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CHAP. XXXI.

BOOK II. as they can, they make their specific ideas of the sorts of substance, for the most part, of a few of those simple ideas which are to be found in them: but these having no original precedency, or right to be put in, and make the specific idea, more than others that are left out, it is plain that both these ways our ideas of substances are deficient and inadequate. The simple ideas whereof we make our complex ones of substances are all of them (bating only the figure and bulk of some sorts 1) powers; which being relations to other substances, we can never be sure that we know all the powers that are in any one body, till we have tried what changes it is fitted to give to or receive from other substances in their several ways of application: which being impossible to be tried upon any one body, much less upon all, it is impossible we should have adequate ideas of any substance made up of a collection of all its properties.

Their

powers usually

make up

our com

of sub

stances.

9. Whosoever first lighted on a parcel of that sort of substance we denote by the word gold, could not rationally take the bulk and figure he observed in that lump to depend on its plex ideas real essence, or internal constitution. Therefore those never went into his idea of that species of body; but its peculiar colour, perhaps, and weight, were the first he abstracted from it, to make the complex idea of that species. Which both are but powers; the one to affect our eyes after such a manner, and to produce in us that idea we call yellow; and the other to force upwards any other body of equal bulk, they being put into a pair of equal scales, one against another. Another perhaps added to these the ideas of fusibility and fixedness, two other passive powers, in relation to the operation of fire upon it; another, its ductility and solubility in aqua regia, two other powers, relating to the operation of other bodies, in changing its outward figure, or separation of it into insensible parts. These, or parts of these, put together, usually make the complex idea in men's minds of that sort of body we call gold.

Substances

have in

10. But no one who hath considered the properties of bodies in general, or this sort in particular, can doubt that numerable this, called gold, has infinite other properties not contained in powers that complex idea. Some who have examined this species

not con

1 'some sorts,' i. e. bodies only, not spiritual substances.

:

our com

plex ideas

more accurately could, I believe, enumerate ten times as many BOOK II. properties in gold, all of them as inseparable from its internal CHAP. constitution, as its colour or weight and it is probable, if any XXXI. one knew all the properties that are by divers men known of tained in this metal, there would be an hundred times as many ideas go to the complex idea of gold as any one man yet has in his; of them. and yet perhaps that not be the thousandth part of what is to be discovered in it. The changes that that one body is apt to receive, and make in other bodies, upon a due application, exceeding far not only what we know, but what we are apt to imagine. Which will not appear so much a paradox to any one who will but consider how far men are yet from knowing all the properties of that one, no very compound figure, a triangle; though it be no small number that are already by mathematicians discovered of it.

of Sub

11. So that all our complex ideas of substances are imper- Ideas fect and inadequate. Which would be so also in mathematical stances, figures, if we were to have our complex ideas of them, only by being got only by collecting their properties in reference to other figures. How collecting uncertain and imperfect would our ideas be of an ellipsis, if their qualities, we had no other idea of it, but some few of its properties? are all inWhereas, having in our plain idea the whole essence of that adequate. figure, we from thence discover those properties, and demonstratively see how they flow, and are inseparable from it.

12. Thus the mind has three sorts of abstract ideas or Simple nominal essences :

First, simple ideas, which are кTUTTа or copies; but yet certainly adequate. Because, being intended to express nothing but the power in things to produce in the mind such a sensation, that sensation, when it is produced, cannot but be the effect of that power. So the paper I write on, having the power in the light (I speak according to the common notion of light) to produce in men the sensation which I call white, it cannot but be the effect of such a power in something without the mind; since the mind has not the power to produce any such idea in itself: and being meant for nothing else but the effect of such a power, that simple idea is real and adequate ;

Ideas, ἔκτυπα,

and

adequate.

BOOK II. the sensation of white, in my mind, being the effect of that power which is in the paper to produce it, is perfectly adequate to that power; or else that power would produce a different idea.

СНАР. XXXI.

Ideas of Sub

stances are

ἔκτυπα, and inadequate.

Ideas of
Modes

tions are

Arche

13. Secondly, the complex ideas of substances are ectypes, copies too; but not perfect ones, not adequate which is very evident to the mind, in that it plainly perceives, that whatever collection of simple ideas it makes of any substance that exists, it cannot be sure that it exactly answers all that are in that substance. Since, not having tried all the operations of all other substances upon it, and found all the alterations it would receive from, or cause in, other substances, it cannot have an exact adequate collection of all its active and passive capacities; and so not have an adequate complex idea of the powers of any substance existing, and its relations; which is that sort of complex idea of substances we have. And, after all, if we would have, and actually had, in our complex idea, an exact collection of all the secondary qualities or powers of any substance, we should not yet thereby have an idea of the essence of that thing. For, since the powers or qualities that are observable by us are not the real essence of that substance, but depend on it, and flow from it, any collection whatsoever of these qualities cannot be the real essence of that thing. Whereby it is plain, that our ideas of substances are not adequate; are not what the mind intends them to be. Besides, a man has no idea of substance in general, nor knows what substance is in itself.

14. Thirdly, complex ideas of modes and relations are and Rela- originals, and archetypes; are not copies, nor made after the pattern of any real existence, to which the mind intends them types, and to be conformable, and exactly to answer. These being such cannot be collections of simple ideas that the mind itself puts together, and such collections that each of them contains in it precisely all that the mind intends that it should, they are archetypes and essences of modes that may exist; and so are designed only for, and belong only to such modes as, when they do exist, have an exact conformity with those complex ideas.

adequate.

The ideas, therefore, of modes and relations cannot but be BOOK II. adequate 1.

1 Thus, according to Locke in this and the preceding chapter, our complex ideas of the qualities and powers of substances-finite substances, material or spiritual, and God-are the only ideas that need to be brought into conformity with what really exists, or to be made more adequate. Our simple ideas, so far as they go, are as real and adequate as they can be, being the appearances presented by bodies in sense-perception, and by our own minds in self-conscious

ness. Our complex ideas of modes, and of abstract relations, having no other reality than that they are ideas in a human mind, there is nothing more required to make them real than that they be 'so formed that there is a possibility of substances existing con. formable to them.' As complex ideas of which we are actually conscious, they cannot be unreal; unless any one will jumble together in them inconsistent ideas,' in which case they cannot even be formed.

CHAP. XXXI.

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CHAPTER XXXII.

OF TRUE AND FALSE IDEAS.

BOOK II.

XXXII.

belong to

Propositions, not to Ideas.

1. THOUGH truth and falsehood belong, in propriety of speech, only to propositions1: yet ideas are oftentimes termed СНАР. true or false (as what words are there that are not used with Truth and great latitude, and with some deviation from their strict and Falsehood proper significations?) Though I think that when ideas properly themselves are termed true or false, there is still some secret or tacit proposition, which is the foundation of that denomination: : as we shall see, if we examine the particular occasions wherein they come to be called true or false. In all which we shall find some kind of affirmation or negation, which is the reason of that denomination. For our ideas, being nothing but bare appearances, or perceptions in our minds, cannot properly and simply in themselves be said to be true or false, no more than a single name of anything can be said to be true or false 3.

Ideas and

2. Indeed both ideas and words may be said to be true, in words may a metaphysical sense of the word truth; as all other things that any way exist are said to be true, i. e. really to be such as

be said to

be true,

Propositions may be either mental

or verbal.

2 in our minds,' i. e. which are mentally apprehended by us.

3 Until we (expressly or tacitly) affirm or deny something of the ideas we have of things, the idea itself cannot be called either true or false; for its truth or falsehood consists in the relation to reality of some

judgment into which it enters. As the second Book of the Essay professedly treats of ideas, in abstraction from the judgments into which they enter, the consideration of their truth and falsehood rightly belongs to the fourth Book, which deals with the relations of simple and complex ideas in propositions and reasonings.

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