SECTION II.

To measure rightly our intellectual strength, and to apply it properly, in order neither to impose, nor to be imposed upon, is our point of view. I shall not, therefore, say any thing further about the nature of mind in general, that secret spring of thought, unknown and unknowable, but shall content myself to observe in Mr. Locke's method and with his assistance, something about the phenomena of the human mind, by which we may judge surely of the nature, extent, and reality of human knowledge. I say, we may judge surely of them; because our ideas are the foundations, or the materials, call them which you please, of all our knowledge; because without entering into an inquiry concerning the origin of them, we may know so certainly as to exclude all doubt, what ideas we have; and because, when we know this, we know with the same certainty, what kinds, and degrees of knowledge we have, and are capable of having.

Thus we know that the first ideas, with which the mind is furnished, are received from without, and are caused by such sensations, as the presence of external objects excites in us, according to laws of passion and action, which the Creator has established. What these laws are, and how external objects become able to make such impressions on our organs, we know as little, and it is impossible to know any thing less, as those philosophers do, who have pretended, most extravagantly, to explain these laws, and to account for these impressions; or as those philosophers know of another system, who denying, as extravagantly, that any such power can belong to body, and affirming that it is absurd to talk of passive power, confine all activity and ascribe all such ideas of sensation to spirit alone. We are far from knowing how body acts on body, or spirit on spirit; how body operates on mind, and produces thought, or how mind operates on body, and produces corporeal motion. But this I know, that a leaf of wormwood conveys to my mind, by the sense of sight, and that of touch, for instance, the ideas of color, extension, figure, and solidity, as certainly as I know that it conveys thither, by the sense of taste, the idea of bitter; and as certainly as I know that the act of my mind, called volition, produced the motion of my hand which gathered the leaf. Our ignorance of causes does not hinder our knowledge of effects. This knowledge has been thought sufficient for us, in these cases, by infinite wisdom: and nothing can be more ridiculous than to hear men affirm dogmatically, when they guess at most, and that very wildly, and very precariously.

As these ideas come to us from without, so there are others

that arise in the mind, and proceed from the perception of its own operations, to which a still greater number is to be added, that arise there from the concurrence of these joint causes, from perceptions of outward and inward operations, from external, and internal sense. Perception is the first faculty the mind exerts, and is common, whatever some of the others may be, to us and to the whole animal kind. The faculties that come in play afterwards seem to be active, but this seems to be passive; for we perceive ideas, however raised in the mind, whether we will or no: their esse is percipi, to have them we must perceive that we have them. Without this passive power, or this faculty, external objects might act upon us, but they would act to little purpose, for they would excite no ideas: as, on the other hand, without this action of external objects, the power or faculty of perception would be useless, or rather null, and by consequence all the other powers or faculties of the mind.

There is nothing, philosophically speaking, at least I could never find, to my sorrow, that there is any thing, which obliges us necessarily to conclude that we are a compound of material, and immaterial substance. If we are so, contrary to all appearances, (for they denote plainly one single system, all the parts of which are so intimately connected, and dependent one on another, that the whole begins, proceeds, and ends together,) this union of a body and a soul must be magical indeed, as Doctor Cudworth calls it. So magical, that the hypothesis serves to no purpose in philosophy, whatever it may do in theology, and is still less comprehensible than the hypothesis which assumes that, although our idea of thought be not included in the idea of matter, or body, as the idea of figure is, for instance, in that of limited extension, yet the faculty of thinking, in all the modes of thought, may have been superadded by Omnipotence to certain systems of matter; which it is not less than blasphemy to deny, though divines and philosophers, who deny it in terms, may be cited, and which, whether it be true or no, will never be proved false by a little metaphysical jargon about essences, and attributes, and modes.

But however this may be, concerning which it becomes men little to be as dogmatical as they are on one side of this question at least, and whatever strength and vigor, independent on the body, may be ascribed to the soul, the soul exerts none till it is roused into activity by sense. A jog, a knock, a thrust from without is not knowledge.* No. But, if we did not perceive these jogs, knocks, and thrusts from without, we should remain. just as we came into the world, void even of the first elements

* Cudworth.

of knowledge. Not only the inward, active powers of the mind would be unemployed, but we may say, that they would be nonexistent. The human soul is so far from being furnished with forms and ideas to perceive all things by, or from being impreg nated, I would rather say than printed over, with the seeds of universal knowledge, that we have no ideas till we receive passively the ideas of sensible qualities from without. Then indeed the activity of the soul, or mind commences, and another source of original ideas is opened: for then we acquire ideas from, and by the operations of our minds. Sensation would be of little use to form the understanding, if we had no other faculty than mere passive perception; but without sensation these other faculties would have nothing to operate upon, reflection would have by consequence nothing to reflect upon, and it is by reflection that we multiply our stock 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 say, that "all our ideas arise from our senses, and that there is nothing in the mind which was not previously in sense." But these propositions should not be advanced, perhaps, as generally as they are sometimes by logicians, lest they should lead into error, as maxims are apt to do very often. Sensation is the greater, reflection the smaller source of ideas. But these latter are as clear, and distinct, and convey knowledge that may be said to be more real than the former. Sense gave occasion to them, but they never were in sense properly speaking. They are, if I may say so, of the mind's own growth, the elements of knowledge, more immediate, less relative, and less dependent than sensitive knowledge, as any man will be apt to think, who compares his ideas of remembering, recollecting, bare thought, and intenseness of thought, with those of warm and hot, of cool and cold. Des Cartes might have said, "I see, I hear, I feel, I taste, I smell; therefore I am." But surely he might say too, "I think, I reflect, I will; therefore I am." Let us observe, however, that it belongs only to a great philosopher to frame an argument to prove to himself that he exists, which is an object of intuitive knowledge, and concerning which it is impossible he should have any doubt. In the mouth of any other person, "I think, therefore I am," would be very near akin to I am, therefore I am.*

Thus it will appear when we contemplate our understanding in the first step towards knowledge, that corporeal, animal sense,

* Je ne vois pas que vous ayes eu besoin d'un si grand appareil, puisque d'ailleurs vous etiez dejà certain de votre existence, et que vous pouviez inferer la même chose de quelque autre que ce fut de vos actions, etante manifeste par la lumiere naturelle que tout ce qui agit est, ou existe.-Objec. of Gassendi to the second Medit.

which some philosophers hold in great contempt, and which does not deserve much esteem, communicates to us our first ideas, sets the mind first to work, and becomes, in conjunction with internal sense, by which we perceive what passes within, as by the other what passes without us, the foundation of all our knowledge. This is so evidently true, that even those ideas, about which our reason is employed in the most abstract meditations, may be traced back to this original by a very easy analysis. Since these simple 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 consider these ideas like foundations, they are extremely narrow, and shallow, neither reaching to many things, nor laid deep in the nature of any. If we consider them like materials, for so they may be considered likewise, employed to raise the fabric of our intellectual system, they will appear like mud and straw, and lath, materials to erect some frail, and homely cottage, but not of substance, nor value sufficient for the construction of those enormous piles, from whose lofty towers philosophers would persuade us that they discover all nature subject to their inspection, that they pry into the source of all being, and into the inmost recesses 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 simple ideas, it is necessary, in order to make a true estimate of human knowledge, that we take such 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 should have no ideas without perception, so we should lose them, as fast as we get them, without retention. When it was objected to Des Cartes that, if thought was the essence of the soul, the soul of the child must 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 usual method, one hypothesis by another, and assumed that memory consists in certain traces made on the brain by the thoughts that pass through it, and that as long as they last we remember, but that the brain of the child in the womb being too moist, and too soft to preserve these traces, it is impossible he should remember out of the womb what he thought in it. Thus memory seems to be made purely corporeal by the same philosopher, who makes it on some occasions purely intellectual. He might distinguish two memories by the same hypothetical power, by which he distinguished two substances, that

he might employ one or the other as his system required. If you consult other philosophers on the same subject, you will receive no more satisfaction: and the only reasonable method we can take, is to be content to know intuitively, and by inward observation, not the cause, but the effects of memory, and the use of it in the intellectual system.

By this faculty then, whatever it be, our simple ideas, which have been spoken of already, are preserved with greater, and our complex ideas, which remain to be spoken of, with less facility. Both one and the other require to be frequently raised in mind, and frequently recalled to it. I say, with the rest of the world, to be raised, and to be recalled; but surely these words come very short of expressing the wonderful phenomena of memory. The images that are lodged in it present themselves often to the mind without any fresh sensation, and so spontaneously, that the mind seems as passive in these secondary perceptions, as it was in receiving the first impressions. Our simple ideas, and even our complex ideas and notions, return sometimes of themselves, we know not why, nor 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 design, to put a sort of force on memory, to seize, as it were, the end of some particular line, and to draw back into the mind, a whole set of ideas that seem to be strung to it, or linked one with the other. In general, when images, essences, 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 conscious, but of which we know nothing more, than that the mind performs it. These phenomena are more surprising, and less to be accounted for than the action of external objects on the organs of sense in the first production of ideas, which is an observation that deserves the notice of those philosophers who deny such action because they cannot comprehend it.

But still this faculty is proportioned to our imperfect natures, and therefore weak, slow, and uncertain in its operations. Our simple ideas fade in the mind, or fleet out of it, unless they are frequently renewed: and the most tenacious memory cannot maintain such as are very complex, without the greatest attention, and a constant care, not always with both. All our ideas in general are recalled slowly by some, and successively by every mind. Themistocles was famous, among other parts wherein he excelled, for his memory; but when he refused the offer Simonides made him, it was, I suppose because he did not want the poet's skill to improve his memory, and because he knew