaps, having perfect and exact views 
 of all finite beings that come under their consideration, can, as it were, in 
 the twinkling of an eye, collect together all their scattered and almost bound- 
 less relations. A mind so furnished, what reason has it to acquiesce in the 
 certainty of its conclusions ! 
 
 In this we may see the reason why some men of study and thought, that 
 reason right, and are lovers of truth, do make no great advances in their dis- 
 coveries of it. Error and truth are uncertainly blended in their minds ; their 
 decisions are latne and defective, and they are very often mistaken in their judg- 
 ments : the reason whereof is, they converse but with one sort of men, they 
 read but one sort of books, they will not come in the hearing but of one sort 
 of notions : the truth is, they canton out to themselves a little Goshen, in the 
 intellectual world, where light shines, and, as they conclude, day blesses 
 them ; but the rest of that vast expansum they give up to night and darkness, 
 and so avoid coming near it. They have a pretty traffic with known corres- 
 pondents, in some little creek ; within that they confine themselves, and are 
 dexterous managers enough of the wares and products of that corner, witli 
 which they content themselves, but will not venture out into the great ocean 
 of knowledge, to survey the riches that nature hath stored other parts with, 
 no less genuine, no less solid, no less useful, than what has fallen to their 
 lot in the admired plenty and sufficiency of their own little spot, which to 
 them contains whatsoever is good in the universe. Those who live thus 
 mewed up within their own contracted territories, aild will not look abroad 
 beyond the boundaries that chance, conceit, or laziness, has set to their in- 
 quiries ; but live separate from the notions, discourses, and attainments of the 
 rest of mankind; may not amiss be represented by the inhabitants of the 
 Marian islands, who, being separated, by a large tract of sea, from all com- 
 munion with the habitable parts of the earth, thought themselves the only 
 people of the world. And though the straitness of the conveniences of life 
 among them had never reached' so far as to the use of fire till the Spaniards, 
 not many years since, in their voyages from Acapulco to Manilla, brought it 
 among them, yet, in the want and ignorance of almost all things, they looked 
 upon themselves, even after that the Spaniards had brought among them the 
 notice of variety of nations, abounding in sciences, arts, and conveniences of 
 life, of which they knew nothing ; they looked upon themselves, I say, as the 
 happiest and wisest people of the universe. But, for all that, nobody, I think, 
 will imagine them deep naturalists, or solid metaphysicians; nobody will 
 deem the quickest-sighted among them to have very enlarged views in ethics 
 or politics ; nor can any one allow the most capable among them to be ad- 
 vanced so far in his understanding as to have any other knowledge but of the 
 few little things of his and the neighbouring islands, within his commerce ; 
 but far enough from that comprehensive enlargement of mind, which adorns a 
 soul devoted to truth, assisted with letters, and a free generation of the seve- 
 ral views and sentiments of thinking men of all sides. Let not men, there- 
 fore, that would have a sight of what every one pretends to be desirous to 
 have a sight of, truth in its full extent, narrow and blind their own prospect 
 Let not men think there is no truth but in the sciences that they study, or 
 books that they read. To prejudge other men’s notions, before we have 
 looked into them, is not to show their darkness, but to put out our own eyes. 
 “ Try all things, hold fast to that which is good,” is a divine rule, coming 
 from the Father of light and truth ; and it is hard to know what other wav 
 
488 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 3. 
 
 men can come at truth, to lay hold of it, if they do not dig and search for it 
 as for gold and hid treasure ; but he that does so must have much earth and 
 rubbish, before he gets the pure metal : sand, and pebbles, and dross usually 
 lie blended with it; but the gold is nevertheless gold, and will enrich the man 
 that ersploys his pains to seek and separate it. Neither is there any danger 
 he should be deceived by the mixture. Every man carries about him a touch- 
 stone, if he will make use of it, to distinguish substantial gold from superfi- 
 cial glitterings, truth from appearances. And, indeed, the use and benefit of 
 this touchstone, which is natural reason, is spoiled and lost only by assumed 
 prejudices, overweening presumption, and narrowing our minds. The want 
 of exercising it, in the full extent of things intelligible, is that which weakens 
 and extinguishes this noble faculty in us. Trace it, and see whether it be 
 not so. The day labourer in a country village has commonly but a small 
 pittance of knowledge, because his ideas and notions have been confined to 
 the narrow bounds of a poor conversation and employment ; the low mecha- 
 nic of a country town does somewhat outdo him ; porters and cobblers of 
 great cities surpass him. A country gentleman who, leaving Latin and learn- 
 ing in the university, removes thence to his mansion-house, and associates 
 with neighbours of the same strain, who relish nothing but hunting and a 
 bottle ; with those alone he spends his time, with those alone he converses, 
 and can away with no company whose discourse goes beyond what claret and 
 dissoluteness inspire : such a patriot, formed in this happy way of improve- 
 ment, cannot fail, as we see, to give notable decisions upon the bench, at 
 quarter sessions, and eminent proofs of his skill in politics, when the strength 
 of his purse and party have advanced him to a more conspicuous station. 
 To such a one, truly, an ordinary coffee-house gleaner of the city is an arrant 
 statesman, and as much superior to, as a man conversant about Whitehall 
 and the court is to an ordinary shopkeeper. To carry this a little farther : 
 here is one muffled up in the zeal and infallibility of his own sect, and will 
 not touch a book or enter into debate with a person that will question any 
 of those things which to him are sacred. Another surveys our differences in 
 religion with an equitable and fair indifference, and so finds, probably, that 
 none of them are in every thing unexceptionable. These divisions and sys- 
 tems were made by men, and carry the mark of fallible on them ; and in 
 those whom he differs from, and, till he opened his eyes, had a general pre- 
 judice against, he meets with more to be said for a great many things than 
 before he was aware of, or could have imagined. Which of these two, now, 
 is most likely to judge right in our religious controversies, and to be most 
 stored with truth, the mark all pretend to aim at 1 All these men, that 1 
 have instanced in, thus unequally furnished with truth, and advanced in 
 knowledge, I suppose of equal natural parts ; all the odds between them has 
 been the different scope that has been given to their understandings to 
 range in, for the gathering up of information, and furnishing their heads with 
 ideas and notions and observations, whereon to employ their mind and form 
 their understandings. 
 
 It will possibly be objected, “ who is sufficient for all this V’ I answer, 
 more than can be imagined. Every one knows what his proper business is, 
 and what, according to the character he makes of himself, the world may 
 justly expect of him ; and, to answer that, he will find he will have time anil 
 opportunity enough to furnish himself, if he will not deprive himself, by a 
 narrowness of spirit, of those helps that are at hand. I do not say to be a 
 good geographer, that a man should visit every mountain, river, promontory, 
 and creek, upon the face of the earth, view the buildings, and survey the 
 land every where, as if he were going to make a purchase; but yet every 
 one must allow that he shall know a country better, that makes often salhes 
 into it, and traverses up and down, than he that, like a mill-horse, goes still 
 round in the same track, or keeps within the narrow bounds of a field or two 
 mat delight him. He that will inquire out the best books in every science, 
 and inform himself of the most material authors of the several sects of philo- 
 
Sect. 3. 
 
 REASONING. 
 
 489 
 
 sophy and religion, will not find it an infinite work to acquaint himself with 
 the sentiments of mankind, concerning the most weighty and comprehensive 
 subjects. Let him exercise the freedom of his reason and understanding in 
 such a latitude as this, and his mind will be strengthened, his capacity en- 
 larged, his faculties improved ; and the light, which the remote and scattered 
 parts of truth will give to one another, will so assist his judgment, that he 
 will seldom be widely out, or miss giving proof of a clear head and a com- 
 prehensive knowledge. At least, this is the only way I know to give the 
 understanding its due improvement to 1 he full extent of its capacity, and to 
 distinguish the two most different things I know in the world, a logical chi- 
 caner from a man of reason. Only he, that would thus give the mind its 
 flight, and send abroad his inquiries into all parts after truth, must be sure to 
 settle in his head determined ideas of all that he employs his thoughts about, 
 and never fail to judge himself, and judge unbiassedly, of all that he receives 
 from others, either in their writings or discourses. Reverence or prejudice 
 must not be suffered to give beauty or deformity to any of their opinions. 
 
 Sect. 4. Of 'practice and habits . — We are born with faculties and 
 powers capable almost of any thing, such at least as would carry us farther 
 than can easily be imagined : but it is only the exercise of those powers 
 which gives us ability and skill in any thing, and leads us towards perfection. 
 
 A middle-aged ploughman will scarce ever be brought to the carriage and 
 language of a gentleman, though his body be as well proportioned, and his 
 joints as supple, and his natural parts not any way inferior. The legs of a 
 dancing-master, and the fingers of a musician, fall as it were naturally, with- 
 out thought or pains, into regular and admirable motions. Bid them change 
 their parts, and they will in vain endeavour to produce like motions in the 
 members not used to them, and it will require length of time and long practice 
 to attain but some degrees of a like ability. What incredible and astonishing 
 actions do we find rope-dancers and tumblers bring their bodies to ! Not but 
 that sundry, in almost all manual arts, are as wonderful ; but I name those 
 which the world takes notice of for such, because on that very account they 
 give money to see them. All these admired motions, beyond the reach and 
 almost conception of unpractised spectators, are nothing but the mere effects 
 of use and industry in men, whose bodies have nothing peculiar in them from 
 those of the amazed lookers on. 
 
 As it is in the body, so it is in the mind ; practice makes it what it is, and 
 most even of those excellencies, which are looked on as natural endowments, 
 will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to be the product of exer- 
 cise, and to be raised to that pitch only by repeated actions. Some men are 
 remarked for pleasantness in raillery; others for apologues and apposite di- 
 verting stories. This is apt to be taken for the effect of pure nature, and that 
 the rather, because it is not got by rules, and those who excel in either of 
 them never purposely set themselves to the study of it, as an art to be learnt. 
 But yet it is true that at first some lucky hit, which took with somebody, and 
 gained him commendation, encouraged him to try again, inclined his thoughts 
 and endeavours that way, till at last he insensibly got a facility in it, without 
 perceiving how ; and that is attributed wholly to nature, which was mucll 
 more the effect of use and practice. I do not deny that natural disposition 
 may often give the first rise to it, but that never carries a man far, without 
 use and exercise; and it is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind, 
 as well as those of the body, to their perfection. Many a good poetic vein 
 is buried under a trade, and never produces any thing for want of improve- 
 ment. We see the ways of discourse and reasoning are very different, even 
 concerning the same matter, at court and in the university. And he that will 
 go but from Westminster-hall to the Exchange, will find a different genius 
 and turn in their ways of talking ; and yet one cannot think that all whose 
 lot fell in the city were born with different parts from those who were bred 
 at the university or inns of court. 
 
 To what purpose all tins, but to show that the difference, so observable in 
 3 M 
 
490 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 4. 
 
 men’s understandings and parts, does not arise so much from their natural 
 faculties as acquired habits. He would be laughed at, that should go about 
 to make a fine dancer out of a country hedger, at past fifty. And he will not 
 have much better success, who shall endeavour, at that age, to make a man 
 reason well, or speak handsomely, who has never been used to it, though you 
 should lay before him a collection of all the best precepts of logic or oratory. 
 Nobody is made any thing by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his 
 memory ; practice must settle the habit of doing* without reflecting on the 
 rule ; and you may as well hope to make a good painter or musician extem- 
 pore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a co- 
 herent thinker, or a strict reasoner, by a set of rules showing him wherein 
 right reasoning consists. 
 
 This being so, that defects and weakness in men’s understandings, as well 
 as other faculties, come from want of a right use of their own minds ; I am apt 
 to think the fault is generally mislaid upon nature, and there is often a com- 
 plaint of want of parts, when the fault lies in want of a due improvement of 
 them. We see men frequently dexterous and sharp enough in making a bargain, 
 who, if you reason with them about matters of religion, appear perfectly stupid. 
 
 Sect. 5. Ideas . — I will not here, in what relates to the right conduct and 
 improvement of the understanding, repeat again the getting clear and deter- 
 mined ideas, and the employing our thoughts rather about them than about 
 sounds put for them ; nor of settling the signification of words, which we 
 use with ourselves in the search of truth, or with others, in discoursing about 
 it. Those hinderances of our understandings in the pursuit of knowledge I 
 have sufficiently enlarged upon in another place ; so that nothing more needs 
 here to be said of those matters. 
 
 Sect. 6. Principles . — There is another fault that stops or misleads men 
 in their knowledge, which I have also spoken something of, but yet is neces- 
 sary to mention here again, that we may examine it to the bottom, and see 
 the root it springs from ; and that is a custom of taking up with principles 
 that are not self-evident, and very often not so much as true. It is not unu- 
 sual to see men rest their opinions upon foundations that have no more cer- 
 tainty and solidity than the propositions built on them and embraced for 
 their sake. Such foundations are these and the like, viz. — the founders or 
 leaders of my party are good men, and therefore their tenets are true ; — it is 
 the opinion of a sect that is erroneous, therefore it is false : — it hath been long 
 received in the world, therefore it is true ; or — it is new, and therefore false. 
 
 These and many the like, which are by no means the measures of truth 
 and falsehood, the generality of men make the standards by which they ac- 
 custom their understanding to judge. And thus, they falling into a habit of 
 determining of truth and falsehood by such wrong measures, it is no wonder 
 they should embrace error for certainty, and be very positive in things they 
 have no ground for. 
 
 There is not any, who pretends to the least reason, but, when any of these 
 his false maxims are brought to the test, must acknowledge them to be fallible, 
 and such as he will not allow in those that differ from him ; and yet, after he 
 is convinced of this, jmu shall see him go on in the use of them, and, the 
 very next occasion that offers, argue again upon the same grounds. Would 
 one not be ready to think that men are willing to impose upon themselves 
 and mislead their own understandings, who conduct them by such wrong 
 measures, even after they see they cannot be relied on! But yet they will 
 not appear so blameable as may be thought at first sight ; for I think there 
 are a great many that argue thus in earnest, and do it not to impose on them- 
 selves or others. They are persuaded of what they say, and think there is 
 weight in it, though in a like case they have been convinced there is none 
 but men would be intolerable to themselves, and contemptible to others, if 
 they should embrace opinions without any ground, and hold what they could 
 give no manner of reason for. True or false, solid or sandy, the mind mus 
 have some foundation to rest itself upon; and, as I have remarked in anothe ; 
 
Sect. 6. 
 
 PRINCIPLES. 
 
 491 
 
 place, it no sooner entertains any proposition, but it presently hastens to 
 some hypothesis to bottom it on ; till then it is unquiet and unsettled. So 
 much do our own very tempers dispose us to a right use of our understand- 
 ings, if vve would follow, as we should, the inclinations of our nature. 
 
 In some matters of concernment, especially those of religion, men are 
 not permitted to be always wavering and uncertain ; they must embrace and 
 profess some tenets or other ; and it would be a shame, nay a contradiction too 
 heavy for any one’s mind to lie constantly under, for him to pretend seriously 
 to be persuaded of the truth of any religion, and yet not to be able to give any 
 reason of his belief, or to say any thing for his preference of this to any other 
 opinion : and therefore they must make use of some principles or other, and 
 those can be no other than such as they have and can manage ; and to say 
 they are not in earnest persuaded by them, and do not rest upon those they 
 make use of, is contrary to experience, and to allege that they are not misled 
 when we complain they are. 
 
 If this be so, it will be urged, why then do they not make use of sure and 
 unquestionable principles, rather than rest on such grounds as may deceive 
 them, and will, as is visible, serve to support error as well as truth 1 
 
 To this I answer, the reason why they do not make use of better and surer 
 principles is because they cannot : but this inability proceeds not from want 
 of natural parts (for those few, whose case that is, are to be excused), but 
 for want of use and exercise. Few men are, from their youth, accustomed 
 to strict reasoning, and to trace the dependence of any truth, in a long train 
 of consequences, to its remotest principles, and to observe its connexion ; 
 and he that by frequent practice has not been used to this employment of his 
 understanding, it is no more wonder that he should not, when he is growr 
 into years, be able to bring his mind to it, than that he should not be on ? 
 sudden, able to grave or design, dance on the ropes or write a good hand 
 who has never practised either of them. 
 
 Nay, the most of men are so wholly strangers to this, that they do not so 
 much as perceive their want of it ; they despatch the ordinary business of 
 their callings by rote, as we say, as they have learnt it ; and if at any time 
 they miss success, they impute it to any thing rather than want of thought or 
 skill ; that they conclude (because they know no better) they have in perfec- 
 tion : or, if there be any subject that interest or fancy has recommended to 
 their thoughts, their reasoning about it is still after their own fashion ; be it 
 better or worse, it serves their turns, and is the best they are acquainted 
 with ; and, therefore, when they are led by it into mistakes, and their business 
 succeeds accordingly, they impute it to any cross accident or default of others, 
 rather than to their own want of understanding ; that is what nobody disco- 
 vers or complains of in himself. Whatsoever made his business to miscarry, 
 it was not want of right thought and judgment in himself: he -sees no such 
 defect in himself, but is satisfied that he carries on his designs well enough 
 by his own reasoning, or at least should have done, had it not been for un- 
 lucky traverses not in his power. Thus, being content with this short and 
 very imperfect use of his understanding, he never troubles himself to seek 
 out methods of improving his mind, and lives all his life without any notion 
 of close reasoning, in a continued connexion of a long train of consequences 
 from sure foundations ; such as is requisite for the making out and clearing 
 most of the speculative truths most men own to believe, and are most con- 
 cerned in. Not to mention here, what I shall have occasion to insist on by 
 and by more fully, viz. that in many cases it is not one series of conse- 
 quences will serve the turn, but many different and opposite deductions must 
 be examined and laid together, before a man can come to make a right judg- 
 ment of the point in question. What then can be expected from men that 
 neither see the want of any such kind of reasoning as this : nor, if they do, 
 know how to set about it, or could perform it 1 You may as well set a coun- 
 tryman, who scarce knows the figures, and never cast up a sum of three par- 
 ticulars, to state a merchant’s long account, and find the true balance of it. 
 
492 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 6 
 
 What then should be done in the case! I answer, we should always re- 
 member what I said above, that the faculties of our souls are improved and 
 made useful to us, just after the same manner as our bodies are. Would 
 you have a man write or paint, dance or fence well, or perform any other 
 manual operation dexterously and with ease ; let him have ever so much 
 vigour and activity, suppleness and address naturally, yet nobody expects this 
 from him, unless he has been used to it, and has employed time and pains in 
 fashioning and forming hrs hand, or outward parts to these motions. Just so 
 it is in the mind : would you have a man reason well, you must use him to it 
 betimes, exercise his mind in observing the connexion of ideas, and following 
 them in train. Nothing does this better than mathematics, which, therefore, 
 I think should be taught all those who have the time and opportunity ; not so 
 much to make them mathematicians, as to make them reasonable creatures ; 
 for though we all call ourselves so, because we are born to it, if we please , 
 yet we may truly say, nature gives us but the seeds of it : we are born to be, 
 if we please, rational creatures ; but it is use and exercise only that make us 
 so, and we are, indeed, so no farther than industry and application have car- 
 ried us. And, therefore, in ways of reasoning, which men have not been 
 used to, he that will observe the conclusions they take up, must be satisfied 
 they are not all rational. 
 
 This has been the less taken notice of, because every one, in his private 
 affairs, uses some sort of reasoning or other, enough to denominate him rea- 
 sonable. But the mistake is, that he that is found reasonable in one thing is 
 concluded to be so in all, and to think or to say otherwise is thought so unjust 
 an affront, and so senseless a ^ensure, that nobody ventures to dQ it. It looks 
 like the degradation of a man below the dignity of his nature. It is true, 
 that he that reasons well in any one thing has a mind naturally capable of 
 reasoning well in others, and to the same degree of strength and clearness, 
 and possibly much greater, had his understanding been so employed. But it 
 is as true that he who can reason well to-day about one sort of matters, can- 
 not at all reason to day about others, though perhaps a year hence he may. 
 But wherever a man’s rational faculty fails him, and will not serve him to 
 reason, there we cannot say he is rational, how capable soever he may be, by 
 time and exercise, to become so. 
 
 Try in men of low and mean education, who have never elevated their 
 thoughts above the spade and the plough nor looked beyond the ordinary 
 drudgery of a day-labourer. Take the thoughts of such an one, used for 
 many years to one track, out of that narrow compass, he has been all his life 
 confined to, you will find him no more capable of reasoning than almost a 
 perfect natural. Some one or two rules, on which their conclusions imme- 
 diately depend, you will find in most men have governed all their thoughts ; 
 these, true or false, have been the maxims they have been guided by ; take 
 these from them, and they are perfectly at a loss, their compass and pole-star 
 then are gone, and their understanding is perfectly at a nonplus ; and there- 
 fore they either immediately return to their old maxims again, as the founda- 
 tions of all truth to them, notwithstanding all that can be said to show their 
 weakness ; or if they give them up to their reasons, they, with them, give 
 up all truth and farther inquiry, and think there is no such thing as certainty. 
 For if you would enlarge their thoughts, and settle them upon more remote 
 and surer principles, they either cannot easily apprehend them ; or, if they 
 can, know not what use to make of them ; for long deductions from remote 
 principles are what they have not been used to, and cannot manage. 
 
 What then, can grown men never be improved, or enlarged in their under- 
 standings 1 I say not so ; but this I think I may say, that it will not be done 
 without industry and application, which will require more time and pains than 
 grown men, settled in their course of life, will allow to it, and therefore very 
 seldom is done. And this very capacity of attaining it, by use and exercise 
 only, brings us back to that which I laid down before, that it is only practice 
 
PRINCIPLES. 
 
 Sect. 6. 
 
 49 £ 
 
 that improves our minds as well as bodies, and we must expect nothing from 
 our understandings, any farther than they are perfected by habits. 
 
 The Americans are not all born with worse understandings than the Eu- 
 ropeans, though we see none of them have such reaches in the arts and 
 sciences. And, among the children of a poor countryman, the lucky chance 
 of education, and getting into the world, gives one infinitely the superiority 
 in parts over the rest, who, continuing at home, had continued also just of 
 the same size with his brethren. 
 
 He that has to do with young scholars, especially in mathematics, may 
 perceive how their minds open by degrees, and how it is exercise alone that 
 opens them. Sometimes they will stick a long time at a part of demonstra- 
 tion, not for want of will and application, but really for want of perceiving 
 the connexion of two ideas, that, to one whose understanding is more exer- 
 cised, is as visible as any thing can be. The same would be with a grown 
 man beginning to study mathematics ; the understanding, for want of use, 
 often sticks in every plain way, and he himself that is so puzzled, when he 
 comes to see the connexion, wonders what it was he stuck at, in a case so 
 plain. 
 
 Sect. 7. Mathematics . — I have mentioned mathematics as a way to settle 
 in the mind a habit of reasoning closely and in train ; not that I think it ne- 
 cessary that ah men should be deep mathematicians, but that, having got the 
 way of reasoning, which that study necessarily brings the mind to, they might 
 be able to transfer it to other parts of knowledge, as they shall have occasion. 
 For, in all sorts of reasoning, every single argument should be managed as a 
 mathematical demonstration : the connexion and dependence of ideas should 
 be followed, till the mind is brought to the source on which it bottoms, and 
 observes the coherence all along, though in proofs of probability one such 
 train is not enough to settle the judgment, as in demonstrative knowledge. 
 
 Where a truth is made out by one demonstration, there needs no farther 
 inquiry; but in probabilities, wl «re there wants demonstration to establish 
 the truth beyond doubt, there it is not enough to trace one argument to its 
 source, and observe its strength and, weakness, but all the arguments, after 
 having been so examined on both sides, must be laid in balance one against 
 another, and, upon the whole, the understanding determine its assent. 
 
 This is a way of reasoning the understanding should be accustomed to, 
 which is so different from what the illiterate are used to, that even learned 
 men oftentimes seem to have very little or no notion of it. Nor is it to be 
 wondered, since the way of disputing, in the schools, leads them quite away 
 from it, by insisting on one topical argument, by the success of which the 
 truth or falsehood of the question is to be determined, and victory adjudged 
 to the opponent or defendant ; which is all one as if one should balance an 
 account by one sum, charged and discharged, when there are an hundred 
 others to be taken into consideration. 
 
 This, therefore, it would be well if men’s minds were accustomed to, and 
 that early ; that they might not erect their opinions upon one single view, 
 when so many other are requisite to make up the account, and must come 
 into the reckoning, before a man can form a right judgment. This would 
 enlarge their minds, and give a due freedom to their understandings, that they 
 might not be led into error by presumption, laziness, or precipitancy ; for I 
 think nobody can approve such a conduct of the understanding as should 
 mislead it from truth, though it be ever so much in fashion to make use of it. 
 
 To this perhaps it will be objected, that to manage the understanding as I 
 propose, would require every man to be a scholar, and to be furnished with 
 all the materials of knowledge, and exercised in all the ways of reasoning. 
 To which I answer, that it is a shame for those that have time, and the means 
 to attain knowledge, to want any helps or assistance, for the improvement 
 of their understandings, that are to be got ; and to such I would be thought 
 here chiefly to speak. Those methinks who, by the industry and parts of 
 (lieu ancestors, have been set free from a constant drudgery to their backs 
 
494 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 7. 
 
 and their bellies, should bestow some of their spare time on their heads, and 
 open their minds, by some trials and essays, in all the sorts and matters o f 
 reasoning;. I have before mentioned mathematics, wherein algebra gives new 
 nelps and views to the understanding. If I propose these, it is not, as I said, 
 to make every man a thorough mathematician, or a deep algebraist ; but yet 
 I think the study of them is of infinite use, even to grown men ; first, by ex- 
 perimentally convincing them, that to make any one reason well, it is not 
 enough to have parts wherewith he is satisfied, and that serve him well enough 
 in his ordinary course. A man in those studies will see, that however good lie 
 mav think his understanding, yet in many things, and those very visible, it may 
 fail him. This would take off that presumption that most men have of them- 
 selves in this part; and they would not be so apt to think their minds wanted 
 no helps to enlarge them, that there could be nothing added to the acuteness 
 and penetration of their understandings. 
 
 Secondly, The study of mathematics would show them the necessity there 
 is in reasoning to separate all the distinct ideas, and see the habitudes that 
 all those concerned in the present inquiry have to one another, and to lay by 
 those which relate not to the proposition in hand, and wholly to leave them 
 out of the reckoning. This is that which in other subjects, besides quantity, 
 is what is absolutely requisite to just reasoning, though in them it is not so 
 easily observed, nor so carefully practised. In those parts of knowledge 
 where it is thouglft demonstration has nothing to do, men reason as it were 
 in the lump ; and if, upon a summary and confused view, or upon a partial 
 consideration, they can raise the appearance of a probability, they usually 
 rest content ; especially if it be in a dispute where every little straw is laid 
 hold on, and every thing that can but be drawn in any way to give colour to 
 the argument is advanced with ostentation. But that mind is not in a pos- 
 ture to find the truth, that does not distinctly take all the parts asunder, and, 
 omitting what is not at all to the point, draw a conclusion from the result of 
 all the particulars which any way influence it. There is another no less use- 
 ful habit to be got by an application to mathematical demonstrations, and that 
 is, of using the mind to a long train of.consequences ; but having mentioned 
 that already, I shall not again here repeat it. 
 
 As to men whose fortunes and time are narrower, what may suffice them 
 is not of that vast extent as may be imagined, and so comes not within the 
 objection. 
 
 Nobody is under an obligation to know every thing. Knowledge and 
 science in general is the business only of those who are at ease and lei- 
 sure. Those who have particular callings ought to understand them ; and it 
 is no unreasonable proposal, nor impossible to be compassed, that they should 
 think and reason right about what is their daily employment. This one can- 
 not think them incapable of, without levelling them with the brutes, and 
 charging them with a stupidity below the rank of rational creatures. 
 
 Sect. 8. Religion . — Besides his particular calling for the support of this 
 life, every one has a concern in a future life, which he is bound to look after. 
 This engages his thoughts in religion ; and here it mightily lies upon him to 
 understand and reason right. Men, therefore, cannot be excused from un- 
 derstanding the words, and framing the general notions relating to religion, 
 right. The one day of seven, besides other days of rest, allows in the Chris- 
 tian world time enough for this (had they no other idle hours) if they would 
 but make use of these vacancies from their daily labour, and apply themselves 
 to an improvement of knowledge with as much diligence as they often do to 
 a great many other things that are useless, and had but those that would en- 
 ter them according to their several capacities in a right way to this know- 
 ledge. The original make of their minds is like that of other men, and they 
 would be found not to want understanding fit to receive the knowledge of re- 
 ligion, if they were a little encouraged and helped in it, as they should be. 
 For there are instances of very mean people, who have raised their minds ts> 
 a great sense and understanding of religion : and though these ha^'t not been 
 
Sect. 8. 
 
 RELIGION. 
 
 49£ 
 
 so frequent as could be wished, yet they are enough to clear that condition 
 of life from a necessity of gross ignorance, and to show that more might be 
 brougnt to be rational creatures and Christians (for they can hardly be thought 
 really to be so, who, wearing the name, know not so much as the very prin- 
 ciples of that religion) if due care were taken of them. For, if I mistake not, 
 the peasantry lately in France (a rank of people under a much heavier pres- 
 sure of want and poverty than the day-labourers in England) of the reformed 
 religion understood it much better, and could say more for it than those of a 
 higher condition among us. 
 
 But if it shall be concluded that the meaner sort of people must give them- 
 selves up to brutish stupidity in things of their nearest concernment, which I 
 see no reason for, this excuses not those of a freer fortune and education, if 
 they neglect their understandings, and take no care to employ them as they 
 ought, and set them right in the knowledge of those things for which prin- 
 cipally they were given them. At least those, whose plentiful fortunes allow 
 them the opportunities and helps of improvements, are not so few, but that 
 it might be hoped great advancements might be made in knowledge of all 
 kinds, especially in that of the greatest concern and largest views, if men 
 would make a right use of their faculties, and study their own understandings. 
 
 Sect. 9. Ideas . — Outward corporeal objects, that constantly importune 
 our senses and captivate our appetites, fail not to fill our heads with lively 
 and lasting ideas of that kind. Here the mind needs not to be set up upon 
 getting greater store ; they offer themselves fast enough, and are usually en- 
 tertained with such plenty, and lodged so carefully, that the mind wants room or 
 attention for others that it has more use and need of. To fit the understanding, 
 therefore, for such reasoning as I have been above speaking of, care should be 
 taken to fill it with moral and more abstract ideas ; for these not offering 
 themselves to the senses, but being to be framed to the understanding, people 
 are generally so neglectful of a faculty they are apt to think wants nothing, 
 that I fear most men’s minds are more untarnished with such ideas than is 
 imagined. They often use the words, and how can they be suspected to 
 want the ideas 1 What I have said in the third book of my Essay will ex- 
 cuse me from any other answer to this question. But to convince people of 
 what moment it is to their understandings to be furnished with such abstract 
 ideas, steady and settled in them, give me leave to ask, how any one shall be 
 able to know whether he be obliged to be just, if he has not established ideas 
 in his mind of obligation and of justice; since knowledge consists in nothing 
 but the perceived agreement or disagreement of those ideas i ind so of all 
 others the like, which concern our lives and manners. And if men do find a 
 difficulty to see the agreement or disagreement of two angles, which lie be- 
 fore their eyes unalterable in a diagram ; how utterly impossible will it be to 
 perceive it in ideas that have no other sensible object to represent them to 
 the mind but sounds , with which they have no manner of conformity, and 
 therefore had need to be clearly settled in the mind themselves, if we would 
 make any clear judgment about them. This, therefore, is one of the first 
 things the mind should be employed about, in the right conduct of the under- 
 standing, without which it is impossible it should be capable of reasoning 
 right about those matters. But in these, and all other ideas, care must be 
 taken that they harbour no inconsistencies, and that they have a real exist- 
 ence where real existence is supposed ; and are not mere chimeras with a 
 supposed existence. 
 
 Sect. 10. Prejudice . — Every one is forward to complain of the prejudices 
 that mislead other men or parties, as if he were free, and had none of his 
 own. This being objected on all sides, it is agreed that it is a fault and an 
 hinde^ance to knowledge. What now is the cure 1 No other but this, that 
 every man should let alone others’ prejudices, and examine his own. Nobody 
 is convinced of his by the accusation of another : he recriminates by the same 
 rule, and is clear. The only way to remove this great cause of ignorance 
 and error out of the world is, for every one impartially to examine himself. 
 
496 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 10. 
 
 If others will not deal fairly with their own minds, does that make my errors 
 truths ! or ought it to make me in love with them, and willing to impose on 
 myself ! If others love cataracts in their eyes, should that hinder me from 
 couching of mine as soon as I can! Every one declares against blindness, 
 and yet who almost is not fond of that which dims his sight, and keeps the 
 clear light out of his mind, which should lead him into truth and knowledge ! 
 False or doubtful positions, relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those 
 in the dark from truth who build on them. Such are usually the prejudices 
 imbibed from education, party, reverence, fashion, interest, &c. This is the 
 mote which every one sees in his brother’s eye, but never regards the beam 
 in his own. For who is there almost that is ever brought fairly to examine 
 his own principles, and see whether they are such as will bear the trial ! 
 But yet this should be one of the first things every one should set about, and 
 be scrupulous in, who would rightly conduct his understanding in the search 
 of truth and knowledge. 
 
 To those who are willing to get rid of thiB great hinderance of knowledge 
 (for to such only I write), to those who would shake off this great and danger- 
 ous impostor, prejudice, who dresses up falsehood in the likeness of truth, 
 and so dexterously hoodwinks men’s minds, as to keep them in the dark, 
 with a belief that they are more in the light than any that do not see with 
 their eyes, — I shall offer this one mark whereby prejudice may be known. 
 He that is strongly of any opinion must suppose (unless he be self-con- 
 demned) that his persuasion is built upon good grounds; and that his assent 
 is no greater than what the evidence of the truth he holds forces him to ; and 
 that they are arguments, and not inclination, or fancy, that make him so 
 confident and positive in his tenets. Now if, after all his profession, he can- 
 not bear any opposition to his opinion, if he cannot so much as give a patient 
 hearing, much less examine and weigh the arguments on the other side, does 
 he not plainly confess it is prejudice governs him! and it is not the evidence 
 of truth, but some lazy anticipation, some beloved presumption, that he de- 
 sires to rest undisturbed in. For, if what he holds be, as he gives out, well 
 fenced with evidence, and he sees it to be true, what need he fear to put it 
 to the proof! If his opinion be settled upon a firm foundation, if the argu- 
 ments that support it, and have obtained his assent, be clear, good, and con- 
 vincing, why should he be shy to have it tried whether they be proof or not 1 
 He whose assent goes beyond this evidence, owes this excess of his adhe- 
 rence only to prejudice, and does in effect own it, when he refuses to hear 
 what is offered against it ; declaring thereby that it is not evidence he seeks, 
 but the quiet enjoyment of the opinion he is fond of, with a forward condem- 
 nation of all that may stand in opposition to it, unheard and unexamined ; 
 which, what is it but prejudice ! qui cequum statuerit, -parte inaudita altera 
 etiamsi cequum statuerit, haud cequus fuerit. He that would acquit himse.f 
 in this case as a lover of truth, not giving way to any pre-occupation or bias 
 that may mislead him, must do two things that are not very common nor 
 very easy. 
 
 Sect. 11. Indifferency. — First, He must not be in love with any opinion, 
 or wish it to be true, till he knows it to be so, and then he will not need to 
 wish it; for nothing that is false can deserve our good wishes, nor a desire 
 that it should have the place and force of truth ; and yet nothing is more fre • 
 quent than this. Men are fond of certain tenets upon no other evidence but 
 respect and custom, and think they must maintain them, or all is gone ; 
 though they have never examined the ground they stand on, nor have ever 
 made them out to themselves, or can make them out to others : we shoul 1 
 contend earnestly for the truth, but we should first be sure that it is truth, or 
 else we fight against God, who is the God of truth, and do the work of the 
 devil, who is the father and propagator of lies; and our zeal, though ever so 
 warm, will not excuse us, for this is plainly prejudice. 
 
 Sect. 12. Examine. — Secondly, He must do that which he will find him- 
 self very averse to, as judging the thing unnecessary, or himself incapable of 
 
Sect. 12. 
 
 EXAMINE. 
 
 497- 
 
 doing it. He must try whether his principles be certainly true, or not, and 
 how far he may safely rely upon them. This, whether fewer have the hear' 
 or the skill to do, I shall not determine ; but this, I am sure, is that which every 
 one ought to do, who professes to love truth, and would not impose upon 
 himself; which is a surer way to be made a fool of than by being exposed to 
 the sophistry of others. The disposition to put any cheat upon ourselves 
 works constantly, and we are pleased with it, but are impatient of being ban- 
 tered or misled by others. The inability I here speak of is not any natural 
 defect that makes men incapable of examining their own principles. To 
 such, rules of conducting their understandings are useless ; and that is the 
 case of very few. The great number is of those whom the ill habit of never 
 exerting their thoughts has disabled; the powers of their minds are starved 
 by disuse, and have lost that reach and strength which nature fitted them to 
 receive from exercise. Those who are in a condition to learn the first rules 
 of plain arithmetic,* and could be brought to cast up an ordinary sum, aTe 
 capable of this, if they had but accustomed their minds to reasoning : but they 
 that have wholly neglected the exercise of their understandings in this way, 
 will be very far, at first, from being able to do it, and as unfit for it as one 
 unpractised in figures to cast up a shop-book, and, perhaps, think it as strange 
 to be set about it. And yet it must nevertheless be confessed to be a wrong 
 use of our understandings, to build our tenets (in things where we are con- 
 cerned to hold the truth) upon principles that may lead us into error. We 
 take our principles at hap-hazard, upon trust, and without ever having ex- 
 amined them, and then believe a whole system, upon a presumption that they 
 are true and solid; and what is all this but childish, shameful, senseless cre- 
 dulity 1 
 
 In these two things, viz. an equal indifferency for all truth ; I mean the re- 
 ceiving it, the love of it, as truth, but not loving it for any other reason, be- 
 fore we know it to be true ; and in the examination of our principles, and not 
 receiving any for such, nor building on them, till we are fully convinced, as 
 rational creatures, of their solidity, truth, and certainty ; consists that free- 
 dom of the understanding which is necessary to a rational creature, and with- 
 out which it is not truly an understanding. It is conceit, fancy, extravagance, 
 any thing rather than understanding, if it must be under the constraint of 
 receiving and holding opinions by the authority of any thing but their own, 
 not fancied, but perceived, evidence. This was rightly called imposition, 
 and is of all other the worst and most dangerous sort of it. For we impose 
 upon ourselves, which is the strongest imposition of all others ; and we im- 
 pose upon ourselves in that part which ought with the greatest care to be kept 
 free from all imposition. The world is apt to cast great blame on those who 
 have an indifferency of opinions, especially in religion. I fear this is the 
 foundation of great error and worse consequences. To be indifferent which 
 of two opinions is true, is the right temper of the mind that preserves it from 
 being imposed on, and disposes it to examine with that indifferency, till it has 
 done its best to find the truth, and this is the only direct and safe way to it. 
 But to be indifferent whether we embrace falsehood or truth, is the great road 
 to error. Those who are not indifferent which opinion is true, are guilty of 
 this ; they suppose, without examining, that what they hold is true, and they 
 think they ought to be zealous for it. Those, it is plain by their warmth and 
 eagerness, are not indifferent for their own opinions, but methinks are very 
 indifferent whether they be true or false ; since they cannot endure to have 
 any doubts raised, or objections made against them ; and it is visible they 
 never have made any themselves, and so, never having examined them, know 
 not, nor are concerned, as they should be, to know whether they be true or 
 false. 
 
 These are the common and most general miscarriages which I think 
 men should avoid or rectify, in a right conduct of their understandings, and 
 should be particularly taken care of in education. The business whereof, in 
 respect of knowledge, is not, as I think, to perfect a learner in all or anv one 
 3 N 
 
498 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 12. 
 
 of the sciences, but to give his mind that freedom, that disposition, and those 
 habits, that may enable him to attain any part of knowledge he shall apply 
 himself to, or stand in need of in the future course of his life. 
 
 This, and this only, is well pripcipling, and not the instilling a reverence 
 and veneration for certain dogmas, under the specious title of principles, 
 which are often so remote from that truth and evidence which belongs to 
 principles, that they ought to be rejected, as false and erroneous ; and often 
 cause men so educated, when they come abroad into the world, and fine they 
 cannot maintain the principles so taken up and rested in, to cast off all prin- 
 ciples, and turn perfect sceptics, regardless of knowledge and virtue. 
 
 There are several weaknesses and defects in the understanding, either 
 from the natural temper of the mind, or ill habits taken up, which hinder it 
 in its progress to knowledge. Of these, there are as many, possibly, to be 
 found, if the mind were thoroughly studied, as there are diseases of the body, 
 each whereof clogs and disables the understanding to some degree, and 
 therefore deserves to be looked after and cured. I shall set down some few 
 to excite men, especially those who make knowledge their business, to look 
 into themselves, and observe whether they do not indulge some weaknesses, 
 allow some miscarriages in the management of their intellectual faculty, which 
 is prejudicial to them in the search of truth. 
 
 Sect. 13. Observations . — Particular matters of fact are the undoubted 
 foundations on which our civil and natural knowledge is built : the benefit the 
 understanding makes of them is to draw from them conclusions, which may 
 be as standing rules of knowledge, and consequently of practice. The mind 
 often makes not that benefit it should of the information it receives from the 
 accounts of civil or natural historians, by being too forward or too slow in 
 making observations on the particular facts recorded in them. 
 
 There are those who are very assiduous in reading, and yet do not much 
 advance their knowledge by it. They are delighted with the stories that are 
 told, and perhaps can tell them again, for they make all they read nothing 
 but history to themselves : but not reflecting on it, not making to themselves 
 observations from what they read, they are very little improved by all that 
 crowd of particulars, that either pass through, or lodge themselves in their 
 understanding. They dream on in a constant course of reading and cram- 
 ming themselves ; but not digesting any thing, it produces nothing but a heap 
 of crudities. 
 
 If their memories retain well, one may say, they have the materials of 
 knowledge ; but, like those for building, they are of no advantage, if there be 
 no other use made of them but to let them lie heaped up together. Opposite 
 to these, there are others who lose the improvement they should make of 
 matters of fact by a quite contrary conduct. They are apt to draw general 
 conclusions, and raise axioms from every particular they meet with. These 
 make as little true benefit of history as the other ; nay, being of forward and 
 active spirits, receive more harm by it ; it being of worse consequence to 
 steer one’s thoughts by a wrong rule, than to have none at all ; error doing 
 to busy men much more harm than ignorance to the slow and sluggish. Be- 
 tween these, those seem to do best, who taking material and useful hints, 
 sometimes from single matters of fact, carry them in their minds to be judged 
 of, by what they shall find in history, to confirm or reverse these imperfect 
 observations ; which may be established into rules fit to be relied on, when 
 they are justified by a sufficient and wary induction of particulars. He that 
 makes no such reflections on what he reads, only loads his mind with a rhap- 
 sody of tales, fit, in winter-nights, for the entertainment of others: and he 
 that will improve every matter of fact into a maxim, will abound in contrary 
 observation, that can be of no other use but to perplex and pudder him, if he 
 compares them ; or else to misguide him, if he gives himself up to the 
 authority of that, which for its novelty, or for some other fancy, best pleases 
 him. 
 
 Sect. 14. Bias . — Next to these, we may place those who suffer their 
 
Sect. i4. 
 
 BIAS. 
 
 499 
 
 own natural tempers and passions they are possessed with lo influence their 
 judgments, especially of men and things, that may any way relate to their 
 present circumstances and interest. Truth is all simple, all pure, will bear 
 no mixture of any thing else with it. It is rigid and inflexible to any by in- 
 terest ; and so should the understanding be, whose use and excellency lies 
 in conforming itself to it. To think of every thing just as it is in itself is 
 the proper business of the understanding, though it be not that which men 
 always employ it to. This all men, at first hearing, allow is the right use 
 every one should make of his understanding. Nobody will be at such an 
 open defiance with common sense as to profess that we should not endeavour 
 to know and think of things as they are in themselves ; and yet there is 
 nothing more frequent than to do the contrary ; and men are apt to excuse 
 themselves ; and think they have reason to do so, if they have but a pretence 
 that it is for God, or a good cause ; that is, in effect, for themselves, their 
 own persuasion, or party : for those in their turns the several sects of men, 
 especially in matters of religion, entitle God and a good cause. But God 
 requires not men to wrong or misuse their faculties for him, nor to lie to 
 others, or themselves, for his sake ; which they purposely do, who will not 
 suffer their understandings to have right conceptions of the things proposed 
 to them and designedly restrain themselves from having just thoughts of every 
 thing, as far as they are concerned to inquire. And as for a good cause, 
 that needs not such ill helps ; if it be good, truth will support it, and it has no 
 need of fallacy or falsehood. 
 
 Sect. 15. Arguments. — Very much of kin to this is the hunting after 
 arguments to make good one side of a question, and wholly to neglect and 
 refuse those which favour the other side. What is this but wilfully to mis- 
 guide the understanding, and is so far from giving truth its due value, that it 
 wholly debases it : espouse opinions that best comport with their power, pro- 
 fit, or credit, and then seek arguments to support them ? Truth lit upon this 
 way is of no more avail to us than error ; for what is so taken up by us may 
 be false as well as true, and he has not done his duty who has thus stumbled 
 upon truth in his way to preferment. 
 
 There is another, but more innocent way of collecting arguments, very 
 familiar among bookish men, which is to furnish themselves with the argu- 
 ments they meet with pro and con. in the questions they study. This helps 
 them not to judge right, nor argue strongly, but only to talk copiously on 
 either side, without being steady and settled in their own judgments : for 
 such arguments, gathered from other men’s thoughts, floating only in the 
 memory, are there ready, indeed, to supply copious talk with some appear- 
 ance of reason, but are far from helping us to judge right. Such variety of 
 arguments only distract the understanding that relies on them, unless it has 
 gone farther than such a superficial way of examining ; this is to quit truth 
 for appearance, only to serve our vanity. The sure and only way to get 
 true knowledge is to fonn in our minds clear settled notions of things, 
 with names annexed to those determined ides. These we are to consider, 
 with their several relations and habitudes, and not amuse ourselves with 
 floating names and words of indetermined signification, which we can use in 
 several senses to serve a turn. It is in the perception of the habitudes and 
 respects our ideas have one to another that real knowledge consists ; and 
 when a man once perceives how far they agree or disagree one with another, 
 he will be able to judge of what other people say, and will not need to be led 
 by the arguments of others, which are many of them nothing but plausible 
 sophistry. This will teach him to state the question right, and see whereon 
 it turns ; and thus he will stand upon his own legs, and know by his own un- 
 derstanding. Whereas by collecting and learning arguments by heart, he 
 will be but a retainer to others : and when any one questions the foundations 
 they are built upon, he will be at a nonplus, and be fain to give up his implicit 
 knowledge. 
 
 Sect. 16. Haste. — Labour for labours’ sake is against nature. The un- 
 
500 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect, 16. 
 
 derstanding, as well as all the other faculties, chooses always the shortest way 
 to its end, would presently obtain the knowledge it is about, and then set 
 upon some new inquiry. But this, whether laziness or haste, often misleads 
 it, and makes it content itself with improper ways of search, and such as will 
 not serve the turn : sometimes it rests upon testimony, when testimony of 
 right lias nothing to do, because it is easier to believe than to be scientifically 
 nstructed : sometimes it contents itself with one argument, and rests satis- 
 tied with that, as it were a demonstration, whereas the thing under ptoof 
 is not capable of demonstration, and therefore must be submitted to the 
 trial of probabilities, and all the material arguments pro and con. be exa- 
 mined and brought to a balance. In some cases the mind is determined by 
 probable topics in inquiries where demonstration may be had. All these, and 
 several others which laziness, impatience, custom, and want of use and at- 
 tention lead men into, are misapplications of the understanding in the search 
 of truth. In every question the nature and manner of the proof it is capable 
 of should be considered, to make our inquiry such as it should be. This would 
 save a great deal of frequently misemployed pains, and lead us sooner to that 
 discovery and possession of truth we are capable of. The multiplying variety 
 of arguments, especially frivolous ones, such as are all that are merely verbal, 
 is not only lost labour, but cumbers the memory to no purpose, and serves 
 only to hinder it from seizing and holding of the truth in all those cases which 
 are capable of demonstration. In such a way of proof the truth and certainty 
 is seen, and the mind fully possesses itself of it; when in the other way of 
 assent it only hovers about it, is amused with uncertainties. In this superfi- 
 cial way, indeed, the mind is capable of more variety of plausible talk, but is 
 not enlarged, as it should be, in its knowledge. It is to this same haste and 
 impatience of the mind also, that a not due tracing of the arguments to their 
 true foundation is owing ; men see a little, presume a great deal, and so jump 
 to the conclusion. This is a short way to fancy and conceit, and (if firmly 
 embraced) to opinionatry, but is certainly the farthest way about to know- 
 ledge. For he that will know, must by the connexion of the proofs see the 
 truth, and the ground it stands on ; and therefore, if he has for haste skipped 
 over what he should have examined, he must begin and go over all again, or 
 else he will never come to knowledge. 
 
 Sect. 17. Desultory . — Another fault of as ill consequence as this, which 
 proceeds also from laziness, with a mixture of vanity, is the skipping from 
 one sort of knowledge to another. Some men’s tempers are quickly weary 
 of any one thing. Constancy and assiduity is what they cannot bear : the 
 same study long continued in is as intolerable to them as the appearing long 
 in the same clothes, or fashion, is to a court-lady. 
 
 Sect. 18. Smattering. — Others, that they may seem universally knowing, 
 get a little nmattering in every thing. Both these may fill their heads with 
 superficial notions of things, but are very much out of the way of attaining 
 truth or knowledge. 
 
 Sect. 19. Universality . — I do not here speak against the taking a taste 
 of every sort of knowledge ; it is certainly very useful and necessary to form 
 the mind ; but then it must be done in a different way, and to a different end. 
 Not for talk and vanity to fill the head with shreds of all kinds, that he who 
 is possessed of such a frippery may be able to match the discourses of all he 
 shall meet with, as if nothing could come amiss to him ; and his head was so 
 well stored a magazine, that nothing could be proposed which lie was not 
 master of, and was readily furnished to entertain any one on. This is an ex- 
 cellency, indeed, and a great one too, to have a real and true knowledge in 
 all, or most of the objects of contemplation. But it is what the mind of one 
 and the same man can hardly attain unto ; and the instances are so few ot 
 those who have, in any measure, approached towards it, that I know no 
 whether they are to be proposed as examples in the ordinary conduct of the 
 understanding. For a man to understand fully the business of his particular 
 calling in the commonwealth, and of religion, which is his calling as he is a 
 
Sect. 19. 
 
 UNIVERSALITY. 
 
 501 
 
 man in the world, is usually enough to take up his whole time ; and there are 
 few that inform themselves in these, which is every man’s proper and peculiar 
 business, so to the bottom as they should do. But though this be so, and 
 there are very few men that extend their thoughts toward universal know- 
 ledge ; yet I do not doubt, but if the right way were taken, and the methods 
 of inquiry were ordered as they should be, men of little business and great 
 leisure might go a great deal farther in it than is usually done. To turn to 
 the business in hand; the end and use of a little insight in those parts of 
 knowledge, which are not a man’s proper business, is to accustom our 
 minds to all sorts of ideas, and the proper ways of examining their habitudes 
 and relations. This gives the mind a freedom, and the exercising the under- 
 standing in the several ways of inquiry and reasoning, which the most skill- 
 ful have made use of, teaches the mind sagacity and wariness, and a supple- 
 ness to apply itself more closely and dexterously to the bents and turns of the 
 matter in all its researches. Besides, this universal taste of all the sciences, 
 with an indifferency before the mind is possessed with any one in particular, 
 and grown into love and admiration of what is made its darling, will prevent 
 another evil, very commonly to be observed in those who have from the be- 
 ginning been seasoned only by one part of knowledge. Let a man be given 
 up to the contemplation of one sort of knowledge, and that will become every 
 thing. The mind will take such a tincture from a familiarity with that object, 
 that every thing else, how remote soever, will be brought under the same 
 view. A metaphysician will bring ploughing and gardening immediately to 
 abstract notions : the history of nature shall signify nothing to him. An al- 
 chymist, on the contrary, shall reduce divinity to the maxims of his labora- 
 tory ; explain morality by sal, sulphur, and mercury; and allegorize the Scrip- 
 ture itself, and the sacred mysteries thereof, into the philosopher’s stone. 
 And I heard once a man, who had a more than ordinary excellency in music, 
 seriously accommodate Moses’s seven days of the first week to the notes of 
 music, as if from thence had been taken the measure and method of the crea- 
 tion. It is of no small consequence to keep the mind from such a possession, 
 which I think is best done by giving it a fair and equal view of the whole in- 
 tellectual world, wherein it may see the order, rank, and beauty of the whole, 
 and give a just allowance to the distinct provinces of the several sciences in 
 the due order and usefulness of each of them. 
 
 If this be that which old men will not think necessary, nor be easily brought 
 to ; it is fit, at least, that it should be practised in the breeding of the young. 
 The business of education, as I have already observed, is not, as I think, to 
 make them perfect in any one of the sciences, but so to open and dispose 
 their minds, as may best make them capable of any, when they shall apply 
 themselves to it. If men are, for a long time, accustomed only to one sort or 
 method of thoughts, their minds grow stiff in it, and do not readily turn to 
 another. It is, therefore, to give them this freedom, that I think they should 
 be made to look into all sorts of knowledge, and exercise their understand- 
 ings in so wide a variety and stock of knowledge. But I do not propose it as 
 a variety and stock of knowledge, but a variety and freedom of thinking, as 
 an increase -of the powers and activity of the mind, not as an enlargement of 
 its possessions. 
 
 Sect. 20. Reading . — This is that which I think great readers are apt to 
 be mistaken in. Those who have read of every thing, are thought to under- 
 stand every thing too ; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind 
 only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. 
 We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with 
 a great load of collections, unless we chew them over again, they will not give 
 us strength and nourishment. There are, indeed, in some writers visible in- 
 stances of deep thoughts, close and acute reasoning, and ideas well pursued. 
 The light these would give would be of great use, if their reader would ob- 
 serve and imitate them ; all the rest at best are but particulars fit to be turned 
 into know 1 edge ; but that can be done only by our own meditation, and exa 
 
502 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 20. 
 
 minir.g the reach, force, and coherence of what is said ; and then, as far as 
 we apprehend and see the connexion of ideas, so far it is ours ; without that, 
 it is but so much loose matter floating in our brain. The memory may be 
 stored, but the judgment is little better, and the stock of knowledge not in- 
 creased, by being able to repeat what others have said, or produce the argu- 
 ments we have found in them. Such a knowledge as this is but knowledge 
 by hearsay, and the ostentation of it is at best but talking by rote, and very 
 often upon weak and wrong principles. For all that is to be found in books is 
 not built upon true foundations, nor always rightly deduced from the princi- 
 ples it is pretended to be built on. Such an examen as is requisite to disco- 
 ver that, every reader’s' mind is not forward to make; especially in those who 
 nave given themselves up to a party, and only hunt for what they can scrape 
 together, that they may favour and support the tenets of it. Such men wil- 
 fully exclude themselves from truth, and from all true benefit to be received by 
 reading. Others of more indifferency often want attention and industry. 
 The mind is backward in itself to be at the pains to trace every argument to 
 its original, and to see upon what basis it stands, and how firmly; but yet it 
 is this that gives so much the advantage to one man more than another in 
 reading. The mind should by severe rules be tied down to this, at first, un- 
 easy task ; use and exercise will give it facility. So that those who are ac- 
 customed to it readily, as it were with one cast of the eye, take a view of the 
 argument, and presently, in most cases, see where it bottoms. Those who 
 have got this faculty, one may say, have got the true key of books, and the 
 clue to lead them through the mizmaze of variety of opinions and authors to 
 truth and certainty. This young beginners should be entered in, and showed 
 the use of, that they might profit by their reading. Those who are strangers 
 to it will be apt to think it too great a clog in the way of men’s studies, and 
 they will suspect they shall make but small progress, if, in the books they read, 
 they must stand to examine and unravel every argument, and follow it step 
 by step up to its original. 
 
 I answer, this is a good objection, and ought to weigh with those whose 
 reading is designed for much talk and little knowledge, and I have nothing to 
 say to it. But I am here inquiring into the conduct of the understanding in 
 its progress towards knowledge ; and to those who aim at that, I may say, that 
 he who fair and softly goes steadily forward in a course that points right, will 
 sooner be at his journey’s end, than he that runs after every one he meets, 
 though he gallop all day full-speed. 
 
 To which let me add, that this way of thinking on, and profiting by, what 
 we read, will be a clog and rub to any one only in the beginning: when cus- 
 tom and exercise have made it familiar, it will be dispatched, on most occa- 
 sions, without resting or interruption in the course of our reading. The mo- 
 tions and views of a mind exercised that way are wonderfully quick ; and a 
 man used to such sort of reflections sees as much at one glimpse as would re- 
 quire a long discourse to lay before another, and make out in an entire and 
 gradual deduction. Besides that, when the first difficulties are over, the de- 
 light and sensible advantage it brings mightily encourages and enlivens the 
 mind in reading, which without this is very improperly called study. 
 
 Sect. 21. Intermediate principles . — As a. help to this, I think it may be 
 proposed, that for the saving the long progression of the thoughts to remote 
 and first principles in every case, the mind should provide it several stages ; 
 that is to say, intermediate principles, which it might have recourse to in the 
 examining those positions that come in its way. These, though they are not 
 self-evident principles, yet if they have been made out from them by a wary 
 and unquestionable deduction, may be depended on as certain and infallible 
 truths, and serve as unquestionable truths to prove other points depending on 
 them by a nearer and shorter view than remote and general maxims. These 
 may serve as land-marks to show what lies in the direct way of truth, or is 
 quite besides it. And thus mathematicians do, who do not in every new pro 
 blem run it back to the first axioms, through all the whole train of interme 
 
Sect. 21. 
 
 INTERMEDIATE PRINCIPLES. 
 
 503 
 
 diate propositions. Certain theorems, that they have settled to themselves 
 upon sure demonstration, serve to resolve to them multitudes of propositions 
 which depend on them, and are as firmly made out from thence as if the mind 
 went afresh over every link of the whole chain that ties them to first self-evi- 
 dent principles. Only in other sciences great care is to be taken, that they 
 establish those intermediate principles with as much caution, exactness and 
 indifferency, as mathematicians use in the settling any of their great theorems. 
 When this is not done, but men take up the principles in this or that science 
 upon credit, inclination, interest, &c. in haste, without due examination, and 
 most unquestionable proof, they lay a trap for themselves, and, as much as in 
 them lies, captivate their understandings to mistake, falsehood and error. 
 
 Sect. 22. Partiality . — As there is a partiality to opinions, which, as we 
 have already observed, is apt to mislead the understanding ; so there is often 
 a partiality to studies, which is prejudicial also to knowledge and improve- 
 ment. Those sciences which men are particularly versed in they are apt to 
 value and extol, as if that part of knowledge which every one lias acquainted 
 himself with were that alone which was worth the having, and all the rest 
 v/ere idle and empty amusements, comparatively of no use or importance. 
 This is the effect of ignorance, and not knowledge ; the being vainly puffed 
 up with a flatulency arising from a weak and narrow comprehension. It is 
 not amiss that every one should relish the science that he has made his pecu- 
 liar study ; a view of its beauties, and a sense of its usefulness, carries a man 
 on with the more delight and warmth in the pursuit and improvement of it. 
 But the contempt of all other knowlege, as if it were nothing in comparison 
 of law or physic, of astronomy or chemistry, or perhaps some yet meaner 
 part of knowledge, wherein I have got some smattering, or am somewhat ad- 
 vanced, is not only the mark of a vain or little mind ; but does this prejudice 
 in the conduct of the understanding, that it coops it up within narrow bounds, 
 and hinders it from looking abroad into other provinces of the intellectual 
 world, more beautiful possibly and more fruitful than that which it had, till 
 then, laboured in ; wherein it might find, besides new knowledge, ways or 
 hints whereby it might be enabled the better to cultivate its own. 
 
 Sect. 23. Theology . — There is, indeed, one science (as they are now 
 distinguished) incomparably above all the rest, where it is not by corruption 
 narrowed into a trade or faction, for mean or ill ends, and secular interests ; 
 1 mean theology, which, containing the knowledge of God and his creatures, 
 ciur duty to him and our fellow-creatures, and a view of our present and future 
 state, is the comprehension of all other knowledge directed to its true end ; 
 i. e. the honour and veneration of the Creator, and the happiness of man- 
 kind. This is that noble study which is every man’s duty, and every one that 
 can be called a rational creature is capable of. The works of nature, and the 
 words of revelation, display it to mankind in characters so large and visible, 
 that those who are not quite blind may in them read and see the first princi- 
 ples and most necessary parts of it ; and from thence, as they have time and 
 industry, may be enabled to go on to the more abstruse parts of it, and pene- 
 trate into those infinite depths filled with the treasures of wisdom and know- 
 ledge. This is that science which would truly enlarge men’s minds, were it 
 studied, or permitted to be studied, every where, with that freedom, love of 
 truth, and charity which it teaches, and were not made, contrary to its nature, 
 the occasion of strife, faction, malignity, and narrow impositions. I shall say 
 no more here of this, but that it is undoubtedly a wrong use of my under- 
 standing, to make it the rule and measure of another man’s ; a use whicn it 
 is neither fit for, nor capable of. 
 
 Sect. 24. Partiality . — This partiality, where it is not permitted an au- 
 thority to render all other studies insignificant or contemptible, is often in- 
 dulged so far as to be relied upon, and made use of in other parts of know- 
 ledge, to which it does not at all belong, and wherewith it has no manner of 
 uffinity. Some men have so used their heads to mathematical figures, that, 
 giving a preference to the methods of that science, they introduce lines and 
 
504 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 diagrams into their study of divinity, or politic inquiries, as if nothing could 
 be known without them ; and others, accustomed to retired speculations, run 
 natural philosophy into metaphysical notions, and the abstract generalities of 
 logic ; and how often may one meet with religion and morality treated of in 
 the terms of the laboratory, and thought to be improved by the methods and 
 notions of chemistry I But he that will take care of the conduct of his un- 
 derstanding, to direct it rig-ht to the knowledge of things, must avoid those 
 undue mixtures, and not, by a fondness for what he has found useful and ne- 
 cessary in one, transfer it to another science, where it serves only to perplex 
 and confound the understanding. It is a certain truth, that res nolunt male 
 administrari ; it is no less certain res nolunt mail intelligi. Things them- 
 selves are to be considered as they are in themselves, and then they will show 
 us in what way they are to be understood. For to have right conceptions 
 about them, we must bring our understandings to the inflexible natures and 
 unalterable relations of things, and not endeavour to bring things to any pre 
 conceived notions of our own. 
 
 There is another partiality very commonly observable in men of study, no 
 less prejudicial nor ridiculous than the former; and that is a fantastical and 
 wild attributing all knowledge to the ancients alone, or to the moderns. This 
 raving upon antiquity in matter of poetry, Horace has wittily described and 
 exposed in one of his satires. The same sort of madness may be found in 
 reference to all the other sciences. Some will not admit an opinion not au- 
 thorized by men of old, who were then all giants in knowledge. Nothing is 
 to be put into the treasury of truth or knowledge which has not the stamp of 
 Greece or Rome upon it; and since their days, will scarce allow that men have 
 been able to see, think, or write. Others, with a like extravagancy, contemn 
 all that the ancients have left us, and, being taken with the modem inventions 
 and discoveries, lay by all that went before, as if whatever is called old must 
 have the decay of time upon it, and truth, too, were liable to mould and rot- 
 tenness. Men, 1 think, have been much the same for natural endowments in 
 all times. Fashion, discipline, and education, have put eminent differences 
 in the ages of several countries, and made one generation much differ from 
 another in arts and sciences : but truth is always the same ; time alters it not, 
 nor is it the better or worse for being of ancient or modem tradition. Many 
 were eminent in former ages of the world for their discovery and delivery of 
 it ; but though the knowledge they have left us be worth pur study, yet 
 they exhausted not all its treasure ; they left a great deal for the industry and 
 sagacity of after-ages, and so shall we. That was once new to them which 
 any one now receives with veneration for its antiquity, nor was it the worse 
 for appearing as a novelty ; and that which is now embraced for its newness 
 will to posterity be old, but not thereby be less true or less genuine. There is 
 no occasion, on this account, to oppose the ancients and the moderns to one 
 another, or to be squeamish on either side. He that wisely conducts his mind 
 in the pursuit of knowledge will gather what lights, and get what helps he 
 can, from either of them, from whom they are best to be had, without adoring 
 the errors, or rejecting the truths, which he may find mingled in them. 
 
 Another partiality may be observed, m some to vulgar, in others to hetero- 
 dox tenets : some are apt to conclude that what is the common opinion cannot 
 but be true ; so many men’s eyes they think cannot but see right ; so many 
 men’s understandings of all sorts cannot be deceived ; and, therefore, will not 
 venture to look beyond the received notions of the place and age, nor have so 
 presumptuous a thought as to be wiser than their neighbours. They are con- 
 tent to go with the crowd, and so go easily, which they think is going right, 
 or at least serves them as well. But, however vox populi vox Dei has pre- 
 vailed as a maxim, yet I do not remember where ever God delivered his ora- 
 cles by the multitude, or nature truths by the herd. On the other side, some 
 fly all common opinions as either false or fri volous. The title of many-headed 
 beast is a sufficient reason for them to conclude that no truths of weight or 
 conseauence can be lodged there. Vulgar opinions are suited to vulgar capa 
 
PARTIALITY. 
 
 505 
 
 cities, and adapted to the ends of those that govern. He that will know the 
 truth of Hungs must leave the common and beaten track, which none but weak 
 and servile minds are satisfied to trudge along continually in. Such nice pa- 
 lates relish nothing but strange notions quite out of the way : whatever is 
 commonly received, has the mark of the beast on it ; and they think it a les- 
 sening to them to hearken to it, or receive it ; their mind runs only after para- 
 doxes ; these they seek, these they embrace, these alone they vent ; and so, as 
 they think, distinguish themselves from the vulgar. But common or uncom- 
 mon are not the marks to distinguish truth or falsehood, and therefore should 
 not be any bias to us in our inquiries. We should not judge of things by 
 men’s opinions, but of opinions by things. The multitude reason but ill, and 
 therefore may be well suspected, and cannot be relied on, nor should be fol- 
 lowed as a sure guide ; but philosophers, who have quitted the orthodoxy of 
 the community, and the popular doctrines of their countries, have fallen into 
 as extravagant and as absurd opinions as ever common reception countenanced. 
 It would be madness to refuse to breathe the common air, or quench one’s 
 thirst with water, because the rabble use them to these purposes : and if there 
 are conveniences of life which common use reaches not, it is not reason to 
 reject them because they are not grown into the ordinary fashion of the coun- 
 try, and every villager doth not know them. Truth, whether in or out of 
 fashion, is the measure of knowledge, and the business of the understanding ; 
 whatsoever is besides that, however authorized by consent, or recommended 
 by rarity, is nothing but ignorance, or something worse. 
 
 Another sort of partiality there is, whereby men impose upon themselves, 
 and by it make their reading little useful to themselves : I mean the making 
 use of the opinions of writers, and laying stress upon their authorities, wher- 
 ever they find them to favour their own opinions. 
 
 There is nothing almost has done more harm to men dedicated to letters 
 than giving the name of study to reading, and making a man of great read- 
 ing to be the same with a man of great knowledge, or at least to be a title of 
 honour. All that can be recorded in writing are only facts or reasonings. 
 
 Facts are of three sorts; 1. Merely of natural agents, observable in the 
 ordinary operations of bodies one upon another, whether in the visible course 
 of things left to themselves, or in experiments made by them, applying agents 
 and patients to one another, after a peculiar and artificial manner. 2. Of 
 voluntary agents, more especially the actions of men in society, which makes 
 civil and moral history. 3. Of opinions. 
 
 In these three consists, as it seems to me, that which commonly has the 
 name of learning ; to which perhaps some may add a distinct head of critical 
 writings, which indeed at bottom is nothing but matter of fact ; and resolves 
 itself into this, that such a man, or set of men, used such a word, or phrase, 
 in such a sense ; i. e. that they made such sounds the marks of such ideas. 
 
 Under reasonings I comprehend all the discoveries of general truths made 
 by human reason, whether found by intuition, demonstration, or probable de- 
 ductions. And this is that which is, if not alone knowledge, (because the truth 
 or probability of particular propositions may be known too,) yet is, as may 
 be supposed, most properly the business of those who pretend to improve 
 their understandings, and make themselves knowing by reading. 
 
 Books and reading are looked upon to be the great helps of the understand- 
 ing, and instruments of knowledge, as it must be allowed that they are ; and 
 yet I beg leave to question whether these do not prove a hinderance to many, 
 and keep several bookish men from attaining to solid and true knowledge. 
 This, I think, I may be permitted to say, that there is no part wherein the un- 
 derstanding needs a more careful and wary conduct than in the use of books ; 
 without which they will prove rather innocent amusements than profitable em- 
 ployments of our time, and bring but small additions to our knowledge. 
 
 There is not seldom to be found, even among those who aim at knowledge, 
 who with an unwearied industry employ their whole time in books, who scarce 
 allow themselves time to eat or sleep, but read, and read, and read on, ye 
 3 O 
 
CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 24 
 
 505 
 
 make no great advances in .eal knowledge, though there be no defect in their 
 intellectual faculties, to which their little progress can be imputed. The mis- 
 take here is, that it is usually supposed that by reading, the author’s know- 
 ledge is transfused into the reader’s understanding ; and so it is, but not by 
 bare reading, but by reading and understanding what he writ. Whereby I 
 mean, not barely comprehending what is affirmed or denied in each proposi- 
 tion, (though that great readers do not always think themselves concerned 
 precisely to do,) but to see and follow the train of his reasonings, observe the 
 strength and clearness of their connexion, and examine upon what they bottom. 
 Without this a man may read the discourses of a very rational author, writ 
 m a language, and in propositions, that he very well understands, and yet ac- 
 quire not one jot of his knowledge; which consisting only in the perceived 
 certain, or probable connexion of the ideas made use of in his reasonings, 
 the reader’s knowledge is no farther increased than he perceives that ; so much 
 as he sees of this connexion, so much he knows of the truth or probability 
 of that author’s opinions. 
 
 All that he relies on, without this perception, he takes upon trust, upon the 
 author’s credit, without any knowledge of it at all. This makes me not at 
 all wonder to see some men so abound in citations, and build so much upon 
 authorities, it being the sole foundation on which they bottom most of their 
 own tenets ; so that, in effect, they have but a second-hand, or implicit know- 
 ledge ; i. e. are in the right, if such an one from whom they borrowed it were 
 in the right in that opinion which they took from him ; which indeed is no 
 knowledge at all. Writers of this or former ages may be good witnesses of 
 matters of fact which they deliver, which we may do well to take upon their 
 authority ; but their credit can go no farther than this ; it cannot at all affect 
 the truth and falsehood of opinions which have no other sort of trial but rea- 
 son and proof, which they themselves made use of to make themselves know- 
 ing, and so must others too, that will partake in their knowledge. Indeed, it 
 is an advantage that they have been at the pains to find out the proofs, and lay 
 them in that order that may show the truth or probability of their conclusions ; 
 and for this we owe them great acknowledgments for saving us the pains in 
 searching out those proofs which they have collected for us, and which possi- 
 bly, after all our pains, we might not have found, nor been able to have set 
 them in so good a light as that which they left them us in. Upon this ac- 
 count we are mightily beholden to judicious writers of all ages, for those dis- 
 coveries and discourses they have left behind them for our instruction, if we 
 know how to make a right use of them ; which is not to run them over in a 
 hasty perusal, and perhaps lodge their opinions or some remarkable passages 
 in our memories ; but to enter into their reasonings, examine their proofs, and 
 then judge of the truth or falsehood, probability or improbability of what they 
 advance, not by any opinion we have entertained of the author, but by the 
 evidence he produces, and the conviction he affords us, drawn from things 
 themselves. Knowing is seeing, and if it be so, it is madness to persuade 
 ourselves that we do so by another man’s eyes, let him use ever so many words 
 to tell us that what he asserts is very visible. Till we ourselves see it with 
 our own eyes, and perceive it by our own understandings, we are as much in 
 the dark and as void of knowledge as before, let us believe any learned author 
 as much as we will. 
 
 Euclid and Archimedes are allowed to be knowing, and to have demon- 
 strated what they say : and yet whoever shall read over their writings with- 
 out perceiving the connexion of their proofs, and seeing what they show, 
 though he may understand all their words, yet he is not the more knowing : 
 he may believe, indeed, but does not know what they say ; and so is not ad- 
 vanced one jot in mathematical knowledge, by all his reading of those ap- 
 proved mathematicians. 
 
 Sect. 25. Haste . — The eagerness and strong bent of the mind after know- 
 ledge, if not warily regulated, is often an hinderance to it. It still presses 
 into farther discoveries and new objects, and catches at the variety of know- 
 
Sect. 25. 
 
 HASTE. 
 
 507 
 
 ledge ; and therefore often stays not long enough on what is before it, to look 
 into it as it should, for haste to pursue what is yet out of sight. He that rides 
 post through a country may be able, from the transient view, to tell how in 
 general the parts lie, and may be able to give some loose description of here 
 a mountain, and there a plain; here a morass, and there a river; woodland in 
 one part, and savannahs in another. Such superficial ideas and observations 
 as these he may collect in galloping over it : but the more useful observations 
 of the soil, plants, animals, and inhabitants, with their several sorts and pro- 
 perties, must necessarily escape him ; and it is seldom men ever discover the 
 rich mines without some digging. Nature commonly lodges her treasure and 
 jewels in rocky ground. If the matter be knotty, and the sense lies deep, the 
 mind must stop and buckle to it, and stick upon it with labour and thought, 
 and close contemplation ; and not leave it till it has mastered the difficulty, 
 and got possession of truth. But here care must be taken to avoid the oilier 
 extreme : a man must not stick at every useless nicety, and expect mysteries 
 of science m every trivial question, or scruple, that he may raise. He that 
 will stand to pick up and examine every pebble that comes in his way is as 
 unlikely to return enriched and loaden with jewels, as the other that travelled 
 full speed. Truths are not the better nor the worse for their obviousness or 
 difficulty, but their value is to be measured by their usefulness and tendency. 
 Insignificant observations should not take up any of our minutes, and those 
 that enlarge our view, and give light towards farther and useful discoveries, 
 should not be neglected, though they stop our course and spend some of our 
 time in a fixed attention. 
 
 There is another haste that does often, and will mislead the mind if it be 
 left to itself, and its own conduct. The understanding is naturally forward, 
 not only to learn its knowledge by variety (which makes it skip over one to 
 get speedily to another part of knowledge) but also eager to enlarge its views, 
 by running too fast into general observations and conclusions, without a due 
 examination of particulars enough whereon to found those general axioms. 
 This seems to enlarge their stock, but it is of fancies, not realities ; such 
 theories built upon narrow foundations stand but weakly, and, if they fall not 
 of themselves, are at least very hardly to be supported against the assaults of 
 opposition. And thus men being too hasty to erect to themselves general 
 notions and ill-grounded theories, find themselves deceived in their stock of 
 knowledge, when they come to examine their hastily assumed maxims them- 
 selves, or to have them attacked by others. General observations drawn from 
 particulars are the jewels of knowledge, comprehending great store in a little 
 room ; but they are therefore to be made with the greater care and caution, 
 lest, if we take counterfeit for true, our loss and shame be the greater when 
 our stock comes to a severe scrutiny. One or two particulars may suggest 
 hints of inquiry, and they do well to take those hints ; but if they turn them 
 into conclusions, and make them presently general rules, they are forward 
 indeed, but it is only to impose on themselves by propositions assumed for 
 truths without sufficient warrant. To make such observations is, as has been 
 already remarked, to make the head a magazine of materials, which can hardly 
 be called knowledge ; or at least it is but like a collection of lumber not re- 
 duced to use or order; and he that makes every thing an observation, has the 
 same useless plenty, and much more falsehood mixed with it. The extremes 
 on both sides are to be avoided, and he will be able to give the best account 
 of his studies who keeps his understanding in the right mean between them. 
 
 Sect. 26. Anticipation . — Whether it be a love of that which brings the 
 first light and information to their minds, and want of vigour and industry to 
 inquire ; or else that men content themselves with any appearance of know- 
 ledge, right or wrong ; which, when they have once got, they will hold fast : 
 this is visible, that many men give themselves up to the first anticipations of 
 their minds, and are very tenacious of the opinions that first possess them ; 
 they are often as fond of their first conceptions as of their first-born, and will 
 by no means recede from the judgment they have once made, or ar.y conjee- 
 
008 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 26. 
 
 ture or conceit which they have once entertained. This is a fault in the con 
 duct of the understanding, since this firmness or rather stiffness of the mind 
 is not from an adherence to truth, but a submission to prejudice. It is an 
 unreasonable homage paid to prepossession, whereby we show a reverence, 
 not to (what we pretend to seek) truth, but what by hap-hazard we chance 
 to light on, be it what it will. This is visibly a preposterous use of our facul- 
 ties, and is a downright prostituting of the mind to resign it thus, and put it 
 under the power of the first comer. This can never be allowed, or ought to 
 be followed, as a right way to knowledge, till the understanding (whose 
 business it is to conform itself to what it finds in the objects without) can, by 
 its own opinionatry, change that, and make the unalterable nature of things 
 comply with its own hasty determinations, which will never be. Whatever 
 we fancy, things keep their course ; and the habitudes, correspondencies, and 
 relations, keep the same to one another. 
 
 Sect. 27. Resignation . — Contrary to these, but by a like dangerous ex- 
 cess, on- the other side, are those who always resign their judgment to the 
 last man they heard or read. Truth never sinks into these men’s minds, nor 
 gives any tincture to them ; but, cameleon-like, they take the colour of what 
 is laid before them, and as soon lose and resign it to the next that happens to 
 come in their way. The order wherein opinions are proposed, or received by 
 us, is no rule of their rectitude, nor ought to be a cause of their preference. 
 First or list, in this case, is the effect of chance, and not the measure of truth 
 or falsehood. This every one must confess, and therefore should in the pur- 
 suit of truth, keep his mind free from the influence of any such accidents. A 
 man may as reasonably draw cuts for his tenets, regulate his persuasion by 
 the cast of a die, as take it up for its novelty, or retain it because it had his 
 first assent, and he was never of another mind. Well-weighed reasons are 
 to determine the judgment ; those the mind should be always ready to hearken 
 and submit to, and by their testimony and suffrage entertain or reject any 
 tenet indifferently, whether it be a perfect stranger, or an old acquaintance. 
 
 Sect. 28. Practice . — Though the faculties of the mind are improved by 
 exercise, yet they must not be put to a stress beyond their strength. Quid 
 valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent, must be made the measure of every 
 one’s understanding, who has a desire not only to perform well, but to keep 
 up the vigour of his faculties ; and not to baulk his understanding by what is 
 too hard for it. The mind, by being engaged in a task beyond its strength, 
 like the body, strained by lifting at a weight too heavy, has often its force 
 broken, and thereby gets an unaptness, or an aversion, to any vigorous attempt 
 ever after. A sinew cracked seldom recovers its former strength, or at least 
 the tenderness of the sprain remains a good while after, and the memory of 
 it longer, and leaves a lasting caution in the man, not to put the part quickly 
 again to any robust employment. So it fares in the mind once jaded by an 
 attempt above its power; it either is disabled for the future, or else checks at 
 any vigorous undertaking ever after ; at least is very hardly brought to exert 
 its force again on any subject that requires thought and meditation. The 
 understanding should be brought to the difficult and knotty parts of know- 
 ledge, that try the strength of thought, and a full bent of the mind, by insen- 
 sible degrees ; and in such a gradual proceeding nothing is too hard for it. 
 Nor let it be objected, that such a slow progress will never reach the extent 
 of some sciences. It is not to be imagined how far constancy will carry a 
 man ; however, it is better walking slowly in a rugged way, than to break a 
 leg and be a cripple. He that begins with the calf may carry the ox ; but he 
 that will at first go to take up an ox, may so disable himself as not to be able 
 to lift up a calf after that. When the mind, by insensible degrees, has brought 
 itself to attention and close thinking, it will be able to cope with difficulties, 
 and master them without any prejudice to itself, and then it may go on 
 roundly. Every abstruse problem, .every intricate question, will not baffle, 
 discourage, or break it. But though putting the mind unprepared upon an 
 unusual stress, that may discourage or damp it for the future, ought to be 
 
Sect. 28. 
 
 PRACTICE. 
 
 509 
 
 avoided ; yet this must not run it by an over-great shyness of difficulties, into 
 a lazy sauntering about ordinary and obvious things, that demand no thought 
 or application. This debases and enervates the understanding, makes it weak 
 and unfit for labour. This is a sort of hovering about the surface of things, 
 without any insight into them or penetration ; and when the mind has been 
 once habituated to this lazy recumbency and satisfaction on the obvious sur- 
 face of things, it is in danger to rest satisfied there, and go no deeper ; since 
 it cannot do it without pains and digging. He that has for some time accus- 
 tomed himself to take up with what easily offers itself at first view, has reason 
 to fear he shall never reconcile himself to the fatigue of turning and tumbling 
 things in his mind, to discover their more retired and more valuable secrets. 
 
 Tt is not strange that methods of learning which scholars have been accus- 
 tomed to in their beginning and entrance upon the sciences, should influence 
 them all their lives, and be settled in their minds by an overruling reverence ; 
 especially if they be such as universal use has established. Learners must at 
 first be believers, and their masters’ rules having been once made axioms to 
 them, it is no wonder they should keep that dignity, and, by the authority 
 they have once got, mislead those who think it sufficient to excuse them, if 
 they go out of their way in a well-beaten track. 
 
 Sect. 29. Words . — I have copiously enough spoken of the abuse of words 
 in another place, and therefore shall upon this reflection, that the sciences 
 are full of them, warn those that would conduct their understandings right 
 not to take any term, howsoever authorized by the language of the schools, to 
 stand for any thing till they have an idea of it. A word may be of frequent 
 use, and great credit, with several authors, and be by them made use of as if 
 it stood for some real being ; but yet, if he that reads cannot frame any dis- 
 tinct idea of that being, it is certainly to him a mere empty sound without a 
 meaning; and he learns no more by all that is said of it, or attributed to it, 
 than if it were affirmed only of that bare empty sound. They who would 
 advance in knowledge, and not deceive and swell themselves with a little 
 articulated air, should lay down this as a fundamental rule, not to take words 
 for things, nor suppose that names in books signify real entities in nature, till 
 they can frame clear and distinct ideas of those entities. It will not perhaps 
 be allowed, if I should set down “ substantial forms” and “ intentional spe- 
 cies,” as such that may justly be suspected to be of this kind of insignificant 
 terms : but this I am sure, to one that can form no determined ideas of what 
 they stand for, they signify nothing at all ; and all that he thinks he knows 
 about them is to him so much knowledge about nothing, and amounts at most 
 but to be a learned ignorance. It is not without all reason supposed that 
 there are many such empty terms to be found in some learned writers, to 
 which they had recourse to etch out their systems, where their understand- 
 ings could not furnish them with conceptions from things. But yet I believe 
 the supposing of some realities in nature, answering those and the like words, 
 have much perplexed some, and quite misled others in the study of nature. 
 That which in any discourse signifies, “ I know not what,” should be consi- 
 dered “ I know not when.” Where men have any conceptions, they can, if 
 they are never so abstruse or abstracted, explain them, and the terms they 
 use for them. For our conceptions being nothing but ideas, which are all 
 made up of simple ones : if they cannot give us the ideas their words stand 
 for, it is plain they have none. To what purpose can it be to hunt after his 
 conceptions who has none, or none distinct 1 He that knew not what he 
 himself meant by a learned term, cannot make us know any thing by his use 
 of it, let us beat our heads about it never so long. Whether we are able to 
 comprehend all the operations of nature, and the manners of them, it matters 
 aot to inquire ; but this is certain, that we can comprehend no more of them 
 Jhan we can distinctly conceive ; and therefore to obtrude terms where we 
 have no distinct conceptions, as if they did contain or rather conceal some- 
 thing, is but an artifice of learned vanity to cover a defect in a hypothesis or 
 our understandings. Words are not made to conceal, but to declare and 
 
510 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 2b. 
 
 show something ; where they are by those, who pretend to instruct, otherwise 
 used, they conceal indeed something; but that that they conceal is nothing 
 but the ignorance, error, or sophistry of the talker; for there is, in truth, 
 nothing else under them. 
 
 Sect. 30. Wandering . — That there is a constant succession and flux ot 
 ideas in our minds, I have observed in the former part of this Essay ; and 
 every one may take notice of it in himself. This, 1 suppose, may deserve 
 some part of our care in the conduct of our understandings; and I think it 
 may be of great advantage, if we can by use get that power over our minds, 
 as to be able to direct that train of ideas, that so, since there will new ones 
 perpetually come into our thoughts by a constant succession, we may be able 
 by choice so to direct them, that none may come in view but such as are per- 
 tinent to our present inquiry, and in such order as may be most useful to the 
 discovery we are upon ; or at least, if some foreign and unsought ideas will 
 offer themselves, that yet we might be able to reject them, and keep them 
 from taking off our minds from its present pursuit, and hinder them from 
 running away with our thoughts quite from the subject in hand. This is not, 
 I suspect, so easy to be done as perhaps may be imagined ; and yet, for aught 
 1 know, this may be, if not the chief, yet one of the great differences that 
 carry some men in their reasoning so far beyond others, where they seem to 
 be naturally of equal parts. A proper and effectual remedy for this wandering 
 of thoughts I would be glad to find. He that shall propose such an one, would 
 do great service to the studious and contemplative part of mankind, and per- 
 haps help unthinking men to become thinking. I must acknowledge that 
 hitherto I have discovered no other way to keep our thoughts close to their 
 business, but the endeavouring as much as we can, and by frequent attention 
 and application, getting the habit of attention and application. He that will 
 observe children will find, that even when they endeavour their utmost, they 
 cannot keep their minds from straggling. The way to cure it, I am satisfied, 
 is not angry chiding or beating, for that presently fills their heads with all the 
 ideas that fear, dread, or confusion can offer to them. To bring back gently 
 their wandering thoughts, by leading them into the path, and going before 
 them in the train they should pursue, without any rebuke, or so much as 
 taking notice (where it can be avoided) of their roving, I suppose would 
 sooner reconcile and inure them to attention than all those rougher methods 
 which more distract their thought, and, hindering the application they would 
 promote, introduce a contrary habit. 
 
 Sect. 31. Distinction . — Distinction and division are (if I mistake not the 
 import of the words) very different things ; the one being the. perception of a 
 difference that nature has placed in things; the other, our making a division 
 where there is yet none ; at least, if I may be permitted to consider them in 
 this sense, I think I may say of them that one of them is the most necessary 
 and conducive to true knowledge that can be; the other, when too much 
 made use of, serves only to puzzle and confound the understanding. To ob- 
 serve every the least difference that is in things argues a quick and clear 
 sight; and this keeps the understanding steady, and right in its way to know- 
 ledge. But though it be useful to discern every variety that is to be found in 
 nature, yet it is not convenient to consider every difference that is in things, 
 and divide them into distinct classes under every such difference. This will 
 run us, if followed, into particulars (for every individual lias something that 
 differences it from another,) and we shall be able to establish no general 
 truths, or else at least shall be apt to perplex the mind about them. The 
 collection of several things into several classes gives the mind more general 
 and larger views ; but we must take care to unite them only in that, and so 
 far as they do agree, for so far they may be united under the consideration : 
 for entity itself, that comprehends all things, as general as it is, may afford 
 us clear and '•ational conceptions. If we would weigh and keep in our minds 
 what it is wt are considering, that would best instruct us when we should or 
 should ->ot branch into farther distinctions, which are to be taken only from 
 
Sect. 31. 
 
 DISTINCTION. 
 
 5U 
 
 a due contemplation of tilings; to which there is nothing more opposite than 
 the art of verbal distinctions, made at pleasure in learned and arbitrarily in- 
 vented terms, to be applied at a venture, without comprehending or convey- 
 ing any distinct notions ; and so altogether fitted to artificial talk, or empty 
 noise in dispute, without any clearing of difficulties, or advance in knowledge. 
 Whatsoever subject we examine and would get knowledge in, we should, I 
 think, make as general and as large as it will bear; nor can there be any 
 danger of this, if the idea of it be settled and determined : for if that be so, 
 we shall easily distinguish it from any other idea, though comprehended under 
 the same name. For it is to fence against the entanglements of equivocal 
 words, and the great art of sophistry which lies in them, that distinctions 
 have been multiplied, and their use thought so necessary. But had every 
 distinct abstract idea a distinct known name, there would be little need of 
 t? ese multiplied scholastic distinctions, though there would be nevertheless 
 as much need still of the mind’s observing the differences that are in things, 
 and discriminating them thereby one from another. It is not, therefore, the 
 right way to knowledge, to hunt after and fill the head with abundance of 
 artificial and scholastic distinctions, wherewith learned men’s writings are 
 often filled : we sometimes find what they treat of so divided and subdivided, 
 that the mind of the most attentive reader loses the sight of it, as it is more 
 than probable the writer himself did ; for in things crumbled into dust it is in 
 vain to affect or pretend order, or expect clearness. To avoid confusion, by 
 too few or too many divisions, is a great skill in thinking as well as writing, 
 which is but the copying our thoughts ; but what are the boundaries of the 
 mean between the two vicious excesses on both hands, I think is hard to set 
 down in words : clear and distinct ideas is all that I yet know able to regulate 
 it. But as to verba] distinctions received and applied to common terms, i. e. 
 equivocal words, they are more properly, I think, the business of criticisms 
 and dictionaries than of real knowledge and philosophy; since they, for the 
 most part, explain the meaning of words, and give us their several significa- 
 tions. The dexterous management of terms, and being able to fend and prove 
 with them, I know has and does pass in the world for a great part of learning ; 
 but it is learning distinct from knowledge ; for knowledge consists only in 
 perceiving the habitudes and relations of ideas one to another, which is done 
 without words; the intervention of a sound helps nothing to it. And hence 
 we see that there is at least use of distinctions where there is most knowledge ; 
 I mean in mathematics, where men have determined ideas, without known 
 sames to them ; and so there being no room for equivocations, there is no 
 seed of distinctions. In arguing, the opponent uses as comprehensive and 
 equivocal terms as he can, to involve his adversary in the doubtfulness of his 
 expressions : this is expected, and therefore the answerer on his side makes 
 ,t his plaj to distinguish as much as he can, and thinks he can never do it 
 too much, nor can he indeed in that way wherein victory may be had without 
 truth and without knowledge. This seems to me to be the art of disputing. 
 Use your words as captiously as you can in your arguing on one side, and 
 apply distinctions as much as you can on the other side to every term, to 
 nonplus your opponent ; so that in this sort of scholarship, there being no 
 bounds set to distinguishing, some men have thought all acuteness to have 
 lain in it; and therefore in ah they have read or thought on, their great busi- 
 ness has been to amuse themseives with distinctions, and mtfitiply to them- 
 selves divisions ; at least, more than the nature of the thing required. There 
 seems to me, as I said, to be no other rule for this, but a due and right con- 
 sideration of things as they are in themselves. He that has settled in his 
 mind determined ideas, with names affixed to them, will be able both to dis- 
 cern their differences one from another, which is really distinguishing; and, 
 where the penury of words affords not terms answering every distinct idea, 
 will be able to apply proper distinguishing terms to the comprehensive and 
 equivocal names he is forced to make use of. This is all the need I know ot 
 distinguishing terms ; and in such verbal distinctions, each term of the dis- 
 
512 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 31 
 
 tinction, joined to that whose signification it distinguishes, is but a distinct 
 name for a distinct idea. Where they are so, and men have clear and dis- 
 tinct conceptions that answer their verbal distinctions, they are right, and are 
 pertinent as far as they serve to clear any thing in the subject under consi- 
 derat.on. And this is that which seems to me the proper and only measure 
 cf distinctions and divisions ; which he that will conduct his understanding 
 right must not look for in the acuteness of invention, nor the authority of 
 writers, but will find only in the consideration of things themselves, whether 
 he is led into it by his own meditations, or the information of books. 
 
 An aptness to jumble things together, wherein can be found any likeness, 
 is a fault in the understanding on the other side, which will not fail to mislead 
 it, and by thus lumping of things hinder the mind from distinct and accurate 
 conceptions of them. 
 
 Sect. 32. Similes . — To which let me here add another near of kin to this, 
 at least in name, and that is letting the mind, upon the suggestion of any new 
 notion, run immediately after similes to make it the clearer to itself, which, 
 though it may be a good way, and useful in the explaining our thoughts to 
 others ; yet it is by no means a right method to settle true notions of any 
 tiling in ourselves, because similes always fail in some part, and come short 
 of that exactness which our conceptions should have to things, if we would 
 think aright. This indeed makes men plausible talkers; for those are 
 always most acceptable in discourse who have the way to let their thoughts 
 into other men’s minds with the greatest ease and facility; whether those 
 thoughts are well formed and correspond with things, matters not ; few men 
 care to be instructed but at an easy rate. They, who in their discourse strike 
 the fancy, and take the hearers’ conceptions along with them as fast as their 
 words flow, are the applauded talkers, and go for the only men of clear 
 thoughts. Nothing contributes so much to this as similes, whereby men 
 think they themselves understand better, because they are the better under- 
 stood. But it is one thing to think right, and another thing to know the right 
 way to lay our thoughts before others with advantage and clearness, be they 
 right or wrong. Well-chosen similes, metaphors, and allegories, with method 
 and order, do this the best of any tiling, because being taken from objects 
 already known, and familiar to the understanding, they are conceived as fast 
 as spoken ; and the correspondence being concluded, the thing they are 
 brought to explain and elucidate is thought to be understood too. Thus fancy 
 passes for knowledge, and what is prettily said is mistaken for solid. I say 
 not this to decry metaphor, or with design to take away that ornament of 
 speech ; my business here is not with rhetoricians and orators, but with phi- 
 losophers and lovers of truth ; to whom I would beg leave to give this one 
 rule whereby to try whether, in the application of their thoughts to any thing 
 for the improvement of their knowledge, they do in truth comprehend the 
 matter before them really such as it is in itself. The way to discover this is 
 to observe whether, in the laying it before themselves or others, they make 
 use only of borrowed representations, and ideas foreign to the things which 
 are applied to it by way of accommodation, as bearing some proportion or 
 imagined likeness to the subject under consideration. Figured and meta- 
 phorical expressions do well to illustrate more abstruse and unfamiliar ideas 
 which the mind is not yet thoroughly accustomed to ; but then they must be 
 made use of to illustrate ideas that we already have, not to paint to us those 
 which we yet have not. Such borrowed and allusive ideas may follow real 
 and solid truth, to set it off when found : but must by no means be set in its 
 place, and taken for it. If all our search has yet reached no farther than 
 simile and metaphor, we may assure ourselves we rather fancy than know, 
 and have not yet penetrated into the inside and reality of the thing, be it what 
 it will, but content ourselves with what our imaginations, not things them- 
 selves, furnish us with. 
 
 Sect. 33. Assent . — In the whole conduct of the understanding there is 
 nothing of more moment than to know when and where, and how far to give 
 
Sect. 32. 
 
 SIMILES. 
 
 513 
 
 assent ; and possibly there is nothing harder. It is very easily sa.d, and no- 
 oody questions it, that giving and withholding our assent, and the degrees of 
 it, should be regulated by the evidence which things carry with them ; and 
 yet we see men are not the better for this rule ; some firmly embrace doctrines 
 upon slight grounds, some upon no grounds, and some contrary to appearance : 
 some admit of certainty, and are not to be moved in what they hold : others 
 waver in every thing, and there want not those that reject all as uncertain. 
 What then shall a novice, an inquirer, a stranger do in the case ? I answer, 
 
 , use his eyes. There is a correspondence in things, and agreement and dis- 
 agreement in ideas, discernible in very different degrees, and there are eyes 
 in men to see them, if they please : only their eyes may be dimmed or dazzled, 
 and the discerning sight in them impaired or lost. Interest and passion 
 dazzle ; the custom of arguing on any side, even against our persuasions, dims 
 the understanding, and makes it by degrees lose the faculty of discerning 
 clearly between truth and falsehood, and so of adhering to the right, side. It 
 is not safe to play with error, and dress it up to ourselves or others in the' 
 shape of truth. The mind by degrees loses its natural relish of real solid 
 truth, is reconciled insensibly to any thing that can be dressed up into any 
 faint appearance of it; and if the fancy be allowed the place of judgment at 
 first in sport, it afterward comes by use to usurp it; and what is recommended 
 by this flatterer (that studies but to please,) is received for good. There are 
 60 many ways of fallacy, such arts of giving colours, appearances, and resem- 
 blances by this court-dresser, the fancy, that he who is not wary to admit 
 nothing but truth itself, very careful not to make his mind subservient to any 
 thing else, cannot but be caught. He that has a mind to believe, has half 
 assented already ; and he that, by often arguing against his own sense, im- 
 poses falsehood on others, is not far from believing himself. This takes away 
 the great distance there is betwixt truth and falsehood; it brings them almost 
 together, and makes it no great odds, in things that approach so near, which 
 you take ; and when things are brought to that pass, passion or interest, &c. 
 easily and without being perceived, determine which shall be the right. 
 
 Sect. 34. Indifferency . — I have said above, that we should keep a perfect 
 indifferency for all opinions, not wish any of them true, or try to make them 
 appear so : but being indifferent, receive and embrace them according as evi- 
 dence, and that alone, gives the attestation of truth. They that do thus, i. e. 
 keep their minds indifferent to opinions, to be determined only by evidence, 
 will always find the understanding has perception enough to distinguish be- 
 tween evidence and no evidence, betwixt plain and doubtful ; and if they nei- 
 ther give nor refuse th'eir assent but by that measure, they will be safe in the 
 opinions they have. Which being perhaps but few, this caution will have 
 also this good in it, that it will put them upon considering, and teach them 
 the necessity of examining more than they do ; without which the mind is but 
 a receptacle of inconsistencies, not the store-house of truths. They that do 
 not keep up this indifferency in themselves for all but truth, not supposed, but 
 evidenced in themselves, put coloured spectacles before their eyes, and look 
 on things through false glasses, and then think themselves excused in follow- 
 ing the false appearances which they themselves put upon them. I do not 
 expect that by this way the assent should in every one be proportioned to the 
 grounds and clearness wherewith every truth is capable to be made out; or 
 that men should be perfectly kept from error : that is more than human nature 
 can by any means be advanced to ; I aim at no such unattainable privilege ; 1 
 am only speaking of what they should do, who would deal fairly with their 
 own minds, and make a right use of their faculties in the pursuit of truth ; we 
 fail them a great deal more than they fail us. It is mismanagement more 
 than want of abilities that men have reason to complain of, and which they 
 actually do complain of in those that differ from them. He that by indiffer- 
 ency for all but truth suffers not his assent to go faster than his evidence, nor 
 beyond it, will learn to examine, and examine fairly instead of presuming, 
 and nobody will be at a loss, or in danger for want of embracing those truths 
 3 P 
 
514 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 34 
 
 which are necessary in his station and circumstances. In any other way but 
 this, all tne world are born to orthodoxy; they imbibe at first the allowed 
 opinions of their country and party, and so never questioning their truth, not 
 one of an hundred ever examines. They are applauded for presumipg thev 
 are in the right. He that considers is a foe to orthodoxy, because possibly 
 ne may deviate from some of the received doctrines there. And thus men, 
 without any industry or acquisition of their own, inherit local truths (for it is 
 not the same every where) and are inured to assent without evidence. This 
 influences farther than is thought; for what one of an hundred of the zealous 
 bigots in all parties ever examined the tenets he is so stiff in, or ever thought 
 it his business or duty so to do! It is suspected of lukewarmness to suppose 
 it necessary, and a tendency to apostacy to go about it. And if a man can 
 bring his mind once to be positive and fierce for positions whose evidence he 
 has never once examined, and that in matters of greatest concernment to him; 
 what shall keep him from this short and easy way of being in the right in 
 cases of less moment! Thus we are taught to clothe our minds as we do our 
 bodies, after the fashion in vogue, and it is accounted fantasticalness, or 
 something worse, not to do so. This custom (which who dares oppose!) 
 makes the short-sighted bigots, and the warier sceptics, as far as it prevails : 
 and those that break from it are in danger of heresy : for taking the whole 
 world, how much of it doth truth and orthodoxy possess together! Though 
 it is by the last alone (which has the good luck to be every where) that error 
 and heresy are judged of: for argument and evidence signify nothing in the 
 case, and excuse nowhere, but are sure to be borne down in all societies by 
 the infallible orthodoxy of the place. Whether this be the way to truth and 
 right assent, let the opinions, that take place and prescribe in the several 
 habitable parts of the earth, declare. I never saw any reason yet why truth 
 might not be trusted on its own evidence : I am sure if that be not able to 
 support it, there is no fence against error; and then truth and falsehood are 
 but names that stand for the same things. Evidence therefore is that by 
 which alone every man is (and should be) taught to regulate his assent, who 
 is then, and then only in the right way, when he follows it. 
 
 Men deficient in knowledge are usually in one of these three states ; either 
 wholly ignorant, or as doubting of some proposition they have either embraced 
 formerly, or are at present inclined to ; or lastly, they do with assurance 
 hold and profess without ever having examined, and being convinced by well- 
 grounded arguments. The first of these are in the best state of the three, 
 by having their minds yet in their perfect freedom and indilferency ; the like- 
 lier to pursue truth the better, having no bias yet clapped on to mislead them. 
 
 Sect. 35. — For ignorance, with an indifferency for truth, is nearer to it 
 than opinion with ungrounded inclination, which is the great source of error; 
 and they are more in danger to go out of the way who are marching under 
 the conduct of a guide, that it is a hundred to one will mislead them, than he 
 that has not yet taken a step, and is likelier to be prevailed on to inquire 
 after the right way. The last of the three sorts are in the worst condition 
 of all ; for if a man can be persuaded and fully assured of any thing for a 
 truth, without having examined, what is there that he may not embrace for 
 truth ! and if he has given himself up to believe a lie, what means is there 
 left to recover one who can be assured without examining! To the other 
 two this I crave leave to say, that as he that is ignorant is in the best state 
 of the two, so he should persue truth in a method suitable to that state ; i. e. 
 by inquiring directly into the nature of the thing itself, without minding the 
 opinions of others, or troubling himself with their questions or disputes about 
 it ; but to see what he himself can, sincerely searching after truth, find out. 
 He that proceeds upon other principles in his inquiry into any sciences, 
 though he be resolved to examine them and judge of them freely, does yet 
 at least put himself on that side, and post himself in a party which he will 
 not quit till he be beaten out ; by which the mind is insensibly engaged to make 
 what defence it can, and so is unawares biassed. I do not say but a man 
 
Sect. 35. 
 
 INDIFFERENCY. 
 
 515 
 
 should embrace some opinion when he has examined, else he examines to no 
 purpose ; but the surest and safest way is to have no opinion at all till he has 
 examined, and that without any the least regard to the opinions or systems 
 of other men about it. For example, were it my business to understand 
 physic, would not the safe and readier way be to consult nature herself, and 
 inform myself in the history of diseases and their cures ; than espousing the 
 principles of the dogmatists, methodists, or chemists, to engage in all the 
 disputes concerning either of those systems, and suppose it to be true, till I 
 have tried what they can say to beat me out of it 1 Or, supposing that Hip- 
 pocrates, or any other book, infallibly contains the whole art of physic ; 
 would not the direct way be to study, read, and consider that book, weigh 
 and compare the parts of it to find the truth, rather than espouse the doc- 
 trines of any party! who, though they acknowledge his authority, have 
 already interpreted and wiredrawn all his text to their own sense ; the tinc- 
 ture whereof, when I have imbibed, I am more in danger to misunderstand 
 his true meaning, than if I had come to him with a mind unprepossessed by 
 doctors and commentators of my sect ; whose reasonings, interpretation, and 
 language, which I have been used to, will of course make all chime that way, 
 and make another, and perhaps the genuine meaning of the author seem 
 harsh, strained, and uncouth to me. For words having naturally none of 
 their own, carry that signification to the hearer that he is used to put upon 
 them, whatever be the sense of him that uses them. This, I think, is visibly 
 so ; and if it be, he that begins to have any doubt of any of his tenets, which 
 he received without examination, ought, as much as he can, to put himself 
 wholly into this state of ignorance in reference to that question ; and throw- 
 ing wholly by all his former notions, and the opinions of others, examine, 
 with a perfect indifferency, the question in its source ; without any inclination 
 to either side, or any regard to his or others’ unexamined opinions. This 1 
 own is no easy thing to do ; but I am not inquiring the easy way to opinion, 
 but the right way to truth ; which they must follow who will deal fairly with 
 their own understandings and their own souls. 
 
 Sect. 36. Question. — The indifferency that I here pi-opose will also enable 
 them to state the question right, which they are in doubt about, without which 
 they can never come to a fair and clear decision of it. 
 
 Sect. 37. Perseverance. — Another fruit from this indifferency, and the 
 considering things in themselves abstract from our own opinions and other 
 men’s notions and discourses on them, will be, that each man will pursue his 
 thoughts in that method which will be most agreeable to the nature of the 
 thing, and to his apprehension of what it suggests to him ; in which he 
 ought to proceed with regularity and constancy, until he come to a well- 
 grounded resolution wherein he may acquiesce. If it be objected that this 
 will require every man to be a scholar, and quit all his other business, and 
 betake himself wholly to study ; I answer, I propose no more to any one 
 than he has time for. Some men’s state and condition requires no great ex- 
 tent of knowledge ; the necessary provision for life swallows the greatest 
 part of their time. But one man’s want of leisure is no excuse for the osci- 
 tancy and ignorance of those who have time to spare ; and every one has 
 enough to get as much knowledge as is required and expected of him, and 
 he that does not that, is in love with ignorance, and is accountable for it. 
 
 Sect. 38. Presumption. — The variety of distempers in men’s minds is as 
 great as of those in their bodies ; some are epidemic, few escape them ; and 
 every one too, if he would look into himself, would find some defect of his 
 particular genius. There is scarce any one without some idiosyncrasy that 
 he suffers by. This man presumes upon his parts, that they will not fail 
 him at time of need ; and so thinks it superfluous labour to make any pro- 
 vision before-hand. His understanding is to him like Fortunatus’s purse, 
 which is always to furnish him, without ever putting any thing into it before- 
 hand ; and so he sits still satisfied, without endeavouring to store his under- 
 standing with knowledge. It is the spontaneous product of the country, and 
 
510 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 38. 
 
 vhat need of labour in tillage? Such men may spread their native riches 
 before the ignorant ; but they were best not come stress and trial with 
 the skilful. We are born ignorant of every thing. The superficies of tilings 
 that surround them make impressions on the negligent, but nobody penetrates 
 into the inside without labour, attention, and industry. Stones and timber 
 grow of themselves, but yet there is no uniform pile with symmetry and con- 
 venience to lodge in without toil and pains. God has made the intellectual 
 world harmonious and beautiful without us ; but it will never cpme into our 
 heads all at once ; we must bring it home piecemeal, and there set it up by 
 our own industry, or else we shall have nothing but darkness and a chaos 
 within, whatever order and light there be in things without us. 
 
 Sect. 39. Despondency . — On the other side, there are others that depress 
 their own minds, despond at the first difficulty, and conclude that the getting 
 an insight in any of the sciences, or making any progress in knowledge 
 farther than serves their ordinary business, is above their capacities. These 
 sit still, because they think they have not legs to go ; as the others I last 
 mentioned do, because they think they have wings tb fly, and can soar on 
 high when they please. To these latter one may for answer apply the proverb, 
 “ Use legs and have legs.” Nobody knows what strength of parts he has till 
 he has tried them. And of the understanding one may most truly say, that its 
 force is greater generally than it thinks, till it is put to it. Viresque acquirit 
 eundo. And therefore the proper remedy here is but to set the mind to work, 
 and apply the thoughts vigorously to the business ; for it holds in the struggles 
 of the mind as in those of war, “ Dum putant se vincere vicere a persuasion 
 that we shall overcome any difficulties that we meet with in the sciences, sel- 
 dom fails to carry us through them. Nobody knows the strength of his mind, 
 and the force of steady and regular application, till he has tried. This is cer- 
 tain, he that sets out upon weak legs will not only go farther, but grow stronger 
 too, than one who, with a vigorous constitution and firm limbs, only sits still. 
 
 Something of kin to this men may observe in themselves, when the mind 
 frights itself (as it often does) with any thing reflected on in gross, and tran- 
 siently viewed confusedly, and at a distance. Things thus offered to the 
 mind carry the show of nothing but difficulty in them, and are thought to be 
 wrapt up in impenetrable obscurity. But the truth is, these are nothing but 
 spectres that the understanding raises to itself to flatter its own laziness. It 
 sees nothing distinctly in things remote, and in a huddle ; and therefore con- 
 cludes too faintly, that there is nothing more clear to be discovered in them. 
 It is but to approach nearer, and that mist of our own raising that enveloped 
 them will remove ; and those that in that mist appeared hideous giants not to 
 be grappled with, will be found to be of the ordinary and natural size and shape. 
 Things, that in a remote and confused view seem very obscure, must be ap- 
 proached by gentle and regular steps ; and what is most visible, easy, and obvi- 
 ous in them first considered. Reduce them into their distinct parts ; and then in 
 their due order bring all that should be known concerning every one of those 
 parts into plain and simple questions ; and then what was thought obscure, 
 perplexed, and too hard for our weak parts, will lay itself open to the under- 
 standing in a fair view, and let the mind into that which before it was awed 
 with, and kept at a distance from, as wholly mysterious. I appeal to my 
 reader’s experience, whether this has never happened to him, especially when, 
 busy on one thing, he has occasionally reflected on another. I ask him 
 whether he has never thus been scared with a sudden opinion of mighty diffi- 
 culties, which yet have vanished, when he has seriously and methodically 
 applied himself to the consideration of this seeming terrible subject; and 
 there has been no other matter of astonishment left, but that he amused him- 
 self with so discouraging a prospect, of his own raising, about a matter which 
 in the handling was found to have nothing in it more strange nor intricate 
 than several other things which he had long since and with ease mastered ? 
 This experience would teach us how to deal with such bugbears another time, 
 which should rather serve to excite our vigour than enervate our industry. 
 
Sect. 39. 
 
 DESPONDENCY. 
 
 517 
 
 The surest way for a learner in this, as in all other cases, is not to advance 
 by jumps and large strides ; let that which he sets himself to learn next be 
 indeed the next; i. e. as nearly conjoined with what he knows already as is 
 possible ; let it be distinct but not remote from it : let it be new, and what he 
 did not know before, that the understanding may advance ; but let it be as 
 little at once as may be, that its advances may be clear and sure. All the 
 ground that it gets this way it will hold. This distinct gradual growth in 
 knowledge is firm and sure ; it carries its own light with it in every step of 
 its progression in an easy and orderly train ; than which there is nothing of 
 more use to the understanding. And though this perhaps may seem a very 
 slow and lingering way to knowledge, yet I dare confidently affirm, that who- 
 ever will try it in himself, or any one he will teach, shall find the advances 
 greater in this method than they would in the same space of time have been 
 in any other he could have taken. The greatest part of true knowledge lies 
 in a distinct perception of things in themselves distinct. And some men give 
 more clear light and knowledge by the bare distinct stating of a question, 
 than others by talking of it in gross whole hours together. In this, they who 
 so state a question do no more but separate and disentangle the parts of it one 
 from another, and lay them, when so disentangled, in their due order. This 
 often, without any more ado, resolves the doubt, and shows the mind where 
 the truth lies. The agreement or disagreement of the ideas in question, when 
 they are once separated and distinctly considered, is, in many cases, presently 
 perceived, and thereby clear and lasting knowledge gained ; whereas things 
 in gross taken up together, and so lying together in confusion, can produce in 
 the mind but a confused, which in effect is no, knowledge ; or at least, when 
 it comes to be examined and made use of, will prove little better than none. 
 I therefore take the liberty to repeat here again what I have said elsewhere, 
 that in learning any thing as little should be proposed to the mind at once as 
 is possible ; and, that being understood and fully mastered, to proceed to the 
 next adjoining part yet unknown, simple, unperplexed proposition belonging 
 to the matter in hand, and tending to the clearing what is principally designed. 
 
 Sect. 40. Analogy. — Analogy is of great use to the mind in many cases, 
 especially in natural philosophy ; and that part of it chiefly which consists in 
 happy and successful experiments. But here we must take care that we 
 keep ourselves within that wherein the analogy consists. For example, the 
 acid oil of vitriol is found to be good in such a case, therefore the spirit of 
 nitre or vinegar may be used in the like case. If the good effect of it be 
 owing wholly to the acidity of it, the trial may be justified ; but if there be 
 something else besides the acidity in the oil of vitriol which produces the 
 good we desire in the case, we mistake that for analogy which is not, and 
 suffer our understanding to be misguided by a wrong supposition of analogy 
 where there is none. 
 
 Sect. 41. Association. — Though I have, in the second book of my Essay 
 concerning Human Understanding, treated of the association of ideas ; yet 
 having done it there historically, as giving a view of the understanding in this 
 as well as its several other ways of operating, rather than designing there to 
 inquire into the remedies that ought to be applied to it; it will, under this 
 latter consideration, afford other matter of thought to those who have a mind 
 to instruct themselves thoroughly in the right way of conducting their under- 
 standings ; and that the rather, because this, if I mistake not, is as frequent 
 a cause of mistake and error in us as perhaps any thing else that can be 
 named, and is a disease of the mind as hard to be cured as any ; it being a 
 very hard thing to convince any one that things are not so, and naturally so, 
 as they constantly appear to him. 
 
 By this one easy and unheeded miscarriage of the understanding sandy and 
 loose foundations become infallible principles, and will not suffer themselves 
 to be touched or questioned : such unnatural connexions become by custom as 
 natural to the mind as sun and light, fire and warmth go together, and so 
 seem to carry with them as natural an evidence as self-evident truths them- 
 
518 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 41 
 
 selves. And where then shall one with hopes of success begin the cure ? 
 Many men firmly embrace falsehood for truth, not only because they never 
 thought otherwise, but also because, thus blinded as they have been from the 
 ueginning, they never could think otherwise, at least without a vigour of mind 
 able to contest the empire of habit, and look into its own principles ; a free- 
 dom which few men have the notion of in themselves, and fewer are allowed 
 the practice of by others ; it being the great art and business of the teachers 
 and guides in most sects to suppress, as much as they can, this fundamental 
 duty which every man owes himself, and is the first steady step towards right 
 and truth in the whole train of his actions and opinions. This would give 
 one reason to suspect that such teachers are conscious to themselves of the 
 falsehood or weakness of the tenets they profess, since they will not suffer 
 the grounds whereon they are built to be examined; whereas those who seek 
 truth only, and desire to own and propagate nothing else, freely expose their 
 principles to the test: are pleased to have them examined; give men leave to 
 reject them if they can ; and if there be any thing weak and unsound in them, 
 are willing to have it detected, that they themselves, as well as others, may 
 not lay any stress upon any received proposition beyond what the evidence of 
 its truths will warrant and allow. 
 
 There is, I know, a great fault among all sorts of people of principling 
 their children and scholars, which at last, when looked into, amounts to no 
 more but making them imbibe their teacher’s notions and tenets by an implicit 
 faith, and firmly to adhere to them whether true or false. What colours may 
 be given to this, or of what use it may be when practised upon the vulgar, 
 destined to labour, and given up to the service of their bellies, I will not here 
 inquire. But as to the ingenuous part of mankind, whose condition allows 
 them leisure, and letters, and inquiry after truth, I can see no other right way 
 of principling them but to take heed, as much as may be, that in their tender 
 years ideas that have no natural cohesion come not to be united in their heads ; 
 and that this rule be often inculcated to them to be their guide in the whole 
 course of their lives and studies, viz. that they never suffer any ideas to be join- 
 ed in their understandings in any other or stronger combination than what their 
 own nature and correspondence give them, and that they often examine those 
 that they find linked together in their minds, whether this association of ideas 
 be from the visible agreement that is in the ideas themselves, or from the ha- 
 bitual and prevailing custom of the mind joining them thus together in thinking. 
 
 This is for caution against this evil, before it be thoroughly rivetted by cus- 
 tom in the understanding; but he that would cure it when habit has estab- 
 lished it, must nicely observe the very quick and almost imperceptible motions 
 of the mind in its habitual actions. What I have said in another place about 
 the change of the ideas of sense into those of judgment, may be proof of this. 
 Let any one not skilled in painting be told, when he sees bottles, and tobacco- 
 pipes, and other things so painted as they are in some places shown, that he 
 does not see protuberances, and you will not convince him but by the touch : 
 he will not believe that, by an instantaneous legerdemain of his own thoughts, 
 one idea is substituted for another. How frequent instances may one meet 
 with of this in the arguings of the learned, who not seldom, in two ideas that 
 they have been accustomed to join in their.minds, substitute one for the other ; 
 and, I am apt to think, often without perceiving it themselves ! This, whilst 
 they are under the deceit of it, makes them incapable of conviction, and they 
 applaud themselves as zealous champions for truth, when, indeed, they are 
 contending for error. And the confusion of two different ideas, which a cus- 
 tomary connexion of them in their minds hath made to them almost one, fills 
 their head with false views, and their reasonings with false consequences. 
 
 Sect. 42. Fallacies . — Right understanding consists in the discovery and 
 adherence to truth, and that in the perception of the visible or probable agree- 
 ment or disagreement of ideas, as they are affirmed and denied one of another. 
 From whence it is evident, that the right use and conduct of the understand- 
 ing, whose business is purely truth and nothing else, is, that the mind should 
 
Sect. 42. 
 
 FALLACIES. 
 
 519 
 
 be kept in a perfect indifferency, not inclining to either side, any farther than 
 evidence settles it by knowledge, or the over-balance of probability gives it 
 the turn of assent and belief; but yet it is very hard to meet with any discourse 
 wherein one may not perceive the author not only maintain (for that is rea- 
 sonable and fit) but inclined and biassed to one side of the question, with 
 marks of a desire that that should be true. If it be asked me, how authors 
 who have such a bias and lean to it may be discovered 1 I answer, by ob- 
 serving how in their writings or arguings they are often led by their inclina- 
 tions to change the ideas of the question, either by changing the terms, or by 
 adding and joining others to them, whereby the ideas under consideration are 
 so varied as to be more serviceable to their purpose, and to be thereby brought 
 to an easier and nearer agreement, or more visible and remoter disagreement 
 one with another. This is plain and direct sophistry; but I am far from 
 thinking that wherever it is found it is made use of with design to deceive 
 and mislead the readers. It is visible that men’s prejudices and inclinations 
 by tills way impose often upon themselves ; and their affection for truth, under 
 their prepossession in favour of one side, is the very thing that leads them from 
 it. Inclination suggests and slides into their discourse favourable terms, 
 which introduce favourable ideas ; till at last, by this means, that is concluded 
 clear and evident, thus dressed up, which, taken in its native state, by making 
 use of none but the precise determined ideas, would find no admittance at all. 
 The putting these glosses on what they affirm ; these, as they are thought, 
 handsome, easy, and graceful explications of what they are discoursing on, is 
 so much the character of what is called and esteemed writing well, that it is 
 "ery hard to think that authors will ever be persuaded to leave what serves so 
 well to propagate their opinions, and procure themselves credit in the world, 
 for a more jejune and dry way of writing, by keeping to the same terms pre- 
 cisely annexed to the same ideas ; a sour and blunt stiffness, tolerable in 
 mathematicians only, who force their way, and make truth prevail by irre- 
 sistible demonstration. 
 
 But yet if authors cannot be prevailed with to quit the looser, though more 
 insinuating ways of writing; if they will not think fit to keep close to truth 
 and instruction by unvaried terms, and plain unsophisticated arguments ; yet 
 it concerns readers not to be imposed on by fallacies, and the prevailing ways 
 of insinuation. To do this, the surest and most effectual remedy is to fix in 
 the mind the clear and distinct ideas of the question stripped of words ; and 
 so likewise in the train of argumentation, to take up the author’s ideas, ne- 
 glecting his words, observing how they connect or separate those in the 
 question. He that does this will be able to cast off all that is superfluous ; he 
 will see what is pertinent, what coherent, what is direct to, what slides by 
 the question. This will readily show him all the foreign ideas in the discourse, 
 and where they were brought in ; and though they perhaps dazzled the writer, 
 yet he will perceive that they give no light nor strength to his reasonings. 
 
 This though it be the shortest and easiest way of reading books with profit, 
 and keeping one’s self from being misled by great names or plausible dis- 
 courses ; yet it being hard and tedious to those who have not accustomed 
 themselves to it, it is not to be expected that every one (among those few 
 who really pursue truth) should this way guard his understanding from being 
 imposed on by the wilful, or at least undesigned sophistry, which creeps into 
 most of the books of argument. They, that write against their conviction, or 
 that, next to them, are resolved to maintain the tenets of a party they are 
 engaged in, cannot be supposed to reject any arms that may help to defend 
 their cause, and therefore such should be read with the greatest caution. 
 And they who write for opinions they are sincerely persuaded of, and believe 
 to be true, think they may so far allow themselves to indulge their laudable 
 affection to truth, as to permit their esteem .of it to give it the best colours, 
 and set it off with the best expressions and dress they can, thereby to gain it 
 tiie easiest entrance into the minds of their readers, and fix it deepest there. 
 
 One of those being the state of mind we may justly suppose most writers to 
 be in, it is fit their readers, who apply to them for instruction, should not lay 
 
5SU 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 42 
 
 by that caution which becomes a sincere pursuit of truth, and should make 
 them always watchful against whatever might conceal or misrepresent it. IS 
 they have not the skill of representing to themselves the author’s sense by 
 pure ideas separated from sounds, and thereby divested of the false lights and 
 deceitful ornaments of speech ; this yet they should do, they should keep the 
 precise question steadily in their minds, carry it along with them through the 
 whole discourse, and suffer not the least alteration in the terms, either by ad- 
 dition, subtraction, or substituting any other. This every one can do who 
 has a mind to it ; and he that has not a mind to it, it is plain, makes his under- 
 standing only the warehouse of other men’s lumber; I mean false and uncon- 
 cluding reasonings, rather than a repository of truth for his own use ; which 
 will prove substantial, and stand him in stead, when he has occasion for it. 
 And whether such an one deals fairly by his own mind, and conducts his own 
 understanding right, I leave to his own understanding to judge. 
 
 Sect. 43. Fundamental verities . — The mind of man being very narrow, 
 and so slow in making acquaintance with things, and taking in new truths, 
 that no one man is capable, in a much longer life than ours, to know all truths ; 
 it becomes our prudence, in our search after knowledge, to employ our 
 thoughts about fundamental and material questions, carefully avoiding those 
 that are trifling, and not suffering ourselves to be diverted from our main even 
 purpose, by those that are merely incidental. How much of many young 
 men’s time is thrown away in purely logical inquiries, I need not mention. 
 This is no better than if a man, who was to be a painter, should spend all his 
 time in examining the threads of the several cloths he is to paint upon, and 
 counting the hairs of each pencil and brush he intends to use in the laying on 
 of his colours. Nay, it is much worse than for a young painter to spend his 
 apprenticeship in such useless niceties ; for he, at the end of all his pains to 
 no purpose, finds that it is not painting, nor any help to it, and so is really to 
 no purpose : whereas men designed for scholars have often their heads so filled 
 and warmed with disputes on logical questions, that they take those airy 
 useless notions for real and substantial knowledge, and think their under- 
 standings so well furnished with science, that they need not look any farther 
 into the nature of things, or descend to the mechanical drudgery of experi 
 ment and inquiry. This is so obvious a mismanagement of the understanding, 
 and that in the professed way to knowledge, that it could not be passed by ; 
 to which might be joined abundance of questions, and the way of handling of 
 them in the schools. What faults in particular of this kind every man is, or 
 may be guilty of, would be infinite to enumerate ; it suffices to have shown 
 that superficial and slight discoveries and observations that contain nothing of 
 moment in themselves, nor serve as clues to lead us into farther knowledge, 
 should not be thought worth our searching after. 
 
 There are fundamental truths that lie at the bottom, the basis upon which 
 a great many others rest, and in which they have their consistency. These 
 are teeming truths, rich in store, with which they furnish the mind, and, like 
 the lights of heaven, are not only beautiful and entertaining in themselves, 
 but give light and evidence to other things, that without them could not be 
 seen or known. Such is that admirable discovery of Mr Newton, that all 
 bodies gravitate to one another, which may be counted as the basis of natural 
 philosophy ; which of what use it is to the understanding of the great frame of 
 our solar system, he has to the astonishment of the learned world shown ; and 
 how much farther it would guide us in other things if rightly pursued, is not 
 yet known. Our Saviour’s great rule, that “ we should love our neighbour 
 as ourselves,” is such a fundamental truth for the regulating human society, 
 that, I think, by that alone, one might without difficulty determine all the cases 
 and doubts in social morality. These and such as these are the truths we 
 should endeavour to find out, and store our minds with. Which leads me to 
 another thing in the conduct of the understanding that is no less necessary , viz. 
 
 Sect. 44. Bottoming . — To accustom ourselves, in any question proposed, 
 to examine and find out upon what it bottoms. Most of the difficulties that 
 come in our way, when well considered and traced, lead us to some proposi- 
 
Sect. 44. 
 
 BOTTOMING. 
 
 521 
 
 tion, which, known to be true, clears the doubt, and gives an easy solution 
 of the question ; whilst topical and superficial arguments, of which there is 
 store to be found on both sides, filling the head with variety of thoughts, and 
 the mouth with copious discourse, serve only to amuse the understanding, 
 and entertain company, without coming to the bottom of the question, the 
 only place of rest and stability for an inquisitive mind, whose tendency is 
 only to truth and knowledge. For example, if it be demanded, whether the 
 grand seignor can lawfully take what he will from any of his people 1 This 
 question cannot be resolved without coming to a certainty, whether all men 
 are naturally equal ; for upon that it turns ; and that truth well settled in the 
 understanding, and carried in the mind through the various debates concern- 
 ing the various rights of men in society, will go a great way in putting an end 
 to them, and showing on which side the truth is. 
 
 Sect. 45. Transferring of thoughts . — There is scarce any thing more for 
 the improvement of knowledge, for the ease of life, and the despatch of busi- 
 ness, than for a man to be able to dispose of his own thoughts ; and there is 
 scarce any thing harder in the whole conduct of the understanding than to 
 get a full mastery over it. The mind, in a waking man, has always some 
 object that it applies itself to ; which, when we are lazy or unconcerned, we 
 can easily change, and at pleasure transfer our thoughts to another, and from 
 thence to a third, which has no relation to either of the former. Hence men 
 forwardly conclude, and frequently say, nothing is so free as thought, and it 
 were well it were so ; but the contrary will be found true in several instances ; 
 and there are many cases wherein there is nothing more resty and ungovern- 
 able than our thoughts : they will not be directed what objects to pursue, nor 
 be taken off from those they have once fixed on ; but run away with a man 
 in pursuit of those ideas they have in view, let him do what he can. 
 
 I will not here mention again what I have above taken notice of, how hard 
 it is to get the mind, narrowed by a custom of thirty or forty years’ standing 
 to a scanty collection of obvious and common ideas, to enlarge itself to a 
 more copious stock, and grow into an acquaintance with those that would 
 afford more abundant matter of useful contemplation ; it is not of this I am 
 here speaking. The inconveniency I would here represent, and find a remedy 
 for, is the difficulty there is sometimes to transfer our minds from one subject 
 to another in cases where the ideas are equally familiar to us. 
 
 Matters, that are recommended to our thoughts by any of our passions, 
 take possession of our minds with a kind of authority, and will not be kept 
 out or dislodged ; but, as if the passion that rules were, for the time, the she- 
 riff of the place, and came with all the posse, the understanding is seized and 
 taken with the object it introduces, as if it had a legal right to be alone con- 
 sidered there. There is scarce any body, I think, of so calm a temper who 
 hath not some time found this tyranny on his understanding, and suffered un- 
 der the inconvenience of it. Who is there almost, whose mind, at some time 
 or other, love or anger, fear or grief, has not so fastened to some clog, that it 
 could not turn itself to any other object 1 I call it a clog, for it hangs upon the 
 mind so as to hinder its vigour and activity in the pursuit of other contempla- 
 tions; and advances itselflittle or not at all in the knowledge of the thing which 
 it so closely hugs and constantly pores on. Men thus possessed are sometimes 
 as if they were so in the worst sense, and lay under the power of an en- 
 chantment. They see not what passes before their eyes ; hear not the 
 audible discourse of the company ; and when by any strong application to 
 them they are roused a little, they are like men brought to themselves from 
 some remote region ; whereas in truth they come no farther than their secret 
 cabinet within, where they have been wholly taken up with the puppet, which 
 is for that time appointed for their entertainment. The shame that such 
 dumps cause to well bred people, when it carries them away from the com . 
 pany, where they should bear a part in the conversation, is a sufficient argu- 
 ment that it is a fault in the conduct of our understanding, not to have that 
 power over it as to make use of it to those purposes, and on those occasions, 
 
522 
 
 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Sect. 45, 
 
 wherein we have need of its assistance. The mind should be always free 
 and ready to turn itself to the variety of objects that occur, and allow them as 
 much consideration as shall for that time be thought fit. To be engrossed so 
 by one object, as not to be prevailed on to leave it for another that we judge 
 fitter for our contemplation, is to make it of no use to us. Did this state of 
 mind remain always so, every one would, without scruple, give it the name 
 of perfect madness ; and whilst it does last, at whatever intervals it returns, 
 such a rotation of thoughts about the same object no more carries us forward 
 towards the attainment of knowledge, than getting upon a mill horse whilst 
 he jogs on in his circular track would carry a man. a journey. 
 
 I grant something must be allowed to legitimate passions, and to natural 
 inclinations. Every man, besides occasional affections, has beloved studies, 
 and those the mind will more closely stick to ; but yet it is best that it should 
 be always at liberty, and under the free disposal of the man, and to act how 
 and upon what he directs. This we should endeavour to obtain, unless we 
 would be content with such a flaw in our understanding, that sometimes we 
 should be as it were without it ; for it is very little better than so in cases 
 where we cannot make use of it to those purposes we would, and which stand 
 in present need of it. But before fit remedies can be thought on for this dis- 
 ease, we must know the several causes of it, and thereby regulate the cure, 
 if we will hope to labour with success. 
 
 One we have already instanced in, whereof all men that reflect have so 
 general a knowledge, and so often an experience in themselves, that nobody 
 doubts of it. A prevailing passion so pins down our thoughts to the ob- 
 ject and concern of it, that a man passionately in love cannot bring himself 
 to think of his ordinary affairs, or a kind mother drooping under the loss of a 
 child, is not able to bear a part as she was wont in the discourse of the com- 
 pany, or conversation of her friends. But though passion be the most obvious 
 and general, yet it is not the only cause that binds up the understanding, and 
 confines it for the time to one object, from which it will not be taken off. 
 
 Besides this, we may often find that the understanding, when it has awhile 
 employed itself upon a subject which either chance, or some slight accident, 
 offered to it, without the interest or recommendation of any passion, works 
 itself into a warmth, and by degrees gets into a career, wherein, like a bowl 
 down a hill, it increases its motion by going, and will not be stopped or diverted ; 
 though, when the heat is over, it sees all this earnest application was about 
 a trifle not worth a thought, and all the pains employed about it lost labour. 
 
 There is a third sort, if I mistake not, yet lower than this ; it is a sort of 
 childishness, if I may so say, of the understanding, wherein, during the fit, it 
 plays with and dandles some insignificant puppet to no end, nor with any de- 
 sign at all, and yet cannot be easily got off from it. Thus some trivial sen- 
 tence, or a scrap of poetry, will sometimes get into men’s heads, and make 
 such a chiming there, that there is no stilling of it ; no peace to be obtained, 
 nor attention to any thing else, but this impertinent guest will take up the 
 mind and possess the thoughts in spite of all endeavours to get rid of it. 
 Whether every one hath experimented in themselves this troublesome in- 
 trusion of some frisking ideas which thus importune the understanding, and 
 hinder it from being better employed, I know not. But persons of very good 
 parts, and those more than one, I have heard speak and complain of it them- 
 selves. The reason I have to make this doubt, is from what I have known 
 in a case something of kin to this, though much odder, and that is of a sort 
 of visions that some people have lying quiet, but perfectly awake, in the dark, 
 or with their eyes shut. It is a great variety of faces, most commonly very 
 odd ones, that appear to them in a train one after another; so that having 
 had just the sight of the one, it immediately passes away to give place to an- 
 other, that the same instant succeeds, and has as quick an exit as its leader; 
 and so they march on in a constant succession ; nor can any one of them by 
 any endeavour be stopped or retained beyond the instant of its appearance, 
 but is thrust out bv its follower, which will have its turn. Concerning this 
 
Sect. 45. 
 
 TRANSFERRING OF THOUGHTS. 
 
 523 
 
 fantastical phenomenon I have talked with several people, whereof some have 
 been perfectly acquainted with it, and others have been so wholly strangers 
 to it, that they could hardly be brought to conceive or believe it. I knew a 
 lady of excellent parts, who had got past thirty without having ever had the 
 least notice of any such thing ; she was so great a stranger to it, that when she 
 heard me and another talking of it, could scarce forbear thinking we bantered 
 her ; but some time after drinking a large dose of dilute tea, (as she was or- 
 dered by a physician) going to bed, she told us at next meeting, that she had 
 now experimented what our discourse had much ado to persuade her of. She 
 had seen a great variety of faces in a long train, succeeding one another, as 
 we had described ; they were all strangers and intruders, such as she had no 
 acquaintance with before, nor sought after then ; and as they came of them- 
 selves they went too ; none of them stayed a moment, nor could be detained 
 by all the endeavours she could use, but went on in their solemn procession, 
 just appeared and then vanished. This odd phenomenon seems to have a 
 mechanical cause, and to depend upon the matter and motion of the blood or 
 animal spirits. When the fancy is bound by passion, I know no way to set 
 the mind free, and at liberty to prosecute what thoughts the man would make 
 choice of, but to allay the present passion, or counterbalance it with another ; 
 which is an art to be got by study, and acquaintance with the passions. 
 
 Those who find themselves apt to be carried away with the spontaneous 
 current of their own thoughts, not excited by any passion or interest, must 
 be very wary and careful in all the instances of it to stop it, and never 
 humour their minds in being thus triflingly busy. Men know the value of 
 their corporeal liberty, and therefore suffer not willingly fetters and chains to 
 be put upon them. To have the mind captivated is, for the time, certainly 
 the greater evil of the two, and deserves our utmost care and endeavours to 
 preserve the freedom of our better part. In this case our pains will not be 
 lost; striving and struggling will prevail, if we constantly, on all such occa- 
 sions, make use of it. We must never indulge these trivial attentions of 
 thought ; as soon as we find the mind makes itself a business of nothing, we 
 should immediately disturb and check it, introduce new and more serious con- 
 siderations, and not leave till we have beaten it off from the pursuit it was 
 upon. This, at first, if we have let the contrary practice grow to a habit, 
 will perhaps be difficult ; but constant endeavours will by degrees prevail, and 
 at last make it easy. And when a man is pretty well advanced, and can 
 command his mind off at pleasure from incidental and undesigned pursuits, it 
 may not, be amiss for him to go on farther, and make attempts upon medita- 
 tions of greater moment, that at the last he may have the full power over his 
 own mind, and be so fully master of his own thoughts, as to be able to trans- 
 fer them from one subject to another, with the same ease that he can lay by 
 any thing he has in his hand, and take something else that he has a mind to in 
 the room of it. This liberty of mind is of great use both in business and 
 study, and he that has got it will have no small advantage of ease and des- 
 patch in all that is the chosen and useful employment of his understanding. 
 
 The third and last way which I mentioned the mind to be sometimes taken 
 up with, I mean the chiming of some particular words or sentence in the me- 
 mory, and, as it were, making a noise in the head, and the like, seldom hap- 
 pens but when the mind is lazy, or very loosely or negligently employed. It 
 were better indeed to be without such impertinent and useless repetitions : 
 any obvious idea, when it is roving carelessly at a venture, being of more 
 nse, and apter to suggest something worth consideration, than the insignifi- 
 cant buzz of purely empty sounds. But since the rousing of the mind, and 
 setting the understanding on work with some degrees of vigour, does for the 
 most part presently set it free from these idle companions ; it may not be 
 amiss, whenever we find ourselves troubled with them, to make use of so 
 profitable a remedy that is always at hand. 
 
INDEX 
 
 TO 
 
 ESSAY ON THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 Anticipation, or first conceived opinions, 
 hinder knowledge, 507. 
 
 Assent, how it may be rightly given, 
 512. 
 
 Association of ideas, a disease of the un- 
 derstanding, 517, Sec. 
 
 how to prevent and cure it, ib. 
 
 Bottom of a question should be sought 
 for, 520. 
 
 Despondency of attaining knowledge, a 
 great hinderance to the mind, 516. 
 
 Desultoriness often misleads the under- 
 standing, 500. 
 
 Distinction, how it differs from division, 
 510. 
 
 how the understanding is im- 
 proved by a right use of it, ib. 
 
 Fallacies, how the understanding is mis- 
 guided by them, 5 IS. 
 
 Fundamental truths, the mind should 
 chiefly apply itself to them, 520. 
 
 Haste, when too great, often misleads 
 the understanding, 499. 
 
 Ignorance, not so bad as groundless as- 
 surance, 514. 
 
 how it should be removed, ib. 
 
 Indifferency for all truth should be che- 
 rished, 496. 
 
 the ill consequences of the 
 
 want of it, 513. 
 
 Mathematics, the usefulness of studying 
 them, 493. 
 
 Observation, very useful to improve 
 knowledge, 498. 
 
 Opinion, no one should be wished to be 
 true, 495. 
 
 Partiality in studies, 503. 
 
 it misleads the understanding, ib. 
 
 Parts, or abilities, their difference, 486. 
 
 may be improved by a due conduct 
 
 of the understanding, ib. 
 
 Perseverance in study necessary to know- 
 ledge, 515. 
 
 Practice, or exercise of the mind, should 
 not be beyond its strength, 508. t 
 
 524 
 
 THE 
 
 Practice, the understanding is improved 
 by it, 489. 
 
 Prejudices, every one should find out, 
 and get rid of his own, 495. 
 
 Presumption, a great hinderance to the 
 understanding, 515. 
 
 Principles, when wrong, are very pre- 
 judicial, 490. Sec. 
 
 we should carefully examine 
 
 our own, 496. 
 
 the usefulnessof intermediate 
 
 principles, 502. 
 
 Question, should be rightly stated, be- 
 fore arguments are used, 515. 
 
 Reading, how the mind should be con- 
 ducted in, 501. 
 
 Reasoning, several defects therein men- 
 tioned, 486, Sec. 
 
 how it should be improved, 488. 
 
 Religion, it concerns all mankind to un- 
 
 . derstand it rightly, 494. 
 
 Resignation, or flexibleness, often ob- 
 structs knowledge, 508. 
 
 Theology, should be studied by all men, 
 503. 
 
 Transferring of thoughts not easily at- 
 tained, 521. 
 
 causes of the difficulty of 
 
 doing it, 522. 
 
 Transferring, how this difficulty may be 
 overcome, 523. 
 
 Understanding, how it may be improved, 
 489. 
 
 man’s last resort to it for 
 
 conduct, 485. 
 
 to be improved by piactice 
 
 and habit, 489. 
 
 wherein the last judgment 
 
 of it consists, 499, See. 
 
 Universality of knowledge, how it should 
 be pursued, 500. 
 
 Wandering, we should endeavour to 
 keep our minds from it, 510. 
 
 Vords, should not be used without a 
 fixed sense, 509. 
 
 END. 
 
 
I 
 
 

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