can do; and when misery overtakes him, he will condemn himself for the neglect of it.

To enlarge on the wrong judgments whereby men mislead themselves would make a volume. But whatever neglect of what is in their power may put men out of their way to happiness, it is certain that morality, established on its true foundations, cannot but determine the choice in any one that will consider. And he that will not be so far rational as to reflect seriously on infinite happiness and misery, must condemn himself as not making a right use of his understanding. The rewards and punishments of another life are of weight enough to determine the choice against any pleasure or pain this life can show, when the eternal state is considered but in its bare possibility. He that will allow endless happiness to be but the possible consequence of a good life here, and the contrary the possible reward of a bad one, must judge very much amiss if he does not conclude, that a virtuous life is to be preferred to a vicious one,' though virtue here had nothing but pain, and vice nothing but pleasure; which is yet for the most part quite otherwise. But when infinite happiness is put into one scale against infinite misery in the other; if the worst that comes to the pious man, if he mistakes, be the best that the wicked can attain to, if he be right, who without madness can run the venture? If the good man be right, he is happy; if he mistake, he is not miserable. If the wicked be right, he is not happy; if he mistake, he is miserable. I have said nothing of the certainty or probability of a future state, designing only to show on his own principles the wrong judgment of him who prefers a vicious life while he knows that a future life is at least possible.

To conclude this inquiry, which, as it stood before, I myself from the beginning fearing, and a judicious friend, since the publication, suspecting to have some mistake, I was put on a review of this chapter;

wherein lighting on a scarcely observable slip I had made in putting one seemingly indifferent word for another, that discovery opened to me this present view, which I here submit to the learned world, and which in short is this: Liberty is a power to act or not to act according as the mind directs.' A power to direct the operative faculties to motion or rest is that which we call the will. That which determines the will to any change of operation, is uneasiness accompanied with desire. Desire is always moved by evil to fly from it, because freedom from pain is a necessary part of our happiness: but every good does not constantly move desire, because it may not be taken to make part of our happiness for all we desire is, to be happy. But though this desire of happiness operates invariably, yet the satisfaction of any particular desire can be suspended, till we have examined whether or not the apparent good makes part of our happiness. The result of our judgment determines the man, who could not be free, if his will were determined by any thing but his own mind guided by his own judgment. Liberty by some is placed in an indifferency antecedent to the determination of the will. I wish these persons had told us whether this indifferency be antecedent to the thought and judgment of the understanding, as well as to the decree of the will: for it is hard to state it between them, because the determination of the will immediately follows the judgment of the understanding; and to place liberty in an indifferency, antecedent to the judgment of the understanding, is to place it in a subject incapable of it, no agent being capable of liberty but in consequence of thought and judgment. I am not nice about phrases, and therefore consent to say that liberty is placed in indifferency; but it is an indifferency after the judgment of the understanding, and even the determination of the will; and this indifferency is not of the man (who, having judged, is no

longer indifferent), but an indifferency of the operative powers, which are able to forbear operating after, as before the decree of the will: v. g. I have the ability to move my hand or to let it rest; that operative power is indifferent to move or not to move. In that respect I am free. My will determines the power to rest; I am yet free, because the indifferency of that power, to act or not to act, yet remains: the power of moving my hand is not impaired by the determination which at present orders rest: the indifferency of the power will appear if the will puts it to the trial by ordering the contrary. But if the hand be seized by a palsy, the indifferency is gone, and with it my liberty, and I am under the necessity of letting my hand rest. Or if my hand be put in motion by a convulsion, the indifferency is in that case taken away by motion, and my liberty is lost.

In a former edition of this treatise I gave an account of the ideas of will, volition, liberty, and necessity, according to the light I then had; and now, as a lover of truth, I own some change of opinion, which I think I have discovered ground for.

Before I close this chapter, it may be to our purpose to take a little more exact survey of action. I have said above, that we have ideas but of two sorts of action, viz. motion and thinking. These, though counted actions, will, if nearly considered, not be found to be always perfectly so: for there are instances of both kinds which will be found rather passions than actions. In these instances the substance that has motion or thought receives the impression from without, and acts by the capacity it has to receive such an impression; and such a power is not an active power, but a mere passive capacity in the subject. Sometimes the substance or agent puts itself into action by its own power, and this is properly active power. Whatever modification a substance has, whereby it produces any effect, that is called

action; as a solid substance, by motion, alters the sensible ideas of another substance. Yet this motion is but a passion, if received from some external agent; so that the active power of motion is in no substance which cannot begin motion. So in thinking, a power to receive ideas or thoughts from the operation of any external substance is called a power of thinking: but this is but a passive power. But to be able to bring into view ideas at one's own choice, and to compare which one thinks fit, this is an active power. This reflection may preserve us from some mistakes which grammars and the frame of languages may lead us into; since verbs called active do not always signify action, v. g. I see the moon, or I feel the heat of the sun, though expressed by a verb active, signifies not any action, but the reception of ideas wherein I am barely passive. But when I turn my eyes another way, or remove from the sun-beams, I am active, because, by a power within myself, I put myself into that motion.

And thus I have given a view of our original ideas, from whence all the rest are derived and made up: which may all be reduced to these primary ones, viz. extension, solidity, mobility, which by our senses we receive from body; perceptivity, or the power of thinking; motivity, or the power of moving; which by reflection we receive from our minds. I use these words to avoid the danger of being mistaken in the use of those which are equivocal; 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 may be explained colors, sounds, tastes, smells, and all other ideas. But my present purpose being only to inquire into the knowlege the mind has of things by the ideas and appearances which God has fitted it to receive from them, and how the mind comes by that knowlege, rather than into their causes, I shall not set my

self to inquire into the peculiar constitution of bodies, whereby they produce in us the ideas of their sensible qualities; it sufficing to observe, that gold or saffron has a power to produce in us the idea of yellow; snow and milk, the idea of white; which we can only have by our sight, without examining the figure or motion of the particles which cause in us that particular sensation; though when we go beyond the bare ideas in our minds, we cannot conceive any thing else to be in any 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.

6

Having treated of simple modes, and given instances of some of the most considerable of them, we are now 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 combinations of simple ideas, I have called mixed modes, to distinguish them from simple modes: these mixed modes being also such combinations of simple ideas as are not marks of real beings, but independent ideas put together by the mind, are thereby distinguished from the complex ideas of substances.

That the mind, in receiving its simple ideas, is wholly passive, experience shows us; but if we consider the ideas we are now speaking of, we shall find their original quite different. The mind often exercises an active power in making these combinations : for being once furnished with simple ideas, it can make a variety of complex ideas, without examining whether they exist so together in nature. And hence these ideas are called notions, as having their origin more in the thoughts of men than in the reality of things; though I do not deny but several of them