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Of simple Ideas

§ 1. THE better to understand the Nature, Manner, and Extent of our Knowledge, one thing is carefully to be observed, concerning the Ideas we have; and that is, That some of them are simple, and some complex.

Though the Qualities that affect our Senses, are, in the things themselves, so united and blended, that there is no separation, no distance between them; yet ’tis plain, the Ideas they produce in the Mind, enter by the Senses simple and unmixed. For though the Sight and Touch often take in from the [108]same Object, at the same time, different Ideas; as a Man sees at once Motion and Colour; the Hand feels Softness and Warmth in the same piece of Wax: Yet the simple Ideas thus united in the same Subject, are as perfectly distinct, as those that come in by different Senses. The coldness and hardness, which a Man feels in a piece of Ice, being as distinct Ideas in the Mind, as the Smell and Whiteness of a Lily; or as the taste of Sugar, and smell of a Rose: And there is nothing can be plainer to a Man, than the clear and distinct Perception he has of those simple Ideas; which being each in it self uncompounded, contains in it nothing but one uniform Appearance, or Conception in the mind, and is not distinguishable into different Ideas.

§ 2. These simple Ideas, the Materials of all our Knowledge, are suggested and furnished to the Mind, only by those two ways above mentioned, viz. Sensation and Reflection. When the Understanding is once stored with these simple Ideas, it has the Power to repeat, compare, and unite them even to an almost infinite Variety, and so can make at Pleasure new complex Ideas. But it is not in the Power of the most exalted Wit, or enlarged Understanding, by any quickness or variety of Thought, to invent or frame one new simple Idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways before mentioned: nor can any force of the Understanding, destroy those that are there. […]

§ 3. This is the Reason why, though we cannot believe it impossible to God, to make a Creature with other Organs, and more ways to convey into the Understanding the notice of Corporeal things, than those five, as they are usually counted, which he has given to Man: Yet I think, it is not possible, for any [110]one to imagine any other Qualities in Bodies, howsoever constituted, whereby they can be taken notice of, besides Sounds, Tastes, Smells, visible and tangible Qualities. And had Mankind been made with but four Senses, the Qualities then, which are the Object of the Fifth Sense, had been as far from our Notice, Imagination, and Conception, as now any belonging to a sixth, seventh, or eighth Sense, can possibly be: which, whether yet some other Creatures, in some other Parts of this vast, and stupendious Universe, may not have, will be a great Presumption to deny. […]