Identity of ideas may be taken in a double sense, either as including or excluding identity of circumstances, such as time, place, &c. (M76) I am glad the people I converse with are not all richer, wiser, &c. than I. This is agreeable to reason; is no sin. ’Tis certain that if the happyness of my acquaintance encreases, & mine not proportionably, mine must decrease. The not understanding this & the doctrine about relative good, discuss’d with French, Madden(93), &c., to be noticed as 2 causes of mistake in judging of moral matters. Mem. To observe (wn you talk of the division of ideas into simple and complex) that there may be another cause of the undefinableness of certain ideas besides that which Locke gives; viz. the want of names. (M77) Mem. To begin the First Book(94) not with mention of sensation and reflection, but instead of sensation to use perception or thought in general. (M78) I defy any man to imagine or conceive perception without an idea, or an idea without perception. (M79) Locke’s very supposition that matter & motion should exist before thought is absurd—includes a manifest contradiction. Locke’s harangue about coherent, methodical discourses amounting to nothing, apply’d to the mathematicians. They talk of determining all the points of a curve by an equation. Wt mean they by this? Wt would they signify by the word points? Do they stick to the definition of Euclid? (M80) We think we know not the Soul, because we have no imaginable or sensible idea annex’d to that sound. This the effect of prejudice. (M81) Certainly we do not know it. This will be plain if we examine what we mean by the word knowledge. Neither doth this argue any defect in our knowledge, no more than our not knowing a contradiction. The very existence of ideas constitutes the Soul(95). (M82) Consciousness(96), perception, existence of ideas, seem to be all one. Consult, ransack yr understanding. Wt find you there besides several perceptions or thoughts? Wt mean you by the word mind? You must mean something that you perceive, or yt you do not perceive. A thing not perceived is a contradiction. To mean (also) a thing you do not perceive is a contradiction. We are in all this matter strangely abused by words. Mind is a congeries of perceptions(97). Take away perceptions and you take away the mind. Put the perceptions and you put the mind. Say you, the mind is not the perception, not that thing which perceives. I answer, you are abused by the words “that a thing.” These are vague and empty words with us. (M83) The having ideas is not the same thing with perception. A man may have ideas when he only imagines. But then this imagination presupposeth perception. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ (M84) That wch extreamly strengthens us in prejudice is yt we think we see an empty space, which I shall demonstrate to be false in the Third Book(98).