17 .Dark room

I pretend not to teach, but to inquire; and therefore
cannot but confess here again,- that external and internal sensation
are the only passages I can find of knowledge to the understanding.

These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which
light is let into this dark room.

For, methinks, the understanding
is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some
little openings left, to let in external visible resemblances, or
ideas of things without: would the pictures coming into such a dark
room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon
occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in
reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.

These are my guesses concerning the means whereby the
understanding comes to have and retain simple ideas, and the modes
of them, with some other operations about them.

I proceed now to examine some of these simple ideas and their
modes a little more particularly.

Chapter XII
Of Complex Ideas

1.Made by the mind out of simple ones

We have hitherto
considered those ideas, in the reception whereof the mind is only
passive, which are those simple ones received from sensation and
reflection before mentioned, whereof the mind cannot make one to
itself, nor have any idea which does not wholly consist of them.

But
as the mind is wholly passive in the reception of all its simple
ideas, so it exerts several acts of its own, whereby out of its simple
ideas, as the materials and foundations of the rest, the others are
framed.

The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over its
simple ideas, are chiefly these three: (1) Combining several simple
ideas into one compound one; and thus all complex ideas are made.

(2) The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex,
together, and setting them by one another, so as to take a view of
them at once, without uniting them into one; by which way it gets
all its ideas of relations.

(3) The third is separating them from
all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is
called abstraction: and thus all its general ideas are made.

This
shows man's power, and its ways of operation, to be much the same in
the material and intellectual world.

For the materials in both being
such as he has no power over, either to make or destroy, all that
man can do is either to unite them together, or to set them by one
another, or wholly separate them.

I shall here begin with the first of
these in the consideration of complex ideas, and come to the other two
in their due places.

As simple ideas are observed to exist in
several combinations united together, so the mind has a power to
consider several of them united together as one idea; and that not
only as they are united in external objects, but as itself has
joined them together.

Ideas thus made up of several simple ones put
together, I call complex;- such as are beauty, gratitude, a man, an
army, the universe; which, though complicated of various simple ideas,
or complex ideas made up of simple ones, yet are, when the mind
pleases, considered each by itself, as one entire thing, and signified
by one name.

2 .Made voluntarily

In this faculty of repeating and joining
together its ideas, the mind has great power in varying and
multiplying the objects of its thoughts, infinitely beyond what
sensation or reflection furnished it with: but all this still confined
to those simple ideas which it received from those two sources, and
which are the ultimate materials of all its compositions.

For simple
ideas are all from things themselves, and of these the mind can have
no more, nor other than what are suggested to it.

It can have no other
ideas of sensible qualities than what come from without by the senses;
nor any ideas of other kind of operations of a thinking substance,
than what it finds in itself But when it has once got these simple
ideas, it is not confined barely to observation, and what offers
itself from without; it can, by its own power, put together those
ideas it has, and make new complex ones, which it never received so
united.

3 .Complex ideas are either of modes, substances, or relations

COMPLEX IDEAS, however compounded and decompounded, though their
number be infinite, and the variety endless, wherewith they fill and
entertain the thoughts of men; yet I think they may be all reduced
under these three heads:-
1.

MODES.

2 .SUBSTANCES

3.

RELATIONS.

4 .Ideas of modes

First, Modes I call such complex ideas which,
however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of
subsisting by themselves, but are considered as dependences on, or
affections of substances;- such as are the ideas signified by the
words triangle, gratitude, murder, &c.

And if in this I use the word
mode in somewhat a different sense from its ordinary signification,
I beg pardon; it being unavoidable in discourses, differing from the
ordinary received notions, either to make new words, or to use old
words in somewhat a new signification; the later whereof, in our
present case, is perhaps the more tolerable of the two.

5 .Simple and mixed modes of simple ideas

Of these modes, there are
two sorts which deserve distinct consideration:
First, there are some which are only variations, or different
combinations of the same simple idea, without the mixture of any
other;- as a dozen, or score; which are nothing but the ideas of so
many distinct units added together, and these I call simple modes as
being contained within the bounds of one simple idea.

Secondly, there are others compounded of simple ideas of several
kinds, put together to make one complex one;- v.

g.

beauty,
consisting of a certain composition of colour and figure, causing
delight to the beholder; theft, which being the concealed change of
the possession of anything, without the consent of the proprietor,
contains, as is visible, a combination of several ideas of several
kinds: and these I call mixed modes.

6 .Ideas of substances, single or collective

Secondly, the ideas of
Substances are such combinations of simple ideas as are taken to
represent distinct particular things subsisting by themselves; the
supposed or confused idea of substance, such as it is, is always the
first and chief Thus if to substance be joined the simple idea of a
certain dull whitish colour, with certain degrees of weight, hardness,
ductility, and fusibility, we have the idea of lead; and a combination
of the ideas of a certain sort of figure, with the powers of motion,
thought and reasoning, joined to substance, the ordinary idea of a
man.

Now of substances also, there are two sorts of ideas:- one of
single substances, as they exist separately, as of a man or a sheep;
the other of several of those put together, as an army of men, or
flock of sheep- which collective ideas of several substances thus
put together are as much each of them one single idea as that of a man
or an unit.

7 .Ideas of relation

Thirdly, the last sort of complex ideas is
that we call Relation, which consists in the consideration and
comparing one idea with another.

Of these several kinds we shall treat in their order.

8 .The abstrusest ideas we can have are all from two sources

If
we trace the progress of our minds, and with attention observe how
it repeats, adds together, and unites its simple ideas received from
sensation or reflection, it will lead us further than at first perhaps
we should have imagined.

And, I believe, we shall find, if we warily
observe the originals of our notions, that even the most abstruse
ideas, how remote soever they may seem from sense, or from any
operations of our own minds, are yet only such as the understanding
frames to itself, by repeating and joining together ideas that it
had either from objects of sense, or from its own operations about
them: so that those even large and abstract ideas are derived from
sensation or reflection, being no other than what the mind, by the
ordinary use of its own faculties, employed about ideas received
from objects of sense, or from the operations it observes in itself
about them, may, and does, attain unto.

This I shall endeavour to show in the ideas we have of space,
time, and infinity, and some few others that seem the most remote,
from those originals.

Chapter XIII
Complex Ideas of Simple Modes:-
and First, of the Simple Modes of the Idea of Space

1.Simple modes of simple ideas

Though in the foregoing part I have
often mentioned simple ideas, which are truly the materials of all our
knowledge; yet having treated of them there, rather in the way that
they come into the mind, than as distinguished from others more
compounded, it will not be perhaps amiss to take a view of some of
them again under this consideration, and examine those different
modifications of the same idea; which the mind either finds in
things existing, or is able to make within itself without the help