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obscure and confused in another: our idea of a chiliaedron, or figure of 1000 sides, may be very confused, though our idea of the number may be very distinct; for it is plain our idea of the figure is not so precise as that we could distinguish it from a figure with 999 sides; whereas while we confine our reasoning to the number of sides, we can argue distinctly about them;-as, that the sides of the one may be divided into two equal numbers, and not those of the other but if one of these bodies was made into a cube, and the other into a figure of 5 sides, we could then distinguish them by their bare figure. In our reasonings concerning Eternity, or any other Infinite, we are apt to involve ourselves in manifest absurdities, for though we may have clear ideas of great lengths of duration, yet we can have no precise idea of a duration where we suppose no end.-In matter we have no clear ideas of the smallness of parts much beyond the smallest that occur to our senses; and so when we talk of the infinite divisibility of matter, we have only clear and distinct ideas of what division and divisibility in general or abstractly are, and of the relation of whole and part.-Nothing finite bears any proportion to infinite, and therefore our ideas, which are all finite, cannot bear any.

CHAP. XXX.

OF REAL AND FANTASTICAL IDEAS.

IDEAS, according to the things which they may be supposed to represent, are either Real, or Fantastical: Adequate or Inadequate; True, or False.

By real ideas I mean such as have a foundation in nature, such as have a conformity with the real being and existence of things, or with their archetypes. Our simple ideas are all real; not that they are images of things existing, for that has been shewn not to be the case, except in the primary qualities of bodies; but that they are the effects of powers in external things producing in us certain sensations: and our ideas are equally real distinguishing characters, whether they be only constant effects, or exact resemblances; the reality lying in that steady correspondence which they have with the distinct constitutions of real beings: whether they answer to those constitutions, as to causes or patterns, it matters not; it suffices that they are constantly produced by them.

· I call those ideas fantastical or chimerical, which have no foundation in nature, nor any conformity with that reality of being, to which they are tacitly referred, as to their archetypes. Our complex ideas

being combinations of simple ideas united under one general name,-I think it is plain that the mind uses some kind of liberty in forming them; else how happens it that one man's idea of gold, or justice, is dif ferent from another's? the difference must be in some simple idea: but the question is which of those complex ideas is real. Mixed modes and relations having no reality but in the mind, our ideas of them are real when they are so framed that there is a possibility of existing conformable to them, that is when they are made of consistent ideas. Our complex ideas of substances are real, as far as they comprise all the simple ideas which actually exist in external things. Such ideas of substances as are not conformable to any existing external pattern that we know of, ought to be considered as barely imaginary; but much more so, these complex ideas which contain any inconsistency or contradiction of parts.

CHAP. XXXI.

OF ADEQUATE AND INADEQUATE IDEAS.

I call those ideas adequate, which perfectly represent the Archetypes from which the mind supposes them taken: Inadequate ideas are but partial or

incompleat representation of the Archetypes to which they are referred.

All our simple ideas are adequate; because being nothing but the effects of certain powers in things so ordained as to p:oduce such sensations in us, they cannot but be correspondent to those powers:—it is true that the things producing simple ideas are too often so denominated, as if those ideas were themselves real beings and not effects only of the things; and therefore when I speak of Secondary Qualities as being in things, or of their Ideas, I only accommodate myself to vulgar notions, and truly signify nothing but powers in things to excite certain sensations or ideas in us; but the Primary Qualities of bodies we have reason to look on as the real modifications of matter, and the exciting causes of all our various sensations from bodies.

Our Complex ideas of modes, being voluntary collections of simple ideas put together by the mind without reference to any archetypes, cannot but be adequate; for they are themselves archetypes by which we rank and denominate other things, having all that perfection which the mind intended they should have thus, having the idea of a figure with three sides and three angles, I cannot suppose any one to have a more perfect idea of the thing signified by the word Triangle, supposing it to exist.

In our ideas of substances, wishing to represent to

ourselves that constitution on which all their properties depend, we find ourselves unable to attain the perfection we wish: but mixed modes and relations, being archetypes without patterns, and so having nothing to represent but themselves, cannot but be adequate.

He that first put together the ideas of danger, absence of fear, sedate consideration and calm execution of what ought to be done, and united them under the single name of courage, could not but form an adequate idea, because he combined in that complex idea all the simple ideas which he intended should compose it:-but another person using the word courage with an idea annexed to it different from that of its first author, and yet designing to make his idea an exact pattern of the other's, would so far have an inadequate idea, as the name he used would not be a sign of the Complex idea in the other man's mind.

Ideas of substances have in the mind a double reference: Sometimes they are referred to a supposed real essence of each species of things:-sometimes they are only designed to be pictures and representations in the mind of things that exist by ideas of those qualities that are discoverable in them: in both which ways they are inadequate copies of those archetypes.

1st. It is usual for men to make the names of sub

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