An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Volume I Part 14

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; in which 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, make 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 IDEA OF s.p.a.cE.

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 of any extrinsical object, or any foreign suggestion.

Those modifications of any ONE simple idea (which, as has been said, I call SIMPLE MODES) are as perfectly different and distinct ideas in the mind as those of the greatest distance or contrariety. For the idea of two is as distinct from that of one, as blueness from heat, or either of them from any number: and yet it is made up only of that simple idea of an unit repeated; and repet.i.tions of this kind joined together make those distinct simple modes, of a dozen, a gross, a million. Simple Modes of Idea of s.p.a.ce.

2. Idea of s.p.a.ce.

I shall begin with the simple idea of s.p.a.cE. I have showed above, chap.

4, that we get the idea of s.p.a.ce, both by our sight and touch; which, I think, is so evident, that it would be as needless to go to prove that men perceive, by their sight, a distance between bodies of different colours, or between the parts of the same body, as that they see colours themselves: nor is it less obvious, that they can do so in the dark by feeling and touch.

3. s.p.a.ce and Extension.

This s.p.a.ce, considered barely in length between any two beings, without considering anything else between them, is called DISTANCE: if considered in length, breadth, and thickness, I think it may be called CAPACITY. When considered between the extremities of matter, which fills the capacity of s.p.a.ce with something solid, tangible, and moveable, it is properly called EXTENSION. And so extension is an idea belonging to body only; but s.p.a.ce may, as is evident, be considered without it. At lest I think it most intelligible, and the best way to avoid confusion, if we use the word extension for an affection of matter or the distance of the extremities of particular solid bodies; and s.p.a.ce in the more general signification, for distance, with or without solid matter possessing it.

4. Immensity.

Each different distance is a different modification of s.p.a.ce; and each idea of any different distance, or s.p.a.ce, is a SIMPLE MODE of this idea.

Men having, by accustoming themselves to stated lengths of s.p.a.ce, which they use for measuring other distances--as a foot, a yard or a fathom, a league, or diameter of the earth--made those ideas familiar to their thoughts, can, in their minds, repeat them as often as they will, without mixing or joining to them the idea of body, or anything else; and frame to themselves the ideas of long, square, or cubic feet, yards or fathoms, here amongst the bodies of the universe, or else beyond the utmost bounds of all bodies; and, by adding these still one to another, enlarge their ideas of s.p.a.ce as much as they please. The power of repeating or doubling any idea we have of any distance, and adding it to the former as often as we will, without being ever able to come to any stop or stint, let us enlarge it as much as we will, is that which gives us the idea of IMMENSITY.

5. Figure.

There is another modification of this idea, which is nothing but the relation which the parts of the termination of extension, or circ.u.mscribed s.p.a.ce, have amongst themselves. This the touch discovers in sensible bodies, whose extremities come within our reach; and the eye takes both from bodies and colours, whose boundaries are within its view: where, observing how the extremities terminate,--either in straight lines which meet at discernible angles, or in crooked lines wherein no angles can be perceived; by considering these as they relate to one another, in all parts of the extremities of any body or s.p.a.ce, it has that idea we call FIGURE, which affords to the mind infinite variety. For, besides the vast number of different figures that do really exist in the coherent ma.s.ses of matter, the stock that the mind has in its power, by varying the idea of s.p.a.ce, and thereby making still new compositions, by repeating its own ideas, and joining them as it pleases, is perfectly inexhaustible. And so it can multiply figures IN INFINITUM.

6. Endless variety of figures.

For the mind having a power to repeat the idea of any length directly stretched out, and join it to another in the same direction, which is to double the length of that straight line; or else join another with what inclination it thinks fit, and so make what sort of angle it pleases: and being able also to shorten any line it imagines, by taking from it one half, one fourth, or what part it pleases, without being able to come to an end of any such divisions, it can make an angle of any bigness. So also the lines that are its sides, of what length it pleases, which joining again to other lines, of different lengths, and at different angles, till it has wholly enclosed any s.p.a.ce, it is evident that it can multiply figures, both in their shape and capacity, IN INFINITUM; all which are but so many different simple modes of s.p.a.ce.

The same that it can do with straight lines, it can also do with crooked, or crooked and straight together; and the same it can do in lines, it can also in superficies; by which we may be led into farther thoughts of the endless variety of figures that the mind has a power to make, and thereby to multiply the simple modes of s.p.a.ce.

7. Place.

Another idea coming under this head, and belonging to this tribe, is that we call PLACE. As in simple s.p.a.ce, we consider the relation of distance between any two bodies or points; so in our idea of place, we consider the relation of distance betwixt anything, and any two or more points, which are considered as keeping the same distance one with another, and so considered as at rest. For when we find anything at the same distance now which it was yesterday, from any two or more points, which have not since changed their distance one with another, and with which we then compared it, we say it hath kept the same place: but if it hath sensibly altered its distance with either of those points, we say it hath changed its place: though, vulgarly speaking, in the common notion of place, we do not always exactly observe the distance from these precise points, but from larger portions of sensible objects, to which we consider the thing placed to bear relation, and its distance from which we have some reason to observe.

8. Place relative to particular bodies.

Thus, a company of chess-men, standing on the same squares of the chess-board where we left them, we say they are all in the SAME place, or unmoved, though perhaps the chessboard hath been in the mean time carried out of one room into another; because we compared them only to the parts of the chess-board, which keep the same distance one with another. The chess-board, we also say, is in the same place it was, if it remain in the same part of the cabin, though perhaps the s.h.i.+p which it is in sails all the while. And the s.h.i.+p is said to be in the same place, supposing it kept the same distance with the parts of the neighbouring land; though perhaps the earth hath turned round, and so both chess-men, and board, and s.h.i.+p, have every one changed place, in respect of remoter bodies, which have kept the same distance one with another. But yet the distance from certain parts of the board being that which determines the place of the chess-men; and the distance from the fixed parts of the cabin (with which we made the comparison) being that which determined the place of the chess-board; and the fixed parts of the earth that by which we determined the place of the s.h.i.+p,--these things may be said to be in the same place in those respects: though their distance from some other things, which in this matter we did not consider, being varied, they have undoubtedly changed place in that respect; and we ourselves shall think so, when we have occasion to compare them with those other.

9. Place relative to a present purpose.

But this modification of distance we call place, being made by men for their common use, that by it they might be able to design the particular position of things, where they had occasion for such designation; men consider and determine of this place by reference to those adjacent things which best served to their present purpose, without considering other things which, to another purpose, would better determine the place of the same thing. Thus in the chess-board, the use of the designation of the place of each chess-man being determined only within that chequered piece of wood, it would cross that purpose to measure it by anything else; but when these very chess-men are put up in a bag, if any one should ask where the black king is, it would be proper to determine the place by the part of the room it was in, and not by the chessboard; there being another use of designing the place it is now in, than when in play it was on the chessboard, and so must be determined by other bodies. So if any one should ask, in what place are the verses which report the story of Nisus and Euryalus, it would be very improper to determine this place, by saying, they were in such a part of the earth, or in Bodley's library: but the right designation of the place would be by the parts of Virgil's works; and the proper answer would be, that these verses were about the middle of the ninth book of his AEneids, and that they have been always constantly in the same place ever since Virgil was printed: which is true, though the book itself hath moved a thousand times, the use of the idea of place here being, to know in what part of the book that story is, that so, upon occasion, we may know where to find it, and have recourse to it for use.

10. Place of the universe.

That our idea of place is nothing else but such a relative position of anything as I have before mentioned, I think is plain, and will be easily admitted, when we consider that we can have no idea of the place of the universe, though we can of all the parts of it; because beyond that we have not the idea of any fixed, distinct, particular beings, in reference to which we can imagine it to have any relation of distance; but all beyond it is one uniform s.p.a.ce or expansion, wherein the mind finds no variety, no marks. For to say that the world is somewhere, means no more than that it does exist; this, though a phrase borrowed from place, signifying only its existence, not location: and when one can find out, and frame in his mind, clearly and distinctly the place of the universe, he will be able to tell us whether it moves or stands still in the undistinguishable inane of infinite s.p.a.ce: though it be true that the word place has sometimes a more confused sense, and stands for that s.p.a.ce which anybody takes up; and so the universe is in a place. The idea, therefore, of place we have by the same means that we get the idea of s.p.a.ce, (whereof this is but a particular limited consideration,) viz. by our sight and touch; by either of which we receive into our minds the ideas of extension or distance.

11. Extension and Body not the same.

There are some that would persuade us, that body and extension are the same thing, who either change the signification of words, which I would not suspect them of,--they having so severely condemned the philosophy of others, because it hath been too much placed in the uncertain meaning, or deceitful obscurity of doubtful or insignificant terms. If, therefore, they mean by body and extension the same that other people do, viz. by BODY something that is solid and extended, whose parts are separable and movable different ways; and by EXTENSION, only the s.p.a.ce that lies between the extremities of those solid coherent parts, and which is possessed by them,--they confound very different ideas one with another; for I appeal to every man's own thoughts, whether the idea of s.p.a.ce be not as distinct from that of solidity, as it is from the idea of scarlet colour? It is true, solidity cannot exist without extension, neither can scarlet colour exist without extension, but this hinders not, but that they are distinct ideas. Many ideas require others, as necessary to their existence or conception, which yet are very distinct ideas. Motion can neither be, nor be conceived, without s.p.a.ce; and yet motion is not s.p.a.ce, nor s.p.a.ce motion; s.p.a.ce can exist without it, and they are very distinct ideas; and so, I think, are those of s.p.a.ce and solidity. Solidity is so inseparable an idea from body, that upon that depends its filling of s.p.a.ce, its contact, impulse, and communication of motion upon impulse. And if it be a reason to prove that spirit is different from body, because thinking includes not the idea of extension in it; the same reason will be as valid, I suppose, to prove that s.p.a.ce is not body, because it includes not the idea of solidity in it; s.p.a.cE and SOLIDITY being as distinct ideas as THINKING and EXTENSION, and as wholly separable in the mind one from another. Body then and extension, it is evident, are two distinct ideas. For,

12. Extension not solidity.

First, Extension includes no solidity, nor resistance to the motion of body, as body does.