§ 4. The Operations of our Minds the other Source of

them.

SECONDLY, The other fountain from which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas, is the percep tion 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, reafoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds, which we being confcious of and obferving in ourselves, do from thefe 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 Senfation, 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 understood to mean, that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them; by reafon whereof there come to be ideas of thefe operations in the understanding. Thefe two, I fay, viz. external material things, as the objects of SENSATION, and the operations of our minds within, as the objects of REFLECTION, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings. The term operations here I ufe in a large fenfe, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about its ideas, but fome fort of pallions arifing fometimes from them; fuch as is the fatisfaction or uneafinefs arising from any thought.

§ 5. All our ideas are of the one or other of these. THE understanding feems to me not to have the leaft glimmering of any ideas, which it doth not receive from one of these two. External abjects furnish the mind with the ideas of fenfible qualities, which are all thofe dif

ferent perceptions they produce in us; and the mind furnifbes the understanding with ideas of its own opera

tions.

Thefe, when we have taken a full furvey of them, and their feveral modes, combinations, and relations, we thall 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 underftanding, 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 fhall fee hereafter.

§ 6. Obfervable in Children.

HE that attentively confiders the state of a child, at his firft 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 themselves before the memory begins to keep a register of time and order, yet it is often fo late before fome unufual quali ties come in the way, that there are few men that cannot recollect the beginning of their acquaintance with them; and if it were worth while, no doubt a child might be fo ordered, as to have but a very few even of the ordinary ideas, till he were grown up to a man. But all that are born into the world being furrounded with bodies that perpetually and diverfely affect them; variety of ideas, whether care be taken about it or no, are imprinted on the minds of children. Light and colours are bufy at hand every where, when the eye is but open: Sounds, and fome tangible qualities, fail not to folicit their proper fenfes, and force an entrance to t

Book II. mind; but yet, I think, it will be granted easily, that if a child were kept in a place where he never saw any other but black and white, till he were a man, he would have no more ideas of fcarlet or green, than he that from his childhood never tasted an oyster or a pine-apple, has of thofe particular relishes.

§ 7. Men are differently furnished with these, according to the different Objects they converfe with.

MEN then come to be furnished with fewer or more fimple ideas from without, according as the objects they converfe with afford greater or lefs variety, and from the operations of their minds within, according as they more or lefs reflect on them. For though he that contemplates the operations of his mind cannot but have plain and clear ideas of them, yet, unless he turn his thoughts that way, and confiders them attentively, he will no more have clear and distinct ideas of all the operations of his mind, and all that may be obferved therein, than he will have all the particular ideas of any landscape, or of the parts and motions of a clock, who will not turn his eyes to it, and with attention heed all the parts of it. The picture or clock may be fo placed, that they may come in his way every day; but yet he will have but a confufed idea of all the parts they are made up of, till he applies himself with attention to confider them each in particular.

8. Ideas of Reflection later, because they need At

tention.

AND hence we fee the reafon why it is pretty late before moft children get ideas of the operations of their own minds, and some have not any very clear or perfect ideas of the greateft part of them all their lives; because, though they pafs there continually, yet, like floating vifions, they make not deep impreflions enough to leave in the mind clear, diftinct, lafting ideas, till the understanding turns inwards upon itself, reflects on its own operations, and makes them the object of its own contemplation. Children, when they come first into it, are furrounded with a world of new things, which, by a conftant folicitation of their fenfes, drav

75 the mind conftantly to them, forward to take notice of new, and apt to be delighted with the variety of changing objects. Thus, the first years are ufually employed and diverted in looking abroad. Mens bufinefs in them is to acquaint themselves with what is to be found without, and fo, growing up in a conftant attention to outward fenfations, feldom make any confiderable reflection on what paffes within them, till they come to be of riper years, and fome fcarce ever at all.

$9. The Soul begins to have Ideas, when it begins to perceive.

To ask at what time a man has first any ideas, is to ask when he begins to perceive, having ideas, and percep- L tion, being the fame thing. I know it is an opinion, that the foul always thinks, and that it has the actual perception of ideas in itself conftantly as long as it exifts, and that actual thinking is as infeparable from the foul as actual extenfion is from the body; which, if true, to inquire after the beginning of a man's ideas, is the fame as to inquire after the beginning of his foul; for, by this account, foul and its ideas, as body and its extenfion, will begin to exift both at the fame time. § IC. The Soul thinks not always, for this wants

Proofs.

BUT whether the foul be supposed to exift antecedent to, or coeval with, or fome time after, the first rudiments or organization, or the beginnings of life in the body, I leave to be difputed by those who have better thought of that matter. I confefs myself to have one of thofe dull fouls, that doth not perceive itfelf always to contemplate ideas, nor can conceive it any more neceffary for the foul always to think, than for the body always to move, the perception of ideas being (as I conceive) to the foul, what motion is to the body, not its effence, but one of its operations. And therefore, though thinking be fuppofed ever fo much the proper action of the foul, yet it is not neceffary to suppose that it should be always thinking, always in action; that, perhaps, is the privilege of the infinite Author and Preferver of things, who never fumbers nor fleeps, but

Book II. is not competent to any finite being, at least not to the foul of man. We know certainly by experience, that we fometimes think, and thence draw this infallible confequence, that there is fomething in us that has a power to think; but whether that fubftance perpetually thinks or no, we can be no farther affured than experience informs us; for to fay that actual thinking is effential to the foul, and infeparable from it, is to beg what is in queftion, and not to prove it by reafon; which is neceffary to be done, if it be not a felf-evident propofition. But whether this, that the foul always thinks, be a felf-evident proposition that every body afsents to at first hearing, I appeal to mankind. It is doubted, whether I thought all laft night or no; the queftion being about a matter of fact, it is begging it, to bring as a proof for it, an hypothefis, which is the very thing in difpute, by which way one may prove any thing; and it is but fuppofing that all watches, whilft the balance beats, think, and it is fufficiently proved, and past doubt, that my watch thought all laft night. But he that would not deceive himself, ought to build his hypothesis on matter of fact, and make it out by fenfible experience, and not presume on matter of fact, becaufe of his hypothefis, that is, because he fuppofes it to be fo; which way of proving amounts to this, that I muft neceffarily think all laft night, because another fuppofes I always think, though I myself cannot perceive that I always do fo.

But men, in love with their opinions, may not only fuppofe what is in question, but allege wrong matter of fact. How elfe could any one make it an inference of mine, that a thing is not, because we are not fenfible of it in our fleep? I do not fay there is no foul in a man, because he is not fenfible of it in his fleep; but I do fay, he cannot think at any time, waking or fleeping, with out being fenfible of it. Our being fenfible of it, is not neceflary to any thing, but to our thoughts, and to, them it is, and to them it will always be neceflary, till we can think without being confcious of it.