MODE, in Metaphysics, seems properly to denote the manner of a thing's existence: but Locke, whose language
language in that science is generally adopted, uses the word in a sense somewhat different from its ordinary and proper signification. "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," he calls modes. Of these modes, there are, according to him, 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 a score; which are nothing but the ideas of so many distinct units added together;" and these he calls simple modes. 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 any thing without the consent of the proprietor, contains, as is visible, a combination of several ideas of several kinds;" and these he calls mixed modes. For the just distinction between ideas and notions, as well as between ideas and the qualities of external objects, which in this account of modes are all confounded together, see METAPHYSICS.