fome fort of creatures, but has also left out others as much infeparable, it judges this to be a perfect complete idea of a fort of things which really it is not; v. g. having joined the ideas of fubftance, yellow, malleable, most heavy, and fufible, it takes that complex idea to be the complete idea of gold, when yet its peculiar fixednefs and folubility in aqua regia are as infeparable from those other ideas or qualities of that body, as they

are from one another.

4. When

judged to reprefent the real effence,

§. 24. Fourthly, the mistake is yet greater, when I judge, that this, complex idea contains in it the real effence of any body exifting, when at least it contains but fome few of thofe properties which flow from its real effence and conftitution. I fay, only fome few of those properties; for thofe properties confifting moftly in the active and paffive powers it has, in reference to other things, all that are vulgarly known of any one body, of which the complex idea of that kind of things is usually made, are but a very few, in comparifon of what a man, that has feveral ways tried and examined it, knows of that one fort of things: and all that the most expert man knows are but a few, in comparison of what are really in that body, and depend on its internal or effential conftitution. The effence of a triangle lies in a very little compafs, confifts in a very few ideas: three lines including a space make up that effence: but the properties that flow from this effence are more than can be eafily known or enumerated. So I imagine it is in substances, their real effences lie in a little compafs, though the properties flowing from that internal conftitution are endless.

falfe.

$. 25. To conclude, a man having no notion of any thing without him, but by Ideas, when the idea he has of it in his mind (which idea he has a power to call by what name he pleases) he may indeed make an idea neither anfwering the reafon of things, nor agreeing to the idea commonly fignified by other people's words; but cannot make a wrong or falfe idea of a thing, which is no otherwise known to him but by the idea he has of it: v. g. when VOL. I E e I frame

Book 2. I frame an idea of the legs, arms, and body of a man, and join to this a horfe's head and neck, I do not make a falfe idea of any thing; because it reprefents nothing without me. But when I call it a man or Tartar, and imagine it to reprefent fome real being without me, or to be the fame idea that others call by the fame name; in either of these cafes I may err. And upon this account it is, that it comes to be termed a falfe idea; though indeed the falfhood lies not in the idea, but in that tacit mental propofition, wherein a conformity and refemblance is attributed to it, which it has not. But yet, if having framed fuch an idea in my mind, without thinking either that existence, or the name man or Tartar, belongs to it, I will call it man or Tartar, I may be justly thought fantaftical in the naming, but not erroneous in my judgment; nor the idea any way falfe.

More properly to be called right or wrong.

§. 26. Upon the whole matter, I think, that our ideas, as they are confidered by the mind, either in reference to the proper

fignification of their names, or in reference to the reality of things, may very fitly be called right or wrong ideas, according as they agree or difagree to those patterns to which they are referred. But if any one had rather call them true or falfe, it is fit he ufe a liberty, which every one has, to call things by those names he thinks beft; though, in propriety of speech, truth or falfhood, will, I think, fcarce agree to them, but as they, fome way or other, virtually contain in them fome mental propofition. The ideas that are in a man's mind, fimply confidered, cannot be wrong, unless complex ones, wherein inconfiftent parts are jumbled together. All other ideas are in themselves right, and the knowledge about them right and true knowledge: but when we come to refer them to any thing, as to their patterns and archetypes, then they are capable of being wrong, as far as they difagree with fuch archetypes.

-СНА Р.

СНА Р. XXXIII.

Of the Affociation of Ideas.

§. 1. THERE is fcarce any one

Something

that does not obferve fomething unreasonable that seems odd to him, and is in itself in most men. really extravagant in the opinions, reafon

ings, and actions of other men. The leaft flaw of this kind, if at all different from his own, every one is quick-fighted enough to efpy in another, and will by the authority of reafon forwardly condemn, though he be guilty of much greater unreasonableness in his own tenets and conduct, which he never perceives, and will very hardly, if at all, be convinced of.

Not wholly

from felf

love.

$. 2. This proceeds not wholly from felf-love, though that has often a great hand in it. Men of fair minds, and not given up to the over-weening of felf-flattery, are frequently guilty of it; and in many cafes one with amazement hears the arguings, and is aftonished at the obftinacy of a worthy man, who yields not to the evidence of reason, though laid before him as clear as day-light.

Not from

§. 3. This fort of unreasonablenefs is ufually imputed to education and preju- education. dice, and for the most part truly enough, though that reaches not the bottom of the disease, nor fhows diftinctly enough whence it rifes, or wherein it lies. Education is often rightly affigned for the cause, and prejudice is a good general name for the thing itfelf: but yet, I think, he ought to look a little farther, who would trace this fort of madnefs to the root it fprings from, and fo explain it, as to fhow whence this flaw has its original in very fober and rational minds, and wherein it confifts.

§. 4. I fhall be pardoned for calling it by fo harsh a name as madness, when it is confidered, that oppofition to reason de

Ee 2

A degree of madness.

ferves

ferves that name, and is really madnefs; and there is fcarce a man fo free from it, but that if he fhould always, on all occafions, argue or do as in fome cafes he Conftantly docs, would not be thought fitter for Bedlam than civil converfation. I do not here mean when he is under the power of an unruly paffion, but in the fteady calm courfe of his life. That which will yet more apologize for this hárfh name, and ungrateful imputation on the greatest part of mankind, is, that inquiring a little by the bye into the nature of madnefs, b. ii. c. xi. §. 13. I found it to fpring from the very fame root, and to depend on the very fame caufe we are here fpeaking of. This confideration of the thing itself, at a time when I thought not the least on the fubject which I am now treating of, fuggefted it to me. And if this be a weaknefs to which all men are fo liable; if this be a taint which fo univerfally infects mankind; the greater care fhould be taken to lay it open under its due name, thereby to excite the greater care in its prevention and cure.

From a

wrong connexion of ideas.

§. 5. Some of our ideas have a natural correfpondence and connexion one with another: it is the office and excellency of our reafon to trace thefe, and hold them together in that union and correfpondence which is founded in their peculiar beings. Befides this, there is another connexion of ideas wholly owing to chance or cuftom: ideas, that in themselves are not all of kin, come to be fo united in fome men's minds, that it is very hard to feparate them; they always keep in company, and the one no fooner at any time comes into the understanding, but its affociate appears with it; and if they are more than two, which are thus united, the whole gang, always infeparable, fhow themselves together.

This connexion how made.

§. 6. This ftrong combination of ideas, not allied by nature, the mind makes in itfelf either voluntarily or by chance; and hence it comes in different men to be very different, according to their different inclinations, education, interests, &c. Custom settles habits of thinking in the

5

und...

understanding, as well as of determining in the will, and of motions in the body; all which feems to be but trains of motion in the animal fpirits, which once fet a-going, continue in the fame fteps they have been used to: which, by often treading, are worn into a smooth path, and the motion in it becomes eafy, and as it were natural. As far as we can comprehend thinking, thus ideas seem to be produced in our minds; or if they are not, this may ferve to explain their following one another in an habitual train, when once they are put into their track, as well as it does to explain fuch motions of the body. A mufician ufed to any tune will find, that let it but once begin in his head, the ideas of the several notes of it will follow one another orderly in his understanding, without any care or attention, as regularly as his fingers move orderly over the keys of the organ to play out the tune he has begun, though his unattentive thoughts be elsewhere a wandering. Whether the natural caufe of thefe ideas, as well as of that regular dancing of his fingers, be the motion of his animal fpirits, I will not determine, how probable foever, by this inftance, it appears to be fo but this may help us a little to conceive of intellectual habits, and of the tying together of ideas.

Some antipa. thies an ef

fect of it.

§. 7. That there are fuch affociations of them made by cuftom in the minds of moft men, I think no-body will queftion, who has well confidered himself or others; and to this, perhaps, might be juftly attributed most of the fympathies and antipathies obfervable in men, which work as strongly, and produce as regular effects as if they were natural; and are therefore called fo, though they at first had no other original but the accidental connexion of two ideas, which either the ftrength of the first impreffion, or future indulgence fo united, that they always afterwards kept company together in that man's mind, as if they were but one idea. I fay moft of the antipathies, I do not fay all, for fome of them are truly natural, depend upon our original conftitution, and are born with us; but a great part of those which are counted natural, would have been known to