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BOOK II.

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CHAP. I.

OF IDEAS IN GENERAL, AND THEIR ORIGINAL.

EVERY man being conscious that he thinks, and that his thinking is about the Ideas in his mind, our first enquiry is how he comes by them; in which I shall appeal to every one's observation and experience.

Suppose the mind without any ideas, like white paper, void of all characters: how comes it to be furnished? whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? from experience. The Under

standing gets all its ideas, or materials of thinking, from observation, employed either about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves.

Our Senses convey into the mind, from particular ́sensible objects, several distinct perceptions, that is, what produces there those perceptions: which source

of most of our ideas I call Sensation: such are our ideas of Yellow, White, Heat, Cold, Soft, Hard, Bitter, Sweet.

The perception of the operations of our own mind as employed about the ideas it has got, is the other source of our ideas; and this I call Reflection; such are, Perception, Thinking, Reasoning, Knowing, Willing; which source every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, (as having nothing to do with external objects,) yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense, being that notice which the mind takes of its own operations and the manner of them.

I use the term Operations in a large sense, not merely for the actions of the mind about its ideas, but for certain Passions arising from them; as the satisfaction or uneasiness from any thought.

Men have fewer or more simple ideas from without according to the greater or less variety of the objects they converse with; and from within, according as they reflect more or less on them.

Children, in their first years, have their senses so constantly solicited by new objects, that they seldom make much reflection on what passes within them, till they come to riper years.

A man first has ideas, when he begins to perceive, I pretend not to determine whether the existence of the soul be antecedent to, coeval with, or subsequent

to the organization of the body: but I do not conceive it more necessary for the soul always to think, than for the body always to move: the perception of Ideas being (as I conceive) to the soul what motion is to the body, not its essence, but one of its operations.

I do not say that there is no soul in a man, because he is not sensible of it in his sleep: but I do say, he cannot think at any time, waking or sleeping, without being sensible of it. The soul in a waking man is never without thought, because it is the condition of being awake: but whether sleeping without dreaming be not an affection of the whole man, mind as well as body, may be worth a waking man's consideration; it being hard to conceive that any thing should think and not be conscious of it. If a man sleeping thinks without knowing it, the sleeping and waking man are two persons.

They make the soul and the man two persons, who make the soul think apart what the man is not conscious of: for I suppose nobody will make Identity of persons to consist in the soul's being united to the very same numerical particles of matter; as then it will be impossible, in the constant flux of the particles of our bodies, that any man should be the same person two moments together.

We have sometimes instances of Perception, whilst we are asleep, and retain the memory of those

Thoughts: but those who dream know how extravagant and incoherent they generally are. The dreams of sleeping men are, as I take it, all made up of the waking man's Ideas, though for the most part oddly put together.

They who say that a man always thinks, though not conscious of it, may as well say that a man is always hungry, but does not always feel it; whereas hunger consists in that very sensation, as thinking consists in consciousness, or the perception of what passes in a man's own mind.

To define the soul to be a substance that always thinks can only serve to make many men suspect that they have no souls at all, since they find a good part of their lives pass away without thinking: for I know no definitions or suppositions of any sect that are of force to destroy constant experience; and perhaps 'tis the affectation of knowing beyond what we perceive that makes so much useless dispute and noise in the world.

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In the reception of simple Ideas the Understanding is merely passive: it cannot help acquiring these materials of knowledge: it can no more refuse to have them, or alter them when they are imprinted, or blot them out, and make new ones, than a mirror can refuse, alter, or obliterate the images or Ideas which the objects set before it produce therein.

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CHAP. II.

OF SIMPLE IDEAS.

OF our Ideas some are simple, and some complex, Qualities that are blended in the same subject, produce simple and distinct Ideas in the mind. By the sight we have at once distinct ideas of motion and colour: by the Touch, of softness and warmth. Yet the simple ideas, thus united in the same subject, are as perfectly distinct as those that come in by different senses. When the Understanding is once stored with these simple ideas, it can repeat, com pare, and unité them to an almost infinite variety, and so make at pleasure new complex ideas: but no force of the understanding can invent or destroy one simple idea: all the power of man reaching no further than to compound and divide the materials made to his hand.

I have followed the common opinion of man's having but five senses; though perhaps there may be justly counted more: but either supposition serves equally to my present purpose.

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