Metaphysics is that part of philosophy which considers the nature and properties of thinking beings.
Aristotle, after treating on physics, begins his next book, (in which he pretends to elevate the mind above corporeal objects, to fix it on the contemplation of God, of angels, and of things spiritual, and to enable it to judge of the principles of sciences by abstraction,) with the Greek words μετα τα φυσικα, περι φυσικαιν, i.e. after metaphysics. His disciples, and succeeding philosophers, have formed, of these two, one word, Metaphysics, by which they mean that science of which we have just now given the definition.
Metaphysics is divided, according to the objects that it considers, into six principal parts, which are called,
1. Ontology: 2. Cosmology: 3. Anthropology: 4. Psychology: 5. Pneumatology: and, 6. Theodicy, or metaphysical theology.
1. The doctrine that is named Ontology, is that part of metaphysics which investigates, and explains, the nature and general essence of all beings, as well as the qualities and attributes that essentially appertain to them, and which we ought to assign them by abstraction, as considering them a priori. Hence it appears, that this doctrine should proceed in its operations from the most simple ideas; such as do not admit of any other qualities of which they may be compounded. These simple ideas are, for example, those of being, of essence, of substance, of mode, of existence as well with regard to time as place, of a necessary cause, of unity, the idea of negation, the difference between a being that is simple or compound, necessary or accidental, finite or infinite; the idea of essential and abstract properties, as of the greatness, perfection, and goodness of beings; and so of the rest. The business therefore of ontology, is to make us acquainted with every kind of being in its essence and abstract qualities, and such as are distinct from all other beings. This knowledge being once established on simple principles, just consequences may from thence be drawn, and those things proved after which metaphysics inquires, and which is its business to prove.
It is easy to conceive, that even a clear knowledge of beings, and their essential properties, would be still defective and useless to man, if he did not know how to determine and fix his ideas by proper denominations, and consequently to communicate his perceptions to those whom he would instruct, or against whom he is obliged to dispute, as they would not have the same perceptions that he has. It is, by the way, perhaps one of the greatest advantages that we have over other animals, to be able so to determine our ideas by signs or denominations, either of writing or speech, as to refer each particular perception to its general idea, and each general perception to its particular idea. To render therefore our ideas intelligible to others, we must have determinate words or denominations for each being, and the qualities of each being; and ontology teaches us those terms which are so necessary to fix our ideas, and to give them the requisite requisite perspicuity and precision, that we may not dispute about words when we endeavour to extend the sphere of our knowledge, or when we debate concerning the essence of an object, or endeavour to make it more evident. It is for this reason that ontology was formerly regarded as a barren science, that consisted of technical terms only; as a mere terminology: whereas the best modern philosophers make it a more substantial science, by annexing determinate ideas to those words, and the examination of those objects themselves that these terms imply. But the misfortune is, to speak the truth, that in this ontologic determination there is still much uncertainty and sophistry. For, in the first place, we yet know of no metaphysics where all the definitions are just; and in the second place, the words that are employed in these definitions have always something equivocal in their meaning, and have consequently themselves need of definitions; and in this manner we may recede to infinity, unless we recur to the first impressions that the simple words have made in our minds, and the primitive ideas which they there excite. The words man, love, coach, &c., say more, and make a stronger impression than all the definitions we can give of them; by ontologic explications they are almost always covered with a dark cloud.
2. Metaphysics, after having, in as solid a manner as possible, explained and established the principles above mentioned, continues its inquiries to the second part, that is called Cosmology, and examines into the essence of the world, and all that it contains; its eternal laws; of the nature of matter; of motion; of the nature of tangible bodies, of their attributes and essential qualities, and of all that can be known by abstraction, and sometimes also by adding the lights that man acquires concerning them by the experience of his senses. It is also in cosmology that we examine the Leibnitzian system; that is, whether God, in creating the world, must necessarily have created the best world; and if this world be so in effect. And in this manner they pursue the argument from consequence to consequence to its last resort. All philosophers, however, do not go equally deep. Each mind has its dose of penetration. Due care should be likewise taken, that subtlety, in this chain of reasoning, carried beyond the general bounds of the human mind, do not prejudice either the perspicuity or the truth of ideas: seeing that error here too nearly approaches the truth; and that every idea, which cannot be rendered intelligible, is in effect equal to a false idea.
3. Anthropology, or the knowledge of man, forms the third branch of metaphysics. It is subdivided into two parts. The first, which consists in the knowledge of the exterior parts of the human frame, does not belong to this science; anatomy and physiology teach that. The business here is only a metaphysical examination of man, his existence, his essence, his essential qualities and necessary attributes, all considered a priori: and this examen leads at the same time to
4. Psychology, which is the fourth part of metaphysics, and consists in the knowledge of the soul in general, and of the soul of man in particular; concerning which, the most profound, the most subtle and abstract researches have been made, that the human reason is capable of producing; and concerning the substance of which, in spite of all these efforts, it is yet extremely difficult to assert anything that is rational, and still less any thing that is positive and well supported.
5. The fifth part of metaphysics is called Pneumatology. It is not a very long time since this term has been invented, and that metaphysicians have made of it a distinct doctrine. By this they mean the knowledge of all spirits, angels, &c. It is easy to conceive that infinite art is necessary to give an account of what we do not absolutely know any thing, and of which, by the nature of the subject itself, we never can know any thing. But the metaphysician presently offers to show us, "what is the idea of a spirit; the effective existence of a spirit; what are its general qualities and properties; that there are rational spirits, and that these rational spirits have qualities that are founded in the moral qualities of God:" for this is, in so many words, what is taught us by pneumatology or pneumatics.
6. Metaphysical Theology, which M. Leibnitz and some others call Theodicy, is the sixth and last doctrine of metaphysics. It teaches us the knowledge of the existence of God; to make the most rational suppositions concerning his divine essence, and to form a just idea of his qualities and perfections, and to demonstrate them by abstract reasoning a priori. Theodicy differs from natural theology, in as much as this last borrows, in fact, from theodicy, proofs and demonstrations to confirm the existence of a Supreme Being; but after having solidly established that great truth, by extending its consequences, natural theology teaches us what are the relations and connexions that subsist between that Supreme Being and man, and what are the moral duties that result from that connexion. As pneumatology is a science highly infidious and chimerical, so is metaphysical theology susceptible of sound argument and demonstration; to the great comfort of mankind, the whole of whose happiness is founded on the certainty of this science. If the effects and operations of spirits in the universe were as evident as the effects and operations of the Deity, and their necessary existence as capable of being proved a priori, pneumatology would be a doctrine of equal certainty with theodicy: but as neither one nor the other can be proved, with regard to spirits in general, whilst God manifests himself in every part of nature, we have only to descend from the most simple and abstract ideas, to those that are the most compound; and from thence to ascend, by a chain of reasonings, from the creature up to the Author of the creature and of all nature: We shall find, that the result of all these operations of the mind will constantly be, The necessity of the existence of a God; and we may at all times determine, though very imperfectly, from the weakness of our discernment, what that Supreme Being must be, by positively determining what he cannot be. Every thing that can concur to furnish new proofs on this subject, or to elucidate and establish those which are already known, is therefore of inestimable value to mankind; and though this were the only object of metaphysics, it would highly merit the attention of those of the most refined and most exalted genius.
After giving this general view of the subject, we shall proceed, proceed to give the substance of what Mr Locke has delivered upon it.
Of ideas in general, and their original.
By the term idea, as defined by Mr Locke, is meant whatever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking.
In order to trace the manner by which we acquire these ideas, let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: how comes it to be furnished? whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? From experience and observation. This, when employed about external sensible objects, we may call sensation: by this we have the ideas of bitter, sweet, yellow, hard, &c., which are commonly called sensible qualities, because conveyed into the mind by the senses. The same experience, when employed about the internal operations of the mind, perceived and reflected on by us, we may call reflection: hence we have the ideas of perception, thinking, doubting, willing, reasoning, &c.
These two, viz. external material things as the objects of sensation, and the operations of our own minds as the objects of reflection, are the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings; the understanding seems not to have the least glimmering of ideas, which it doth not receive from one of these two sources. These, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several modes and compositions, we shall find to contain our whole stock of ideas; and that we have nothing in our minds which did not come in one of these two ways.
It is evident, that children come by degrees to be furnished with ideas from the objects they are conversant with: they are so surrounded with bodies that perpetually and diversely affect them, that some ideas will (whether they will or no) be imprinted on their minds. Light and colours, sounds and tangible qualities, do continually solicit their proper senses, and force an entrance into the mind. It is late, commonly, before children come to have ideas of the operations of their minds; and some men 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 impressions enough to leave in the mind clear and lasting ideas, till the understanding turns inward upon itself, and reflects on its own operation, and makes them the objects of its own contemplation.
When a man first perceives, then he may be said to have ideas; having ideas, and perception, signifying the same thing.
Of simple ideas.
Of ideas, some are simple, others complex. A simple idea is one uniform appearance or conception in the mind, which is not distinguishable into different ideas. Such are the ideas of sensible qualities, which though they are in the things themselves so united and blended, that there is no separation, no distance between them, yet the ideas they produce in the mind enter by the senses simple and unmixed. Thus, though the hand feels which changes the situation of its parts upon an easy and unpainful touch.
This difficulty of changing situation among the parts, gives no more solidity to the hardest body, than to the softest; nor is an adamant one jot more solid than water. He that shall fill a yielding soft body well with air or water, will quickly find its resistance. By this we may distinguish the idea of the extension of body, from the idea of the extension of space: That of body, is the cohesion or continuity of solid, separable, and moveable parts; that of space, the continuity of unfold, inseparable, and immovable parts. Upon the solidity of bodies depends their mutual impulse, resistance, and protrusion.
Of simple ideas of different senses.
Some ideas we get into the mind by more than one sense; as space, extension, figure, rest, and motion. These are perceivable by the eyes and touch.
Of simple ideas of reflection.
Some ideas are had from reflection only: Such are the ideas we have of the operations of our minds; of which the two principal are, perception, or thinking; and volition, or willing. The powers of producing these operations are called faculties; which are, the understanding, and will. The several modes of thinking, &c. belong to this head.
Of simple ideas of sensation and reflection.
There are some simple ideas conveyed into the mind by all the ways of sensation and reflection; such are pleasure, pain, power, existence, unity, succession. Pleasure or delight, pain or uneasiness, accompany almost every impression on our senses, and every action or thought of the mind.
The Author of our beings having given a power to our minds, in several instances, to choose amongst its ideas which it will think on; to excite us to these actions of thinking and motion, he has joined to several thoughts and sensations a perception of delight; without this we should have no reason to prefer one thought or action to another.
Pain has the same efficacy to set us on work that pleasure has; since we are as ready to avoid that, as to pursue this. This is worth our consideration, that pain is often produced by the same objects and ideas that produce pleasure in us. This their near conjunction 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 they will do us, and as advice to withdraw us 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: Which is wisely ordered by nature, that when any object does by the vehemence of its operation disorder the instruments of sensation, whose structures cannot but be very delicate, we might by the pain be warned to withdraw before the organ be quite put out of order. That this is the end of pain, appears from this consideration; that though great light is insufferable to the eyes, yet the highest degree of darkness does not at all displease them; because that causes no disorderly motion in that curious organ the eye. But excess of cold, as well as heat, pains us; because it is equally destructive to the temper which is necessary to the preservation of life.
Existence and unity are two other ideas suggested by every object without, and every idea within. When ideas are in our minds, we consider them as being actually there, as well as we consider things to be actually without us; which is, that they exist, or have existence: And whatever we consider as one thing, whether a real being, or idea, suggests the idea of unity.
Power is another idea derived from these sources: For finding in ourselves that we can think, and move several parts of our bodies at pleasure, and observing the effects that natural bodies produce in one another; by both these ways we get the idea of power.
Succession is another idea suggested by our senses, and by reflection on what passes in our minds: For if we look into ourselves, we shall find our ideas always, whilst we are awake, or have any thought, passing in train, one going and another coming, without intermission.
Some farther considerations concerning simple ideas.
Whatsoever is able, by affecting our senses, to cause any perception in the mind, doth thereby produce in the understanding a simple idea; which, whatsoever be the cause of it, is looked upon as a real positive idea in the understanding. Thus the ideas of heat and cold, light and darkness, motion and rest, &c. are equally positive in the mind, though some of their causes may be mere privations.
That a privative cause may produce a positive idea, appears from shadows; which (though nothing but the absence of light) are discernible, and cause clear and positive ideas. We have indeed some negative names which stand not directly for positive ideas, but for their absence; such as insipid, silence, which denote positive ideas, viz. taste and sound, with a signification of their absence.
It will be useful to distinguish ideas as they are perceptions in our minds, from what they are in the bodies that cause such perceptions in us; for we are not to think the former exact images and resemblances of something inherent in the subject, most of those of sensation being, in the mind, no more the likeness of something existing without us, than the names that stand for them are the likeness of our ideas, which yet, upon hearing, they excite in us.
Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, is an idea: And the power to produce any idea in our mind, is the quality of the subject wherein that power exists. Thus a snow ball having the power to produce in us the ideas of white, cold, and round; those powers, as they are in the snow-ball, are called qualities; and as they are sensations or perceptions in our understandings, they are called ideas. These qualities are of two sorts: First, original, or primary; such are solidity, expansion, tension, motion, or rest, number, and figure. These are inseparable from body, and such as it constantly keeps in all its changes and alterations.
Secondly, Secondary qualities; such as colours, smells, tastes, sounds, &c., which, whatever reality we by mistake may attribute to them, are in truth nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us; and depend on the qualities before mentioned.
The ideas of primary qualities of bodies, are resemblances of them; and their patterns really exist in bodies themselves: But the ideas produced in us by secondary qualities have no resemblance of them at all; and what is sweet, blue, or warm, in the idea, is but the certain bulk, figure, and motion of the insensible parts in the bodies themselves, which we call so.
Thus we see, that fire at one distance produces in us the sensation of warmth, which at a nearer approach causes the sensation of pain. Now what reason have we to say, that the idea of warmth is actually in the fire; but that of pain not in the fire; which the same fire produces in us the same way? The bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts of fire, are really in it, whether we perceive them or no; and therefore may be called real qualities, because they really exist in that body: But light and heat are no more really in it, than sickness or pain: Take away the sensation of them; let not the eyes see light or colours, nor the ear hear sounds; let the palate not taste, or 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, (that is,) bulk, motion, figure, &c. of parts.
These secondary qualities are of two sorts. First, Immediately perceivable; which by immediately operating on our bodies, produce several different ideas in us. Secondly, Mediate perceivable; which by operating on other bodies, change their primary qualities, so as to render them capable of producing ideas in us different from what they did before. These last being powers relating to other bodies, and resulting from the different modifications of the original qualities, are yet otherwise thought of; the former being esteemed real qualities, but the latter barely powers.
Of perception.
Perception is the first idea we receive from reflection: It is by some called thinking in general: Though thinking, in the propriety of the English tongue, signifies that sort of operation of the mind about its ideas, wherein the mind is active; where it considers any thing with some degree of voluntary attention: For in bare perception the mind is, for the most part, only passive; and what it perceives, it cannot avoid perceiving. What this is, we cannot otherwise know, than by reflecting on what passes in our minds when we see, feel, hear, &c.
Impressions made on the outward parts, if they are not taken notice of within, cause no perception; as we see in those whose minds are intently fixed in the contemplation of certain objects.
We may observe that the ideas we receive from sensation, are often in grown people altered by the judgment, without our taking notice of it. Thus a globe of any uniform colour, (as of gold, or jet,) being set before our eyes, the idea thereby imprinted is of a flat circle variously shadowed: But being accustomed to perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make in us, the judgment alters the appearances into their causes; and, from that variety of shadow or colour, frames to itself the perception of a convex figure of one uniform colour. This in many cases, by a settled habit, is performed so readily, that we take that for the perception of our sensation, which is but an idea formed by the judgment; so that one serves only to excite the other, and is scarce taken notice of itself: As a man who reads or hears with attention, takes little notice of the characters or sounds, but of the ideas that are excited in him by them.
Perception is also the first step and degree towards knowledge, and the inlet of all the materials of it; so that the fewer senses any man has, and the duller the impressions that are made by them are, the more remote he is from that knowledge which is to be found in other men.
Of retention.
The next faculty of the mind whereby it makes a further progress towards knowledge, is called retention; which is the keeping of those ideas it has received. Which is done two ways:
First, By keeping the idea which is brought into the mind for some time actually in view; which is called contemplation.
Secondly, By reviving those ideas in our minds which have disappeared, and have been, as it were, laid out of sight: And 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 at once, it was necessary to have a repository to lay up those ideas, which at another time it may have use of. But our ideas being nothing but actual perceptions in the mind, which cease to be anything when there is no perception of them, this lying 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 it has once had, with this additional perception annexed to them, that it has had them before. And it is by the affluence of this faculty, that we are said to have all those ideas in our understandings which we can bring in sight, and make the objects of our thoughts, without the help of those sensible qualities which first imprinted them there.
Those ideas that are often refreshed by a frequent return of the objects or actions that produce them, fix themselves best in the memory, and remain longest there: Such are the original qualities of bodies viz. solidity, extension, figure, motion, &c. These and the like are seldom quite lost while the mind retains any ideas at all. Of discerning, and other operations of the mind.
Another faculty of the mind, is that of discerning between its ideas. On this depends the evidence and certainty of several general propositions. In being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where there is the least difference, consists, in a great measure, that exactness of judgment and clearness of reason which is to be observed in one man above another.
To the well distinguishing our ideas, it chiefly contributes that they be clear and determinate; and when they are so, it will not breed any confusion or mistake about them, though the senses should convey them from the same object differently on different occasions.
The comparing of our ideas one with another in respect of extent, degree, time, place, or any other circumstances, is another operation of the mind about its ideas which is the ground of relations. Brutes seem not to have this faculty in any great degree. They have probably several ideas distinct enough; but cannot compare them farther than some sensible circumstances annexed to the objects themselves.
Composition is another operation of the mind, whereby it combines several of its simple ideas into complex ones: Under which operation we may reckon that of enlarging; wherein we put several ideas together of the same kind, as several units to make a dozen.
Abstraction is another operation of the mind, whereby the mind forms general ideas from such as it received from particular objects; which it does by considering them, as they are in the mind such appearances separate from the circumstances of real existence, as time, place, &c. These become general representatives of all of the same kind, and their names applicable to whatever exists conformable to such abstract ideas. Thus the colour received from chalk, snow, and milk, is made a representative of all of that kind; and has a name given it (whiteness,) which signifies the same quality, wherever to be found or imagined. And thus universals, both ideas and terms, are made.
Of complex ideas.
In the reception of simple ideas the mind is only passive having no power to frame any one to itself, nor having any idea which does not wholly consist of them. But about these simple ideas its exerts several acts of its own, whereby out of them, as the materials and foundations of the rest, the other are framed: The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over its simple ideas, are chiefly, these three: First, It combines several simple ideas into one compound one; and thus all complex ideas are made. Secondly, It brings two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and sets 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. Thirdly, It separates them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: And thus all its general ideas are made. As simple ideas are observed to exist in several combinations united together, so the mind may consider them as united, not only as they are really united in external objects, but as itself has joined them. Ideas thus made up of several ones put together, are called complex; as man, army, beauty, gratitude, &c. By this faculty of repeating and joining together its ideas, the mind has great power in varying and multiplying the objects of its thoughts. But it is still confined to those simple ideas which it received from the two sources of sensation and reflection. It can have no other ideas of sensible qualities, than what come from without by the senses, nor any other ideas of the operations of a thinking substance than what it finds in itself; but having once got these simple ideas, it can by its own power put them together, and make new complex ones, which it never received so united.
Complex ideas, however compounded and decompound ed, though their number be infinite, and their variety endless, may all be reduced under these three heads: 1st, Modes; 2dly, Substances; 3dly, Relations.
1st, Modes are such complex ideas as contain not the supposition of subsisting by themselves but are considered as dependences on, and affections of substances; as triangle, gratitude, murder, &c. These modes are of two sorts: First, Simple; which are combinations of the same simple idea; as a dozen, score, &c. which are but the ideas of so many distinct units put together. Secondly, Mixed; which are compounded of simple ideas of several kinds; as beauty, which consists in a certain composition of colour and figure, causing delight in the beholder; theft, which is the concealed change of the possession of any thing, without the consent of the proprietor. These visibly contain a combination of ideas of several kinds.
2dly, Substances. The ideas of substances are only such combinations of simple ideas, as are taken to represent distinct particular things subsisting by themselves, in which the confused idea of substance is always the chief. Thus a combination of the ideas of a certain figure, with the powers of motion, thought, and reasoning, joined to substance, make the ordinary idea of man.
These again are either of single substances, as man, stone; or of collective, or several put together, as army, heap. Ideas of several substances thus put together, are as much each of them one single idea, as that of a man or an unit.
3dly, Relations; which consist in the consideration and comparing of one idea with another. Of these several kinds we shall treat in their order.
Of simple modes: And, first, of the simple modes of space.
Concerning simple modes we may observe, that the modifications of any simple ideas are as perfectly different and distinct ideas in the mind, as those of the greatest distance or contrariety: Thus two is as distinct from three, as blueness from heat.
Space is a simple idea which we get both by our sight and touch. When we consider it barely in length between two bodies, it is called distance: when in length, breadth, and thickness, it may be called capacity. When considered between the extremities of matter, which fills the capacity of space with something solid, tangible, and moveable, it is called extension. And thus extension will be an idea belonging to body; but space may be conceived without it. Each different distance is a different modification of space; and each idea of any different space is a simple mode of this idea. Such are an inch, foot, yard, &c. When these ideas are made familiar to mens thoughts, they can in their minds repeat them as often as they will, without joining to them the idea of body, and frame to themselves the ideas of feet, yards, or fathoms, beyond the utmost bounds of all bodies; and, by adding these till one to another, enlarge their idea of space as much as they please. From this power of repeating any idea of distance, without being ever able to come to an end, we come by the idea of immensity.
Another modification of space is taken from the relation of the parts of the termination of extension or circumscribed space amongst themselves; and this is what we call figure. 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 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.
Another mode belong to this head, is that of place. Our idea of place is nothing but the relative position of anything with reference to its distance from some fixed and certain points. Whence we say, that a thing has or has not changed place, when its distance either is or is not altered with respect to those bodies which which we have occasion to compare it. That this is so, we may easily gather from hence, that we can have no idea of the place of the universe, though we can of all its parts. To say that the world is somewhere, means no more than that it does exist. The word place is sometimes take to signify that space which any body takes up; and so the universe may be conceived in a place.
Of duration, and its simple modes.
There is another sort of distance, the idea of which we get from the fleeting and perpetually perishing parts of succession, which we call duration. The simple modes of it are any different lengths of it whereof we have distinct ideas; as hours, days, years, &c., time, and eternity.
The idea of succession is got by reflecting on that train of ideas which constantly follow one another in our minds as long as we are awake. The distance between any parts of this succession, is what we call duration; and the continuation of the existence of ourselves, or any thing else, commensurate to the succession of any ideas in our minds, is what we call our own duration, or that of another thing co-existing with our thinking. That this is so, appears from hence, that we have no perception of succession or duration, when that succession of our ideas ceases, as in sleep: the moment that we sleep, and awake, how distant forever, seems to be joined and connected. And possibly it would be so to a waking man, could he fix upon one idea without variation and the succession of others. And we see that they whose thoughts are very intent upon one thing, let slip out of their account a good part of that duration, and think that time shorter than it is. But if a man, during his sleep, dreams, and a variety of ideas make themselves perceptible in his mind one after another, he hath then, during such dreaming, a sense of duration, and of the length of it.
A man having once got this idea of duration, can apply it to things which exist while he does not think: and thus we measure the time of our sleep, as well as that wherein we are awake.
Duration, as marked by certain periods and measures, is what we most properly call time; which we measure by the diurnal and annual revolutions of the sun, as being constant, regular, and universally observable by all mankind, and supposed equal to one another.
The mind having once got such a measure of time, as the annual revolution of the sun, can easily apply it to duration, wherein that measure itself did not exist; and 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 to distances beyond the confines of the world.
By the same means, and from the same original that we come to have the idea of time, we have also that idea which we call eternity: for having got the ideas of certain lengths of duration, we can in our thoughts add them to one another as oft as we please, without ever coming to an end.
And thus it is plain, that from the two fountains of all knowledge before mentioned, viz. sensation and reflection, we get the ideas of duration, and the several measures of it.
Of numbers.
The complex ideas of number are formed by adding several units together. The simple modes of it are each several combinations, as two, three, &c. These are of all others most distinct, the nearest being as clearly different from each other as the most remote: two being as distinct from one, as two hundred. But it is hard to form distinct ideas of every least excess in extension. Hence demonstrations in numbers are more general in their use, and more determinate in their application, than those of extension.
Simple modes of numbers being in our minds but so many combinations of units, which have no variety but more or less; names for each distinct combination seem more necessary than in any other sort of ideas: For without a name, or mark, to distinguish that precise collection, it will hardly be kept from being a heap of confusion. Hence some Americans have no distinct idea of any number beyond twenty; so that when they are discourse with of greater numbers, they shew the hairs of their head. So that to reckon right, two things are required:
Firstly, That the mind distinguish carefully two ideas which are different one from another only by the addition or subtraction of one unit.
Secondly, That it retain in memory the names or marks of the several combinations, from an unit to that number; and that in exact order, as they follow one another. In either CHEMISTRY. To follow P. 180.
SHOWING THE MANNER IN WHICH NATURAL BODIES, CONSIDERED IN A CHEMICAL VIEW, MAY BE DIVIDED INTO CLASSES: WITH THEIR SEVERAL SUBDIVISIONS; THEIR PROPERTIES DEFINED; AND THE MANNER IN WHICH THEY ARE OBTAINED, POINTED OUT.
1. SALINE. These are fluids in water, rapid, and not inflammable. They are either:
- Simple, which can be further divided into acids, bases, and salts. - Compound, consisting of two or more chemical elements.
2. INFLAMMABLES. These are bodies that combine to burn of themselves if they are once set on fire. Divided into:
- Oils, which are liquids not miscible with water. - Sulphur, or brimstone. - Alcohol, or spirituous fluids.
3. METALLIC. Bodies that have a hard, dense, solid texture, fusible in the fire, and not repulsive to the touch; not miscible with water, and not inflammable. Divided into:
- Metals, which are fusible, and do not break when struck by a hammer. - Semi-metals, which are fusible, but do not break when struck by a hammer.
4. FARTHY. These are bodies that are not fusible, but not infusible; that is, if fixed in the fire, they cannot reform their own form, but take that of glass. Divided into:
- Assorted, which are capable of being united with acids, and are either:
5. WATER. These are fluids that are not fusible, but not infusible; that is, if fixed in the fire, they cannot reform their own form, but take that of glass. Divided into:
6. AIR. ### Table
**ACIDS**
- Nitric acid: A mixture which readily inflames oils. By solution, generating heat. - Muriatic, vegetable, and all other acids yet known. By solution, generating heat.
**ALKALIS**
- Vegetables: By solution and crystallization; or double decomposition by distillation from nitre with the addition of water. - Fossil: By solution and crystallization; or by distillation from nitre with the addition of water. - Volatile: By solution and crystallization; or by distillation from nitre with the addition of water. - Essential: By solution and crystallization; or by distillation from nitre with the addition of water.
**OILS**
- Essential: A volatile refractory oil. A great heat and violent efflorescence being produced by this mixture. Native gums supposed to have their origin in a mixture of the kind.
**EMPERYTHUMATIC:** Little known. By solution.
**SULPHUR**
- Fossil: A yellowish, refractory substance. By solution.
**ALCOHOL**
- Spiritus vitrioli dulcis: By careful solution and distillation, the other being prepared by the addition of water.
**METALS**
- Gold: By a particular process after being separated from aqua regia. - Silver: This is sometimes a native production, but in this way it is never pure. It is artificially prepared by solution in a very concentrated nitric acid. - Copper: Blue vitriol. This is sometimes a native production, but in this way it is never pure. It is artificially prepared by solution in a very concentrated nitric acid. - Iron: By solution and crystallization; or by distillation from nitre with the addition of water. - Lead: An indissoluble compound. By precipitation from the nitrous acid. - Tin: By boiling with nitric acid. - Antimony: By solution and crystallization; or by distillation from nitre with the addition of water. - Zinc: White vitriol. Often found in its native state. Artificially made by solution and crystallization in a diluted acid. Used by painters for drying. - Arsenic: By distillation. - Mercury: By solution and crystallization; or by distillation from nitre with the addition of water. - Cobalt: A rose-coloured mixture. By solution. - Gallinaceous: By precipitation from a very powerful solution of chalk in the nitrous acid; by mixing the vitriolic acid. - Earths: Concentrated nitric acid. Used as a cement; for taking impressions from metals, &c. - Magnesia: Epitome, or magnesia glauca's filth. By solution and crystallization. - Earth of alum: Alum. By solution, crystallization. - Earth of antimony: Osteocellos. By solution. - Glass: By solution. The mixture of these are not applied to any particular use.
**WATER**
- An acidulous water, containing, though seldom, found filings along with native spangles. Applied to no particular use.
**ACIDS**
- Vitriolic: Aqua regia. By solution. This is the only proper menstruum for gold; and it is a solution of tin in this menstruum which is the basis of the common aqua regia. - Vegetable: Common nitre. A native production. Made artificially by solution and crystallization. This degrades with oily or metallic bodies, and is the foundation of gunpowder. - Volatile: Nitrous ammonia. By solution. This differs from all the other ammoniacal salts by being soluble in alcohol. - Expresssed: A thick bituminous-like fulminance. Upon the mixture a considerable degree of heat is generated, and sometimes, though very seldom, a violent explosion is produced. - Essential: A more violent heat is generated upon the mixture with these oils than any other, and with many of them an actual flame is produced. - Empyremumatic: This mixture has no name, nor is it applied to any remarkable use in arts.
**OILS**
- Essential: By distillation. - Spiritus nitri dulcis: By distillation and then distilling. - Gold: By boiling in clove vessels after the ordinary method of separating silver from gold by the nitrous acid.
**METALS**
- Silver: By solution and crystallization. - Copper: A green-coloured solution. By solution. - Iron: A greenish solution, if a diluted acid is employed; if otherwise, it is of a yellowish colour; evaporated to drincks, it deliquesces in the air. - Lead: A yellow solution. By diluting in a diluted acid. If much water is added, the metal is precipitated. - Tin: A yellow solution. By diluting in a diluted acid. This solution is often put upon the face for giving force to hair, and is prepared to be used as an ingredient in gun-powder to augment its force. - Bismuth: By precipitation from the solution by means of water. This has been employed as a cosmetic, but is ineffectual. - Mercury: Red precipitate. By evaporating the solution to drincks, and then diluting till it becomes red. - Zinc: A corroded solution. By the ordinary means.
**SEMI-METALS**
- Antimony: By distillation from butter of antimony, after having added the nitrous acid. - Arsenic: By distillation from arsenic, and deflagerating. - Cobalt: By solution either in its calcined or metallic state. - Nickel: A green-coloured liquor. By solution.
**EARTHS**
- Earth of alum and all other silicious earths. By solution. The compounds have no names nor any remarkable properties hitherto discovered.
**WATER**
- Acidulated: By solution after precipitation from the liquor nitric.
---
This table provides a comprehensive list of various substances and their properties, including acids, alkalis, oils, metals, and waters, along with methods of preparation and uses. **METAL**
*Iron.* Harder and paler than gold. When well boiled, it retains its bitter taste, but afterward becomes more bitter.
*Mercury.* A curious substance, soft when cold but soon transforms when heated.
*Litharge.* A yellow metal, found in large quantities at Lavernock, Kent, and elsewhere.
*Zinc.* A silvery metal, found in large quantities at Lavernock, Kent, and elsewhere.
**SEMI-METALS**
*Sulphur.* A native substance, found in Cornwall. It is usually found in large quantities at Lavernock, Kent, and elsewhere.
**ACIDS**
*Vitriolic.* Nitrous, Muriatic, Vegetable, or Urine, of Amber, or Annis, as above.
**ALKALIS**
*Fixed,* and Volatile, as above.
**SULPHUR**
*As above.*
**METALS**
*Gold, Silver,* Lead,* Tin,* Copper, and Iron, as above.
*Zinc.* A pale yellow metal, found in large quantities at Lavernock, Kent, and elsewhere.
*Mercury.* A silvery metal, found in large quantities at Lavernock, Kent, and elsewhere.
**SEMI-METALS**
*Sulphur.* As above.
**ACIDS**
*Vitriolic.* Nitrous, Muriatic, Vegetal, or Urine, of Amber, as above.
**ALKALIS**
*Fixed,* as above.
**MERCURY**
**METALS**
*Gold, Silver,* Lead, Tin, Copper, and Iron, as above.
*Zinc.* A pale yellow metal, found in large quantities at Lavernock, Kent, and elsewhere.
*Mercury.* As above.
**SEMI-METALS**
*Sulphur.* As above.
**ACIDS**
*Vitriolic.* Nitrous, Muriatic, Vegetal, or Urine, of Amber, as above.
**ALKALIS**
*Fixed,* as above.
**SULPHUR**
*As above.*
**METALS**
*Gold, Silver,* Lead, Tin, Copper, and Iron, as above.
*Zinc.* A pale yellow metal, found in large quantities at Lavernock, Kent, and elsewhere.
*Mercury.* As above.
**SEMI-METALS**
*Sulphur.* As above.
**ACIDS**
*Vitriolic.* Nitrous, Muriatic, Vegetal, as above.
**ALKALIS**
*Fixed,* as above.
**ANTI-
**METALS**
*Silver:* Lead,* Copper, and Iron, as above.
**ACIDS**
*Vitriolic.* Nitrous, Muriatic, Vegetal, or Urine, of Amber, as above.
**ALKALIS**
*Fixed,* as above.
**SULPHUR**
*As above.*
**METALS**
*Gold, Silver,* Lead, Tin, Copper, and Iron, as above.
*Zinc.* A pale yellow metal, found in large quantities at Lavernock, Kent, and elsewhere.
*Mercury.* As above.
**SEMI-METALS**
*Sulphur.* As above.
**ACIDS**
*Vitriolic.* Nitrous, Muriatic, Vegetal, as above.
**ALKALIS**
*Fixed,* as above.
**BISMUTH**
**METALS**
*Gold,* Silver,* Lead, Tin, Copper, and Iron, as above.
*Zinc.* A pale yellow metal, found in large quantities at Lavernock, Kent, and elsewhere.
*Mercury.* As above.
**SEMI-METALS**
*Sulphur.* As above.
**ACIDS**
*Vitriolic.* Nitrous, Muriatic, Vegetal, as above.
**ALKALIS**
*Fixed,* as above.
**ARSENIC**
**METALS**
*Gold, Silver,* Lead, Tin, Copper, and Iron, as above.
*Zinc.* A pale yellow metal, found in large quantities at Lavernock, Kent, and elsewhere.
*Mercury.* As above.
**SEMI-METALS**
*Sulphur.* As above.
**ACIDS**
*Vitriolic.* Nitrous, Muriatic, Vegetal, or Urine, of Amber, as above.
**ALKALIS**
*Fixed,* as above.
**COBALT**
**METALS**
*Gold, Silver,* Lead, Tin, Copper, and Iron, as above.
*Zinc.* A pale yellow metal, found in large quantities at Lavernock, Kent, and elsewhere.
*Mercury.* As above.
**SEMI-METALS**
*Sulphur.* As above.
**ACIDS**
*Vitriolic.* Nitrous, Muriatic, Vegetal, or Urine, of Amber, as above.
**ALKALIS**
*Fixed,* as above.
**NICKEL**
**METALS**
*Gold, Silver,* Lead, Tin, Copper, and Iron, as above.
*Zinc.* A pale yellow metal, found in large quantities at Lavernock, Kent, and elsewhere.
*Mercury.* As above.
**SEMI-METALS**
*Sulphur.* As above.
**ACIDS**
*Vitriolic.* Nitrous, Muriatic, Vegetal, as above.
**ALKALIS**
*Fixed,* as above.
**COBALT**
**METALS**
*Gold, Silver,* Lead, Tin, Copper, and Iron, as above.
*Zinc.* A pale yellow metal, found in large quantities at Lavernock, Kent, and elsewhere.
*Mercury.* As above.
**SEMI-METALS**
*Sulphur.* As above.
**ACIDS**
*Vitriolic.* Nitrous, Muriatic, Vegetal, as above.
**ALKALIS**
*Fixed,* as above.
**NICKEL**
**METALS**
*Gold, Silver,* Lead, Tin, Copper, and Iron, as above.
*Zinc.* A pale yellow metal, found in large quantities at Lavernock, Kent, and elsewhere.
*Mercury.* As above.
**SEMI-METALS**
*Sulphur.* As above.
**ACIDS**
*Vitriolic.* Nitrous, Muriatic, Vegetal, as above.
**ALKALIS**
*Fixed,* as above.
**ARGILLACEOUS**
**CRISTALINE OR VI-
**TRESCENT EARTHS.**
**ABSORBENT EARTHS.**
**ARGILLACEOUS EARTHS.**
**EXPLANATION OF THE TABLES.**
It was intended, that a systematic view of the phenomena attending various mixtures should be given to all who would be so fortunate as to come across a list like this; but five pages being limited to six columns, we must necessarily make some sacrifice. The following explanations will serve to elucidate the nature of these systems and their mode of operation:
1. **Crystalline Earths.** - These are substances which form crystals when subjected to heat or pressure, and which return to their original state when cooled.
2. **Vitreous Earths.** - These are substances which melt when heated and solidify when cooled.
3. **Fused Earths.** - These are substances which remain unchanged when subjected to heat or pressure.
4. **Absorbent Earths.** - These are substances which absorb moisture and other substances.
5. **Argillaceous Earths.** - These are substances which absorb moisture and other substances.
The above explanations will serve to elucidate the nature of these systems and their mode of operation. Each different space; and each mode of this is. When these ideas they can in their without joining themselves the utmost bounds one to another, they please. From distance, without come by the idea.
Another mode of the part inscribed space we call figure. Dies, whose extent takes both far are within its visible terminate either sensible angles, or is perceived; by another in all parts it has that idea infinite variety.
Another mode Our idea of any thing with and certain point or has not changed, is not altered when we have occasion easily gather from place of the unit day that the work it does exist. That space which may be conceive
Of duration
There is an idea we get from the succession, which of it are any distinct ideas; as unity.
The idea of ideas which continues as long as we parts of this succession continuation of else, commensurate minds, is what whether thing co-exists appears from the succession or duration of causes, as in the wake, how distanced. And possible he fix upon one notion of others. either of which if it fails, the whole business of numbering will be disturbed; and there will remain only the confused idea of multitude; but the ideas necessary to distinct numeration will not be attained to.
Of infinity.
The idea signified by the name infinity, is best examined, by considering to what infinity is by the mind attributed, and then how it frames it. Finite and infinite, then, are looked upon as the modes of quantity; and attributed primarily to things that have parts, and are capable of increase or diminution by the addition or subtraction of any the least part. Such are the ideas of space, duration, and number.
When we apply this idea to the Supreme Being, we do it primarily, in respect of his duration and ubiquity; more figuratively, when to his wisdom, power, goodness, and other attributes, which are properly inexhaustible and incomprehensible: For when we call them infinite, we have no other idea of this infinity, but what carries with it some reflection on the number or the extent of the acts or objects of God's power and wisdom, which can never be supposed so great, or so many, that these attributes will not always surmount and exceed, though we multiply them in our thoughts with the infinity of endless number.
The next thing to be considered, is, How we come by the idea of infinity. Every one that has any idea of any stated lengths of space, as a foot, yard, &c. finds that he can repeat that idea, and join it to another, to a third, and so on without ever coming to an end of his additions. From this power of enlarging his idea of space, he takes the idea of infinite space, or immensity. By the same power of repeating 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.
If our idea of infinity be got by repeating without end our own ideas; why do we not attribute it 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 others? Yet no body ever thinks of infinite sweetness or whiteness, though he can repeat the idea of sweet or white as frequently as those of yard or day. But those ideas that have parts, and are capable of increase by the addition of any parts, afford us, by their repetition, an idea of infinity; because with the endless repetition there is continued an enlargement, of which there is no end. But it is not so in other ideas: For if to the perfect idea I have of white, I add another of equal whiteness; it enlarges not my idea at all. Those ideas that consist not of parts, cannot be augmented to what proportion 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 an endless room for more; and so these ideas alone lead the mind towards the thought of infinity.
Of the modes of thinking.
When the mind turns its view inwards upon itself, thinking is the first idea that occurs: Wherein it observes a great variety of modifications; and thereof frames to itself distinct ideas. Thus the perception annexed to any impression on the body made by an external object, is called sensation. When an idea recurs without the presence of the object, it is called remembrance: When sought after by the mind, and brought again in view, it is recollection: When held there long under attentive consideration, it is contemplation. When ideas float in the mind without regard or reflection, it is called in French reverie; our language has scarce a name for it: When the ideas are taken notice of, and, as it were, registered in the memory, it is attention: When the mind fixes its view on any one idea, and considers it on all sides, it is intention and study. Sleep, without dreaming, is reft from all these. And dreaming is the perception of ideas in the mind, not suggested by any external objects, or known occasions; nor under any choice or conduct of the understanding.
Of the modes of pleasure and pain.
Pleasure and pain are simple ideas, which we receive both from sensation and reflection. There are thoughts of the mind, as well as sensations, accompanied with pleasure or pain. Their causes are termed good or evil. Pleasure and pain, and their causes good and evil, are the hinges upon which our passions turn; by reflecting on the various modifications or tempers of mind, and the internal sensations which pleasure and pain, good and evil, produce in us, we may thence form to ourselves the ideas of our passions. Thus by reflecting upon the thought we have of the delight which any thing is apt to produce in us, we have an idea we call love: And on the contrary, the thought of the pain which any thing present or absent produces in us, is what we call hatred. Desire is that uneasiness which a man finds in himself upon the absence of any thing the present enjoyment of which carries the idea of delight with it. Joy is a delight of the mind arising from the present or assured approaching possession of a good. Sorrow is an uneasiness of the mind, upon the thought of a good lost, or the sense of a present evil. Hope is a pleasure in the mind, upon the thought of a probable future enjoyment of a thing which is apt to delight. Fear is an uneasiness of the mind, upon the thought of a future evil likely to befall us. Anger is a discomposure of mind, upon the receipt of injury, with a present purpose of revenge. Despair is the thought of the unattainableness of any good. Envy is an uneasiness of mind, caused by the consideration of a good we desire, obtained by one we think should not have had it before us.
It is to be considered, that in reference to the passions, the removal or lessening of a pain, is considered and operates as a pleasure; and the loss or diminishing of a pleasure, as a pain. And farther, that the passions in most persons operate on the body, and cause various changes in it; but these being not always sensible, do not make a necessary part of the idea of each passion.
Of power.
The mind being every day informed by the senses of the alteration of those simple ideas it observes in things without, reflecting also on what passes within itself, and observing observing a constant change of its ideas, sometimes by the impressions of outward objects upon 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 the same 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, and make it fluid; and gold has a power to be melted.
Power thus considered, is twofold, viz. as able to make, or able to receive any change: the one may be called active, the other passive power. Of passive power all sensible things abundantly furnish us with ideas, whole sensible qualities and beings we find to be in a continual flux. Nor have we of active power fewer instances; since whatever change is observed, the mind must collect a power somewhere able to make that change. 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, viz. thinking and motion, let us consider whence we have the clearest ideas of the powers which produce these actions.
Of thinking, body affords us no idea at all: it is only from reflection that we have that; neither have we from body any idea of the beginning of motion. A body at rest, affords 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; The idea of the beginning of motion, we have only by reflection on what passes in ourselves; where we find by experience, that barely by willing it, we can move the parts of our bodies which were before at rest.
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. This power which the mind has thus to order the consideration of any idea, or the forbearing to consider it; or to prefer the motion of any part of the body to its rest, and vice versa, in any particular instance, is that we call the will; the actual exercise of that power is that which we call volition, or willing. The forbearance or performance 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 we call the understanding. Perception, which we make the act of the understanding, is of three sorts: 1st. The perception of ideas in our minds. 2dly. The perception of the signification of signs. 3dly. The perception of the agreement or disagreement of any distinct ideas. These powers of the mind, viz. of perceiving and 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.
From the consideration of the extent of the power of the mind over the actions of the man, which every one finds in himself, arise the ideas of liberty and necessity: so far as a man has a 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 not equally follow upon the preference of his mind; there he is not free, though perhaps 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 action, according to the determination or thought of the mind whereby either of them is preferred 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 liberty 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. Thus a tennis ball, whether in motion by the stroke of a racket, or lying still at rest, is not by any one taken to be a free agent. 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; no body thinks he has in this liberty; every one pities him, as acting by necessity and constraint. Again, suppose a man be carried whilst fast asleep into a room, where is a person he longs to see, and be there locked fast in, beyond his power to get out; he awakes, and is glad to see himself in so desirable company; which he stays willingly in, that is, prefers his staying to going away. Is not this stay voluntary? no body will doubt it; and yet being locked fast in, he is not at liberty to stay; he has not freedom to be gone. So that liberty 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 chuse or direct.
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 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 remove 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. Thus a man on the rack is not at liberty to lay by the idea of pain, and entertain other contemplations.
Where-ever thought is wholly wanting, 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 beginning or continuation of any action is contrary to the preference of his mind, is called compulsion; when the hindering or stopping any action is contrary to his volition, it is called restraint: Agents that have no thought, no volition at all, are in everything necessary agents. Of mixed modes.
Mixed modes are combinations of simple ideas of different kinds. The mind being once furnished with simple ideas, can put them together in several compositions, without examining whether they exist so together in nature. And hence 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 put the parts of them together, and that they were confident in the understanding, without considering whether they had any real being. There are three ways whereby we get these complex ideas of mixed modes.
1st. By experience, and observation of things themselves: Thus by seeing two men wrestle, we get the idea of wrestling.
2ndly. By invention, or voluntary putting together of several simple ideas in our own minds: So he that first invented printing, had an idea of it first in his mind before it ever existed.
3rdly. By explaining the names of actions we never saw, or nations we cannot see; and by enumerating all those ideas which go to making them up. Thus the mixed mode, which the word lie stands for, is made up of these simple ideas: 1st, Articulate sounds. 2dly, Certain ideas in the mind of the speaker. 3dly, Those words, the signs of these ideas. 4thly, Those signs put together, by affirmation or negation, otherwise than the ideas they stand for are in the mind of the speaker. Since languages are made, complex ideas are usually got by the explication of those terms that stand for them: for since they consist 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 combination of simple ideas was never offered to his mind by the real existence of things.
Mixed modes have their unity from an act of the mind, combining those several simple ideas together, and considering them as one complex one: the mark of this union is one name given to that combination. Men seldom reckon any number of ideas to make one complex one: but such collections as there be names for. Thus the killing of an old man, is as fit to be united into one complex idea, as that of a father; yet there being no name for it, it is not taken for a particular complex idea, nor a distinct species of action from that of killing any other man.
Those collections of ideas have names generally affixed, which are of frequent use in conversation: in which cases men endeavour to communicate their thoughts to one another with all possible dispatch. Those others, which they have seldom occasion to mention, they tie not together, nor give them names.
This gives the reason, why there are words in every language, which cannot be rendered by any one single word of another. For the fashions and customs of one nation make several combinations of ideas familiar in one, which another had never any occasion to make. Such were οσκαρικος among the Greeks, proscriptio among the Romans. This also occasions the constant change of languages; because the change of custom and opinions brings with it new combinations of ideas, which, to avoid long descriptions, have new names annexed to them, and so they become new species of mixed modes.
Of all our simple ideas, those that have had most mixed modes made out of them, are thinking, and motion; which comprehend in them all action; and power, from whence these actions are conceived to flow. For actions being the great business of mankind, it is no wonder, if the several modes of thinking and motion should be taken notice of, the ideas of them observed and laid up in memory, and have names assigned them. For without such complex ideas with names to them, men could not easily hold any communication about them. Of this kind are the modes of actions distinguished by their causes, means, objects, ends, instruments, time, place, and other circumstances; as also of the powers fitted for those actions: thus boldness is the power to do or speak what we intend, without fear or disorder; which power of doing any thing, when it has been acquired by the frequent doing the same thing, is that idea we call habit; when forward, and ready upon every occasion, to break into action, we call it disposition: thus tendency is a disposition or aptness to be angry.
Power being the source of all action, the substances wherein these powers are, when they exert this power, are called causes; and the substances thereupon produced, or the simple ideas introduced into any subject, effects. The efficacy whereby the new substance or idea is produced, is called, in the subject exerting that power, action; in the subject, wherein any simple idea is changed, or produced, passion: Which efficacy, in intellectual agents, we can conceive to be nothing else but modes of thinking and willing; in corporeal agents, nothing else but modifications of motion.
Of our complex ideas of substances.
The mind observing several simple ideas to go constantly together, which being presumed to belong to one thing, are called, so united in one subject, by one name, which we are apt afterward to talk of and consider as one simple idea, which indeed is a complication of many ideas together. We imagine not these simple ideas to subsist by themselves; but suppose some substratum wherein they subsist, which we call substance. The idea of pure substance is nothing but the supposed (but unknown) support of these qualities, which are capable of producing simple ideas in us.
The ideas of particular circumstances are composed out of this obscure and general idea of substance, together with such combinations of simple ideas as are observed to exist together, and supposed to flow from the internal constitution and unknowing essence of that substance. Thus we come by the ideas of man, horse, gold, &c. Thus the sensible qualities of iron, or a diamond, make the complex ideas of those substances, which a smith or a jeweller commonly knows better than a philosopher.
The same happens concerning the operations of the mind, viz. thinking, reasoning, &c. which we concluding not to subsist by themselves, nor apprehending how they can belong to body, or be produced by it, we think them the actions of some other substance, which we call spirit; of whole substance or nature we have as clear a notion as of that of body; the one being but the supposed substratum of the simple ideas we have from without, as the other of those operations which we experiment in ourselves within: So that the idea of corporeal substance in matter, is as remote from our conceptions as that of spiritual substance.
Hence we may conclude, that he has the perfectest idea of any particular substance, who has collected most of those simple ideas which do exist in it; among which we are to reckon its active powers and passive capacities, though not strictly simple ideas.
Secondary qualities, for the most part, serve to distinguish substances. For our senses fail us in the discovery of the bulk, figure, texture, &c. of the minute parts of bodies, on which their real constitutions and differences depend; and secondary qualities are nothing but powers, with relation to our senses. The ideas that make our complex ones of corporeal substances, are of three sorts: First, The idea of primary qualities of things, which are discovered by our senses; such are bulk, figure, motion, &c. Secondly, The sensible secondary qualities; which are nothing but powers to produce several ideas in us by our senses. Thirdly, The aptness we consider in any substance, to cause or receive such alterations of primary qualities, as that the substance so altered should produce in us different ideas from what it did before; and they are called active and passive powers. All which, as far as we have any notice or notion of them, terminate in simple ideas.
Had we senses acute enough to discern the minute particles of bodies, it is not to be doubted, but they would produce quite different ideas in us; as we find in viewing things with microscopes. Such bodies as to our naked eyes are coloured and opaque, will through microscopes appear pellucid. Blood to the naked eye appears all red; but by a good microscope we see only some red globules swimming in a transparent liquor.
Besides these complex ideas we have of material substances; by the simple ideas taken from the operations of our own minds, which we experiment in ourselves, as thinking, understanding, willing, knowing, &c. coexisting in the same substance, we are able to frame the complex idea of a spirit. And this idea of an immaterial substance, is as clear as that we have of a material. By joining these with substance, of which we have no distinct idea, we have the idea of a spirit: And by putting together the ideas of coherent solid parts, and 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 as the other. The substance of spirit is unknown to us; and so is the substance of body equally unknown to us. Two primary qualities or properties of body, viz. solid coherent parts, and impulse, we have distinct clear ideas of: So likewise have we of two primary qualities or properties of spirit, viz. thinking, and a power of action. We have also clear and distinct ideas of several qualities inherent in bodies, which 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, hoping, fearing, &c. as also of willing and moving the body consequent to it.
Of relation.
There is another set of ideas which the mind gets from the comparing of one thing with another. 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 relation or respect; and the denominations given to things intimating that respect, are what we call relatives, and the things so brought together related. Thus when I call Caius, husband, or whiter, I intimate some other person, or thing, in both cases, with which I compare him. Any of our ideas may be the foundation of relation.
Where languages have failed to give correlative names, there the relation is not so easily taken notice of: As in concubine, which is a relative name as well as wife.
The ideas of relation may be same in those men who have far different ideas of the things that are related. Thus those who have different ideas of man, may agree in that of father.
There is no idea of any kind, which is not capable of an almost infinite number of considerations, in reference to other things; and therefore this makes no small part of mens words and thoughts. Thus one single man may at once sustain the relations of father, brother, son, husband, friend, subject, general, European, Englishman, Islander, master, servant, bigger, left, &c. to an almost infinite number; he being capable of as many relations, as there may be occasions of comparing him to other things in any manner of agreement, disagreement, or respect whatsoever.
Of cause and effect, and other relations.
The ideas of cause and effect we get from our observation of the vicissitude of things, while we perceive some qualities or substances begin to exist, and that they receive their existence from the due application and operation of other beings: That which produces, is the cause; that which is produced, the effect. Thus fluidity in wax is the effect of a certain degree of heat, which we observe to be constantly produced by the application of such heat.
We distinguish the originals of things into two sorts.
First, When the thing is wholly made new, so that no part thereof did ever exist before, as when a new particle of matter doth begin to exist which had before no being, it is called creation.
Secondly, When a thing is made up of particles which did all of them before exist, but the thing so constituted of pre-existing particles, which all together make up such a collection of simple ideas, had not any existence before, as this man, this egg, this role, &c. this, when referred to a substance produced in the ordinary course of nature by an internal principle, but set on work by some external agent, and working by insensible ways which we perceive not, is called generation: When the cause is extrinsic, and the effect produced by a sensible separation, or juxtaposition of discernible parts, we call it making and such are all artificial things. When any simple idea is produced, duced, which was not in that subject before, we call it alteration.
The denominations of things taken from time, are for the most part only relations. Thus when it is said that Queen Elizabeth lived sixty-nine, and reigned forty-five years, no more is meant, than that the duration of her existence was equal to sixty-nine, and of her government to forty-five annual revolutions of the sun.
Young and old, and other words of time, that are thought to stand for positive ideas, are indeed relative; and intimate a relation to a certain length of duration, whereof we have the idea in our minds. Thus we call a man young or old, that has lived little or much of that time that men usually attain to. This is evident from our application of these names to other things; for a man is called young at twenty, but a horse old, &c. The sun and stars, we call not old at all, because we know not what period God has set to that sort of beings.
There are other ideas, that are truly relative, which we signify by names that are thought positive and absolute; such as great and little, strong and weak. The things thus denominated, are referred to some standards, with which we compare them. Thus we call an apple great, that is bigger than the ordinary sort of those we have been used to; and a man weak, that has not so much strength or power to move, as men usually have.
Of identity and diversity.
Another occasion the mind takes of comparing, is the very being of things. When considering a thing as existing at any certain time, or place, and comparing it with itself as existing at any other time, &c. it forms the ideas of identity and diversity. When we see any thing in any certain time and place, we are sure it is that very thing, and can be no other, how likesoever it may be in all other respects.
We conceiving it impossible that two things of the same kind should exist together in the same place, we conclude, that whatever exists anywhere at the same time, excludes 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 something, that existed such a time, in such a place, which it was certain at that instant was the same with itself and no other.
We have ideas of three sorts of substances: 1st, Of God; 2dly, Finite intelligences; 3dly, Bodies.
Firstly, God being eternal, unalterable, and everywhere, concerning his identity there can be no doubt.
Secondly, Finite spirits having had their determinate time and place of beginning to exist, the relation to that time and place will always determine to each its identity, as long as it exists.
Thirdly, The same will hold of every particle of matter to which no addition or subtraction is made. These three exclude not one another out of the same place, yet each exclude those of the same kind out of the same place.
The identity and diversity of modes and relations are determined after the same manner that substances are; only the actions of finite beings, as motion and thought, consisting in succession, they cannot exist in different times and places as permanent beings: for no motion or thought, considered as at different times, can be the same, each part thereof having a different beginning of existence.
From whence it is plain, that existence itself is the principium individuationis, which determinates a being to a particular time and place incommunicable to two beings of the same kind. Thus, suppose an atom existing in a determined time and place; it is evident that, considered in any instant, it is the same with itself, and will be so as long as its existence continues. The same may be said of two, or more, or any number of particles, whilst they continue together. The mass will be the same, however jumbled; but if one atom be taken away, it is not the same mass.
In vegetables, the identity depends not on the same mass, and is not applied to the same thing. The reason of this, is the difference between an animate body and mass of matter; this being only the cohesion of particles anyhow united; the other, such a disposition, an organization of parts, as is fit to receive and distribute nourishment, so as to continue and frame the wood, bark, leaves, &c. (of an oak, for instance) in which consists the vegetable life. That therefore which has such an organization of parts partaking of one common life, continues to be the same plant, though that life be communicated to new particles of matter, vitally united to the living plant. The case is not so much different in brutes, but that any one may hence see what makes an animal, and continues it the same.
The identity of the same man likewise consists in a participation of the same continued life in succeeding particles of matter vitally united to the same organized body.
To understand identity aright, we must consider what idea the word it is applied to stands for; it being one thing to be the same substance, another the same man, and a third the same person.
An animal is a living organized body; and the same animal is the same continued life communicated to different particles of matter, as they happen successively to be united to that organized living body; and our notion of man is but of a particular sort of animal.
Person stands for an intelligent being, that reasons and reflects, and can consider itself the same thing in different times and places; which it doth by that consciousness that is inseparable from thinking. By this every one is to himself what he calls self, without considering whether that self be continued in the same or divers substances. In this consists personal identity, or the sameness of a rational being; and so far as this consciousness extends backward to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person. It is the same self now, it was then: And it is by the same self, with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done.
Self is that conscious thinking thing, whatever subsistence it matters not, which is conscious of pleasure or pain, capable of happiness or misery; and so is concerned for itself as far as that consciousness extends. That with which the consciousness of this present thinking thing can join itself, makes the same person, and is one self with it; and so attributes to itself and owns all the actions of that thing as its own, as far as that consciousness reaches. This personal identity is the subject of reward and punishment, being that by which every one is concerned for himself. If the consciousness went along with the little finger, when that was cut off, it would be the same self that was just before concerned for the whole body.
If the same Socrates, waking and sleeping, did not partake of the same consciousness, they would not be the same person. Socrates waking, could not be in justice accountable for what Socrates sleeping did, no more than one twin for what his brother twin did because their outsides were so like that they could not be distinguished.
But suppose I wholly lose the memory of some parts of my life, beyond a possibility of retrieving them, so that I shall never be conscious of them again: Am I not the same person that did those actions, though I have now forgot them? 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 solemn declaration 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. Thus we say in English, such a one is not himself, or is besides himself; in which phrase it is insinuated, that self is changed, and the self-same person is no longer in that man.
But is not a man drunk or sober the same person? Why else is he punished for the same fact he commits when drunk, though he be never afterwards conscious of it? Just as much the same person, as a man that walks and does other things in his sleep is the same person, and is as 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, and what is 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 consciousness; and the drunkard, perhaps, is not conscious of what he did; yet human judicatories justly punish him, because the fact is proved against him, but want of consciousness cannot be proved for him.
To conclude: Whatever substance begins to exist, it must during its existence 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 composition be of distinct substances, and different modes, the same rule holds.
Of other relations.
All simple ideas, wherein are parts or degrees, afford an occasion of comparing the subjects wherein they are to one another, in respect of those simple ideas. As whiter, sweeter, more, less, &c. These depending on the equality and excess of the same simple ideas, in several subjects, may be called proportional relations.
Another occasion of comparing things is taken from the circumstances of their origin, as father, son, brother, &c. These may be called natural relations.
Sometimes the foundation of considering things, is some act whereby any one comes by a moral right, power, or obligation to do something: Such are general, captain, burglar; these are instituted and voluntary relations, and may be distinguished from the natural, in that they are alterable and separable from the persons to whom they sometimes belonged, though neither of the substances so related be destroyed. But natural relations are not alterable, but are as lasting as their subjects.
Another relation is the conformity or disagreement of men's voluntary actions to a rule to which they are referred, and by which they are judged off: These may be called moral relations. It is this conformity or disagreement of our actions to some law (whereby good or evil is drawn on us from the will and power of the law-maker, and is what we call reward or punishment) that renders our actions morally good or evil.
Of these moral rules or laws, there seem to be three sorts, with their different enforcements: first, The divine law; secondly, Civil law; thirdly, The law of opinion or reputation. By their relation to the first, our actions are either sins or duties; to the second, criminal or innocent; to the third, virtues or vices.
First, The divine law, is that law which God has set to the actions of men, whether promulgated to them by the light of nature, or the voice of revelation.
That God has given a law to mankind, seems undeniable; since he has, first, A right to do it; we are his creatures. Secondly, Goodness and wisdom, to direct our actions to what is best. Thirdly, Power to enforce it by reward, and punishment of infinite weight and duration. This is the only true touch-stone of moral rectitude; and by which 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 to them happiness or misery from the hands of the Almighty.
Secondly, The civil law is the rule set by the commonwealth to the actions of those that belong to it. This law nobody over-looks; the rewards and punishments being ready at hand to enforce it, extending to the protecting or taking away of the life, liberty, and estate of those who observe or disobey it.
Thirdly, The law of opinion, or reputation. Virtue and vice are names supposed everywhere to stand for actions in their own nature right and wrong. As far as they are really so applied, they so far are coincident with the divine law. But it is visible that these names in the particular instances of their application, through the several nations and societies of men, are constantly attributed only to such actions as in each country and society are in reputation or discredit. So that the measure of what is everywhere called and esteemed virtue and vice, is the approbation or dislike, praise or blame, which by a tacit consent establishes itself in the societies and tribes of men in the world; world; whereby several actions come to find credit or disgrace amongst them, according to the judgment, maxims, or fashions of the place.
That this is so, appears hence: That though that passes for virtue in one place, which is elsewhere accounted vice, yet everywhere virtue and praise, vice and blame, go together; Virtue is everywhere that which is thought praiseworthy; and nothing else but that which has the allowance of public esteem, is called virtue. These have so close an alliance, that they are often called by the same name.
It is true, virtue and vice do, in a great measure, everywhere correspond with the unchangeable rule of right and wrong, which the laws of God have established; because the observation of these laws visibly secures and advances the general good of mankind, and the neglect of them breeds mischief and confusion: And therefore men, without renouncing all sense and reason, and their own interest, could not generally mistake in placing their commendation and blame on that side that deserved it not.
They who think commendation and disgrace not sufficient motives to engage men to accommodate themselves to the opinions and rules of those with whom they converse, seem little skilled in the history of mankind; the greatest part whereof govern themselves chiefly by this law of fashion.
The penalties that attend the breach of God's laws are seldom seriously reflected on; and those that do reflect on them entertain thoughts of future reconciliation; and for the punishment due from the laws of the commonwealth, men flatter themselves with the hopes of impunity: But no man escapes censure and dislike, who offends against fashion; nor is there one of ten thousand stiff and inflexible enough, to bear up under the constant dislike and condemnation of his own club.
Morality then is nothing but a relation to these laws or rules: And these rules being nothing but a collection of several simple ideas, the conformity thereto is but so ordering the action, that the simple ideas belonging to it may correspond to those which the law requires. By which we see, how moral beings and notions are founded on, and terminated in the simple ideas of sensation and reflection. For example; let us consider the complex idea signified by the word murder. First, from reflection, we have the ideas of willing, considering, purposing, malice, &c. also of life, perception, and self-motion. Secondly, from sensation, we have the ideas of man, and of some action whereby we put an end to that perception and motion in the man: All which simple ideas are comprehended in the word murder.
This collection of simple ideas being found to agree or disagree with the esteem of the country I have been bred in, and to be held worthy of 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 suppose the action commanded or forbidden by God, I call it good or evil, sin or duty: If I compare it with the civil law of my country, I call it lawful or unlawful, a crime or no crime.
Moral actions may be considered two ways:
Firstly, As they are in themselves a collection of simple ideas; in which sense, they are positive absolute ideas.
Secondly, As good or bad, or indifferent: In this respect they are relative, it being their conformity or disagreement with some rule that makes them so. We ought carefully to distinguish between the positive idea of the action, and the reference it has to a rule: Both which are commonly comprehended under one name, which often occasions confusion, and misleads the judgment.
Thus the taking from another what is his, without his consent, is properly called stealing: But that name being commonly understood to signify also the moral gravity of the action, 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, it is no sin or transgression, though the name stealing ordinarily carries such an intimation with it.
Of real and fantastical ideas.
Our ideas, in reference to things from whence they are taken, or which they may be supposed to represent, come under a threefold distinction; and are, firstly, either real or fantastical; secondly, adequate, or inadequate; thirdly, true or false.
Real ideas, are such as have a foundation in nature, such as have a conformity with the real being and existence of things, or with their archetypes.
Fantastical are such as have no foundation in nature, nor any conformity with that reality of being to which they are referred as to their archetypes. By examining the several sorts of ideas we shall find, that, first our simple ideas are all real; not that they are images or representations of what does exist, but as they are the certain 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.
Their reality lies in the 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.
Complex ideas being arbitrary combinations of simple ideas put together, and united under one general name, in forming of which the mind uses its liberty, we must inquire which of these are real, and which imaginary combinations.
First, Mixed modes and relations having no other reality than what they have in the minds of men, nothing else is required to make them real, but a possibility of existing conformable to them. These ideas being themselves archetypes, cannot differ from their archetypes, and so cannot be chimerical; unless any one will jumble together in them inconsistent ideas. Those indeed that have names assigned them in any language, must have a conformity to the ordinary signification of the name that is given. given them, that they may not be thought fantastical.
Secondly, Our complex ideas of substances being made, in reference to things existing without us, whose representations they are thought are no farther real, than as they are such combinations of simple ideas as are really united, and co-exist in things without us: those are fantastic which are made up of several ideas that never were found united, as Centaur, &c.
Of ideas adequate or inadequate.
Real ideas are either adequate or inadequate. First, adequate; which perfectly represent those archetypes which the mind supposes them taken from, and which it makes them to stand for. Secondly, Inadequate; which are such as do but partially or incompletely represent those archetypes to which they are referred. Whence it appears,
First, That all our simple ideas are adequate; for they being 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 such powers, and we are sure they agree to the reality of things.
Secondly, Our complex ideas of modes being voluntary collections of simple ideas, which the mind puts together without reference to any real archetypes, cannot but be adequate ideas. They are referred to no other pattern, nor made by any original, but the good-looking and will of him that makes the combination. If indeed one would conform his ideas to those which are formed by another person, they may be wrong or inadequate, because they agree not to that which the mind deigns to be their archetype and pattern; in which respect only any ideas of modes can be wrong, imperfect, or inadequate.
Thirdly, Our ideas of substances have in the mind a double reference: First, They are sometimes referred to a supposed real essence, of each species of things; Secondly, They are designed for representations in the mind, of things that do exist, by ideas discoverable in them: In both which respects they are inadequate.
First, If the names of substances stand for things, as supposed to have certain real essences, whereby they are of this or that species, of which real essences men are wholly ignorant; it follows, that the ideas they have in their minds, being referred to real essences as archetypes which are unknown, they must be so far from being adequate, that they cannot be supposed to be any representation of them at all. Our complex ideas of substances are nothing but certain collections 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 it would be deducible from it, and their necessary connection with it be known; as all the properties of a triangle depend on and are deducible from the complex idea of three lines including a space: But it is certain, that in our complex ideas of substances are not contained such ideas on which all other qualities that are to be found in them depend.
Secondly, Those that take their ideas of substances from their sensible qualities, cannot form adequate ideas of them: Because their qualities and powers are so various, that no man's complex idea can contain them all. Most of our simple ideas, whereof our complex ones of substances do consist, are powers, which being relations to other substances, we cannot be sure we know all the powers, till we have tried what changes they are fitted to give and receive from other substances in their several ways of application; which being not possible to be tried upon one body, much less upon all, it is impossible we should have adequate ideas of any substance made of a collection of all its properties.
Of true and false ideas.
Truth and falsehood, in propriety of speech, belong only to propositions; and when ideas are termed true or false, there is some secret or tacit proposition which is the foundation of that denomination. Our ideas being nothing but appearances, or perceptions in the mind, can, in strictness of speech, no more be said to be true or false, than single names of things can be said to be true or false. The idea of Centaur has no more falsehood in it when it appears in our minds, than the name Centaur when it is pronounced or written on paper. For truth or falsehood lying always in some affirmation or negation, our ideas are not capable, any of them, of being false, till the mind passes some judgment on them, that is, affirms or denies something of them. In a metaphysical sense they may be said to be true, that is, to be really 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.
When the mind refers any of its ideas to any thing extraneous to it, they are then capable of being true or false: because in such a reference, the mind makes a tacit supposition of their conformity to that thing; which supposition, as it is true or false, so the ideas themselves come to be denominated. This happens in these cases:
1st, When the mind supposes its idea conformable to that in other mens minds, called by the same name, such as that of justice, virtue, &c.
2ndly, When the mind supposes any idea conformable to some real existence. Thus, that of Man is true, that of Centaur false; the one having a conformity to what has really existed, the other not.
3rdly, When the mind refers any of its ideas to that real constitution and essence of any thing whereon all its properties depend: and thus the greatest part, if not all our ideas of substances are false.
As to the first, when we judge of our ideas by their conformity to those of other men, they may be any of them false: but simple ideas are least liable to be mistaken. We seldom mistake green for blue, or bitter for sweet; much less do we confound the names belonging to different senses, and call a colour by the name of a taste. Complex ideas are much more liable to falsehood in this particular; and those of mixed modes more than substances: because in substances, their sensible qualities serve, for the most part, to distinguish them clearly; but in mixed modes we are more uncertain, and we may call that justice which ought to be called by another name. The reason reason of this is, that the abstract ideas of mixed modes being men's voluntary combinations of such a precise collection of simple ideas, we have nothing else to refer our ideas of mixed modes as standards to, but the ideas of those who are thought to use names in their proper significations: and so as our ideas conform or differ from them, they pass for true or false.
As to the second, When we refer our ideas to the real existence of things, none can be termed false but our complex ideas of substances: for our simple ideas being nothing but perceptions in us answerable to certain powers in external objects, their truth consists in nothing but such appearances as are produced in us suitable to those powers; neither do they become liable to the imputation of falsehood, whether we judge these ideas to be in the things themselves, or not: for God having set them as marks of distinguishing things, that we may be able to discern one thing from another, and thereby chase them as we have occasion, it alters not the nature of our simple ideas, whether we think the idea of blue (for instance) to be in the violet itself, or in the mind only: and it is equally from that appearance to be denominated 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.
Neither would our simple ideas be false, 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: for this could never be known, since objects would operate constantly after the same manner. It is most probable, nevertheless, that the ideas produced by the same objects in different men's minds, are very near and undiscernibly like. Names of simple ideas may be misapplied; as a man, ignorant in the English tongue, may call purple, scarlet: but this makes no falsehood in the idea.
Complex ideas of modes cannot be false, in reference to the essence of any thing really existing; because they have no reference to any pattern existing, or made by nature.
Our complex ideas of substances, being all referred to patterns in things themselves, may be false. They are so, 1st, When looked upon as representations of the unknown essences of things: 2ndly, When they put together simple ideas which in the real existence of things have no union; as in centaur. 3rdly, When from any collection of simple ideas, that do always exist together, there is separated, by a direct negation, any one simple idea which is constantly joined with them. Thus, if from extension, solidity, fixedness, malleability, fusibility, &c. we remove the colour observed in gold: If this idea be only left out of the complex one of gold, it is to be looked on as an inadequate and imperfect, 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.
Upon the whole, 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 more properly be called right or wrong ideas, according as they agree or disagree to those patterns to which they are referred. The ideas that are in men's minds, simply considered, cannot be wrong, unless complex ideas, 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 patterns, or archetypes, then they are capable of being wrong, as far as they disagree with such archetypes.
Of the association of ideas.
Some of our ideas have a natural correspondence and connection 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 connection of ideas wholly owing to chance or custom: Ideas that in themselves are not at all of kin, come to be so united in some men's minds, that it is very hard to separate them; they always keep company, and the one no sooner comes into the understanding, but its associate appears with it; and if they are more than two, the whole gang always inseparably shew themselves together. 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, educations, interests, &c. Custom fetters 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 a-going, continue on in the same steps they have been used to; which by often treading are worn into a smooth path, and the motion in it becomes easy, and, as it were, natural. As far as we can comprehend 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 that tract, as well as it does to explain such motions of the body.
This connection in our minds of ideas, in themselves loose and independent one of another, 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. Thus the ideas of goblins and sprights have really no more to do with darkness than light; yet let 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 ever afterwards bring with it those frightful ideas. 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 that of the pain and displeasure with it; he confounds him in his mind, and can as little bear the one as the other.
Intellectual habits and defects this way contracted, are not less frequent and powerful, though less observed. Let the ideas of being and matter be strongly joined either by education or much thought, whilst these are still combined in the mind, what notions, what reasonings will there there be about separate spirits? 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 joined to any person, and these two constantly together possess the mind; and then one body in two places at once shall be swallowed for a certain truth, whenever that imagined infallible person dictates, and demands assent without inquiry.
Some such wrong combinations of ideas will be found to establish the irreconcilable opposition between different sects of philosophy and religion: for we cannot imagine every one of their followers to impose wilfully on himself, and knowingly refuse truth offered by 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 perseverence, as that every one of them should knowingly maintain falsehood; some at least must be allowed to do what all pretend to, i.e., to pursue truth sincerely. That therefore which captivates their reasons, and leads men of sincerity blindfold from common sense, will, when examined, be found to be what we are speaking of: some independent ideas, 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 absurdities, and consistency to nonsense, and is the foundation of the greatest errors in the world. The confusion of two different ideas, which a customary connection of them in their minds hath to them in effect made but one, cannot but fill mens heads with false views, and their reasonings with false consequences.
Of knowledge in general.
Since the mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, has no other immediate object but its own ideas, which alone it does or can contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge is only conversant about them. Knowledge then seems to be nothing but the perception of the connection and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our ideas: where this perception is, there is knowledge; and where it is not, there, though we fancy, guess, or believe, yet we always come short of knowledge. When we know that white is not black, what do we but perceive that these two ideas do not agree? Or 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 triangle? But to understand a little more distinctly wherein this agreement or disagreement consists, we may reduce it all to these four sorts:
1st. Identity or diversity; 2dly, Relation; 3dly, Coexistence; 4thly, Real existence.
1. Identity or diversity. It is the first act of the mind, to perceive its ideas; and so far as it perceives them, to know each what it is, and thereby to perceive their difference, that is, the one not to be the other: by this the mind clearly perceives each idea to agree with itself, and to be what it is; and all distinct ideas to disagree. This it does without any pains or deduction, by its natural power of perception and distinction. This is what men of art have reduced to those general rules, viz., what is, is; and, it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be. But no maxim can make a man know it clearer, that round is not square, than the bare perception of those two ideas, which the mind at first sight perceives to disagree.
2. The next sort of agreement or disagreement the mind perceives in any of its ideas, may be called relative, and is nothing but the perception of the relation between any two ideas of what kind soever; that is, their agreement or disagreement one with another in several ways the mind takes of comparing them.
3. The third sort of agreement or disagreement to be found in our ideas, is, coexistence or non-coexistence in the same subject; and this belongs particularly to substances. Thus when we pronounce concerning gold, that it is fixed, it amounts to no more but this, that fixedness, or a power to remain in the fire unconsumed, is an idea that always accompanies that particular sort of yellowness, weight, fusibility, &c., which make our complex idea signified by the word gold.
4. The fourth sort, is that of actual and real existence agreeing to any idea. Within these four sorts of agreement or disagreement, is contained all the knowledge we have, or are capable of. For all that we know or can affirm concerning any idea, is, That it is, or is not the same with some other; as, that blue is not yellow: That it does, or does not coexist with another in the same subject; as, that iron is susceptible of magnetic impressions; That it has that or this relation to some other ideas; as, That two triangles, upon equal bases between two parallels, are equal: or, that it has a real existence without the mind; as, that God is.
There are several ways wherein the mind is possessed of truth, each of which is called knowledge. First, There is actual knowledge, when the mind has a present view of the agreement or disagreement of any of its ideas, or of the relation they have one with another. Secondly, A man is said to know any proposition, when having once evidently perceived the agreement or disagreement of the ideas whereof it consists, and so lodged it in his memory, that whenever it comes to be reflected on again, the mind assents to it without doubt or hesitation, and is certain of the truth of it. And this may be called 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.
Of habitual knowledge there are two sorts: The one is of such truths laid up in the memory, as whenever they occur to the mind, it actually perceives the relation that is between those ideas. And this is in all those truths, where the ideas themselves, by an immediate view, discover their agreement or disagreement one with another. The other is of such truths, whereof the mind having been convinced, 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, knows it to be true, when that demonstration is gone out. of his mind, and possibly cannot be recollected: But he knows it in a different way from what he did before, namely, not by the intervention of those intermediate ideas, whereby the agreement or disagreement of those in the proposition was at first perceived, but by remembering, i.e., knowing 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 immutable things, is now the idea that shews him, that if the three angles of a triangle were once equal to two right ones, they will always be so. And hence he comes to be certain, that what was once true, is always true; what ideas once agreed, will always agree; and consequently, what he once knew to be true, he will always know to be true, as long as he can remember that he once knew it.
Of the degrees of our knowledge.
All our knowledge consisting in the view the mind has of its own ideas, which is the utmost light and greatest certainty we are capable of, the different clearness of our knowledge seems to lie in the different way of perception the mind has of the agreement or disagreement of any of its ideas.
When the mind perceives this agreement or disagreement of two ideas immediately by themselves, without the intervention of any other, we may call it intuitive knowledge; in which case the mind perceives truth, as the eye does light, only by being directed towards it. Thus the mind perceives, that white is not black; that three are more than two, and equal to one and two. This part of knowledge is irresistible, and, like the bright sun-shine, forces itself immediately to be perceived as soon as ever the mind turns its view that way. It is on this intuition that depends all the certainty and evidence of our other knowledge; which certainty every one finds to be so great, that he cannot imagine, and therefore not require a greater.
The next degree of knowledge, is, where the mind perceives not this agreement or disagreement immediately, or by the juxtaposition, as it were, of the ideas, because those ideas concerning whose agreement or disagreement the inquiry is made, cannot by the mind be so put together, as to shew it. In this case the mind is fond to discover the agreement or disagreement which it searches, by the intervention of other ideas: And this is that which we call reasoning. And thus, if we would know the agreement or disagreement in bigness, between the three angles of a triangle, and two right angles, we cannot by an immediate view and comparing them do it; because the three angles of a triangle cannot be brought at once, and be compared with any other one or two angles. And so of this the mind has no immediate or intuitive knowledge. But we must find out some other angles, to which the three angles of a triangle have equality; and finding those equal to two right ones, we come to know the equality of these three angles to two right ones. Those intervening ideas which serve to shew the agreement of any two others, are called proofs; and where the agreement or disagreement is by this means plainly and clearly perceived, it is called demonstration. A quickness in the mind to find those proofs, and to apply them right, is that which is called sagacity.
This knowledge, though it be certain, is not so clear and evident as intuitive knowledge. It requires pains and attention, and steady application of mind, to discover the agreement or disagreement of the ideas it considers; and there must be a progression by steps and degrees, before the mind can in this way arrive at certainty. Before 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 paper be all of a colour.
Now, in every step that 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. By which it is evident, that every step in reasoning, that produces knowledge, has intuitive certainty; which when the mind perceives, there is no more required but to remember it, to make the agreement or disagreement of the ideas concerning which we inquire visible and certain. This intuitive perception of the agreement or disagreement of the intermediate ideas in each step and progression of the demonstration, must also be exactly carried in the mind; and a man must be sure that no part is left out; which because in long deductions the memory cannot easily retain, this knowledge becomes more imperfect than intuitive, and men often embrace falsehoods for demonstrations.
It has been generally taken for granted, that mathematici alone are capable of demonstrative certainty. But to have such an agreement or disagreement as may be intuitively perceived, being 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: For in whatever ideas the mind can perceive the agreement or disagreement immediately, there it 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 the ideas of figure, number, extension, or their modes. The reason why it has been generally supposed to belong to them only, is, because in comparing their equality or excess, the modes of numbers have every the least difference very clear and perceptible: And in extension, though every the-least excess is not so perceptible, yet the mind has found out ways to discover the just equality of two angles, extensions, or figures; and both, that is, numbers and figures, can be set down by visible and lasting marks.
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 or find ways to measure their just equality, equality, or the least differences: For those other simple ideas being appearances or sensations produced in us by the size, figure, motion, &c. of minute corpuscles singly insensible, their different degrees also depend on 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 subtle to be perceived, it is impossible for us to have any exact measures of the different degrees of these simple ideas. Thus, for instance, not knowing 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 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 ideas clearly distinct, there ideas of colours, as we see in different kinds, blue and red, (for instance,) are as capable of demonstration as ideas of number and extension. What is here said of colours, holds true in all secondary qualities. These two then, intuition and demonstration, are the degrees of our knowledge; whatever comes short of one of these, is but faith or opinion, 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 probability, but not reaching to either of the foregoing degrees of certainty, passes under the name of knowledge.
Nothing can be more certain, than that the idea we receive from an external object is in our minds: This is intuitive knowledge; but whether we can thence certainly infer the existence of anything without us, corresponding to that idea, is that whereof some men think there may be a question made, because men may have such an idea in their minds, when no such things exist, no such object affects their senses. But it's evident that we are invincibly conscious to ourselves of a different perception, when we look upon the sun in the day, and think on it by night; when we actually taste wormwood, or smell a rose, or only think on that favour or odour. So that we may add to the two former sorts of knowledge, this also of the existence of particular external objects, by that perception and consciousness we have of the actual entrance of ideas from them, and allow these three degrees of knowledge, viz. intuitive, demonstrative, and sensitive.
But since our knowledge is founded on, and employed about our ideas only, will it follow thence that it must be conformable to our ideas; and that where our ideas are clear and distinct, obscure and confused, there our knowledge will be so too? No. For our knowledge consisting in the perception 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. A man (for instance) that has a clear idea of the angles of a triangle, and of equality to two right ones, may yet have but an obscure perception of their agreement; and so have but a very obscure knowledge of it. But obscure and confused ideas can never produce any clear or distinct knowledge; because, as far as any ideas are obscure or confused, so far the mind can never perceive clearly whether they agree or disagree.
Of the extent of human knowledge.
From what has been said concerning knowledge, it follows, First, That we can have no knowledge farther than we have ideas.
Secondly, That we have no knowledge farther than we can have perception of that agreement or disagreement of our ideas, either by intuition, demonstration, or sensation.
Thirdly, We cannot have an intuitive knowledge that shall 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 juxtaposition, or an immediate comparison one with another. Thus we cannot intuitively perceive the equality of two extensions, the difference of whole figures makes their parts incapable of an exact immediate application.
Fourthly, Our rational knowledge cannot reach to the whole extent of our ideas; because between two different ideas we would examine, we cannot always find such proofs as we can connect one to another, with an intuitive knowledge in all the parts of the deduction.
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.
Sixthly, From all which it is evident, that the extent of our knowledge, comes not only short of the reality of things, but even of the extent of our own ideas. We have the ideas of a square, a circle, and equality; and yet, perhaps, shall never be able to find a circle equal to a square.
The affirmations or negations we make concerning the ideas we have, being reduced to the four sorts above mentioned, viz. identity, coexistence, relation, and real existence, we shall examine how far our knowledge extends in each of these.
First, As to identity and diversity, our intuitive knowledge is as far extended as our ideas themselves; and there can be no idea in the mind, which it does not presently, by an intuitive knowledge, perceived to be what it is, and to be different from any other.
Secondly, As to the agreement or disagreement of our ideas in coexistence: In this our knowledge is very short; though in this consists the greatest and most material part of our knowledge, concerning substances. For our ideas of substances being nothing but certain collections of simple ideas, coexisting in one subject, (our idea of flame, for instance, is a body hot, luminous, and moving upward;) when we would know anything farther concerning this, or any other sort of substance, what do we but inquire 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. The reason of this is, because the simple ideas which make up our complex ideas of substances, have no visible necessary connection metaphysics.
notion or inconsistence with other simple ideas whose coexistence with them we would inform ourselves about. These ideas being likewise, for the most part, secondary qualities, which depend upon the primary qualities of their minute or insensible parts, or on something yet more remote from our comprehension, it is impossible we should know which have a necessary union or inconsistency one with another, since we know not the root from whence they spring; or the size, figure, and texture of parts on which they depend, and from which they result.
Besides this, there is no discoverable connection between any secondary quality, and those primary qualities that it depends on. We are so far from knowing what figure, size, or motion produces (for instance) a yellow colour, or sweet taste, or a sharp sound, that we can by no means conceive how any size, figure, or motion can possibly produce in us the idea of any colour, taste, or sound whatsoever; and there is no conceivable connection between the one and the other.
Our knowledge therefore of coexistence reaches little farther than experience. Some few, indeed, of the primary qualities have a necessary dependence and visible connection one with another; as figure necessarily supposes extension, receiving or communicating motion by impulse supposes solidity. But qualities coexistent in any subject, without this dependence and connection, cannot certainly be known to coexist any farther than experience by our senses informs us. Thus, though upon trial we find gold yellow, weighty, malleable, fusible, and fixed, yet because none of these have any evident dependence or necessary connection 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: But the highest degree of probability amounts not to certainty; without which there can be no true knowledge: For this coexistence can be no further known, than it is perceived; and it cannot be perceived, but either, in particular subjects, by the observation of our senses, or, in general, by the necessary connection of the ideas themselves.
As to incompatibility, or repugnancy to coexistence, we may know that any subject can have of each sort of primary qualities but one particular at once, one extension, one figure; and so of sensible ideas, peculiar to each sense: for whatever of each kind is present in any subject, excludes all other of that sort; for instance, one subject cannot have two smells or two colours at the same time.
As to powers of substances, which make a great part of our inquiries about them, and are no inconsiderable branch of our knowledge; our knowledge as to these reaches little farther than experience; because they consist in a texture and motion of parts which we cannot by any means come to discover. Experience is that which in this part we must depend on; and it were to be wished that it were more improved.
As to the third sort, the agreement or disagreement of our ideas in any other relation, this is the largest field of knowledge, and it is hard to determine how far it may extend. This part depending on our sagacity in finding intermediate ideas that may shew the habitudes and relations of ideas, it is an hard matter to tell when we are at the end of such discoveries. They that are ignorant of algebra, cannot imagine the wonders in this kind that are to be done by it; and what farther improvements and helps advantageous to other parts of knowledge the sagacious mind of man may yet find out, it is not easy to determine. The ideas of quantity are not those alone that are capable of demonstration and knowledge; other, and perhaps more useful parts of contemplation, would undoubtedly afford us certainty, if vices, passions, and designing interest, did not oppose or menace endeavours of this kind.
The idea of a Supreme Being, infinite in power, goodness, and wisdom, whose workmanship we are, and on whom we depend; and the idea of ourselves, as understanding rational creatures; would, if duly considered, afford such foundations of our duty, and rules of action, as might place morality among the sciences capable of demonstration. The relations of other modes may certainly be perceived, as well as those of number and extension. Where there is no property, there is no injustice, is a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid: for the idea of property being a right to anything; and the idea of injustice being the invasion or violation of that right; it is evident, that these ideas being thus established, and these names annexed to them, we 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, we are as capable of being certain of the truth of this proposition, as of any in mathematics.
What has given the advantage to the ideas of quality, and made them thought more capable of certainty and demonstration, is,
First, That they can be represented by sensible marks which have a nearer correspondence with them than any words or sounds. Diagrams drawn on paper are copies of the ideas, and not liable to the uncertainty that words carry in their signification: But we have no sensible marks that resemble our moral ideas, and 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, Moral ideas are commonly more complex than figures. Whence these two inconveniences follow:
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. Secondly, The mind cannot easily retain those precise combinations so exactly and perfectly as is necessary; in the examination of the habitudes and correspondencies, agreements or disagreements of several of them one with another, especially where it is to be judged off by long deductions, and the intervention of several other complex ideas, to shew the agreement or disagreement of two remote ones. Now one part of these disadvantages in moral ideas, which has made them be thought not capable of demonstration, 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.
As to the fourth sort of knowledge, viz. of the real actual existence of things, we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence; a demonstrative knowledge of the existence of God; and a sensitive knowledge of the objects that present themselves to our senses.
From what has been said, we may discover the causes of our ignorance; which are chiefly these three: First, Want of ideas; Secondly, Want of discoverable connection between the ideas we have; Thirdly, Want of tracing and examining our ideas.
First, There are some things we are ignorant of for want of ideas. All the simple ideas we have are confined to the observations of our senses, and the operations of our own minds that we are conscious of in ourselves. What other ideas it is possible other creatures may have, by the assistance of other 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. What faculties therefore other species of creatures have to penetrate into the nature and inmost constitutions of things, we know not. This we know, and certainly find, that we want other views of them, besides those we have, to make discoveries of them more perfect. The intellectual and sensible world are in this perfectly alike, that the parts which we see of either of them, hold no proportion with that 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.
Another great cause of ignorance, is the want of ideas that we are capable of. This keeps us in ignorance of things we conceive capable of being known. Bulk, figure, and motion we have ideas of; yet not knowing what is the particular bulk, motion, and figure of the greatest part of the bodies of the universe, we are ignorant of the several powers, efficacies, and ways of operation, whereby the effects we daily see are produced. These are hid from us in some things, by being too remote; in others, by being too minute.
When we consider the vast distance of the known and visible parts of the world, and the reasons we have to think that what lies within our ken is but a small part of the immense universe, we shall then discover an huge abyss of ignorance. 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; and what is their motion, and how continued; and what influence they have upon one another; are contemplations, that at first glimpse our thoughts lose themselves in. If we confine our thoughts to this little system of our sun, and the groser 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 probably be in 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 into our minds?
There are other bodies in the universe, no less concealed from us by their minuteness. These insensible corpuscles being the active parts of matter, and the great instruments of nature on which depend all their secondary qualities and operations, our want of precise distinct ideas of their primary qualities keeps us in incurable ignorance of what we desire to know about them. Did we know the mechanical affections of rhubarb and opium, we might as easily account for their operations of purging or causing sleep, as a watchmaker can for the motions of his watch. The dissolving of silver in aqua fortis, or 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 turning 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 affections, we must be content to be ignorant of their properties and operations: 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 beyond particular matters of fact. And therefore, how far forever human industry may advance useful and experimental philosophy in physical things, yet scientific will still be out of our reach; because we want perfect and adequate ideas of those very bodies which are nearest to us, and most under our command.
This, at first sight, shews us how disproportionate 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; we shall find this cause of ignorance conceal from us, in an impenetrable obscurity, almost the whole intellectual world, a greater certainty, and a more beautiful world than the material: For batting some very few ideas of spirit we get from our own mind by reflection, and from thence the best we can collect of the Father of all spirits, the Author of them and us and all things, we have no certain information so much as of the existence of other spirits but by revelation; much less have we distinct ideas of their different natures, states, powers, and several constitutions, wherein they agree or differ one from another, and from us: And therefore in what concerns their different species and properties, we are under an absolute ignorance.
The second cause of ignorance, is the want of discoverable connection between those ideas we have: Where we want that, we are utterly incapable of universal and certain knowledge: and are, as in the former case, left only to observation and experiment. Thus the mecha- nical affections of bodies having no affinity at all with the ideas they produce in us, we can have no distinct knowledge of such operations beyond our experience; and can reason no otherwise about them, than as the effects or appointment of an infinitely wise agent, which perfectly surpasses our comprehensions.
The operation of our minds upon our bodies, is as inconceivable. How any thought should produce a motion in body, is as remote 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 discover to us.
In some of our ideas there are certain relations, habits, and connections, so visibly included in the nature of the ideas themselves, that we cannot conceive them separable from them by any power whatsoever: In these only we are capable of certain and universal knowledge. Thus the idea of a right lined triangle, necessarily carries with it an equality of its angles to two right ones. But the coherence and continuity of the parts of matter, the production of sensation in us of colours and sounds, &c., by impulse and motion, being such wherein we can discover no natural connection with any ideas we have, we cannot but ascribe them to the arbitrary will and good pleasure of the wise Architect.
The things that we observe constantly to proceed regularly, we may conclude to act by a law set them; but yet by a law that we know not; whereby, though causes work steadily, and effects constantly flow from them, yet their connections and dependencies being not discoverable in our ideas, we can have but an experimental knowledge of them.
The third cause of ignorance, is our want of tracing those ideas we have or may have, and finding out those intermediate ideas which shew us what habitude of agreement or disagreement they may have with another: And thus many are ignorant of mathematical truths, for want of application in inquiring, examining, and by due ways comparing those ideas.
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 nature of our ideas. If the ideas are abstract, whose agreement or disagreement we perceive, our knowledge is universal. For what is known of such general ideas, will be true of every particular thing in which that essence, that is, abstract idea, is to be found: And what is once known of such idea, will be perpetually, and for ever true. So that, as to all general knowledge, we must search and find it only in our own minds: And it is only the examining of our own ideas that furnishes us with that. Truths belonging to essences of things, (that is, to abstract ideas), are eternal, and are to be found out by the contemplation only of those essences, as the existence of things is to be known only from experience.
Of the reality of our knowledge.
The reader by this time may be ready to object, If it be true, that all knowledge lies only in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of our own ideas, the visions of 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 conformably; it is all truth, all certainty.
To this it is answered, that if our knowledge of our ideas should terminate in them, and reach no farther, where there is something farther intended, our most serious thoughts would be of little more use than the reveries of a crazy brain. But it is evident, that this way of certainty, by the knowledge of our own ideas, goes a little farther than bare imagination: and that all the certainty of general truths a man has, lies in nothing else but this knowledge of our ideas.
It is evident, that the mind knows not things immediately, but 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 how shall we know when our ideas agree with things themselves? There are two sorts of ideas, that we may be assured agree with things: These are,
First, Simple ideas; which since the mind can by no means make to itself, must be the effect of things operating upon the mind in a natural way, and producing therein those perceptions, which, by the will of our Maker, they are ordained and adapted to. Hence it follows, that simple ideas are not fictions of our fancies, but the natural and regular productions of things without us, really operating upon us; which carry with them all the conformity our state requires, which is to represent things under those appearances they are fitted to produce in us. Thus the idea of whiteness, as it is in the mind, exactly answers that power which is in any body to produce it there. And this conformity between our simple ideas, and the existence of things, is sufficient for real knowledge.
Secondly, All our complex ideas, except those of substances, being archetypes of the mind's own making, and not referred to the existence of things as to their originals, cannot want any conformity necessary to real knowledge: For that which is not designed to represent anything but itself, can never be capable of a wrong representation. Here the ideas themselves are considered as archetypes, and things no otherwise regarded than as they are conformable to them. Thus the mathematician considers the truth and properties belonging to a rectangle, or circle, only as they are ideas in his own mind, which possibly he never found existing mathematically, that is, precisely true; yet his knowledge is not only certain, but real; 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. It is true of the idea of a triangle, that its three angles are equal to two right ones: It is true also of a triangle, wherever it exists: What is true of those figures, that have barely an ideal existence in his mind, will hold true of them also when they come to have a real existence in nature.
Hence it follows, that moral knowledge is as capable of real certainty as mathematics: For certainty being nothing nothing but the perception of the agreement or disagree- ment of our ideas, and demonstration nothing but the perception of such agreement by the intervention of other ideas, our moral ideas, as well as mathematical, being archetypes themselves, and to adequate or complete i- deas, all the agreement or disagreement we shall find in them will produce real knowledge, as well as in mathe- matical figures. That which is requisite to make our knowledge certain, is the clearness of our ideas; and that which is required to make it real, is, that they answer their archetypes.
Thirdly, But the complex ideas, which we refer to archetypes without us, may differ from them, and so our knowledge about them may come short of being real; and such are our ideas of substances. These must be ta- ken from something that does or has existed, and not be made up of ideas arbitrarily put together, without any real pattein. Herein, therefore, is founded the reality of our knowledge concerning substances, that all our com- plex ideas of them must be such, and such only, as are made up of such simple ones as have been discovered to coexist in nature. And our ideas being thus true, tho' not perhaps very exact copies, are the subjects of the real knowledge of them. Whatever ideas we have, the agreement we find they have with others will be knowl- edge. 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. Wherever, therefore, we perceive the agreement or dif- ference of our ideas, there is certain knowledge: And wherever we are sure those ideas agree with the reality of things, there is certain real knowledge.
Of truth in general.
Truth, in the proper import of the word, signifies 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, is what we call proposi- tions; so that truth properly belongs only to propositions: Whereof there are two sorts, mental and verbal; as there are two sorts of signs commonly made use of, i- deas and words.
It is difficult to treat of mental propositions without verbal; because, in speaking of mental, we must make use of words, and then they become verbal. Again, men commonly in their thoughts and reasonings use words instead of ideas; especially if the subject of their medita- tion contains in it complex ideas. If we have occasion to form mental propositions about white, black, circle, &c., we can, and often do, frame in our minds the ideas them- selves, without reflecting on the names: But when we would consider, or make propositions about the more com- plex ideas, as of a man, vitriol, fortitude, glory, &c., we usually put the name for the idea; because the idea these names stand for being for the most part confused, imperfect, and undetermined, we reflect on the names themselves, as being more clear, certain, and distinct, and readier to occur to our thoughts, than pure ideas; and so we make use of these words instead of the ideas themselves, even when we would meditate and reason within ourselves, and make tacit mental propositions.
We must then observe two sorts of propositions that we are capable of making: First, Mental propositions, where- in the ideas in our understandings are put together or separated by the mind perceiving or judging of their a- greement or disagreement. Secondly, Verbal propositions; which are words put together or separated in affirmative or negative sentences: So that proposition consists in join- ing or separating signs; and truth consists in putting to- gether or separating these signs, according as the things they stand for agree or disagree.
Truth, as well as knowledge, may well come under the distinction of verbal and real; that being only verbal truth, wherein terms are joined according to the agree- ment or disagreement 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 sub- stances we cannot know, but by knowing that such have existed. Truth is the marking down in words the a- greement or disagreement of ideas as it is: Falsehood is the marking down in words the agreement or disagree- ment of ideas otherwise than it is; and so for 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, according as it is marked by those words.
Besides truth taken in the strict sense before mentioned, there are other sorts of truths: As, first, Moral truth; which is speaking things according to the persuasion of our own minds. Secondly, Metaphysical truth; which is nothing but the real existence of things conformable to the ideas to which we have annexed their names.
These considerations of truth either having been before taken notice of, or not being much to our present pur- pose, it may suffice here only to have mentioned them.
Of our knowledge of existence.
Hitherto we have only considered the essences of things; which being only abstract ideas, and thereby re- moved in our thoughts from particular existence, give us no knowledge of existence at all. We proceed now to in- quire concerning our knowledge of the existence of things, and how we come by it.
We have the knowledge of our own existence by intu- ition; of the existence of God, by demonstration; and of other things, by sensation. As for our own existence, we perceive it so plainly, that it neither needs, nor is capable of any proof. 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 exis- tence, and will not suffer me to doubt of that. If I know I doubt, I have as certain a perception of the thing doubt- ing, 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, reasoning, or thinking, we are conscious to ourselves of our own being; and in this matter come not short of the highest degree of certainty.
Of our knowledge of the existence of a God.
Though God has given us no innate ideas of himself, yet having furnished us with those faculties our minds are endowed with, he hath not left himself without a witness, since we have sense, perception, and reason, 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 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 discovers, 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 ignorant of this, as of other propositions which are in themselves capable of clear demonstration. To shew, therefore, that we are capable of knowing, that is, being certain, that there is a God, and how we may come by this certainty, we need go no farther than ourselves, and that undoubted knowledge we have of our own existence. It is beyond question, that man has a clear perception of his own being: He knows certainly that he exists, and that he is something. 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 therefore, we know there is some real being, it is an evident demonstration, 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. Next, it is evident, that what has its being 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 be also the source and original of all power; and so this eternal Being must be also the most powerful.
Again, man finds in himself perception and knowledge: We are certain, then, that there is not only some being, but some knowing intelligent being in the world. There was a time, then, when there was no knowing being, or else there has been a knowing being from eternity. If it be said, there was a time when that eternal being had no knowledge; the reply is, that then it is impossible there should have ever been any knowledge; it being as impossible that things wholly void of knowledge, and operating blindly, and without any perception, should produce a knowing being, as it is that a triangle should make itself three angles bigger than two right ones.
Thus from the consideration of ourselves, and 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 knowing being; and from this idea duly considered, will easily be deduced all those other attributes we ought to ascribe to this eternal being.
From what has been said, it is plain, we have a more certain knowledge of the existence of a God, than of any thing our senses have not immediately discovered to us; nay, that we more certainly know that there is a God, than that there is any thing else without us.
It being then unavoidable for all rational creatures to conclude, that something has existed from eternity: let us next see what kind of thing that must be. There are but two sorts of beings in the world, that man knows or conceives. First, Such as are purely material, without sense or perception, as the clippings of our beards, and parings of our nails. Secondly, Sensible perceiving beings; such as we find ourselves to be. These two sorts we shall hereafter call cogitative and incogitative beings: Which to our present purpose are better than material and immaterial.
If then there must be something eternal, it is very obvious to reason, that it must necessarily be a cogitative being; because 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, we shall find it in itself unable to produce anything. Let us suppose its parts firmly at rest together: If there were no other being in the world, must it not eternally remain fo, a dead inactive lump? Is it possible to conceive it can add motion to itself, or produce any thing? Matter then by its own strength cannot produce in itself so much as motion. The motion it has must also be from eternity, or else added to matter by some other being more powerful than matter. But let us suppose motion eternal too; yet matter, incogitative matter and motion, could never produce thought: Knowledge will still be as far beyond the power of motion and matter to produce, as matter is beyond the power of nothing to produce. Divide matter into as minute parts as you will, vary the figure and motion of it as much as you please, it will operate no otherwise upon other bodies of proportionable bulk, than it did before this division. The minutest particles of matter 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 eternal, matter can never begin to be: If we suppose bare matter without motion eternal, motion can never begin to be: If we suppose only matter and motion eternal, thought can never begin to be: For it is impossible to conceive that matter, either with or without motion, could have originally, in and from itself sense, perception, and knowledge; as is evident from hence, that then sense, perception and knowledge, must be a property eternally inseparable from matter and every particle of it. 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 perfections that can ever after exist, it necessarily follows, that the first eternal being cannot be matter.
If therefore it be evident that something necessarily must exist from eternity, it is also evident, that that something must necessarily be a cogitative being: For it is as impossible that incogitative matter should produce a cogitative being, as that nothing, or the negation of all being, should produce a positive being or matter.
This discovery of the necessary existence of an Eternal Mind, mind does sufficiently lead us into the knowledge of God. For 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 least excellent pieces of this universe, all inanimate bodies, whereby his omniscience, power, and providence, will be established; and from thence all his other attributes necessarily follow.
Of our knowledge of the existence of other things.
The knowledge of our own being we have by intuition: The existence of a God, reason clearly makes known to us. The knowledge of the existence of any other thing, we can have only by sensation; for there being no necessary connection 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 actually operating upon him, it makes itself be perceived by him. The having the idea of anything 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. It is therefore the actual receiving of ideas from without, that gives us notice of the existence of other things, and makes us know that something doth exist at that time without us, which causeth that idea in us, though perhaps we neither know nor consider 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. This notice we have by our senses of the existence of things without us, though it be not altogether so certain as intuition and demonstration, deserves the name of knowledge, if we persuade ourselves that our faculties act and inform us right concerning the existence of those objects that affect them. 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, we have other concurrent reasons: As, 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.
Secondly, Because we find sometimes that we cannot avoid the having those ideas produced in our minds. When my eyes are shut, I can at pleasure recall to my mind the ideas of light, or the sun, which former sensations had lodged in my memory: But if I turn my eyes towards the sun, I cannot avoid the ideas which the light or the sun then produces in me. Which shews a manifest difference between those ideas laid up in the memory, and such as force themselves upon us, and we cannot avoid having. And therefore it must needs be some exterior cause, 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 actually looking upon the sun, and contemplating the idea he has of it in his memory; and therefore he hath certain knowledge, that they are not both memory or fancy, but that actual seeing has a cause without.
Thirdly, Add to this, that many ideas are produced in us with pain, which we afterwards remember without the least offence. Thus the pain of heat or cold, when the idea of it is received in our minds, gives us no disturbance, which, when felt, was very troublesome; and we remember the pain of hunger, thirst, head-ach, &c., 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.
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 doubts when he feels a fire, whether it be real, may, if he please, feel it too; and by the exquisite pain he will be convinced, that it is not a bare idea or phantom.
If after all this, any one will be so sceptical, as to distrust his senses, and to question the existence of all things, or our knowledge of any thing, let him consider 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 not suited to the full extent of being, nor a clear comprehensive knowledge of all things, but to the preservation of us in whom they are, and accommodated to the use of life; they serve our purpose well enough, if they will but give us certain notice of those things that are convenient or inconvenient to us: For he that feels a candle burning, and has experimented the force of the 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 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: So that this evidence is as great as we can define, being as certain to us as our pleasure or pain, that is, happiness or misery; beyond which we have no concernment either of knowing or being.
In fine, when our senses doth actually convey into our understandings any idea, we are assured that there is something at that time really existing without us. But this knowledge extends only as far as the present testimony of our senses, employed about particular objects, that do then affect them, and no farther. My feeling a man a minute since, is no certain argument of his present existence.
As when our senses are actually employed about any object, we 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 the 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.
As to the existence of spirits, our having ideas of them does not make us know that any such things do exist without without us, or that there are any finite spirits, or any other spiritual beings; but 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 existence; for we can no more know that there are finite spirits really existing, by the ideas we have of such beings, than by the ideas any one has of fairies, or centaurs, he can come to know, that things answering those ideas do really exist.
Hence we may gather, that there are two sorts of propositions: One concerning the existence of any thing answerable to such an idea, as that of an elephant, phoenix, motion, or angel, viz. whether such a thing does anywhere exist: And this knowledge is only of particulars, and not to be had of anything without us, but only of God, any other way than by our senses.
Another sort of proposition is, wherein is expressed the agreement or disagreement of our abstract ideas, and their dependance one on another. And these 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 man in general, if I have made an abstract idea of such a species, whereof I am one particular. But such a proposition, how certain forever, proves not to me the existence of men in the world; but will be true of all such creatures, whenever they do exist: which certainty of such general propositions, depends on the agreement or disagreement discoverable in those 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, the consequences of the ideas that are in our minds, and producing these general propositions, many whereof are called eternal verities: 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 propositions in any one's mind, till he, having got the abstract ideas, joined or separated them by affirmation or negation; but whereforever 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 applies his thoughts to the consideration of his ideas, know the truth of certain propositions that will arise from the agreement or disagreement he will perceive in his own ideas. Such propositions being once made about abstract ideas, so as to be true, they will, whenever they can be supposed to be made again, at any time past, or to come, by a mind having those ideas, always 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, propositions concerning any abstract ideas that are once true must needs be eternal verities.
Of judgment.
The understanding faculties being given to man, not barely for speculation, but also for the conduct of his life, a man would be at a great loss, if he had nothing to direct him but what has the certainty of true knowledge. He that will not eat till he has demonstration that it will nourish him, nor stir till he is infallibly assured of success in his business, will have little else to do but sit still, and perish.
Therefore as God hath set some things in broad daylight; 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 endeavour after a better state;) so in the greatest part of our concernment, he has afforded us only the twilight of probability, suitable to that state of mediocrity and probationership he has been pleased to place us in here.
The faculty which God has given man to enlighten him, next to certain knowledge, is judgment; whereby the mind takes its ideas to agree or disagree, without perceiving a demonstrative evidence in the proofs. The mind exercises this judgment sometimes out of necessity, where demonstrative proofs and certain knowledge are not to be had; and sometimes out of laziness, unkindliness, or haste, even where they are to be had.
This faculty of the mind, when it is exercised immediately about things, is called judgment; when about truths delivered in words, is most commonly called assent or dissent. Thus the mind has two faculties conversant about truth and falsehood: First, Knowledge; whereby it certainly perceives, and is undoubtedly satisfied 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 disagreement is not perceived, but presumed to be so. And if it so unites or separates them as in reality things are, it is right judgment.
Of probability.
Probability is nothing but the appearance of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, by the intervention of proofs, whose connection is not constant and immutable; or 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.
Of probability there are degrees, from the neighbourhood of certainty and demonstration, quite down to improbability and unlikeliness, even to the confines of impossibility: And also degrees of assent from certain knowledge, and what is next it, full assurance and confidence, quite down to conjecture, doubt, distrust, and disbelief.
That proposition then is probable, for which there are 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. Probability then being to supply the defect of our knowledge, 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.
First, The conformity of anything with our own knowledge, experience, or observation.
Secondly, The testimony of others, vouching their observation and experience. In the testimony of others is to be considered, First, The number; Secondly, The integrity; Thirdly, The skill of the witnesses; Fourthly, The design of the author, if it be a testimony cited out of a book; Fifthly, The confusiveness of the parts and circumstances of the relation; Sixthly, Contrary testimonies.
The mind, before it rationally assents or dissents to any probable proposition, ought to examine all the grounds of probability, and see how they make, more or less, for or against it; and upon a due balancing of the whole, reject or receive it, with a more or less firm assent, according to the preponderancy of the greater grounds of probability on one side, or the other.
Of the degrees of assent.
The grounds of probability, laid down in the foregoing section, as they are the foundations on which our assent is built, so are they also the measure whereby its several degrees are (or ought to be) regulated. Only we are to take notice, that no grounds of probability operate any 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. It is indeed in many cases impossible, and in most very hard, even for those who have 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 as they could; and having once found on which side the probability appeared to them, they lay up the conclusion in their memories, as a truth they have discovered; and for the future 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 as they afford it.
It is unavoidable then that the memory be relied on in this case, and that men be persuaded of several 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 sceptics, or change every moment, when any one offers them arguments which for want of memory, they are not presently able to answer.
It must be owned, that men's sticking to past judgments, 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 before they had well examined. 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 has a clear and full view, and that there is no more to be alleged for his better information? And yet we are forced to determine ourselves on one side, or other: The conduct of our lives, and the management of our great concerns, will not bear delay: For these depend, for the most part, on the determination of our judgment in points, wherein we are not capable of certain knowledge, and wherein it is necessary for us to embrace one side or the other.
The propositions we receive upon inducements of probability, are of two sorts: First, Concerning some particular existence, or matter of fact, which falling under our observation, is capable of human testimony: Secondly, Concerning things which, being beyond the discovery of our senses, are not capable of human testimony.
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 with 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. Thus, if all Englishmen, who have occasion to mention it, should report, that it froze in England last winter, or the like, a man would as little doubt of it, as that seven and four are eleven.
The first and highest degree of probability then is, when the general consent of all men, in all ages, as far as can be known, concurs with a man's own constant experience in the like cases, to confirm the truth of any particular matter of fact, attested by fair witnesses: Such are the stated constitutions 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 we and others always observe to be after the same manner, we conclude with reason to be the effects of steady and regular causes, though they come not within the reach of our knowledge; as that fire warmed a man, or made lead fluid; that iron sunk in water, swam in quicksilver. A relation affirming any such thing to have been, or a predication that it will happen again in the same manner, is received without doubt or hesitation; and our belief thus grounded, rises to assurance.
Secondly, The next degree of probability, is when by my own experience, and the agreement of all others that mention it, a thing is found to be for the most part so; and that the particular instance of it is attested by many and undoubted witnesses. Thus history giving us such an account of men in all ages, and my own experience confirming it, that most men prefer their own private advantage to the public; if all historians that write of Tiberius, say that he did so, it is extremely probable: And in this case, our assent rises to a degree which we may call confidence.
Thirdly, In matters happening indifferently, as that a bird should fly this or that way; when any particular matter of fact comes attested by the concurrent testimony of unsuspected witnesses, there our assent is also unavoidable. Thus, that there is in Italy such a city as Rome; that about one thousand and seven hundred years ago there lived such a man in it as Julius Caesar, &c. a man can as little doubt of this, and the like, as he does of the being and actions of his own acquaintance, whereof he himself is a witness.
Probability, on these grounds, carries so much evidence with it, that it leaves us as little liberty to believe or disbelieve, as demonstration does, whether we will know or be ignorant. But the difficulty is, when testimonies contradict common experience, and the reports of witnesses clash with the ordinary course of nature, or with one another; here diligence, attention, and exactness, is required quired to form a right judgment, and to proportion the assent to the evidence and probability of the thing, which rises and falls according as the two foundations of credibility favour or contradict it. These are liable to such variety of contrary observations, circumstances, reports, tempers, designs, over-sight, &c. of reporters, that it is impossible to reduce to precise rules the various degrees wherein men give their assent. This in general may be said, that as the proof, upon due examination, shall to any one appear in a greater or less degree to preponderate on either side, so they are fitted to produce in the mind such different entertainments, as are called belief, conjecture, guess, doubt, wavering, distrust, disbelief, &c.
It is a rule generally approved, that any testimony, the farther off it is removed from the original truth, the less force it has: And in traditional truths, each remove weakens the force of the proof. There is a rule quite contrary to this, advanced by some men, who look on opinions to gain force by growing older. Upon this ground, propositions evidently false or doubtful in their first beginning, come by an inverted rule of probability to pass for authentic truths; and those which deserved little credit from the mouths of their first relators, are thought to grow venerable by age, and are urged as undeniable.
But certain it is, that no probability can rise above its first original. What has no other evidence than the single testimony of one witness, must stand or fall by his only testimony, though afterwards cited by hundreds of others; and is so far from receiving any strength thereby, that it becomes the weaker; because passion, interest, inadvertency, mistake of his meaning, and a thousand odd reasons, which capricious mens minds are acted by, may make one man quote another's words or meaning wrong. 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.
The second sort of probability, is concerning things not falling under the reach of our senses, and therefore not capable of testimony: And such are,
1st. The existence, nature, and operations of finite immaterial beings without us, as spirits, angels, &c., or the existence of material beings such as, for their smallness or remoteness, our senses cannot take notice of; as whether there be any plants, animals, &c. in the planets, and other mansions of the vast universe.
2ndly. 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, &c. But the causes that operate, and the manner they are produced in, we can only guess, and probably conjecture. In these matters analogy 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 upon one another, produces heat, and very often fire, we have reason to think, that what we call heat and fire consist in a certain violent agitation of the imperceptible minute parts of the burning matter. This sort of probability, which is the best con-
duct of rational experiments, and the rise of hypotheses has also its use and influence. And a wary reasoning from analogy leads us often into the discovery of truths and useful deductions, which would otherwise lie concealed.
Though the common experience, and the ordinary course of things, have 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 the 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 themselves, but give it also to other truths.
There are propositions that challenge the highest degree of our assent upon bare testimony, whether the thing proposed agree or disagree with common experience and the ordinary 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 God himself. This carries with it certainty beyond doubt, evidence beyond exception. This is called by a peculiar name, revelation, and our assent to it, faith, which has as much certainty in it as our knowledge itself; and we may as well doubt of our own being, as we can whether any revelation from God be true. So that faith is a settled and sure principle of assent 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, if we have faith and assurance in what is not divine revelation.
Of reason.
The word reason, in English, has different significations. Sometimes it is taken for true and clear principles; sometimes for clear and fair deductions from those principles; sometimes for the cause, and particularly for the final cause: But the consideration we shall have of it here, is as it stands for a faculty whereby man is supposed to be distinguished from beasts, and wherein it is evident he much surpasses them.
Reason is necessary, 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. first, Sagacity, whereby it finds intermediate ideas; secondly, Illation, whereby it so orders and dispenses of them, as to discover what connection 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 we call illation, or inference; and consists in nothing but the perception of the connection 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 connection, on which it gives or with-holds its assent, as in opinion.
Sense and intuition reach but a little way: The greatest part of our knowledge depends upon deductions and intermediate ideas. In those cases where we must take propositions for true, without being certain of their being so, we have need to find out, examine, and compare the grounds of their probability: In both cases, the faculty 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: So that in reason we may consider these four degrees; firstly, The discovering and finding out of proofs; secondly, The regular and methodical disposition of them, and laying them in such order as their connection may be plainly perceived; thirdly, The perceiving their connection; fourthly, The making a right conclusion.
There is one thing more which deserves to be considered concerning reason; and that is, whether syllogism, as is generally thought, be the proper instrument of it; and the usefulness of exercising this faculty. The causes to doubt of it, are these:
First, Because syllogism serves our reason but in one only of the forementioned parts of it; and that is, to show the connection of the proofs of any one instance, and no more: But in this it is of no great use, since the mind can perceive such connection, where it really is, as easily, nay perhaps better, without it. We may observe, that there are many men that reason exceeding clear and rightly, who know not how to make a syllogism: And scarce any one make syllogisms in reasoning within himself. Indeed, sometimes they may serve to discover a fallacy, hid in a rhetorical flourish; or by stripping an absurdity of the cover of wit and good language, shew it in its naked deformity: But the weakness or fallacy of such a loose discourse it shews, 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: 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; the mind is not taught to reason by these rules; it has a native faculty to perceive the coherence or incoherence of its ideas, and can range them right without any such perplexing repetitions.
And to shew the weakness of an argument, there needs no more but to strip it of the superfluous ideas, which, blended and confounded with those on which the inference depends, seem to shew a connection where there is none, or at least do 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 connection they have, and so is able to judge of the inference without any need of syllogism at all.
Secondly, Because syllogisms are not less liable to fallacies than the plainer ways of argumentation. And for this we 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 if it be certain that fallacy can be couched in syllogisms, as it cannot be denied, it must be something else, and not syllogism, that must discover them: But if men skilled in and used to syllogisms, find them afflicting to their reason in the discovery of truth, we think they ought to make use of them. All that we aim at is, that they should not ascribe more to these forms than belongs to them; and think that men have no use, or not so full a use, of their reasoning faculty without them.
But however it be in knowledge, it is of far less, or no use at all in probabilities: For the assent there being to be determined by the preponderancy, after a due weighing of all the proofs on both sides, nothing is so unfit to afflant the mind in that as syllogism; which running away with one assumed probability, pursues that till it has led the mind quite out of sight of the thing under consideration.
But let it help us (as perhaps may be said) in convincing men of their errors or mistakes: 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. This way of reasoning discovers no new proofs, but is the art of marshalling and ranging the old ones we have already. A man knows first, and then he is able to prove syllogistically; so that syllogism comes after knowledge; and then a man has little or no need of it. But it is chiefly by the finding out those ideas that shew the connection of distant ones, that our stock of knowledge is increased, and that useful arts and sciences are advanced.
Reason, though of a very large extent, fails us in several instances; as, firstly, Where our ideas fail. Secondly, It is often at a loss, because of the obscurity, confusion, nor imperfection of the ideas it is employed about. Thus having no perfect idea of the least extension of matter, or of infinity, we are at a loss about the divisibility of matter. Thirdly, Our reason is often at a stand, because it perceives not those ideas, which would serve to shew the certain or probable agreement or disagreement of any two other ideas. Fourthly, Our reason is often engaged in absurdities and difficulties, by proceeding upon false principles, which being followed, lead men into contradictions to themselves, and inconsistency in their own thoughts. Fifthly, Dubious words, and uncertain signs, often puzzle mens reason, and bring them to a nonplus.
Though the deducing one proposition from another, 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 disagreement 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 juxtaposition: 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. In reasoning, men ordinarily use four sorts of arguments.
The first is to alledge the opinions of men, whose parts, learning, eminency, power, or some other cause, has gained a name, and settled their reputation in the common esteem with some kind of authority: This may be called argumentum ad verecundiam.
Secondly, Another way is, to require the adversary to admit what they alledge as a proof, or to assign a better: This is called argumentum ad ignorantiam.
A third way, is to press a man with consequences drawn from his own principles or concessions: This is known under the name of argumentum ad hominem.
Fourthly, The using of proofs drawn from any of the foundations of knowledge or probability: This is called argumentum ad judicium. This alone, of all the four, brings true intuition with it, and advances us in our way to knowledge: For, firstly, It argues not another man's opinion to be right, because I, out of respect, or any other consideration but that of conviction, will not contradict him. Secondly, 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. Thirdly, Nor does it follow, that another man is in the right way, because he has shewn me that I am in the wrong: 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; not from my shame-facedness, ignorance, or error.
By what has been 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. 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. Above reason, are such propositions, whose truth or probability we cannot by reason derive from those principles. Contrary to reason, are such propositions as are inconsistent with, or irreconcilable to our clear and distinct ideas. Thus the existence of one God, is according to reason; the existence of more than one God, contrary to reason; the resurrection of the body after death, above reason. Above reason, may be also taken in a double sense, viz. Above probability; or, above certainty: In that large sense also, contrary to reason is sometimes taken.
There is another use of the word reason, wherein it is opposed to faith; which, though authorised by common use, yet is it in itself a very improper way of speaking; for faith is nothing but a firm affect of the mind; which, if it be regulated as is our duty, cannot be afforded to anything 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 discerning faculties he has given him, to keep him out of mistake and error.