The World's Greatest Books — Volume 14 — Philosophy and Economics
Philosophy
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 14 — Philosophy and Economics
Economics; Philosophy
When the understanding is once stored with these simple ideas, it has
the power to repeat, compare, and unite them even to an almost infinite
variety, and so can make at will new complex ideas. But it is not in the
power of any most exalted wit or enlarged understanding, by any
quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new simple idea
in the mind, nor to destroy those that are there. I would have anyone
try to fancy any taste which had never affected his palate, or frame the
idea of a scent he had never smelt; and when he can do this, I will also
conclude that a blind man hath ideas of colours and a deaf man true,
distinct notions of sound.
There are some ideas which have admittance only through one sense which
is peculiarly adapted to receive them. Thus, light and colours come in
only by the eye, all kinds of noises by the ear, the tastes and smells
by the nose and palate. The most considerable of those belonging to the
touch are heat, cold, and solidity--which is the idea that belongs to
the body, whereby we conceive it to fill space.
Simple ideas of divers senses are the ideas of space or extension,
figure, rest, and motion, for these make perceivable impressions both
on the eyes and touch, and we can receive and convey into our minds the
ideas of the extension, figure, motion, and rest of bodies both by
seeing and feeling.
The mind, receiving the ideas mentioned in the foregoing from without,
when it turns its view inward upon itself and observes its own actions
about those ideas it has, takes from thence other ideas which are as
capable to be the objects of its contemplation as any of those it
received from foreign things. The two great and principal actions of the
mind which are most frequently considered, and which are so frequent
that everyone that pleases may take notice of them in himself, are these
two--Perception or Thinking, and Volition or Will. 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. Some of the modes of these simple ideas of reflection are
remembrance, discerning, reasoning, judging, knowledge, faith.
It has, further, pleased our wise Creator to annex to several objects
and to the ideas which we receive from them, as also to several of our
thoughts, a concomitant pleasure, and that in several objects to several
degrees, that those faculties which He has endowed us with might not
remain wholly idle and unemployed by us. Pain has the same efficacy and
use to set us on work that pleasure has, we being as ready to employ our
faculties to avoid that as to pursue this.
Existence and unity are two other ideas that are suggested to the
understanding by every object without and every idea within. Power,
also, is another of those simple ideas which we receive from sensation
and reflection; and, besides these, there is succession.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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