the taking up another's principles, without examining them, made not him a philofopher, I fuppofe it will hardly make any body else fo. In the fciences, every one has fo much as he really knows and comprehends: What he believes only, and takes upon truft, are but fhreds; which however well in the whole piece, make no confiderable addition to his stock who gathers them. Such borrowed wealth, like fairy-money, though it were gold in the hand from which he received it, will be but leaves and duft when it comes to use.

Whence the opinion of innate principles,

§. 24. When men have found fome general propofitions, that could not be doubted of as foon as understood, it was, I know, a fhort and eafy way to conclude them innate. This being once received, it eased the lazy from the pains of fearch, and ftopped the inquiry of the doubtful. concerning all that was once styled innate. And it was of no fmall advantage to those who affected to be mafters and teachers, to make this the principle of principles, "that principles muft not be queftioned:" for having once established this tenet, that there are innate principles, it put their followers upon a neceffity of receiving fome doctrines as fuch; which was to take them off from the ufe of their own reafon and judgment, and put them on believing and taking them upon truft, without farther examination: in which posture of blind credulity, they might be more eafily governed by, and made ufeful to, fome fort of men, who had the skill and office to principle and guide them. Nor is it a fmall power it gives one man over another, to have the authority to be the dictator of principles, and teacher of unquestionable truths; and to make a man fwallow that for an innate principle, which may ferve to his purpose who teacheth them: whereas had they examined the ways whereby men came to the knowledge of many univerfal truths, they would have found them to refult in the minds of men from the being of things themfelves, when duly confidered; and that they were difcovered by the application of thofe faculties, that were fitted by nature to receive and judge of them, when duly employed about

§. 15.

Conclufion,

§. 25. To show how the understanding proceeds herein, is the defign of the following difcourfe; which I fhall proceed to, when I have first premifed, that hitherto, to clear my way to thofe foundations, which I conceive are the only true ones whereon to establish thofe notions we can have of our own knowledge, it hath been neceffary for me to give an account of the reafons I had to doubt of innate principles. And fince the arguments which are against them do fome of them rife from common received opinions, I have been forced to take feveral things for granted, which is hardly avoidable to any one, whofe tafk is to fhow the falfhood or improbability of any tenet; it happening in controverfial difcourfes, as it does in affaulting of towns, where if the ground be but firm whereon the batteries are erected, there is no farther inquiry of whom it is borrowed, nor whom it be longs to, fo it affords but a fit rife for the prefent purpofe. But in the future part of this difcourfe, defigning to raise an edifice uniform and confiftent with itfelf, as far as my own experience and obfervation will affift me, I hope to erect it on fuch a bafis, that I fhall not need to shore it up with props and buttreffes, leaning on borrowed or begged foundations; or at least, if mine prove a caftle in the air, I will endeavour it fhall be all of a piece, and hang together, Wherein I warn the reader not to expect undeniable cogent demonftrations, unless I may be allowed the privilege, not feldom affumed by others, to take my principles for granted; and then, I doubt not, but I can demonftrate too. All that I fhall fay for the principles I proceed on is, that I can only appeal to men's own unprejudiced experience and obfervation, whether they be true or no; and this is enough for a man who profeffes no more, than to lay down candidly and freely his own conjectures, concerning a fubject lying fomewhat in the dark, without any other defign than an unbiaffed inquiry after truth.

Bank

§. I.

BOOK II.

CHAP. I.

Of Ideas in general, and their Original.

VERY man being confcious to him-
felf that he thinks, and that which

Idea is the
object of

thinking.

his mind is applied about, whilst thinking, being the ideas that are there, it is paft doubt, that men have in their minds feveral ideas, fuch as are those expreffed by the words, Whiteness, Hardness, Sweetnefs, Thinking, Motion, Man, Elephant, Army, Drunkenness, and others. It is in the first place then to be inquired, how he comes by them. I know it is a received doctrine, that men have native ideas, and original characters, ftamped upon their minds, in their very first being. This opinion I have, at large, examined already; and, I fuppofe, what I have faid, in the foregoing book, will be much more eafily admitted, when I have shown, whence the understanding may get all the ideas it has, and by what ways and degrees they may come into the mind; for which I fhall appeal to every one's own obfervation and experience, §. 2. Let us then fuppofe the mind to be, as we fay, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vaft store which the bufy and boundlefs fancy of man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reafon and knowledge? To this I anfwer, in one word, from experience; in all that our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our obfervation em ployed either about external fenfible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which fupplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking,

6

All ideas

come from

fenfation or
reflection.

These

The objects of fenfation

ideas.

These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do fpring. §. 3. First, Our senses, converfant about particular fenfible objects, do convey into one fource of the mind feveral diftinct perceptions of things, according to thofe various ways wherein thofe objects do affect them: and thus we come by thofe ideas we have, of Yellow, White, Heat, Cold, Soft, Hard, Bitter, Sweet, and all thofe which we call fenfible qualities; which when I fay the fenfes convey into the mind, I mean, they from external objects convey into the mind what produces there thofe percep tions. This great fource of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our fenfes, and derived by them to the understanding, I call SENSATION.

The operations of our minds the other fource of them.

§. 4. Secondly, The other fountain, from which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got; which operations when the foul comes to reflect on and confider, do furnish the understanding with another fet of ideas, which could not be had from things without; and fuch are Perception, Thinking, Doubting, Believing, Reasoning, Knowing, Willing, and all the different actings of our own minds; which we being confcious of and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as diftinct ideas, as we do from bodies affecting our fenfes. This fource of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not fenfe, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal fenfe. But as I call the other fenfation, fo I call this REFLECTION, the ideas it affords being fuch only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself. By reflection then, in the following part of this difcourfe, I would be underftood to mean that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them; by reason whereof there come to be ideas of thefe operations in the understanding. These two, I fay, viz. external material

material things, as the objects of fenfation; and the operations of our own minds within, as the objects of reflection; are to me the only origir ls from whence all our ideas take their beginnings. The term operations here I use in a large fenfe, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about its ideas, but fome fort of paffions arifing fometimes from them, fuch as is the fatisfaction or uneafinefs arifing from any thought.

All our ideas

are of the one

or the other

§. 5. The understanding seems to me not to have the leaft glimmering of any ideas, which it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish the of these. mind with the ideas of fenfible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us: and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations.

Thefe, when we have taken a full furvey of them and their feveral modes, combinations, and relations, we fhall find to contain all our whole ftock of ideas and that we have nothing in our minds which did not come in one of these two ways. Let any one examine his own thoughts, and thoroughly fearch into his understanding; and then let him tell me, whether all the original ideas he has there, are any other than of the objects of his fenfes, or of the operations of his mind, confidered as objects of his reflection: and how great a mafs of knowledge foever he imagines to be lodged there, he will, upon taking a strict view, fee that he has not any idea in his mind, but what one of these two have imprinted; though perhaps, with infinite variety compounded and enlarged by the understanding, as we shall fee hereafter.

§. 6. He that attentively confiders the Obfervable in children, ftate of a child, at his first coming into the world, will have little reason to think him ftored with plenty of ideas, that are to be the matter of his future knowledge: It is by degrees he comes to be furnished with them. And though the ideas of obvious and familiar qualities imprint themfelves before the