part of this discourse, designing to raise a consistent and uniform edifice, I hope to erect it on such a basis, that I shall not need to shore it up with buttresses leaning on borrowed foundations; or if it prove a castle in the air, I will endeavor that it shall be all of a piece. Wherein I warn the reader not to expect undeniable demonstrations, unless I be allowed the privilege, not seldom assumed by others, to take my principles for granted. All I shall say for the principles I proceed on, is, that I appeal to experience and observation for their truth; and this is enough for a man who only professes to lay down his own conjectures concerning a subject lying somewhat in the dark, without any other design than an inquiry after truth.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

Of Ideas in general, and their Original.

EVERY man being conscious that he thinks, and that which his mind is employed about being the ideas which are there, it is past doubt that men have ideas which are expressed by the words whiteness, hardness, motion, man, &c. The inquiry is, how he comes by them? Having examined the received doctrine, that men have innate ideas, what I have there said will be more freely admitted when I have shown by what ways ideas come into the mind, for which I shall appeal to every one's own experience and observa

tion.

Let us then suppose the mind to be as white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; whence has it all its materials of reason and knowlege? I answer, from experience. Our observation, employed about external sensible objects, or about the internal operations of our minds, supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking.

First, our senses convey to the mind perceptions of things according to the ways in which external objects affect them, and thus we have the ideas of heat, cold, soft, hard, and all sensible qualities. This source of our ideas I call sensation.

Secondly, the perception of the operation of our own minds furnishes the understanding with another set of ideas, such as perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the

or misery which his soul experiences when he is asleep; and if we take away a consciousness of our sensations, it will be hard to know wherein to place personal identity.

If the soul thinks during profound sleep, it must be conscious of its perceptions; but the sleeping man is conscious of nothing of all this. Let us suppose the soul of Castor separated from his body during sleep to think apart, and let it choose for its place of thinking the body of Pollux, who is sleeping without a soul, for if it thinks what Castor is not conscious of, it is no matter what place it thinks in. We have here two bodies with one soul between them, which we will suppose to sleep and wake by turns; the soul still thinking in the waking man, of which the sleeping man is never conscious. Are not Castor and Pollux two persons as distinct as Castor and Hercules? and might not one of them be happy and the other miserable? By the same reason, they make the soul and man two persons, who make the soul think what the man is not conscious of: for no one will make personal identity consist in the soul's being united to the same numerical particles of matter; for then it will be impossible that any man should be the same person two days or moments together.

It will be said that the soul thinks in the soundest sleep, but the memory retains it not. That the soul should be this moment busy in thinking, and the next moment not be able to recollect one jot of those thoughts, is very hard to be conceived. Most men pass a great part of their sleep without dreaming. I knew a man who told me that he had never dreamed till he had a fever, which was about the 25th year of his age.

To think without retaining it for a moment is a useless sort of thinking: the soul is thus no better than a looking-glass, which receives a variety of images, and retains none. Perhaps it will be said, that in a waking man, the body is employed in think

ing, and that traces are left on the brain; but that in a sleeping man the soul thinks apart, and leaves no impression on the body. Not to mention the absurdity of two distinct persons, which follows from this supposition, I answer farther, that what the mind can receive, it may also retain without the body, or the soul has but little advantage in thinking. If it has no memory of its thoughts, and can make no use of its reasonings, to what purpose does it think? Characters drawn on the dust, that the first breath of wind effaces, are as useful as the thoughts of a soul that perish in thinking. And it is hardly to be conceived that the infinitely wise Creator should make so admirable a faculty as the power of thinking to be so uselessly employed, at least a fourth part of its time, as to think constantly without remembering its thoughts, or being useful to itself or others.

It is true we have instances of perception while we are asleep, which for the most part are extravagant and incoherent. Now I would ask, whether the soul, when it thinks apart from the body, acts less rationally than when conjointly with it, or no :-if less rationally, then the soul owes its perfection to the body; if more rationally, it is a wonder that our dreams should be so frivolous, and that the soul should retain none of its more rational meditations.

Those who tell us that the soul always thinks, should tell us what are the ideas of the soul of a child before it receives any by sensation. The dreams of a sleeping man are, as I take it, made up of the waking man's ideas; but it is strange, if the soul has ideas of its own, not derived from sensation or reflection, that it should never retain any of them. If it always thinks, and so had ideas before it received any from the body, it is not to be supposed, but that, during sleep, it recollects its native ideas; which, since the waking man never remembers, we must conclude that the soul remembers something which the man does

their notions of God so low, that no one can imagine that they were taught by a rational man, much less by God himself. Nor does it derogate more from the goodness of God that he hath not furnished us with ideas of himself, than that he hath sent us into the world unclothed: for having faculties to attain these, it is want of industry in us, not of bounty in him, if we have them not. It is as certain that there is a God as that the opposite angles made by two straight lines are equal. No rational creature can fail to assent to the truth of these propositions; but this universal consent proves not the idea of God, any more than it does the idea of such angles, innate.

Since then the idea of God is not innate, scarcely any other can pretend to be so; for if God had set any impression on the understanding, it is most reasonable to expect it should have been some idea of himself.

There is another idea which would be of use for men to have, and that is the idea of substance, which we cannot have by sensation or reflection; but by which we signify an uncertain supposition of we know not what idea, which we take to be the substratum or support of those ideas we do know.

Whatever we talk of innate principles, it may as well be said, that a man hath 1007. in his pocket, yet be denied that he hath any one coin out of which the sum is made up, as to think that propositions are innate, when the ideas about which they are cannot be supposed to be so. The assent given to propositions does not prove their ideas innate. Every one that hath an idea of God and worship will assent to the proposition, that God ought to be worshipped;' but such an assent on hearing, no more proves the ideas to be innate, than it does that one born blind had the innate ideas of sun and light, of saffron and yellow, because when his sight is cleared he will assent to the proposition, that the sun is lucid, or that saffron is yellow.