sion to break into action, we call it disposition. Thus testiness is a disposition or aptness to be angry. To conclude: Let us examine any modes of action, v. g. consideration and assent, which are actions of the mind; running and speaking, which are actions of the body; revenge and murder, which are actions of both together and we shall find them but so many collections of simple ideas, which together make up the complex ones signified by those names. Several §. 11. Power being the source from whence all action proceeds, the substances words seemwherein these powers are, when they exert ingto signify this power into act, are called causes; and action, sigthe substances which thereupon are pro- effect. nify but the duced, or the simple ideas which are introduced into any subject by the exerting of that power, are called effects. The efficacy whereby the new substance or idea is produced, is called, in the subject exerting that power, action; but in the subject wherein any simple idea is changed or produced, it is called passion: which efficacy however various, and the effects almost infinite, yet we can, I think, conceive it, in intellectual agents, to be nothing else but modes of thinking and willing; in corporeal agents, nothing else but modifications of motion. I say, I think we cannot conceive it to be any other but these two; for whatever sort of action, besides these, produces any effects, I confess myself to have no notion or idea of; and so it is quite remote from my thoughts, apprehensions, and knowledge; and as much in the dark to me as five other senses, or as the ideas of colours to a blind man: and therefore many words, which seem to express some action, signify nothing of the action or modus operandi at all, but barely the effect, with some circumstances of the subject wrought on, or cause operating; v. g. creation, annihilation, contain in them no idea of the action or manner whereby they are produced, but barely of the cause, and the thing done. And when a countryman says the cold freezes water, though the word freezing seems to import some action, yet truly it signifies nothing but the effect, viz. that water that was before fluid is become hard and consistent, without containing any idea of the action whereby it is done. Mixed §. 12. I think I shall not need to remark modes made here, that though power and action make also of other the greatest part of mixed modes, marked ideas. by names, and familiar in the minds and mouths of men; yet other simple ideas, and their several combinations, are not excluded: much less, I think, will it be necessary for me to enumerate all the mixed modes, which have been settled, with names to them. That would be to make a dictionary of the greatest part of the words made use of in divinity, ethicks, law, and politicks, and several other sciences. All that is requisite to my present design, is, to show what sort of ideas those are which I call mixed modes, how the mind comes by them, and that they are compositions made up of simple ideas got from sensation and reflection: which, I suppose, I have done. END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. |