sober, and of a right understanding in all other things, may in one particular be as frantic as any in Bedlam; if either by any sudden very strong impression, 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 together is in some more, some less. In short, herein seems to lie the difference between idiots and madmen, that madmen put wrong ideas together, and so make wrong propositions, but argue and reason right from them; but idiots make very few or no propositions, and reason scarce at all.

14. Method. These, I think, are the first faculties and operations of the mind, which it makes use of in understanding; and though they are exercised about all its ideas in general, yet the instances I have hitherto given have been chiefly in simple ideas; and I have subjoined the explication 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 principally about simple ideas, we might, by following nature in its ordinary method, trace and discover them in their rise, progress, and gradual improvements.

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 extracts, denominates, compares, and exercises in 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 sensation. compounding, comparing, abstracting, &c., I have but just spoken, having occasion to treat of them more at large in other places.

Of

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 human 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 I am in the right; the best way to come to truth being to examine things as really they are, and not to conclude they are, as we fancy of ourselves, or have been taught by others to imagine.

16. Appeal to Experience. To deal truly, this is the only way that I can discover, whereby the ideas of things are brought into the understanding: if other men have either innate ideas or infused principles, they have reason to enjoy them; and if they are 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.

17. Dark Room.-I pretend not to teach, but to inquire, and therefore 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 reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.

These are my guesses concerning the means whereby the

*For a time this doctrine was received in the philosophical world, and deemed satisfactory; but authors afterwards appeared who brought forward another theory, with inferior genius, and therefore with inferior authority; but possessing the recommendation of novelty, it found many admirers, and still retains them; that is, if any modification of philosophy can any longer be said to command admiration or excite interest in this country. (See Dugald Stewart's Philosophical Essays, Ess. I. chap. 2, 3. p. 71 et seq.)-ED.

understanding 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.

CHAPTER XII.

OF COMPLEX IDEAS.

1. Made by the Mind out of simple Ones.—WE have hitherto considered 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 foundations 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. Combining 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 ways of operation, to be much the same in the material and intellectual 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 consider 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 together. 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 complicated 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.

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 without by the senses, nor any ideas of other kind of operations of a thinking substance, than what it finds in itself; but when 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.

3. Are either Modes, 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.

4. Modes.-First, Modes I call such complex ideas, which, however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are considered as dependencies on, or affections of substances; such as are ideas signified by the words triangle, gratitude, murder, &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 discourses, 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.*

* The reader will perhaps agree with me in regarding this as an unphilosophical decision. It were far better to employ a new term, with a separate and definite meaning attached to it, than to confuse our appre

5. Simple and mixed Modes.-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 certain composition of colour and figure, causing delight in the beholder; theft, which being the concealed change of the possession of anything, without the consent of the proprietor, contains, as is visible, a combination of several ideas of several kinds: and these I call mixed modes.

6. Substances, single or collective.-Secondly, the ideas of substances are such combinations of simple ideas as are taken to represent distinct particular things subsisting by themselves, in which 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 hension of a known word by multiplying its significations, and applying it to uses for which it is unsuited. Locke would have avoided many of the objections that have been urged against him, had he ventured upon the invention of a new nomenclature; for it seems clear to me, that the objections of his adversaries are often directed, not so much at his notions, as at their own misapprehensions of those notions; for which, however, as he furnished them with the handle, he may be himself to blame.-ED.

*Nicholas Caussin, the Jesuit, in his work, "De Eloquentia Sacra et Humana," X. 593, gives a similar definition (if anything so brief deserve the name) of beauty: "Est porro pulchritudo apta membrorum proportio, cum quædam coloris suavitate. In viris dignitas, in fœminis venustas appellatur. (See Payne Knight's Analytical Essays on the Principles of Taste, Part I. ch. v. §§ 26 et seq.; and compare Dugald Stewart's notions, Philosophical Essays, p. 256 et seq.)-ED.