An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 1: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 1 and 2
John Locke · en
To which if we add EXISTENCE, DURATION, NUMBER, which belong both to
the one and the other, we have, perhaps, all the original ideas on
which the rest depend. For by these, I imagine, might be EXPLAINED the
nature of colours, sounds, tastes, smells, and ALL OTHER IDEAS WE HAVE,
if we had but faculties acute enough to perceive the severally modified
extensions and motions of these minute bodies, which produce those
several sensations in us. But my present purpose being only to inquire
into the knowledge the mind has of things, by those ideas and
appearances which God has fitted it to receive from them, and how the
mind comes by that knowledge; rather than into their causes or manner
of Production, I shall not, contrary to the design of this Essay, see
myself to inquire philosophically into the peculiar constitution of
BODIES, and the configuration of parts, whereby THEY have the power to
produce in us the ideas of their sensible qualities. I shall not enter
any further into that disquisition; it sufficing to my purpose to
observe, that gold or saffron has power to produce in us the idea of
yellow, and snow or milk the idea of white, which we can only have by
our sight without examining the texture of the parts of those bodies or
the particular figures or motion of the particles which rebound from
them, to cause in us that particular sensation, though, when we go
beyond the bare ideas in our minds and would inquire into their causes,
we cannot conceive anything else to be in any sensible object, whereby
it produces different ideas in us, but the different bulk, figure,
number, texture, and motion of its insensible parts.
CHAPTER XXII.
OF MIXED MODES.
1. Mixed Modes, what.
Having treated of SIMPLE MODES in the foregoing chapters, and given
several instances of some of the most considerable of them, to show
what they are, and how we come by them; we are now in the next place to
consider those we call MIXED MODES; such are the complex ideas we mark
by the names OBLIGATION, DRUNKENNESS, a LIE, &c.; which consisting of
several combinations of simple ideas of DIFFERENT kinds, I have called
mixed modes, to distinguish them from the more simple modes, which
consist only of simple ideas of the SAME kind. These mixed modes, being
also such combinations of simple ideas as are not looked upon to be
characteristical marks of any real beings that have a steady existence,
but scattered and independent ideas put together by the mind, are
thereby distinguished from the complex ideas of substances.
2. Made by the Mind.