fuch as are remembrance, difcerning, reasoning, judging, knowledge, faith, &c. I fhall have occafion to fpeak hereafter. CHAP. VII. OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF BOTH SENSATION AND REFLECTION. § 1. THERE be other fimple ideas which convey themfelves into the mind by all the ways of fenfation and reflection, viz. Pleafure, or delight, and its oppofite.. Power. Existence. Unity. § 2. Pleasure and Pain. DELIGHT, or uneafinefs, one or other of them, join themselves to almost all ourideas, both of sensation 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 pleafure 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 fatisfaction, delight, pleasure, happiness, &c. on the one fide; or uneafiness, trouble, pain, torment, anguish, misery, &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 moft commonly use for thofe two forts of ideas. § 3. THEinfinitely wife Author of our being having given us the power over several parts of our bodies, to move or keep them at reft as we think fit; and alfo by the motion of them, to move ourselves and other contiguous bodies, in which confift all the actions of our body; having alfo given a power to our minds in feveral in I ftances, to choofe, among 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 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 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 ftate man, however furnifhed with the faculties of underftanding and will, would be a very idle inactive creatúre, and pafs his time only in a lazy, lethargic dream. It has therefore pleafed our wife Creator to annex to feveral objects, and to the ideas which we receive from them, as alfo to feveral of our thoughts, a concomitant pleasure, and that in feveral 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 fac-' ulties to avoid that, as to pursue this: only this is worth our confideration, that pain is often produced by the fame objects and ideas that produce pleasure in us. 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 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. 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 But 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 pleasant of all fenfible objects, light itself, if there be too much of it, if increased beyond a due proportion to our eyes, causes a very painful fenfation. Which is wifely and favourably fo ordered by nature, that when any object does, by the vehemency of its opearation, diforderthe 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 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.. though great light be infufferable to our eyes, yet the highest degree of darknefs does not all difeafe them; because that caufing no diforderly motion in it, leaves that curious organ unharmed in its natural ftate. But yet excefs of cold, as well as heat, pains us, because it is equally deftructive to that temper which is neceffary to the preservation of life, and the exercise 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. For BEYOND all this, we may find another reason, why God hath scattered up and down feveral degrees of pleasure and pain, in all the things that environ and effect 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 fulness of joy, and at whofe right hand are pleafures for evermore. § 6. Pleafure and Pain. 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 capable of having them; yet the confideration of the reafon why they are annexed to fo many other ideas, ferving to give us due fentiments of the wifdom and goodness of the Sovereign Difpofer of all things, may not be unfuitable to the main end of these enquiries; the knowledge and veneration of him being the chief end of all our thoughts, and the proper business of all our underftandings. § 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 exift, or have existence: and whatever we can confider as one thing, whether a real being or idea, fuggests to the understanding the idea of unity. § 8. Power. 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 also, that natural bodies are able to produce in one another, occuring every moment to our fenfes, we both these ways get the idea of power. 9. Succeffion. 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 observable there, we shall find our ideas always, whilst we are awake, or have any thought, paffing in train, one going and another coming, without intermiffion. 10. Simple Ideas the Materials of all our knowledge. THESE, if they are not all, are at leaft (as I think) the molt confiderable of thofe fimple id as 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 these 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 Simple ones. Nor will it be so strange to think these few fimple ideas fufficient to employ the quickest thought, or largest capacity; and to furnish the materials of all that various knowledge, and more va rious 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 that 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? SOME FARTHER CHAP. VIII. CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING OUR SIMPLE IDEAS. § 1. Pofitive Ideas from privative Caufes. CONCERNING 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 cause any perception in the mind, doth thereby produce in the understanding a fimple idea; which, whatever, be the external caufe 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 understanding, as much as any other whatsoever: though perhaps the caufe of it be but a privation of the fubject. |