univerfal knowledge, that we have no ideas till we receive passively the ideas of fenfible qualities from without. Then indeed the activity of the foul, or mind commences, and another fource of original ideas is opened: for then we acquire ideas from, and by the operations of our minds. Senfation would be of little ufe to form the understanding, if we had no other faculty than meer paffive perception; but without fenfation these other faculties would have nothing to operate upon; reflection would have by confequence nothing to reflect upon, and it is by reflection that we multiply our ftock of ideas, and fill that magazine, which is to furnish all the materials of future knowledge. In this manner, and in no other, we may fay that "all our ideas arife "from our fenfes ;" and that "there is nothing "in the mind which was not previously in "fenfe." But these propofitions should not be advanced, perhaps, as generally as they are fometimes by logicians, left they fhould lead into error, as maxims are apt to do very often. Senfation is the greater, reflection the smaller source of ideas. But these latter are as clear and diftinct, and convey knowledge that may be faid to be more real than the former. Senfe gave occafion to them, but they never were in sense, properly speaking. They are, if I may fay fo, of the mind's own growth, the elements of knowledge, more immediate, lefs relative, and lefs dependent, than fenfitive knowledge; as any man will be apt to think, who compares his ideas

of

of remembring, recollecting, bare thought, and intenseness of thought, with those of warm and hot, of cool and cold. DES CARTES might have faid, "I fee, I hear, I feel, I taste, 1 fmell; "therefore I am." But furely he might fay too, "I think, I reflect, I will; therefore I am." Let us observe, however, that it belongs only to a preat philosopher to frame an argument to prove himself that he exifts, which is an object of intuitive knowledge, and concerning which it is impoffible he should have any doubt*. In the mouth of any other perfon, "I think, there"fore I am," would be very near akin to, “I therefore I am."

am,

THUS it will appear, when we contemplate our understanding in the first steps towards knowledge, that corporeal, animal fenfe, which some philofophers hold in great contempt, and which does not deserve much esteem, communicates to us our firft ideas, fets the mind firft to work, and becomes in conjunction with internal fenfe, by which we perceive what paffes within, as by the other what paffes without us, the foundation of all our knowledge. This is fo evidently true, that even those ideas, about which our reafon is

* Je ne vois pas que vous aycz eu befoin d'un fi grand ap pareil, puifque d'ailleurs vous étiez dejà certain de votre existence, & que vous pouviez inferer la même chofe de quel. que autre que ce fût de vos actions, étant manifefte par la lumiere naturelle que tout ce qui agit eft, ou exifte. Objec. of GASSENDI to the fecond Medit.

employed in the most abstract meditations, may be traced back to this original by a very easy analyse. Since thefe fimple ideas therefore are the foundations of human knowledge, this knowledge can neither be extended wider, nor elevated higher, than in a certain proportion to them. If we confider these ideas like foundations, they are extremely narrow, and fhallow, neither reaching to many things, nor laid deep in the nature of any. If we confider them like materials, for so they may be confidered likewise, employed to raise the fabric of our intellectual fyftem, they will appear like mud, and straw, and lath, materials fit to erect fome frail, and homely cottage; but not of fubftance, nor value fufficient for the construction of those enormous piles, from whose lofty towers philosophers would perfuade us that they discover all nature fubject to their inspection, that they pry into the fource of all being, and into the inmost receffes of all wisdom. But it fares with them, as it did with the builders in the plains of Senaar, they fall into a confusion of languages, and neither understand one another, nor are understood by the rest of mankind.

HAVING taken this view of our first, and sinple ideas, it is necessary, in order to make a true eftimate of human knowledge, that we take fuch a view likewise of those faculties by the exercise of which our minds proceed in acquiring knowledge. I have mentioned perception; and retention, or memory ought to follow for as we

fhould

should have no ideas without perception, fo we should lose them as faft, as we get them, without retention. When it was objected to DES CARTES, that, if thought was the effence of the foul, the foul of the child muft think in the mother's womb; and when he was asked, how then it came to pass that we remember none of those thoughts? He maintained, according to his ufual method, one hypothefis by another; and affumed that memory confifts in certain traces made on the brain by the thoughts that pass through it, and that as long as they laft we remember; but that the brain of the child in the womb being too moist, and too soft to preserve these traces, it is impoffible he should remember out of the womb what he thought in it. Thus memory seems to be made purely corporeal by the fame philoso pher who makes it on fome occafions purely intellectual. He might distinguish two memories by the fame hypothetical power, by which he dif tinguished two substances, that he might employ one or the other as his fyftem required. If you confult other philofophers on the same subject, you will receive no more fatisfaction: and the only reasonable method we can take, is to be content to know intuitively, and by inward obfervation, not the caufe, but the effects of memory, and the use of it in the intellectual system..

By this faculty then, whatever it be, our fimple ideas, which have been spoken of alrea ly, are preserved with greater, and our complex ideas,

which

which remain to be spoken of, with less facility. Both one and the other require to be frequently raised in the mind, and frequently recalled to it. I fay, with the rest of the world, to be raised, and to be recalled, but furely these words come very fhort of expreffing the wonderful phænomena of memory. The images that are lodged in it prefent themselves often to the mind without any fresh fenfation, and fo fpontaneously, that the mind feems as paffive in these secondary perceptions, as it was in receiving the firft impreffions. Our fimple ideas, and even our complex ideas, and notions, return fometimes of themselves, we know not why, or how, mechanically, as it were, uncalled by the mind, and often to the disturbance of it in the pursuit of other ideas, to which these intruders are foreign. On the other hand, we are able, at our will and with defign, to put a fort of force on memory, to feize as it were, the end of fome particular line, and to draw back into the mind a whole fet of ideas that seem to be ftrung to it,or linked one with the other. In general; when images, effences, ideas, notions, that existed in any mind, are gone out of it, and have. no longer any existence there, the mind is often able to will them into existence again, by an act, of which we are confcious, but of which we know nothing more, than that the mind performs it. These phenomena are more furprizing, and lefs to be accounted for, than the action of external objects on the organs of fenfe in the first production of ideas; which is an obfervation that de