The power of thinking is called the understanding, and the power of volition is called the will; and these two powers or abilities in the mind are denominated faculties. Of fome of the modes of these fimple ideas of reflection, such as are Remembrance, Difcerning, Reafoning, Judging, Knowledge, Faith, &c., I fhall have occasion to speak hereafter. f. I. CHAP. VII. Of Simple Ideas of both Senfation and Reflection. TH Pleasure and pain. HERE be other fimple ideas which convey themselves into the mind by all the ways of sensation and reflection, viz. Pleasure or Delight, and its oppofite, Pain or Uneafinefs, Power, Existence, Unity. §. 2. Delight or uneafinefs, one or other of them, join themselves to almoft all our ideas, both of fenfation and reflection: and there is fcarce 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 what foever delights or molefts us moft; whether it arifes from the thoughts of our minds, or any thing operating on our bodies. For whether we call it fatisfaction, 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 pleasure and pain, delight or uneafinefs; which are the names I shall most commonly use for those two sorts 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 also, by the motion of them, to move ourselves and other contiguous bodies, in which confift all the actions of our body; body; having alfo given a power to our minds in feveral inftances, to choose, amongst its ideas, which it will think on, and to pursue 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 reason 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 a-drift, 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 ftate man, however furnifhed with the faculties of understanding and will, would be a very idle unactive creature, and pafs his time only in a lazy, lethargick dream. It has therefore pleafed our wife Creator to annex to feveral objects, and the ideas which we receive from them, as alfo to feveral of our thoughts, a concomitant plcafure, and that in feveral objects, to feveral degrees; that thofe faculties which he had endowed us with might not remain wholly idle and unemployed by us. us. §. 4. Pain has the fame efficacy and ufe to fet us on work that pleafure 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 This their near conjunction, which makes us often feel pain in the fenfations where we expected pleasure, gives us new occafion of admiring the wifdom and goodnefs 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 delight us. Thus heat, that is very agreeable to us in one degree, by a little greater increase of it, proves no ordinary torment; and the most pleasant of all fenfible objects, light itfelf, if there be too much of it, if increased beyond a due proportion to our eyes, caufes a very painful fenfation. 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, whose structures 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 function 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 disease them; because that caufing no diforderly motion in it, leaves that curious organ unarmed in its natural ftate. But yet excess of cold as well as heat pains us, because it is equally deftructive to that temper which is neceffary 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 please, 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 pleafure 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 compleat happinefs, 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 fulness of joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore. Pleasure and pain. §. 6. Though what I have here faid may not perhaps make the ideas of pleasure and pain clearer to us than our own experience docs, which is the only way that we are capable of having them; yet the confideration of the reason why they are annexed to fo many other ideas, ferving to give us us due fentiments of the wisdom and goodness of the fovereign difpofer 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 bufinefs of all understandings. Exiftence and unity. §. 7. 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, fuggefts to the understanding the idea of unity. Power. §. 8. Power alfo is another of thofe fimple ideas which we receive from fenfation and reflection. For obferving in ourfelves, that we can at pleasure 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 thefe ways get the idea of power. Succeffion. §. 9. Befides thefe there is another idea, which, though fuggefted by our fenfes, yet is more conftantly offered to us by what paffes in our minds and that is the idea of fucceffion. For if we look immediately into ourselves, 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 intermiffion. · Simple ideas the materials of all our knowledge. §. 10. Thefe, if they are not all, are at leaft (as I think) the most 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 reflection. 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 ftars, and cannot be confined by the limits of the world; that extends its thoughts often even beyond the utmost expanfion of matter, 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 va rious 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 above-mentioned ideas, viz. number, whose stock is inexhaustible and truly infinite: and what a large and immenfe field doth extenfion alone afford the mathematicians? CHAP. VIII. Some farther Confiderations concerning our Simple §. I. CONG Ideas. Pofitive ideas from privative causes. MONCERNING the fimple ideas of fenfation it is to be confidered that whatsoever 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 pofitive idea in the undertanding as much as any other whatfoever; though perhaps the cause of it be but a privation of the Jubject. §. 2. Thus the idea of heat and cold, light and darknefs, white and black, motion and reft, are equally clear and pofitive ideas in the mind; though perhaps fome |