Volume I Part 14 (1/2)
Of these MODES, there are two sorts which deserve distinct consideration:--
First, there are some which are only variations, or different combinations of the same simple idea, without the mixture of any other;--as a dozen, or score; which are nothing but the ideas of so many distinct units added together, and these I call SIMPLE MODES as being contained within the bounds of one simple idea.
Secondly, there are others compounded of simple ideas of several kinds, put together to make one complex one;--v.g. beauty, consisting of a certain composition of colour and figure, causing delight to the beholder; theft, which being the concealed change of the possession of anything, without the consent of the proprietor, contains, as is visible, a combination of several ideas of several kinds: and these I call MIXED MODES.
6. Ideas of Substances, single or collective.
Secondly, the ideas of SUBSTANCES are such combinations of simple ideas as are taken to represent distinct PARTICULAR things subsisting by themselves; in which the supposed or confused idea of substance, such as it is, is always the first and chief. Thus if to substance be joined the simple idea of a certain dull whitish colour, with certain degrees of weight, hardness, ductility, and fusibility, we have the idea of lead; and a combination of the ideas of a certain sort of figure, with the powers of motion, thought and reasoning, joined to substance, make the ordinary idea of a man. Now of substances also, there are two sorts of ideas:--one of SINGLE substances, as they exist separately, as of a man or a sheep; the other of several of those put together, as an army of men, or flock of sheep--which COLLECTIVE ideas of several substances thus put together are as much each of them one single idea as that of a man or an unit.
7. Ideas of Relation.
Thirdly, the last sort of complex ideas is that we call RELATION, which consists in the consideration and comparing one idea with another.
Of these several kinds we shall treat in their order.
8. The abstrusest Ideas we can have are all from two Sources.
If we trace the progress of our minds, and with attention observe how it repeats, adds together, and unites its simple ideas received from sensation or reflection, it will lead us further than at first perhaps we should have imagined. And, I believe, we shall find, if we warily observe the originals of our notions, that EVEN THE MOST ABSTRUSE IDEAS, how remote soever they may seem from sense, or from any operations of our own minds, are yet only such as the understanding frames to itself, by repeating and joining together ideas that it had either from objects of sense, or from its own operations about them: so that those even large and abstract ideas are derived from sensation or reflection, being no other than what the mind, by the ordinary use of its own faculties, employed about ideas received from objects of sense, or from the operations it observes in itself about them, may, and does, attain unto.
This I shall endeavour to show in the ideas we have of s.p.a.ce, time, and infinity, and some few others that seem the most remote, from those originals.
CHAPTER XIII.
COMPLEX IDEAS OF SIMPLE MODES:--AND FIRST, OF THE SIMPLE MODES OF IDEA OF s.p.a.cE.
1. Simple modes of simple ideas.
Though in the foregoing part I have often mentioned simple ideas, which are truly the materials of all our knowledge; yet having treated of them there, rather in the way that they come into the mind, than as distinguished from others more compounded, it will not be perhaps amiss to take a view of some of them again under this consideration, and examine those different modifications of the SAME idea; which the mind either finds in things existing, or is able to make within itself without the help of any extrinsical object, or any foreign suggestion.
Those modifications of any ONE simple idea (which, as has been said, I call SIMPLE MODES) are as perfectly different and distinct ideas in the mind as those of the greatest distance or contrariety. For the idea of two is as distinct from that of one, as blueness from heat, or either of them from any number: and yet it is made up only of that simple idea of an unit repeated; and repet.i.tions of this kind joined together make those distinct simple modes, of a dozen, a gross, a million. Simple Modes of Idea of s.p.a.ce.
2. Idea of s.p.a.ce.
I shall begin with the simple idea of s.p.a.cE. I have showed above, chap.
4, that we get the idea of s.p.a.ce, both by our sight and touch; which, I think, is so evident, that it would be as needless to go to prove that men perceive, by their sight, a distance between bodies of different colours, or between the parts of the same body, as that they see colours themselves: nor is it less obvious, that they can do so in the dark by feeling and touch.
3. s.p.a.ce and Extension.
This s.p.a.ce, considered barely in length between any two beings, without considering anything else between them, is called DISTANCE: if considered in length, breadth, and thickness, I think it may be called CAPACITY. When considered between the extremities of matter, which fills the capacity of s.p.a.ce with something solid, tangible, and moveable, it is properly called EXTENSION. And so extension is an idea belonging to body only; but s.p.a.ce may, as is evident, be considered without it. At lest I think it most intelligible, and the best way to avoid confusion, if we use the word extension for an affection of matter or the distance of the extremities of particular solid bodies; and s.p.a.ce in the more general signification, for distance, with or without solid matter possessing it.