thereby mediately affect our senses, as regularly as its sensible
qualities do it immediately: v. g. we immediately by our senses perceive
in fire its heat and colour; which are, if rightly considered, nothing
but powers in it to produce those ideas in US: we also by our senses
perceive the colour and brittleness of charcoal, whereby we come by the
knowledge of another power in fire, which it has to change the colour
and consistency of WOOD. By the former, fire immediately, by the latter,
it mediately discovers to us these several powers; which therefore we
look upon to be a part of the qualities of fire, and so make them a part
of the complex idea of it. For al those powers that we take cognizance
of, terminating only in the alteration of some sensible qualities in
those subjects on which they operate, and so making them exhibit to us
new sensible ideas, therefore it is that I have reckoned these powers
amongst the simple ideas which make the complex ones of the sorts of
substances; though these powers considered in themselves, are truly
complex ideas. And in this looser sense I crave leave to be understood,
when I name any of these POTENTIALITIES among the simple ideas which we
recollect in our minds when we think of PARTICULAR SUBSTANCES. For the
powers that are severally in them are necessary to be considered, if we
will have true distinct notions of the several sorts of substances.
8. And why.
Nor are we to wonder that powers make a great part of our complex ideas
of substances; since their secondary qualities are those which in most
of them serve principally to distinguish substances one from another,
and commonly make a considerable part of the complex idea of the several
sorts of them. For, our senses failing us in the discovery of the bulk,
texture, and figure of the minute parts of bodies, on which their real
constitutions and differences depend, we are fain to make use of their
secondary qualities as the characteristical notes and marks whereby to
frame ideas of them in our minds, and distinguish them one from another:
al which secondary qualities, as has been shown, are nothing but bare
powers. For the colour and taste of opium are, as wel as its soporific
or anodyne virtues, mere powers, depending on its primary qualities,
whereby it is fitted to produce different operations on different parts
of our bodies.
9. Three sorts of Ideas make our complex ones of Corporeal Substances.
The ideas that make our complex ones of corporeal substances, are of
these three sorts. First, the ideas of the primary qualities of things,
which are discovered by our senses, and are in them even when we
perceive them not; such are the bulk, figure, number, situation, and
motion of the parts of bodies; which are really in them, whether we
take notice of them or not. Secondly, the sensible secondary qualities,
which, depending on these, are nothing but the powers those substances
have to produce several ideas in us by our senses; which ideas are not
in the things themselves, otherwise than as anything is in its cause.
Thirdly, the aptness we consider in any substance, to give or receive
such alterations of primary qualities, as that the substance so altered
should produce in us different ideas from what it did before; these are
called active and passive powers: all which powers, as far as we have
any notice or notion of them, terminate only in sensible simple ideas.
For whatever alteration a loadstone has the power to make in the minute
particles of iron, we should have no notion of any power it had at al
to operate on iron, did not its sensible motion discover it: and I doubt
not, but there are a thousand changes, that bodies we daily handle have
a power to cause in one another, which we never suspect, because they
never appear in sensible effects.
10. Powers thus make a great Part of our complex Ideas of particular
Substances.
POWERS therefore justly make a great part of our complex ideas of
substances. He that will examine his complex idea of gold, wil find
several of its ideas that make it up to be only powers; as the power of
being melted, but of not spending itself in the fire; of being dissolved
in AQUA REGIA, are ideas as necessary to make up our complex idea of
gold, as its colour and weight: which, if duly considered, are also
nothing but different powers. For, to speak truly, yellowness is not
actually in gold, but is a power in gold to produce that idea in us by
our eyes, when placed in a due light: and the heat, which we cannot
leave out of our ideas of the sun, is no more really in the sun, than
the white colour it introduces into wax. These are both equally powers
in the sun, operating, by the motion and figure of its sensible parts,
so on a man, as to make him have the idea of heat; and so on wax, as to
make it capable to produce in a man the idea of white.
11. The now secondary Qualities of Bodies would disappear, if we could
discover the primary ones of their minute Parts.
Had we senses acute enough to discern the minute particles of bodies,
and the real constitution on which their sensible qualities depend, I
doubt not but they would produce quite different ideas in us: and that
which is now the yellow colour of gold, would then disappear, and
instead of it we should see an admirable texture of parts, of a certain
size and figure. This microscopes plainly discover to us; for what to
our naked eyes produces a certain colour, is, by thus augmenting the
acuteness of our senses, discovered to be quite a different thing; and
the thus altering, as it were, the proportion of the bulk of the minute
parts of a coloured object to our usual sight, produces different ideas
from what it did before. Thus, sand or pounded glass, which is opaque,
and white to the naked eye, is pel ucid in a microscope; and a hair
seen in this way, loses its former colour, and is, in a great measure,
pellucid, with a mixture of some bright sparkling colours, such as
appear from the refraction of diamonds, and other pellucid bodies.
Blood, to the naked eye, appears al red; but by a good microscope,
wherein its lesser parts appear, shows only some few globules of red,
swimming in a pellucid liquor, and how these red globules would appear,
if glasses could be found that could yet magnify them a thousand or ten
thousand times more, is uncertain.
12. Our Faculties for Discovery of the Qualities and powers of
Substances suited to our State.
The infinite wise Contriver of us, and all things about us, hath fitted
our senses, faculties, and organs, to the conveniences of life, and the
business we have to do here. We are able, by our senses, to know and
distinguish things: and to examine them so far as to apply them to our
uses, and several ways to accommodate the exigences of this life. We
have insight enough into their admirable contrivances and wonderful
effects, to admire and magnify the wisdom, power and goodness of
their Author. Such a knowledge as this which is suited to our present
condition, we want not faculties to attain. But it appears not that God
intended we should have a perfect, clear, and adequate knowledge of
them: that perhaps is not in the comprehension of any finite being. We
are furnished with faculties (dull and weak as they are) to discover
enough in the creatures to lead us to the knowledge of the Creator, and
the knowledge of our duty; and we are fitted well enough with abilities
to provide for the conveniences of living: these are our business in
this world. But were our senses altered, and made much quicker and
acuter, the appearance and outward scheme of things would have quite
another face to us; and, I am apt to think, would be inconsistent with
our being, or at least wel being, in the part of the universe which we
inhabit. He that considers how little our constitution is able to bear
a remove into part of this air, not much higher than that we commonly
breathe in, will have reason to be satisfied, that in this globe of
earth allotted for our mansion, the all-wise Architect has suited our
organs, and the bodies that are to affect them, one to another. If our
sense of hearing were but a thousand times quicker than it is, how would
a perpetual noise distract us. And we should in the quietest retirement
be less able to sleep or meditate than in the middle of a sea-fight.
Nay, if that most instructive of our senses, seeing, were in any man a
thousand or a hundred thousand times more acute than it is by the best
microscope, things several millions of times less than the smallest
object of his sight now would then be visible to his naked eyes, and so
he would come nearer to the discovery of the texture and motion of the
minute parts of corporeal things; and in many of them, probably get
ideas of their internal constitutions: but then he would be in a quite
different world from other people: nothing would appear the same to him
and others: the visible ideas of everything would be different. So that
I doubt, whether he and the rest of men could discourse concerning
the objects of sight, or have any communication about colours, their
appearances being so wholly different. And perhaps such a quickness and
tenderness of sight could not endure bright sunshine, or so much as open
daylight; nor take in but a very small part of any object at once,
and that too only at a very near distance. And if by the help of such
MICROSCOPICAL EYES (if I may so call them) a man could penetrate further
than ordinary into the secret composition and radical texture of bodies,
he would not make any great advantage by the change, if such an acute
sight would not serve to conduct him to the market and exchange; if he
could not see things he was to avoid, at a convenient distance; nor
distinguish things he had to do with by those sensible qualities others
do. He that was sharp-sighted enough to see the configuration of the
minute particles of the spring of a clock, and observe upon what
peculiar structure and impulse its elastic motion depends, would no
doubt discover something very admirable: but if eyes so framed could not
view at once the hand, and the characters of the hour-plate, and thereby
at a distance see what o'clock it was, their owner could not be much
benefited by that acuteness; which, whilst it discovered the secret
contrivance of the parts of the machine, made him lose its use.
13. Conjecture about the corporeal organs of some Spirits.
And here give me leave to propose an extravagant conjecture of mine,
viz. That since we have some reason (if there be any credit to be given
to the report of things that our philosophy cannot account for) to
imagine, that Spirits can assume to themselves bodies of different bulk,
figure, and conformation of parts--whether one great advantage some of
them have over us may not lie in this, that they can so frame and shape
to themselves organs of sensation or perception, as to suit them to
their present design, and the circumstances of the object they would
consider. For how much would that man exceed all others in knowledge,
who had but the faculty so to alter the structure of his eyes, that one
sense, as to make it capable of all the several degrees of vision which
the assistance of glasses (casually at first lighted on) has taught us
to conceive? What wonders would he discover, who could so fit his eyes
to all sorts of objects, as to see when he pleased the figure and motion
of the minute particles in the blood, and other juices of animals, as
distinctly as he does, at other times, the shape and motion of the
animals themselves? But to us, in our present state, unalterable organs,
so contrived as to discover the figure and motion of the minute parts of
bodies, whereon depend those sensible qualities we now observe in them,
would perhaps be of no advantage. God has no doubt made them so as
is best for us in our present condition. He hath fitted us for the
neighbourhood of the bodies that surround us, and we have to do with;
and though we cannot, by the faculties we have, attain to a perfect
knowledge of things, yet they will serve us wel enough for those ends
above-mentioned, which are our great concernment. I beg my reader's
pardon for laying before him so wild a fancy concerning the ways of
perception of beings above us; but how extravagant soever it be, I doubt
whether we can imagine anything about the knowledge of angels but after
this manner, some way or other in proportion to what we find and observe
in ourselves. And though we cannot but allow that the infinite power and
wisdom of God may frame creatures with a thousand other faculties and
ways of perceiving things without them than what we have, yet our
thoughts can go no further than our own: so impossible it is for us
to enlarge our very guesses beyond the ideas received from our own
sensation and reflection. The supposition, at least, that angels do
sometimes assume bodies, needs not startle us; since some of the most
ancient and most learned Fathers of the church seemed to believe that
they had bodies: and this is certain, that their state and way of
existence is unknown to us.
14. Our specific Ideas of Substances.
But to return to the matter in hand,--the ideas we have of substances,
and the ways we come by them. I say, our SPECIFIC ideas of substances
are nothing else but A COLLECTION OF CERTAIN NUMBER OF SIMPLE IDEAS,
CONSIDERED AS UNITED IN ONE THING. These ideas of substances, though
they are commonly simple apprehensions, and the names of them simple
terms, yet in effect are complex and compounded. Thus the idea which an
Englishman signifies by the name swan, is white colour, long neck, red
beak, black legs, and whole feet, and all these of a certain size, with
a power of swimming in the water, and making a certain kind of noise,
and perhaps, to a man who has long observed this kind of birds, some
other properties: which all terminate in sensible simple ideas, all
united in one common subject.
15. Our Ideas of spiritual Substances, as clear as of bodily Substances.
Besides the complex ideas we have of material sensible substances, of
which I have last spoken,--by the simple ideas we have taken from those
operations of our own minds, which we experiment daily in ourselves,
as thinking, understanding, willing, knowing, and power of beginning
motion, &c., co-existing in some substance, we are able to frame the
COMPLEX IDEA OF AN IMMATERIAL SPIRIT. And thus, by putting together the
ideas of thinking, perceiving, liberty, and power of moving themselves
and other things, we have as clear a perception and notion of immaterial
substances as we have of material. For putting together the ideas of
thinking and willing, or the power of moving or quieting corporeal
motion, joined to substance, of which we have no distinct idea, we have
the idea of an immaterial spirit; and by putting together the ideas of
coherent solid parts, and a power of being moved joined with substance,
of which likewise we have no positive idea, we have the idea of matter.
The one is as clear and distinct an idea as the other: the idea of
thinking, and moving a body, being as clear and distinct ideas as the
ideas of extension, solidity, and being moved. For our idea of substance
is equal y obscure, or none at all, in both: it is but a supposed I know
not what, to support those ideas we call accidents. It is for want of
reflection that we are apt to think that our senses show us nothing but
material things. Every act of sensation, when duly considered, gives us
an equal view of both parts of nature, the corporeal and spiritual. For
whilst I know, by seeing or hearing, &c., that there is some corporeal
being without me, the object of that sensation, I do more certainly
know, that there is some spiritual being within me that sees and hears.
This, I must be convinced, cannot be the action of bare insensible
matter; nor ever could be, without an immaterial thinking being.
16. No Idea of abstract Substance either in Body or Spirit.
By the complex idea of extended, figured, coloured, and all other
sensible qualities, which is al that we know of it, we are as far from
the idea of the substance of body, as if we knew nothing at all: nor
after all the acquaintance and familiarity which we imagine we have with
matter, and the many qualities men assure themselves they perceive and
know in bodies, wil it perhaps upon examination be found, that they
have any more or clearer primary ideas belonging to body, than they have
belonging to immaterial spirit.
17. Cohesion of solid parts and Impulse, the primary ideas peculiar to
Body.
The primary ideas we have PECULIAR TO BODY, as contradistinguished to
spirit, are the COHESION OF SOLID, AND CONSEQUENTLY SEPARABLE, PARTS,
and a POWER OF COMMUNICATING MOTION BY IMPULSE. These, I think, are
the original ideas proper and peculiar to body; for figure is but the
consequence of finite extension.
18. Thinking and Motivity
The ideas we have belonging and PECULIAR TO SPIRIT, are THINKING, and
WILL, or A POWER OF PUTTING BODY INTO MOTION BY THOUGHT, AND, WHICH
IS CONSEQUENT TO IT, LIBERTY. For, as body cannot but communicate its
motion by impulse to another body, which it meets with at rest, so the
mind can put bodies into motion, or forbear to do so, as it pleases. The
ideas of EXISTENCE, DURATION, and MOBILITY, are common to them both.
19. Spirits capable of Motion.
There is no reason why it should be thought strange that I make mobility
belong to spirit; for having no other idea of motion, but change of
distance with other beings that are considered as at rest; and finding
that spirits, as well as bodies, cannot operate but where they are; and
that spirits do operate at several times in several places, I cannot but
attribute change of place to all finite spirits: (for of the Infinite
Spirit I speak not here). For my soul, being a real being as well as my
body, is certainly as capable of changing distance with any other
body, or being, as body itself; and so is capable of motion. And if
a mathematician can consider a certain distance, or a change of that
distance between two points, one may certainly conceive a distance and a
change of distance, between two spirits; and so conceive their motion,
their approach or removal, one from another.
20. Proof of this.
Every one finds in himself that his soul can think wil, and operate on
his body in the place where that is, but cannot operate on a body, or in
a place, an hundred miles distant from it. Nobody can imagine that his
soul can think or move a body at Oxford, whilst he is at London; and
cannot but know, that, being united to his body, it constantly changes
place all the whole journey between Oxford and London, as the coach or
horse does that carries him, and I think may be said to be truly al
that while in motion or if that will not be allowed to afford us a clear
idea enough of its motion, its being separated from the body in death, I
think, will; for to consider it as going out of the body, or leaving it,
and yet to have no idea of its motion, seems to me impossible.
21. God immoveable because infinite.
If it be said by any one that it cannot change place, because it hath
none, for the spirits are not IN LOCO, but UBI; I suppose that way of
talking wil not now be of much weight to many, in an age that is not
much disposed to admire, or suffer themselves to be deceived by such
unintelligible ways of speaking. But if any one thinks there is any
sense in that distinction, and that it is applicable to our present
purpose, I desire him to put it into intelligible English; and then from
thence draw a reason to show that immaterial spirits are not capable of
motion. Indeed motion cannot be attributed to God; not because he is an
immaterial, but because he is an infinite spirit.
22. Our complex idea of an immaterial Spirit and our complex idea of
Body compared.
Let us compare, then, our complex idea of an immaterial spirit with our
complex idea of body, and see whether there be any more obscurity in one
than in the other, and in which most. Our idea of BODY, as I think, is
AN EXTENDED SOLID SUBSTANCE, CAPABLE OF COMMUNICATING MOTION BY
IMPULSE:
and our idea of SOUL, AS AN IMMATERIAL SPIRIT, is of A SUBSTANCE THAT
THINKS, AND HAS A POWER OF EXCITING MOTION IN BODY, BY WILLING, OR
THOUGHT. These, I think, are our complex ideas of soul and body, as
contradistinguished; and now let us examine which has most obscurity in
it, and difficulty to be apprehended. I know that people whose thoughts
are immersed in matter, and have so subjected their minds to their
senses that they seldom reflect on anything beyond them, are apt to say,
they cannot comprehend a THINKING thing which perhaps is true: but I
affirm, when they consider it wel , they can no more comprehend an
EXTENDED thing.
23. Cohesion of solid Parts in Body as hard to be conceived as thinking
in a Soul.
If any one says he knows not what it is thinks in him, he means he knows
not what the substance is of that thinking thing: No more, say I, knows
he what the substance is of that solid thing. Further, if he says he
knows not how he thinks, I answer, Neither knows he how he is extended,
how the solid parts of body are united or cohere together to make
extension. For though the pressure of the particles of air may account
for the cohesion of several parts of matter that are grosser than the
particles of air, and have pores less than the corpuscles of air, yet
the weight or pressure of the air wil not explain, nor can be a cause
of the coherence of the particles of air themselves. And if the pressure
of the aether, or any subtiler matter than the air, may unite, and hold
fast together, the parts of a particle of air, as wel as other bodies,
yet it cannot make bonds for ITSELF, and hold together the parts that
make up every the least corpuscle of that MATERIA SUBTILIS. So that that
hypothesis, how ingeniously soever explained, by showing that the parts
of sensible bodies are held together by the pressure of other external
insensible bodies, reaches not the parts of the aether itself; and by
how much the more evident it proves, that the parts of other bodies are
held together by the external pressure of the aether, and can have no
other conceivable cause of their cohesion and union, by so much the more
it leaves us in the dark concerning the cohesion of the parts of the
corpuscles of the aether itself: which we can neither conceive without
parts, they being bodies, and divisible, nor yet how their parts cohere,
they wanting that cause of cohesion which is given of the cohesion of
the parts of al other bodies.
24. Not explained by an ambient fluid.
But, in truth, the pressure of any ambient fluid, how great soever, can
be no intelligible cause of the cohesion of the solid parts of matter.
For, though such a pressure may hinder the avulsion of two polished
superficies, one from another, in a line perpendicular to them, as in
the experiment of two polished marbles; yet it can never in the least
hinder the separation by a motion, in a line parallel to those surfaces.
Because the ambient fluid, having a ful liberty to succeed in each
point of space, deserted by a lateral motion, resists such a motion of
bodies, so joined, no more than it would resist the motion of that body
were it on al sides environed by that fluid, and touched no other body;
and therefore, if there were no other cause of cohesion, all parts of
bodies must be easily separable by such a lateral sliding motion. For if
the pressure of the aether be the adequate cause of cohesion, wherever
that cause operates not, there can be no cohesion. And since it cannot
operate against a lateral separation, (as has been shown,) therefore in
every imaginary plane, intersecting any mass of matter, there could
be no more cohesion than of two polished surfaces, which will always,