words or sounds, the soul has these intellectual ideas which are attached to them, repeated or raised afresh, and they become actually present to the mind: and thus we are assisted in the memory or recollection even of intellectual things by animal nature in this present state for though our intellectual ideas themselves cannot be traced, nor drawn, nor painted on the brain, and consequently can have no similar impressions made there, yet they may be closely connected or attached by custom to certain corporeal motions, figures, strokes or traces which may be excited or delineated there; which traces or motions were first raised by the reading or hearing words written or spoken, which were designed to signify those incorporeal ideas or objects.

XV. When the soul sets itself by an act of its will to recollect any former ideas, corporeal or intellectual, it is very probable that it employs some finer or more spirituous parts of animal nature to open all the kindred traces that lie in that part of the brain, till at last it lights upon that particular trace which is connected with the desired idea, and immediately the soul perceives and acknowledges it. It is in this manner that we hunt after a name that we have almost forgotten; as for instance, suppose the name be Tompkins, we think of all the names that end in kius, viz. Wilkins, Watkins, Jenkins, Hopkins, &c. till at last we light upon the name Tompkins which we sought; or suppose we seek after the name or idea of a temple, we rummage over the traces of house, building, palace, church, till we light on the idea and word temple.

Thus we have seen the way and manner whereby the soul of man comes to acquire its ideas at first, both of corporeal and intellectual objects, and that is, by sensation and reflection; we have also made a probable guess how these ideas are treasured up and recollected while the mind is united to the body.

XVI. But besides these two sorts of ideas, there is a third sort which are properly called abstracted ideas; such as are not the express representations of any corporeal or spiritual beings just as they exist, but are as it were a part of our ideas of some spiritual or corporeal things abstracted from the other parts; or at least they are ideas drawn from their real or supposed properties abstracted from the beings themselves, or from some modes or affections of these corporeal or spiritual beings, or sometimes from the mere relations that several beings bear to one another. Of these abstractions there are several sorts and degrees, and consequently there are ideas which are more or less abstracted.

The first sort of these ideas, which are least abstracted, are ideas of common and general kinds of being drawn from particuJars or individuals; such as a man, a bird, a flower, a pigeon, a spirit, &c. Now these abstract ideas are formed in this manner. I see several pigeons, I observe they are birds of such a shapé,

and size, and motion; one is of a dark brown colour, a second is white, a third is speckled but I omit or leave out these particular colours, and all other peculiarities in which they differ, and abstracting from them the things in which they agree, I keep those only in mind, viz. a bird of such a shape, size, and motion, and I call this a pigeon: now this is a general name for all the birds of that kind, and this we call an abstracted idea. So we form the general idea of a spirit, by considering the soul of Peter, Thomas, George, &c. and leaving out their different personal properties and individual circumstances, we retain only those ideas wherein they all agree, and call that a spirit.

Note, this first sort of abstract ideas may still be called corporeal or intellectual ideas, according to the nature of the objects whence we derive them, though they are not completely like those objects, because they represent but that part of them only wherein they agree with others of the same kind. Now these abstract

ed ideas evidently arise from a power that is in the mind itself to abstract or divide one part of an idea from the other, or to separate mingled ideas and conceive them apart.

Another sort of abstracted ideas, and which indeed are more properly called by that name, are general relations which arise from comparing one thing with another, and from observing the relations that one thing bears to another and then the mind abstracts those relations from the things which are related, and trea sures up those relations as a distinct set of ideas, even while the things which are related, are neglected or forgotten; such are cause, effect, likeness, difference, whole, part, &c. I might give an instance thus; when I see a sword wound a man, or when I am conscious that my soul forms an argument, I conceive the sword to be the cause, and the wound is the effect or I conceive the soul is the cause, and the argument is the effect: then I reserve these ideas of cause and effect for general use, and apply them very properly to a hundred other cases, when I have no further thought of a sword or a soul, which occasioned my first ideas of causality. These are pure abstract ideas.

Some absolute modes, properties or affections borrowed from individual beings, as well as their relative modes, or relations, will also afford us such kind of pure abstracted ideas; such are the ideas of essence, existence, duration, substance, mode, &c. which are formed in this manner. Suppose I think of a bowl as subsisting by itself, and that it is both round and heavy; I conceive of the bowl as a substance, and of roundness and heaviness as modes belonging to it so when I think of a spirit as a thing that subsists of itself, and that this spirit is grieved or joyful: I infer that spirit is a substance, and joy and grief are modes of that substance. Then I abstract the ideas of substance and mode both from the corporeal and the spiritual ideas which first occasioned

them; and though I think no more of a bowl or a spirit, of roundness or heaviness, of joy or grief, yet I retain the abstracted ideas of substance and mode, and apply them to a thousand things besides.

As the ideas of cause and substance and mode may be properly called pure abstracted ideas, so the causality or the substantiality of a thing, or its modality, are yet more abstracted ideas, or have another degree of abstraction; for these words signify only the view or consideration of a thing as a cause, as a substance, or as a mode. Such also are the ideas of genus and species, of noun, verb, &c. and a multitude of such very abstracted ideas belong to common speech as well as to learned writings.

Here let it be noted, that the ideas of cause, effect, substance, mode, likeness, difference, and many other abstracted ideas of this sort, are precisely the same ideas, whether they are drawn originally from corporeal or from intellectual beings, and therefore they are plainly different from the first sort of abstract ideas which are either intellectual or corporeal; nor can these be ranked under either of those two classes, for they are ideas of another distinct kind, and make a class of their own, i. e. pure abstract ideas.

If therefore we confine ourselves strictly and entirely to those two things which Mr. Locke asserts to be the springs and causes of all our ideas, viz. sensation and reflection, without admitting this third principle, viz. the soul's power of comparing ideas and abstracting one from another, we shall hardly account for the numerous abstracted ideas which we have, whereof many are neither intellectual nor corporeal, though they are all evidently at first derived from corporeal or from spiritual objects and ideas; and the original remote springs of them may be sensation or reflection, though these are not the immediate causes of them. See more in the Treatise of Logic, part I chap. III. sect. I.

ESSAY IV.

Of innate Ideas.

SECT. I.-The common Opinion well refuted by Mr. Locke.

THE common opinion of innate notions and innate ideas, against which Mr. Locke so earnestly contends, I take to be this, viz. that there are some certain ideas of things, and some certain propositions botli of speculation and practice, or of truth and duty, which are explicitly wrought into the very nature of man, and are born with all mankind; which ideas and propositions are supposed to be the first principles of our knowledge, and original rules of all our judgments and reasonings about natural or moral subjects; that they stand in the soul as axioms or maxims, and are the propositional principles of our religion and virtue, of our duty both to God and man, though they lie hid, and we are not actually conscious of them till some special occasion calls them forth to sight.

The propositions are reckoned such as these,

1. Of the natural kind, viz. "What has no being has no real properties; whatsoever acts, is, or exists; one thing cannot be the cause of itself: It is impossible for a thing to be and not to be, in the same sense and at the same time; the whole is greater than each part, &c." 2. Of the moral kind, viz. "Parents must be honoured; falsehood must not be practised to our neighbour; injury must not be done; contracts should be fulfilled, &c. 3. Of the religious kind, viz. "There is a God: God is to be worshipped: God will approve virtue; he will punish vice, &c."

These have been supposed to be actual innate propositions ; and all the ideaso f which these are composed must certainly then be innate ideas, if they are actually existent in the mind as soon as it begins to be; however, neither the propositions nor ideas may actually appear there to ourselves, till some occasion call them forth.

Now those writers who hold innate ideas in this sense, seem to lie under a great mistake.

Mr. Locke has ingeniously and sufficiently refuted this sort of doctrine of innate ideas, and innate propositions, in his discourse on that subject; wherein he discovers that there is no necessity from reason, or from religion, to admit them; because God having given the mind of man a capacity of forming ideas of natural and moral things, and of comparing and joining or

disjoining them by judgment, has sufficiently furnished men with necessaries for knowledge; and God having given us a power of reasoning, we are able from the most common and obvious things to infer both his own being and our duty considered merely as creatures; and there is no such necessity of his actual implanting in the mind all those ideas and long trains of propositions, whether natural or moral, which some men have supposed to be innate. Thus far I think we may safely agree, with Mr. Locke, who reasons exceeding well on this subject, and most of bis arguments, I think, are just and convincing.

And yet I believe still that many simple ideas are innate in some sense, though not actually formed in the mind at the birth; and perhaps also some general principles both of truth and duty may be called in some sense innate, though not in the explicit form of propositions. Let us consider things in the following manner.

SECT. II.-In what Sense many Ideas are innate.

FIRST, The simple ideas of light and colours, sounds, tastes and smells, viz. red, blue, sweet, bitter, loud, shrill, cold, hot, &c. even all the sensible qualities (which are called the secondary qualities of bodies) with all the infinite variety of their mixtures, though they are not immediately, actually and explicitly impressed at once on the mind at its first union to the body; yet they may be called in some sense innate, for they seem to be given to the mind by a divine energy or law of union between soul and body, appointed in the first creation of man; and this law operates or begins its efficacy in all particular instances, as soon as those sensible objects occur which give occasion to these sensible qualities and ideas to be first perceived by the mind.

The reason why I think so is this: The millions of impres sions that are made upon the senses by outward objects, do necessarily excite nothing but an equal variety of impressions or motions of certain fibres in the brain, and form perhaps certain courses or traces of some fine fluid, called the animal spirits, there. But among this infinite variety of fibrous motious in the brain, or lines and strokes which are drawn there, or traces of the animal spirits; none of them do necessarily and in their own nature raise in the soul the sensations of these secondary qualities as they are called, viz. colours, tastes, smells, feeling, sound, &c. such as green, blue, red, sweet, sour, stinking, cold, warm, shrill, loud, &c. Sensation is a very different thing from motion: It is only God the author of our nature who really forms or creates these sensations and all these ideas of sensible qualities in a soul uaited to a body, and he has appointed these ideas to arise when such particular impressions shall be