things signified by ideas; for he that thinks, must have some immediate object of his mind in thinking: i. e. must have ideas.

"But whether it be the name or the thing; ideas in sound, or ideas in signification; that your lordship apprehends may be of dangerous consequence to that article of faith which your lordship endeavours to defend; it seems to me, I will not say a new way of reasoning (for that belongs to me), but were it not your lordship's, I should think it a very extraordinary way of reasoning, to write against a book, wherein your lordship acknowledges they are not used to bad purposes, nor employed to do mischief; only because you find that ideas are, by those who oppose your lordship, employed to do mischief; and so apprehend they may be of dangerous consequence to the article your lordship has engaged in the defence of. For whether ideas as terms, or ideas as the immediate objects of the mind, signified by those terms, may be, in your lordship's apprehension, of dangerous consequences to that article ; I do not see how your lordship's writing against the notions of ideas, as stated in my book, will at all hinder your opposers from employing them in doing mischief, as before.

"However, be that as it will, so it is, that your lordship apprehends these new terms, these ideas with which the world hath, of late, been so strongly amused (though at last they come to be only common notions of things, as your lordship owns), may be of dangerous consequence to that article.

"My lord, if any, in answer to your lordship's sermons, and in other pamphlets, wherein your lordship complains they have talked so much of ideas, have been troublesome to your lordship with that term; it is not strange that your lordship should be tired with that sound; but how natural soever it be to our weak constitutions, to be offended with any sound, wherewith an importunate din hath been made about our ears; yet, my lord, I know your lordship has a better opinion of the articles of our faith, than to think any of them can be overturned, or so much as shaken, with a breath formed into any sound or term whatsoever. "Names are but the arbitrary marks of conception; and so they be sufficiently appropriated to them in their use. I know no other difference any of them have in particular, but as they are of easy or difficult pronunciation, and of a more or less pleasant sound; and what particular antipathies there may be in men, to some of them upon that account, it is not easy to be foreseen. This I am sure, no term whatsoever, in itself, bears, one more than another, any opposition to the truth of any kind; they are only propositions that do, or can, oppose the truth of any article or doctrine: and thus no term is privileged from being set in opposition to truth. "There is no word to be found, which may not be brought into a proposition, wherein the most sacred and most evident truths may be opposed; but that is not a fault in the term, but him that uses it. And, therefore, I cannot easily persuade myself (whatever your lordship hath said in the heat of your concern) that you have bestowed so much pains upon my book, because the word idea is so much used there. For though upon my saying, in my chapter about the existence of God, that I scarce use the word idea in that chapter,' your lordship wishes that I had done so quite through my book. Yet I must rather look upon that as a compliment to me, wherein your lordship wished, that my book had been all through suited to vulgar readers, not used to that and the like terms, than that your lordship has such an apprehension of the word idea; or that there is any such harm in the use of it, instead of the word notion (with which your lordship seems to take it to agree in signification) that your lordship would think it worth your while to spend any part of your valuable time and thoughts about my book, for having the word idea so often in it; for this would be to make your lordship to write only against an impropriety of speech. I own to your lordship, it is a great condescension in your lordship to have done it, if that word have such a share in what your lordship has writ against my book, as some expressions would persuade one; and I would, for the satisfaction of your lordship, change the term of idea for a better, if your lordship, or any one, could help me to it. For, that notion will not so well stand for every immediate object of the mind in thinking, as idea does, I have (as I guess) somewhere given a reason in my book, by shewing that the term notion is more peculiarly appropriated to a certain sort of those objects, which I call mixed modes; and, I think, it would not sound altogether so well, to say, the notion of red, and the notion of a horse; as the idea of red, and the idea of a horse. But if any one thinks it will, I contend not: for I have no fondness for, no antipathy to, any particular articulate sounds: nor do I think there is any spell or fascination in any of them.

"But be the word idea proper or improper, I do not see bow it is the better or the worse, because ill-men have made use of it, or because it has been made use of to bad purposes; for if that be a reason to condemn or lay it by, we must lay by the terms, scripture, reason, perception, distinct, clear, &c. Nay, the name of God himself will not escape; for I do not think any one of these, or any other term, can be produced, which hath not been made use of by such men, and to such purposes. And, therefore, if the Unitarians, in their late pamphlets, have talked very much of, and strangely amused the world with, ideas; I cannot believe your lordship will think that word one jot the worse, or the more dangerous, because they use it; any more than, for their use of them, you will think reason or scripture terms ill or

B

dangerous. And, therefore, what your lordship says, in the bottom of this 93d page, that I might have enjoyed the satisfaction of my ideas long enough before your lordship had taken notice of them, unless you had found them employed in doing mischief, will, I presume, when your lordship has considered again of this matter, prevail with your lordship to let me enjoy still the satisfaction I take in my ideas, i. e. as much satisfaction as I can take in so small a matter, as is the using of a proper term, notwithstanding it should be employed by others in doing mischief.

"For, my lord, if I should leave it wholly out of my book, and substitute the word notion every where in the room of it; and every body else should do so too (though your lordship does not, I suppose, suspect that I have the vanity to think they would follow my example), my book would, it seems, be the more to your lordship's liking; but I do not see how this would one jot abate the mischief your lordship complains of. For the Unitarians might as much employ notions, as they do now ideas, to do mischief; unless they are such fools to think they conjure with this notable word idea; and that the force of what they say, lies in the sound, and not in the signification of their terms.

"This I am sure of, that the truths of the Christian religion can be no more battered by one word than another; nor can they be beaten down or endangered by any sound whatsoever. And I am apt to flatter myself, that your lordship is satisfied that there is no harm in the word ideas, because you say, you should not have taken any notice of my ideas, if the enemies of our faith had not taken up my new way of ideas, as an effectual battery against the mysteries of the Christian faith. In which place, by new way of ideas, nothing, I think, can be construed to be meant, but my expressing myself by that of ideas, and not by other more common words, and of ancienter standing in the English language.".

As to the objection of the author's way by ideas being a new way, he thus answers: My new way by ideas, or my way by ideas, which often occurs in your lordship's letter, is, I confess a very large and doubtful expression; and may, in the full latitude, comprehend my whole essay; because, treating in it of the understanding, which is nothing but the faculty of thinking, I could not well treat of that faculty of the mind which consists in thinking, without considering the immediate objects of the mind in thinking, which I call ideas; and, therefore in treating of the understanding, I guess it will not be thought strange, that the greatest part of my book has been taken up in considering what these objects of the mind, in thinking, are; whence they come; what use the mind makes of them, in its several ways of thinking; and what are the outward marks, whereby it signifies them to others, or records them for its own use. And this, in short, is my way by ideas, that which your lordship calls my new way by ideas; which, my lord, if it be new, it is but a new history of an old thing. For I think it will not be doubted, that men always performed the actions of thinking, reasoning, believing, and knowing, just after the same manner that they do now; though whether the same account has heretofore been given of the way how they performed these actions, or wherein they consisted, I do not know. Were I as well read as your lordship, I should have been safe from that gentle reprimand of your lordship's, for thinking my way of ideas new, for want of looking into other men's thoughts, which appear in their books.

"Your lordship's words, as an acknowledgment of your instructions in the case, and as a warning to others, who will be so bold adventurers as to spin any thing barely out of their own thoughts, I shall set down at large; and they run thus: whether you took this way of ideas from the modern philosopher mentioned by you, is not at all material; but I intended no reflection upon you in it (for that you mean by my commending you as a scholar of so great a master). I never meant to take from you the honour of your own inventions; and I do believe you, when you say, that you wrote from your own thoughts, and the ideas you had there. But many things may seem new to one that converses only with his own thoughts, which really are not so; as he may find, when he looks into the thoughts of other men, which appear in their books. And therefore, although I have a just esteem for the invention of such, who can spin volumes barely out of their own thoughts; yet I am apt to think they would oblige the world more, if, after they had thought so much themselves, they would examine what thoughts others have had before them, concerning the same things; that so those may not be thought their own inventions which are common to themselves and others. If a man should try all the magnetical experiments himself, and publish them as his own thoughts, he might take himself to be the inventor of them. But he that examines them with what Gilbert and others have done before him, will not diminish the praise of his diligence, but may wish he had compared his thoughts with other men's; by which the world would receive greater advantage, although he lost the honour of being an original.

"To alleviate my fault herein, I agree with your lordship, that many things may seem new to one that converses only with his own thoughts, which really are not so: but I must crave leave to suggest to your lordship, that if in the spinning of them out of his own thoughts, they seem new to him, he is certainly the inventor of them; and they may as justly be thought his own invention, as any one's; and he is certainly the inventor of them, as any one who thought on them before him: the distinction of invention, or not invention,

lying not in thinking first, or not first, but in borrowing, or not borrowing, our thoughts from another; and he to whom, spinning them out of his own thoughts, they seem new, could not certainly borrow them from another. So he truly invented printing in Europe, who, without any communication with the Chinese, spun it out of his own thoughts; though it was never so true, that the Chinese had the use of printing, nay of printing in the very same way, among them, many ages before him. So that he that spins any thing out of his own thoughts, that seems new to him, cannot cease to think it his own invention, should he examine ever so far, what thoughts others have had before him, concerning the same thing, and should find by examining, that they had the same thoughts too.

"But what great obligation this would be to the world, or weighty case of turning over and looking into books, I confess I do not see. The great end to me, in conversing with my own or other men's thoughts, in matters of speculation, is to find truth, without being much concerned whether my own spinning of it out of mine, or their spinning it out of their own thoughts, helps me to it. And how little I affect the honour of an original, may be seen at that place of my book, where, if any where, that itch of vain glory was likeliest to have shewn itself, had I been so over-run with it as to need a cure. It is where I speak of certainty, in these following words, taken notice of by your lordship, in another place: ‘I think I have shewn wherein it is that certainty, real certainty, consists, which, whatever it was to others, was, I confess, to me, heretofore, one of those desiderata which I found great want of.' "Here, my lord, however new this seemed to me, and the more so because possibly I had in vain hunted for it in the books of others; yet I spoke of it as new, only to myself; leaving others in the undisturbed possession of what, either by invention, or reading, was theirs before; without assuming to myself any other honour, but that of my own ignorance, until that time, if others before had shewn wherein certainty lay. And yet, my lord, if I had upon this occasion been forward to assume to myself the honour of an original, I had been pretty safe in it; since I should have had your lordship for my guarantee and vindicator in that point, who are pleased to call it new; and, as such, to write against it.

"And truly, my lord, in this respect, my book has had very unlucky stars, since it hath had the misfortune to displease your lordship, with many things in it for their novelty; as, new way of reasoning; new hypothesis about reason; new sort of certainty; new terms; new way of ideus; new method of certainty, &c. And yet, in other places, your lordship seems to think it worthy in me of your lordship's reflection, for saying but what others have said before; as where I say, ' In the different make of men's tempers, and application of their thoughts, some arguments prevail more on one, and some on another, for the confirmation of the same truth;' your lordship asks, What is this different from what all men of understanding have said?' Again, I take it, your lordship meant not these words for a commendation of my book, where you say, But if no more be meant by The simple ideas that come in by sensation or reflection, and their being the foundation of our knowledge,' but that our notions of things come in, either from our senses, or the exercise of our minds: as there is nothing extraordinary in the discovery, so your lordship is far enough from opposing that, wherein you think all mankind are agreed.

"And again, but what need all this great noise about ideas and certainty, true and real certainty by ideas; if, after all, it comes only to this, that our ideas only represent to us such things, from whence we bring arguments to prove the truth of things?

"But the world has been strangely amused with ideas of late; and we have been told, that strange things might be done by the help of ideas, and yet these ideas, at last, come to be only common notions of things, which we must make use of in our reasoning. And to the like purpose in other places.

"Whether, therefore, at last, your lordship will resolve that it is new or no ; or more faulty by its being new, must be left to your lordship. This I find by it, that my book cannot avoid being condemned on the one side, or the other; nor do I see a possibility to help it. If there be readers that like only new thoughts; or, on the other side, others that can bear nothing but what can be justified by received authorities in print; I must desire them to make themselves amends in that part which they like, for the displeasure they receive in the other but if any should. be so exact, as to find fault with both, truly I know not what to say to them. The case is a plain case; the book is all over nought, and there is not a sentence in it, that is not, either from its iniquity or novelty, to be condemned; and so there is a short end of it. From your lordship indeed, in particular, I can hope for something better; for your lordship thinks the general design of it so good, that this, I flatter myself, would prevail on your lordship to preserve it from the fire.

"But as to the way your lordship thinks I should have taken to prevent the having it thought my invention, when it was common to me with others, it unluckily so fell out, in subjects of my Essay of Human Understanding, that I could not look into the thoughts of other men to inform myself. For my design being, as well as I could, to copy nature, and to give an account of the operations of the mind in thinking, I could look into nobody's understanding but my own, to see how it wrought; nor have a prospect into other men's minds, to view their thoughts there; and observe what steps and motions they took, and

by what gradations, they proceeded in their acquainting themselves with truth, and their advance in knowledge: what we find of their thoughts in books, is but the result of this; and not the progress and working of their minds, in coming to the opinions and conclusions they set down and published.

All, therefore, that I can say of my book is, that it is a copy of my own mind, in its several ways of operation. And all that I can say for the publishing of it, is, that I think the intellectual faculties are made, and operate alike in most men; and that some that I shewed it to before I published it, liked it so well, that I was confirmed in that opinion. And, therefore, if it should happen that it should not be so, but that some men should have ways of thinking, reasoning, or arriving at certainty, different from others, and above those that I find my mind to use and acquiesce in, I do not see of what use my book can be to them. I can only make it my humble request, in my own name, and in the name of those that are of my size, who find their minds work, reason, and know in the same low way that mine does, that those men of a more happy genius would shew us the way of their nobler flights; and particularly would discover to us their shorter or surer way to certainty, than by ideas, and the observing their agreement or disagreement.

Your lordship adds,' But now it seems, nothing is intelligible but what suits with the new ways of ideas.' My lord, the new way of ideas, and the old way of speaking intelligibly,a was always, and ever will be, the same: and if I may take the liberty to declare my sense of it, herein it consists, 1. That a man use no words but such as he makes the sign of certain determined objects of his mind in thinking, which he can make known to another. 2. Next, That he use the same word steadily for the sign of the same immediate object of his mind in thinking. 3. That he join those words together in propositions, according to the grammatical rules of that language he speaks in. 4. That he unite those sentences into a coberent discourse. Thus, and thus only, I humbly conceive any one may preserve himself from the confines and suspicion of jargon, whether he pleases to call those immediate objects of his mind, which his words do, or should stand for, ideas or no."

a Mr. Locke's Third Letter to the Bishop of Worcester.

CHAP. II.

NO INNATE PRINCIPLES IN THE MIND.

§ 1. The way shewn how we come by any knowledge, sufficient to prove it not innate.-It is an established opinion amongst some men, that there are in the understanding certain innate principles; some primary notions. Kovai evvoiai, characters, as it were, stamped upon the mind of man, which the soul receives in its very first being; and brings into the world with it. It would be sufficient to convince unprejudiced readers of the falseness of this supposition, if I should only shew (as I hope I shall in the following parts of this discourse) how men, barely by the use of their natural faculties, may attain to all the knowledge they have, without the help of any innate impressions; and may arrive at certainty, without any such original notions or principles. For I imagine any one will easily grant, that it would be impertinent to suppose, the ideas of colour innate in a creature, to whom God hath given sight and a power to receive them by the eyes of external objects; and no less unreasonable would it be to attribute several truths to the impressions of nature, and innate characters, when we may observe in ourselves faculties fit to attain an easy and certain knowledge of them, as if they were originally imprinted on the mind.

But because a man is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road, I shall set down the reasons that made me doubt of the truth of that opinion, as an excuse for my mistake, if I be in one; which I leave to be considered by those who, with me, dispose themselves to embrace truth, wherever they find it.

§ 2. General assent, the great argument.-There is nothing more commonly taken for granted, than that there are certain principles, both speculative and practical (for they speak of both), universally agreed upon by all mankind; which, therefore, they argue, must needs be constant impressions, which the souls of men receive in their first beings, and which they bring into the world with them, as necessarily and really as they do any of their inherent faculties.

§ 3. Universal consent proves nothing innate.-This argument, drawn from universal consent, has this misfortune in it, that if it were true in matter of fact, that there were certain truths, wherein all mankind agreed, it would not prove them innate, if there can be any other way shewn, how men may come to that universal agreement, in the things they do consent in; which I presume may be done.

§4. "What is, is ;" and "it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be," not universally assented to.-But, which is worse, this argument of universal consent, which is made use of to prove innate principles, seems to me a demonstration that there are none such ; because there are none to which all mankind give a universal assent. I shall begin with the speculative, and instance in those magnified principles of demonstration, "whatsoever is, is ;" and "it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be," which, of all others, I think have the most allowed title to innate. These have so settled a reputation of maxims universally received, that it will, no doubt, be thought strange if any one should seem to question it. But yet I take liberty to say, that these propositions are so far from having a universal assent, that there are a great part of mankind to whom they are not so much as known.

:

5. Not on the mind naturally imprinted, because not known to children, idiots, &c.—For, first, it is evident, that all children and idiots have not the least apprehension or thought of them and the want of that is enough to destroy that universal assent, which must needs be the necessary concomitant of all innate truths: it seeming to me near a contradiction, to say, that there are truths imprinted on the soul, which it perceives or understands not imprinting, if it signifies any thing, being nothing else but the making certain truths to be perceived. For to imprint any thing on the mind, without the mind's perceiving it, seems to me hardly intelligible. If, therefore, children and idiots have souls, have minds, with those impressions upon them, they must unavoidably perceive them, and necessarily know and assent to these truths; which, since they do not, it is evident that there are no such impressions. For if they are not notions naturally imprinted, how can they be innate? and if they are notions imprinted, how can they be unknown? to say a notion is imprinted on the mind, and yet at the same time to say that the mind is ignorant of it, and never yet took notice of it, is to make this impression nothing. No proposition can be said to be in the mind, which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of. For if any one may, then, by the same reason, all propositions that are true, and the mind is capable ever of assenting to, may be said to be in the mind, and to be imprinted since, if any one can be said to be in the mind, which it never yet knew, it must be only because it is capable of knowing it, and so the mind is of all truths