fuch as are remembrance, difcerning, reafoning, judging, knowledge, faith, &c. I fhall have occafion to speak here

after.

CHAP. VII.

OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF BOTH SENSATION AND REFLEC

TH

TION.

HERE be other fimple ideas which convey themfelves into the mind by all the ways of sensation and reflection, viz.

Pleafure, or delight, and its opposite.

Pain, or uneafiness.

Power.

Existence.

Unity.

§ 2. Pleafure and Pain.

DELIGHT, or uneafinefs, one or other of them, join themselves to almost all our ideas both of sensation and reflection; and there is scarce any affection of our fenfes from without, any retired thought of our mind within, which is not able to produce in us pleasure or pain. By pleasure and pain I would be understood to fignify whatsoever delights or molefts us, whether it arifes from the thoughts of our minds, or any thing operating on our bodies; for whether we call it fatiffaction, delight, pleasure, happiness, &c. on the one fide, or uneafinefs, trouble, pain, torment, anguish, mifery, &c. on the other, they are ftill but different degrees of the fame thing, and belong to the ideas of pleafure and pain, delight or uneafinefs; which are names I fhall most commonly use for thofe two forts of ideas.

§ 3.

THE infinitely wife Author of our being having given us the power over feveral parts of our bodies, to move or keep them at reft as we think fit, and alfo, by the motion of them, to move ourfelves and other contiguous bodies, in which confift all the actions of our body; having alfo given a power to our minds, in feveral inVOL. I.

E

ftances, to choose, among its ideas, which it will think on, and to purfue the inquiry of this or that fubject with confideration and attention, to excite us to thefe actions of thinking and motion that we are capable of; has been pleafed to join to feveral thoughts and feveral fenfations a perception of delight. If this were wholly feparated from all our outward fenfations and inward thoughts, we fhould have no reafon to prefer one thought or action to another, negligence to attention, or motion to reft; and fo we fhould neither ftir our bodies, nor employ our minds, but let our thoughts (if I may fo call it) run adrift, without any direction or defign, and fuffer the ideas of our minds, like unregarded fhadows, to make their appearances there, as it happened, without attending to them; in which state man, however furnished with the faculties of underftanding and will, would be a very idle inactive creature, and pafs his time only in a lazy lethargic dream. It has therefore pleafed our wife Creator to amex to feveral objects, and to the ideas which we receive from them, as also to several of our thoughts, a concomitant pleasure, and that in several objects to feveral degrees, that thofe faculties which he had endued us with might not remain wholly idle and unemployed by us.

$4.

PAIN has the fame efficacy and ufe to fet us on work that pleasure has, we being as ready to employ our faculties to avoid that as to purfue this; only this is worth our confideration, that pain is often produced by the fame objects and ideas that produce pleafure in us. This their near conjunction, which makes us often feel pain in the fenfations where we expected pleafure, gives us new occafion of admiring the wifdem and goodness of our Maker, who, defigning the prefervation of our being, has annexed pain to the application of many things to our bodies, to warn us of the harm that they will do, and as advices to withdraw from them. But he not defigning our prefervation barely, but the prefervation of every part and organ in its perfection, hath, in many cafes, annexed pain to thofe very ideas which

delight us. Thus heat, that is very agreeable to us in one degree, by a little greater increafe of it, proves no ordinary torment; and the most pleafant of all fenfible objects, light itfelf, if there be too much of it, if increafed beyond a due proportion to our eyes, caufes a very painful sensation; which is wifely and favourably fo ordered by nature, that when any object does, by the vehemency of its operation, diforder the inftruments of fenfation, whofe ftructures cannot but be very nice and delicate, we might by the pain be warned to withdraw before the organ be quite put out of order, and fo be unfitted for its proper functions for the future. The confideration of thofe objects that produce it may well perfuade us that this is the end or ufe of pain; for though great light be infufferable to our eyes, yet the highest degree of darknefs does not at all difeafe them, because that caufing no diförderly motion in it, leaves that curious organ unharmed in its natural ftate. But yet excefs of cold, as well as heat, pains us, becaufe it is equally deftructive to that temper which is neceflary to the prefervation of life and the exercife of the feveral functions of the body, and which confifts in a moderate degree of warmth, or, if you pleafe, a motion of the infenfible parts of our bodies confined within certain

bounds.

$5.

BEYOND all this, we may find another reason why God hath fcattered up and down feveral degrees of pleasure and pain in all the things that environ and affect us, and blended them together in almost all that our thoughts and fenfes have to do with, that we, finding imperfection, diffatisfaction, and want of complete happiness, in all the enjoyments which the creatures can afford us, might be led to feek it in the enjoyment of him, with whom there is fullness of joy, and at whofe right hand are pleafures for evermore.

THOUGH what I have here faid may not perhaps make the ideas of pleafure and pain clearer to us than our own experience does, which is the only way that we are ca

pable of having them, yet the confideration of the reafon why they are annexed to so many other ideas, ferving to give us due fentiments of the wisdom and goodnefs of the Sovereign Disposer of all things, may not be unfuitable to the main end of thefe inquiries, the knowledge and veneration of him being the chief end of all our thoughts, and the proper business of all our understandings.

§7. Existence and Unity. EXISTENCE and unity are two other ideas that are fuggefted to the understanding by every object without, and every idea within. When ideas are in our minds, we confider them as being actually there, as well as we confider things to be actually without us, which is, that they exist, or have exiftence; and whatever we can confider as one thing, whether a real being or idea, suggefts to the understanding the idea of unity.

§ 8. Poaver.

POWER alfo is another of thofe fimple ideas which we receive from fenfation and reflection; for obferving in ourfelves that we can at pleafure move feveral parts of our bodies which were at reft, the effects alfo that natural bodies are able to produce in one another occurring every moment to our fenfes, we both these ways get the idea of power.

$9. Succeffon.

BESIDES thefe, there is another idea, which, though fuggefted by our fenfes, yet is more conftantly offered us by what paffes in our own minds, and that is, the idea of fucceffion; for if we look immediately into ourfelves, and reflect on what is obfervable there, we fhall find our ideas always whilft we are awake, or have any thought, paffing in train, one going and another coming, without intermiflion.

10. Simple Ideas the Materials of all our Knowledge.. THESE, if they are not all, are at least (as I think) the moft confiderable of thofe fimple ideas which the mind has, and out of which is made all its other knowledge; all which it receives only by the two forementioned ways of fenfation and refection. Nor let any one think thefe

too narrow bounds for the capacious mind of man to expatiate in, which takes its flight farther than the stars, and cannot be confined by the limits of the world; that extends its thoughts often even beyond the utmost expanfion of matter, and makes excurfions into that incomprehenfible inane. I grant all this, but defire any one to affign any fimple idea which is not received from one of thofe inlets before-mentioned, or any complex idea not made out of thofe fimple ones. Nor will it be fo ftrange to think these few fimple ideas fufficient to employ the quickest thought or largeft capacity, and to furnish the materials of all that various knowledge, and more various fancies and opinions of all mankind, if we confider how many words may be made out of the various compofition of twenty-four letters; or if, going one ftep farther, we will but reflect on the variety of combinations may be made with barely one of the abovementioned ideas, viz. number, whofe ftock is inexhaustible, and truly infinite: And what a large and immenfe field doth extenfion alone afford the mathematicians?

CHAP. VIII.

SOME FARTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING OUR SIMPLE IDEAS.

C

1. Pofitive Ideas from privative Caufes.

ONCERNING the fimple ideas of fenfation, it is to be confidered, that whatfoever is fo conftituted in nature as to be able, by affecting our fenfes, to caufe any perception in the mind, doth thereby produce in the understanding a fimple idea, which, whatever be the external cause of it, when it comes to be taken notice of by our difcerning faculty, it is by the mind looked on and confidered there to be a real poftive idea in the understanding, as much as any other whatsoever, though perhaps the caufe of it be but a privation in the fubject.