tions) and natural substances, have each something peculiar.

1st, The names of simple ideas and of substances intimate some real existence as their pattern; but the names of mixed modes terminate in our ideas. 2dly, The names of simple ideas and of modes always signify the real as well as nominial essence of their Species; but the names of natural substances, rarely if ever, signify more than the nominal essence. 3dly, The names of simple ideas are not capable of any definition; the names of all complex ideas are.—No one, that I know, has yet noticed what words are, and what are not capable of a definition: and the want of this seems to have occasioned great wrangling and obscurity in men's discourses: some requiring definitions of terms that cannot be defined; and others contenting themselves with an explication made by a more general word and its restriction, (or to speak in terms of art, by a genus and difference). I need not trouble myself to prove that, if the terms of one definition were still to be defined by others, the process would be infinite: but I shall shew from the nature of ideas and the signification of words, why some names can and others cannot be defined, and which they are.-I think it is agreed, that a definition is the shewing the meaning of one term by others not synonimous. The names then of simple ideas only are incapable of definition; and for this

reason: the several terms of a definition signifying several ideas, they can by no means altogether represent an idea which has no composition at all.The not observing of this difference in our ideas and their names has produced that eminent trifling in the schools, which you may observe in their definitions of a few simple ideas. What more exquisite jargon than their definition of motion," the act of a being in power, as far forth as in power?" The atomists in their definition "a passage from one place to another" translate rather than define; for passage and motion are synonimous. The Cartesian definition is not much better:-" the successive application of the parts of the superficies of one body to those of another." No definition of light, however exact, could communicate the Idea of Light to a man born blind: nor would the idea of the cause of light, though never so accurate, give us the idea of light itself, as a perception; any more than the idea of the figure and motion of a sharp piece of steel would give us the idea of that pain which it is able to cause. For the cause of any sensation and the sensation itself in all the simple ideas of one sense, are two ideas as different as can be: and therefore the Cartesians distinguish very rightly between Light itself as a cause, and the sensation it produces.-To attempt to produce simple ideas by sounds only is to endeavour to make the ears do the office of all the other senses:

a sort of Philosophy worthy only of Sancho Panca, who had the faculty to see Dulcinea by hearsay. It is quite otherwise in complex ideas; which may be made intelligible by definition to a man who possesses all the simple ideas that compose them. Thus the word Statue may be explained to a blind man by other words, when Picture cannot; because his senses have given him the idea of figure, but not of colours.Though the names of simple ideas cannot be defined, yet they are the least doubtful; because standing only for a simple perception, men generally agree in their signification. There is neither a multiplicity of simple ideas to be put together, which makes the names of mixed modes doubtful; nor a supposed essence, with an uncertain number of properties depending on it, which makes the difficulty in the names of substances. Simple ideas have but few ascents (in lineâ predicamentali, that is,) from the lowest species to the highest genus; for the lowest species being but one simple idea, nothing can be left out of it, so that it shall agree with some other simple idea in a common name. Nothing can be left out of the ideas of white and red to make them agree in and so appearance, have a common name: but the complex idea of man, leaving out his rationality, agrees with brute in the more general idea and name of animal. When, to avoid enumerations, men would comprehend several simple ideas under one name, they use a word which

denotes the mode of acquiring them: for to comprehend white, red, and yellow under the name colour, signifies that such ideas are acquired by the sight. But to comprehend both colours, sounds, and the like simple ideas under a more general term, they use a word which signifies all such as we acquire by only one sense; and so the general term quality, in its ordinary acceptation, comprises colours, sounds, tastes, smells, and tangible qualities, with distinction from extension, number, motion, pleasure and pain, which make impressions on the mind, and introduce their ideas by more senses than one.-The names of mixed modes stand for ideas perfectly arbitrary: those of substances refer to a pattern, but with some latitude: those of simple ideas are exact copies.-The names of simple modes differ little from those of simple ideas.

CHAP. V.

OF THE NAMES OF MIXED MODES AND RELATIONS.

MIXED modes differ from simple ideas in this respect, that the abstract ideas (or, if you please, the essences) of the several species of them are

made by the understanding; whereas the mind receives all its simple ideas from external things operating upon it, and cannot make them arbitrarily. The complex ideas of mixed modes too are not, like those of substances, examined by the real existence of things; but are made out of a collection of simple ideas; and that collection, considered as one idea, is the archetype.-The mind then proceeds thus:-it chuses a certain number-gives them connection, and makes them into one idea-and ties them together by a name.- -Who can doubt that the ideas of sacrilege and adultery might be framed in the mind, receive names, and so these species of mixed modes be constituted, before either of them was ever committed; and that we could reason about them as well when they only existed in the understanding, as now when they are become facts? Have not Law-makers often made Laws about species of actions which were only the creatures of their own understandings? I think no one can deny that the resurrection, was a species of mixed modes in the mind, before it really existed. What greater connexion in nature has the idea of killing with that of father, than with that of neighbour, that it should be the essence of a distinct species called Parricide? Though these mixed modes are made by the free choice of the mind, pursuing its own ends, they are not made without reason, and at ran