fame colour being obferved to-day in chalk or snow, which the mind yesterday received from milk, it confiders that appearance alone, makes it a reprefentative of all of that kind; and having given it the name whitenefs, it by that found fignifies the fame quality, where foever to be imagined or met with: and thus univerfals, whether ideas or terms, are made.

10. Brutes Abftract not.

IF it may be doubted whether beafts compound and enlarge their ideas that way to any degree; this I think, I may be pofitive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of general ideas, is that which puts a perfect diftinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to. For it is evident we obferve no footsteps in them, of making ufe of general figns for univerfal ideas; from which we have reason to imagine, that they have not the faculty of abitracting, or making general ideas, fince they have no ufe of words, or any other general figns.

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NOR can it be imputed to their want of fit organs to frame articulate founds, that they have no ufe or knowl edge of general words; fince many of them, we find, can fashion such founds, and pronounce words distinctly enough, but never with any fuch application. And on the other fide, men, who through foine defect in the organs want words, yet fail not to exprefs their univerfal ideas by figns, which ferve them instead of general words; a faculty which we fee beafts come fhort in.. And therefore I think we may fuppofe, that it is in this that the fpecies of brutes are difcriminated from man; and it is that proper difference wherein they are wholly feparated, and which at laft widens to fo vaft a dif stance for if they have any ideas at all, and are not bare machines (as fome would have them) we cannot deny them to have fome reafon. It feems as evident to me, that they do fome of them in certain inftances rea fon, as that they have fenfe; but it is only in particu lar ideas, just as they received them from their fenfes.

They are the best of them tied up within thofe narrow bounds, and have not (as I think) the faculty to enlarge them by any kind of abstraction.

12. Idiots and Mamen.

How far idiots are concerned in the want or weakness of any, or all of the foregoing faculties, an exact obfervation of their several ways of faltering would no doubt discover: for thofe who either perceive but dully, or retain the ideas that come into their minds but ill, who cannot readily excite or compound them, will have little. matter to think on. Those who cannot diftinguifh, compare and abftract, would hardly be able to underftand and make ufe of language, or judge or reafon to any tolerable degree; but only a little and imperfectly about things prefent, and very familiar to their fenfes. And, indeed, any of the forementioned faculties, if wanting, or out of order, produce fuitable defects in men's understandings and knowledge.

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IN fine, the defects in naturals feem to proceed from want of quickness, activity, and motion in the intellectual faculties, whereby they are deprived of reafon; whereas, madmen, on the other fide, feem to fuffer by the other extreme: for they do not appear to me to. have loft the faculty of reafoning; but having joined together fome ideas very wrongly, they mistake them for truths, and they err as men do that argue right from wrong principles. For by the violence of their imag-" inations, having taken their fancies for realities, they make right deductions from them. Thus you fhall find a diftracted man fancying himself a king, with a right inference require fuitable attendance, refpect, and obedience; others, who have thought themfelves made of glafs, have used the caution neceffary to preferve fuch brittle bodies. Hence it comes to pafs, that a man, who is very fober, and of a right understanding in all other things, may in one particular be as frantic as any in bedlam; if either by any fudden very strong impreffion, or long fixing his fancy upon one fort of thoughts, incoherent ideas have been cemented together

fo powerfully, as to remain united. But there are degrees of madnefs, as of folly; the diforderly jumbling ideas together, is in fome more and fome lefs. In fhort, herein feems to lie the difference between idiots and madmen, that madmen put wrong ideas together and fo make wrong propofitions, but argue and reafon right from them but idiots make very few or no propofitions, and reafon fcarce at all.

§ 14. Method.

THESE, I think, are the firft faculties and operations of the mind, which it makes ufe of in the understanding; and though they are exercised about all its ideas in general, yet the inftances I have hitherto given have been chiefly in fimple ideas; and I have fubjoined the explication of these faculties of the mind to that of funple ideas, before I come to what I have to fay concerning complex ones, for thefe following reafons:

Firft, Becaufe feveral of these faculties being exercifed at firft principally about fimple ideas, we might, by following nature in its ordinary method, trace and difcover them in their rife, progress, and gradual improve

ments.

Secondly, Becaufe obferving the faculties of the mind, how they operate about fimple ideas, which are ufually, in moft men's minds, much more clear, precife, and diftin&t than complex ones, we may the better examine and learn how the mind abftracts, denominates, compares, and exercises its other operations about those which are complex, wherein we are much more liable to mistake.

Thirdly, Because these very operations of the mind about ideas, received from fenfation, are themselves, when reflected on, another fet of ideas, derived from that other fource of our knowledge which I call reflection, and therefore fit to be confidered in this place after the fimple ideas of fenfation. Of compounding, comparing, abstracting, &c. I have but juft fpoken, having occafion to treat of them more at large in other places.

§ 15. These are the Beginnings of human Knowledge.. AND thus I have given a fhort, and, I think, true biftory of the first beginnings of human knowledge, whence the mind has its first objects, and by what fteps it makes its progrefs to the laying in and storing up thofe ideas, out of which is to be framed all the knowledge it is capable of; wherein I must appeal to experience and obfervation, whether I am in the right: the best way to come to truth, being to examine things as really they are, and not to conclude they are, as we fancy of ourfelves, or have been taught by others to imagine.,

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§ 16. Appeal to Experience.

To deal truly, this is the only way that I can difcover, whereby the ideas of things are brought into the underlanding if other men have either innate ideas, or infused principles, they have reafon to enjoy them; and if they are fure of it, it is impoffible for others to deny them the privilege that they have above their neighbours. I can fpeak but of what I find in myfelf, and is agreeable to thofe notions; which, if we will examine the whole courfe of men in their feveral ages, countries, and educations, feem to depend on thofe foundations which I have laid, and to correspond with this method in all the parts and degrees thereof.

§ 17. Dark Room.

I PRETEND not to teach, but to inquire, and therefore cannot but confess here again, that external and inter→ nal fenfation are the only paffages that I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can difcover, are the windows by which light is let into this dark room: for methinks the understanding is not much unlike a closet wholly fhut from light, with only fome little opening left, to let in external vifible refemblances, or ideas of things without: would the pictures coming into fuch a dark room but stay there, and lie fo orderly as to be found upon occafion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of fight, and the ideas of them.

Thefe are my gueffes concerning the means whereby the understanding comes to have and retain fimple ideas,

and the modes of them, with fome other operations about them. I proceed now to examine fome of thefe fimple ideas, and their modes, a little more particularly.

CHAP. XII.

OF COMPLEX IDEAS.

§1. Made by the Mind out of fimple ones.

WE have hitherto confidered thofe ideas, in the reception whereof the mind is only paffive, which are thofe fimple ones received from fenfation and reflection before mentioned, whereof the mind cannot make one to itfelf, nor have any idea which does not wholly confift of them. But as the mind is wholly paf-· five in the reception of all its fimple ideas, fo it exerts feveral acts of its own, whereby out of its fimple ideas, as the materials and foundations of the reft, the other are framed. The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over its fimple ideas, are chiefly thefe three: 1. Combining feveral fimple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The fecond is bringing two ideas, whether fimple or complex, together, and fetting them by one another, fo as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one; by which way it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is feparating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence; this is called abftraction: and thus all its general ideas are made. This fhows man's power, and its ways of op eration, to be much what the fame in the material and intellectual world. For the materials in both being fuch as he has no power over, either to make or destroy, all that man can do is either to unite them together, or to fet them by one another, or wholly separate them. I fhall here begin with the first of these in the confideration of complex ideas, and come to the other two in their due places. As fimple ideas are obferved to exift in feveral combinations united together, fo the mind has a power to consider several of them united together