natural. As far as we can comprehend thinking, thus ideas seem to be produced in our minds; or if not, this may serve to explain their following one another in an habitual train, when once put into a certain track, as well as it does to explain such motions of the body. A musician used to any tune will find the ideas of the notes follow one another, and his fingers strike the keys orderly, without any care or attention. To such associations of ideas may be attributed most of the sympathies and antipathies observable in men, which work as strongly, and produce as regular effects as if they were natural; and are therefore called so, though at first they had no other original than the accidental connexion of two ideas, which either the strength of the first impression, or future indulgence so united, that they afterwards appear in the mind as one idea. Some of our antipathies indeed are truly natural, depending on our original constitution, and born with us; but many which we think natural, might be traced to early impressions of which we took no notice. The name of honey excites immediately ideas of dislike and sickness in the mind of a grown person who has been surfeited with it; but then he knows the origin of this indisposition: had it been given him when a child, the same effects would have followed, but he would have mistaken the cause, and counted the antipathy natural. I do not mention this for the purpose of distinguishing nicely between natural and acquired antipathies, but to prevent the undue connexion of ideas in the minds of young people, who are most susceptible of lasting impressions; and this connexion of ideas tends more than any thing to give a wrong bias to our natural and moral actions, to our passions, reasonings, and notions. The idea of goblins has no more connexion with darkness than light; but if you once raise the two ideas together in the mind of a child, he may never be able to separate them so long as he lives. A man receives an injury

from another, and associates so strongly the ideas of the man and the pain he suffered from him, that he scarcely distinguishes them, but has as much an aversion for the one as for the other; thus slight occasions often beget hatred and continue quarrels. A man

suffers pain in a certain place, and though these ideas have in nature no connexion, yet the idea of the place brings with it that of the pain, and he can as little bear the one as the other.

Reason cannot relieve us from the effects of this combination; and time cures certain affections which reason cannot prevail over. When the death of a child has destroyed the comfort of its mother, the consolations of reason are vain, till time has separated the idea of the enjoyment and its loss, from the idea of the child returning to her memory; and therefore some, in whom the union of these ideas is never dissolved, carry an incurable sorrow to their graves.

A gentleman, who had been cured of madness by a very severe operation, owned the cure to be the greatest obligation he could have received, but could never bear the sight of the operator. Many children so associate the pain of correction with a book at school, that that book ever after is their aversion. Many other instances of the power of the accidental association of ideas to render things disgusting might be enumerated.

Intellectual habits thus contracted are not less frequent and powerful, though less observed. Let custom, from the very childhood, have joined figure, and shape to the idea of God, and what absurdities will that mind be liable to about the Deity! Let the idea of infallibility be inseparably joined to any person, and the existence of one body in two places at the same time shall be believed whenever he dictates it. Some such wrong and unnatural combinations of ideas will be found to establish the irreconcilable opposition between different sects of philosophy and religion; for we must allow some of them at least to pursue truth

sincerely. Some independent ideas then of no alliance to one another, must be so coupled in their minds by education, custom, and the constant din of their party, that they always appear together and operate like one idea. This gives sense to jargon, demonstration to absurdities, and consistency to nonsense; and is the foundation of the greatest, I had almost said, of all the errors in the world. It is at least the most dangerous one, since it hinders men from seeing and examining.

Having thus given an account of our ideas, I intend to show immediately the use made of them by the understanding; but I now find that there is so close a connexion between ideas and words, that it is impossible to speak clearly of our knowlege, which all consists in propositions, without first considering the nature, use, and signification of language.

BOOK III.

CHAPTER I.

Of Words or Language in General.

GOD having designed man for a sensible creature, gave him language, as the great instrument and common tie of society. Man therefore had by nature organs fit to frame articulate sounds, or words; but as these are not sufficient for language, he is enabled to use these sounds as signs of internal conceptions; so that the ideas of men's minds may be mutually communicated. Yet did not this render words sufficiently useful: sounds must not only be the signs of ideas, but must comprehend several particular ideas; for to denote every particular thing by a distinct name, would multiply words so as to perplex their use; wherefore, general terms were invented to make one word denote a multitude of particular existences. This advantageous use of signs was obtained only by the difference of the ideas they were made signs of. words, instead of denoting any ideas, denote the absence of many or all ideas, as in Latin nihil; in English, 'ignorance,' 'barrenness.' We cannot properly say that these negative or privative words signify no. ideas, for then they would be insignificant sounds; but relating to positive ideas, they denote their absence. It may lead us a little towards the original of all our knowlege to remark the great dependence of our words on common sensible ideas; how words derived from obvious sensible ideas are transferred to more abstruse significations, and denote actions and notions quite remote from sense; thus the words 'imagine,'' apprehend,'

Some

disgust,'

'comprehend,'' conceive,' disturbance,' 'tranquillity,' are taken from the operations of sensible things, and applied to modes of thinking. The primary signification of spirit is breath, of angel a messenger: and doubtless, in all languages, names standing for things that fall not under the notice of our senses, originated in sensible ideas. Hence we may guess what kinds of notions they were which filled the minds of the beginners of languages; and how nature, even in the naming of things, suggested to men unawares the originals and principles of all their knowlege. From sensible objects men borrowed words to express the operations of their minds; and these being the only sources of their ideas, they were furnished with all the materials of knowlege. But to understand better the use and force of language, as subservient to knowlege, we shall consider, 1. To what, in the use of language, names are immediately applied. 2. Since all, except proper names, are general, we must consider what the sorts and kinds, that is the species and genera of things, are, wherein they consist, and how they come to be made. By these means we shall better discover the right use of words, the natural advantages and defects of language, and the remedies that ought to be used for avoiding the inconveniences of obscurity or uncertainty in the signification of words; without which it is impossible to discourse with any clearness or order concerning knowlege; for knowlege being conversant about propositions, and those most commonly universal ones, has a greater connexion with words than is perhaps suspected.

CHAPTER II.

Of the Signification of Words.

Though man has a variety of thoughts, from which profit and delight might be received, yet they are all within his own heart invisible to others. The comfort