notions, were made on our minds, or on the minds of other men; and whether the names that fignify them were given by us, or by others, it is plain that nature taught mankind to make them, directly when the obtruded them, and indirectly when we seemed to invent them without any affistance from outward objects. The firft is evident of itself, and the fecond will appear fo too, if we confider that in learning their names, and the fignification of these names, we learned to decompound them; and that by learning to decompound fome, the mind was inftructed to compound others, even such, perhaps, as existed by these means in idea and notion, before the combinations, whereof they became the architypes, existed in act. Our ideas of relations, and of the relations of relations, which are comprehended so often in our complex ideas, or notions, are not positive beings that exist by themselves, and can be contemplated by themselves. Modes are the affections and dependencies of fubftances; relations are the affectitions and dependencies of substances and modes; and no one of them can exift any longer than both the ideas that produced it, or by the comparison of which it was framed, fubfift. It might feem therefore the lefs likely that outward objects should communicate fuch ideas to the mind, or even inftruct the mind to frame them; and yet fo it is. That act of the mind, that fets two objects before our internal fight, and by referring from one to the other includes both in the fame confideration, is plainly fuggefted to us by the opera

tions of outward objects on our senses. We can neither look up, nor down, without perceiving ideas of bigger and lefs, of more and fewer, of brighter and darker, and a multitude of other relations, the ideas of which arife in the mind as fast as the ideas of things of which they express the relations, and almost prevent reflection. When the mind, thus taught, employs reflection, the number of these relative ideas increases vaftly. Thus, for inftance, when we observe the alterations that are made by nature, or by art, in our complex ideas of fubftances, or when we reflect on the continual viciffitude and flux of all the affections, and paffion, and the confequences of them, how can we avoid framing the ideas of cause and effect? That which produces, or feems to us to produce the alteration, gives us the idea of caufe, and that which receives the alteration gives us the idea of effect. I go no further into the confideration of our ideas of relations phyfical, and moral. They are numberlefs, and they must needs be fo; fince every idea, or notion we have, tho' it be in itself one fingle object of thought, becomes the object of a thousand when it is compared with all those with which it may be compared in fome refpect or other.

SECTION III.

THESE, and fuch as these are all the ideas we

have really, and are capable of having, derived originally from fenfe, external and internal. These too, and fuch as these, are the faculties, by

which we improve and increase our stock: and fuch as all these are, fuch muft our knowledge be; for fince human knowledge is nothing else than the perception of the agreement or disagreement, connection or repugnancy of our ideas, those that are fimple must determine the nature of those that are complex; thofe that are complex that of our notions; our notions that of the principles we establish; and that of the principles we establish that of all the confequences we draw from them. Error, in any one step of this gradation, begets error in all that follow: and tho' we compare ever fo exactly, conclude ever fo truly, and in a word, reafon ever so well, our reasoning must terminate in error whenever this happens. It cannot terminate in knowledge. But before I leave this fubject I must go over it again, that I may carry the reflections upon it further.

How inadequate our ideas are to the nature of outward objects, and how imperfect therefore all our knowledge is concerning them, has been observed tranfiently above, and has been too often and too well explained to be over much infifted on by me. That there are fuch objects, material objects, neither spirits nor ideas, and that they aft on one another and on us in various manners, and according to various laws, no man can doubt any more, than he can doubt of that perception, by which he distinguishes their prefence and their absence according to the difference between the ideas they excite in one cafe, and those he retains

in the other. We can doubt of this, I think, no more than we can doubt whether we are free agents, or whether we are neceffarily determined to all we do; no more than we can doubt of many other things of which philofophers have pretended to doubt, or have really doubted: for, either they have meant on many occafions to exercife their wit, and to triumph in the fubtilty of their genius; or they have been transported by over-heated imaginations into a philofophical delirium. The firft have perplexed knowledge more than they have improved it and if the laft have not made many converts whilst they have argued against self-evidence, they have multiplied useless disputes, and mifpent much time.

HERE then, at our first setting out in the furvey of knowledge, we find an immenfe field in which we cannot range, no nor so much as enter beyond the out-skirts of it: the reft is impenetráble to us, and affords not a fingle path to conduct us forward. Could we range in that field, we fhould be unable to walk in our own. I mean, that if our fenfes were able to discover to us the inmost constitutions, and the real effences of outward objects, fuch senses would render us unfit to live and act in the fyftem to which we belong. If the fyftem was not made for us,who pretend on very weak grounds, I think, to be the final cause of it. we at least were made for the fyftem, and for the part we bear among terreftrirl animals. Other creatures there may be, and, I believe readily,

there

୯

there are, who have finer senses than men, as well as fuperior intelligence to apply and improve the ideas they receive by fenfation. The inmoft constitutions, the real effences of all the bodies that furround them, may lie conftantly open to fuch creatures; or they may be able, which is a greater advantage ftill, fo "to frame, and shape "to themselves organs of fenfation, as to fuit "them to their present defign, and the circum"ftances of the object they would confider," according to that supposition, which Mr. Locke calls an extravagant conjecture of his, but which that great man might very reasonably make; fince it affumes no more than this, that fome other creatures are able to do by their natural constitution, and fo as to obtain full and abfolute knowledge, what we are able to do by art very imperfectly, and yet so as to attain a greater degree of partial and relative knowledge, than our fenfes, unaffifted by art, could communicate to us.

BUT be this as it will, concerning which we can only guefs; it is, I think, evident that altho' outward objects make impreffions on the organs of sense, and may be faid therefore to cause sensations, yet these sensations are determined in the whole animal kind, that we know, and to which we belong, according to the conftitutions of the several species; as these constitutions are framed according to the ufes and ends for which each fpecies is defigned, and to which it is directed. Innumerable instances might be brought to illuAtrate,