amuse the understanding, and entertain company without coming to the bottom of the question, the only place of rest and stability for an inquisitive mind, whose tendency is only to truth and knowledge. For example, if it be demanded, whether the Grand Seignior can lawfully take what he will from any of his people? This question cannot be resolved without coming to a certainty, whether all men are naturally equal; for upon that it turns, and that truth, well settled in the understanding, and carried in the mind through the various debates concerning the various rights of men in society, will go a great way in putting an end to them, and shewing on which side the truth is. § 45. Transferring of thoughts.-There is scarce any thing more for the improvement of knowledge, for the ease of life, and the dispatch of business, than for a man to be able to dispose of his own thoughts; and there is scarce any thing harder in the whole conduct of the understanding than to get a full mastery over it. The mind, in a waking man, has always some object that it applies to; which, when we are lazy or unconcerned, we can easily change, and at pleasure transfer our thoughts to another, and from thence to a third, which has no relation to either of the former. Hence men forwardly conclude, and frequently say, nothing is so free as thought, and it were well it were so; but the contrary will be found true in several instances; and there are many cases wherein there is nothing more restive and ungovernable than our thoughts: they will not be directed what objects to pursue, nor to be taken off from those they have once fixed on, but run away with a man in pursuit of those ideas they have in view, let him do what he can. I will not here mention again what I have above taken notice of, how hard it is to get the mind narrowed by a custom of thirty or forty years standing to a scanty collection of obvious and common ideas, to enlarge itself to a more copious stock, and grow into an acquaintance with those that would afford more abundant matter of useful contemplation; it is not of this I am here speaking. The inconvenience I would here sent and find a remedy for, is the difficulty there is sometimes to transfer our minds from one subject to another, in cases where the ideas are equally familiar to us. repre Matters that are recommended to our thoughts by any of our passions, take possession of our minds with a kind of authority, and will not be kept out or dislodged, but as if the passion that rules, were, for the time, the sheriff of the place, and came with all the posse, the understanding is seized and taken with the object it introduces, as if it had a legal right to be alone considered there. There is scarce any body, I think, of so calm a temper, who hath not sometime found this tyranny on his understanding, and suffered under the inconvenience of it. Who is there almost whose mind, at some time or other, love or anger, fear or grief, has not so fastened to some clog, that it could not turn itself to any other object. I call it a clog, for it hangs upon the mind so as to hinder its vigour and activity in the pursuit of other contemplations, and advances itself little or not at all in the knowledge of the thing which it so closely hugs and constantly pores on. Men thus possessed, are sometimes as if they were so in the worst sense, and lay under the power fo an enchantment. They see not what passes before our eyes, hear not the audible discourse of the company; and when, by any strong application to them they are roused a little, they are like men brought to themselves from some remote region; whereas, in truth, they come no farther than their secret cabinet within, where they have been wholly taken up with the puppet, which is for that time appointed for their entertainment. The shame that such dumps cause to well-bred people, when it carries them away from the company, where they should bear a part in the conversation, is a sufficient argument, that it is a fault in the conduct of our understanding, not to have that power over it as to make use of it to those purposes, and on those occasions wherein we have need of its assistance. The mind should be always free, and ready to turn itself to the variety of objects that occur, and allow them as much consideration as shall for that time be thought fit. To be engrossed so by one object, as not to be prevailed on to leave it for another that we judge fitter for our contemplation, is to make it of no use to us. Did this state of mind remain always so, every one would, without scruple, give it the name of perfect madness; and while it does last, at whatever intervals it returns, such a rotation of thoughts about the same subject no more carries us forwards towards the attainment of knowledge, than getting upon a mill-horse, whilst he jogs on his circular track, would carry a man a journey. I grant something must be allowed to legitimate passions, and to natural inclinations.-Every man, besides occasional affections, has beloved studies, and those the mind will more closely stick to; but yet it is best that it should be always at liberty, and under the free disposal of the man, to act how, and upon what he directs. This we should endeavour to obtain, unless we would be content with such a flaw in our understandings, that sometimes we should be as it were without it; for it is very little better than so in cases where we cannot make use of it to those purposes we would, and which stand in present need of it. But before fit remedies can be thought on for this disease, we must know the several causes of it, and thereby regulate the cure, if we will hope to labour with success. One we have already instanced in, whereof all men that reflect have so general a knowledge, and so often an experience in themselves, that nobody doubts of it. A prevailing passion so pins down our thoughts to the object and concerns of it, that a man passionately in love cannot bring himself to think of his ordinary affairs; nor a kind mother drooping under the loss of a child, is not able to bear a part as she was wont in the discourse of the company or conversation of her friends. But though passion be the most obvious and general, yet it is not the only cause that binds up the understanding, and confines it for the time to one object, from which it will not be taken off. Besides this, we may often find that the understanding, when it has awhile employed itself upon a subject which either chance, or some slight accident, offered to it without the interest or recommendation of any passion, works itself into a warmth, and, by degrees, gets into a career, wherein, like a bowl down a hill, it increases its motion by going, and will not be stopped or diverted; though, when the heat is over, it sees all this earnest application was about a trifle not worth a thought, and all the pains employed about it, lost labour. There is a third sort, if I mistake not, yet lower than this; it is a sort of childishness, if I may so say, of the understanding, wherein during the fit, it plays with, and dandles some insignificant puppet to no end, nor with any design at all, and yet cannot easily be got off from it. Thus some trivial sentence or a scrap of poetry will sometimes get into men's heads, and make such a chiming there, that there is no stilling of it; no peace to be obtained, nor attention to any thing else, but this impertinent guest will take up the mind, and possess the thoughts in spite of all endeavours to get rid of it. Whether every one hath experimented in themselves this troublesome intrusion of some frisking ideas which thus importune the understanding, and hinder it from being better employed, I know not. But persons of very good parts, and those more than one I have heard speak and complain of it themselves. The reason I have to make this doubt, is from what I have known in a case something of kin to this, though much odder, and that is a sort of visions that some people have lying quiet but perfectly awake in the dark, or with their eyes shut. It is a great variety of faces, most commonly very old ones, that appear to them in a train one after another; so that having had just the sight of one, it immediately passes away to give place to another, that the same instant succeeds, and has as quick an exit as its leader, and so they march on in a constant succession; nor can any one of them by any endeavour be stopped or retained beyond the instant of its appearance, but is thrust out by its follower, which will have its turn. Concerning this fantastical phenomenon, I have talked with several people, whereof some have been perfectly acquainted with it, and others have been so wholly strangers to it, that they could hardly be brought to conceive or believe it. I know a lady of excellent parts who had got past thirty without having ever had the least notice of any such thing; she was so great a stranger to it, that when she heard me and another talking of it, could scarce forbear thinking we bantered her; but sometime after drinking a large dose of dilute tea (as she was ordered by a physician), going to bed, she told us at next meeting, that she had now experimented what our discourse had much ado to persuade her of. She had seen a great variety of faces in a long train, succeeding one another, as we had described; they were all strangers and intruders, such as she had no acquaintance with before, nor sought after them, and as they came of themselves, they went too; none of them staid a moment, nor could be detained by all the endeavours she could use, but went on in their solemn procession, just appeared and then vanished. This odd phenomenon seems to have a mechanical cause, and to depend upon the matter and motion of the blood or animal spirits. When the fancy is bound by passion, I know no way to set the mind free and at liberty to prosecute what thoughts the man would make choice of, but to allay the present passion, or counterbalance it with another, which is an art to be got by study, and acquaintance with the passions. Those who find themselves apt to be carried away with the spon taneous current of their own thoughts, not excited by any passion or interest, must be very wary and careful in all the instances of it to stop it, and never humour their minds in being thus triflingly busy. Men know the value of their corporal liberty, and therefore suffer not willingly fetters and chains to be put upon them. To have the mind captivated is, for the time, certainly the greater evil of the two, and deserves our utmost care and endeavours to preserve the freedom of our better part. And in this case our pains will not be lost; striving and struggling will prevail, if we constantly, in all such occasions, make use of it. We must never indulge these trivial attentions of thought; as soon as we find the mind makes itself a business of nothing, we should immediately disturb and check it, introduce new and more serious considerations, and not leave until we have beaten it off from the pursuit it was upon. This, at first, if we have let the contrary practice grow to a habit, will perhaps be difficult; but constant endeavours will by degrees prevail, and at the last make it easy. When a man is pretty well advanced, and can command his mind off at pleasure from incidental and undesigned pursuits, it may not be amiss for him to go on farther, and make attempts upon meditations of greater moment, that at the last he may have full power over his own mind, and be so fully master of his own thoughts, as to be able to transfer them from one subject to another, with the same ease that he can lay by any thing he has in his hand, and take something else that he has a mind to in the room of it. This liberty of mind is of great use both in business and study, and he that has got it will have no small advantage of ease and dispatch in all that is the chosen and useful employment of his understanding. The third and last way which I mentioned the mind to be sometimes taken up with, I mean the chiming of some particular words or sentence in the memory, and, as it were, making a noise in the head, and the like, seldom happens but when the mind is lazy, or very loosely and negligently employed. It were better indeed be without such impertinent and useless repetitions: any obvious idea, when it is roving causelessly at a venture, being of more use and apter to suggest something worth consideration, than the insignificant buzz of purely empty sounds. But since the rousing of the mind, and setting the understanding on work with some degrees of vigour, does for the most part presently set it free from these idle companions, it may not be amiss, whenever we find ourselves troubled with them, to make use of so profitable a remedy that is always at hand. END OF THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. INDEX. ABBOT of St. Martin, page 318, s. 26. Abstract ideas, why made, 267, s. 6; 268, Abstract terms cannot be affirmed one of Accident, 190, s. 2. Actions, the best evidence of men's princi- Adequate ideas, 260, s. 1, 2. we have not Algebra, 471, s. 15. Belief, what, 475, s. 3. to believe without Best in our opinion, not a rule of God's Blind man, if made to see, would not know Brutes have no universal ideas, 99, s. 10, Body: we have no more primary ideas Analogy, useful in natural philosophy, 482, whether the word body he a simple or com- Arguments of four sorts:-1. Ad verecun- Arithmetic: the use of ciphers in arithme- Artificial things are most of them collec- plex term, 232. this only a controversy about But, its several significations, 331, s. 5. Capacity, 104, s. 3. Capacities, to know their extent, useful, Certainty depends on intuition, 374, s. 1. Assent to maxims, 23, s. 10. upon hearing Association of ideas, 274, s. 1, &c. this as- Assurance, 479, s. 6. Atheism in the world, 48, s. 8. Authority; relying on others' opinions, one Beings, but two sorts, 452, s. 9. the eter- Changelings, whether men or no, 415, Clearness alone hinders confusion of ideas, Clear and obscure ideas, 251, s. 2. s. 9. Complex ideas how made, 98, s. 6; 102, Comparing ideas, 98, s. 4. herein men ex- Compounding ideas, 98, s. 6. in this is a |