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Chapter VII
Of Simple Ideas of both Sensation and Reflection
1. Ideas of pleasure and pain. There be other simple ideas which
convey themselves into the mind by all the ways of sensation and
reflection, viz. pleasure or delight, and its opposite, pain, or
uneasiness; power; existence; unity.
2. Mix with almost all our other ideas. Delight or uneasiness, one
or other of them, join themselves to almost all our ideas both of
sensation and reflection: and there is scarce any affection of our
senses from without, any retired thought of our mind within, which
is not able to produce in us pleasure or pain. By pleasure and pain, I
would be understood to signify, whatsoever delights or molests us;
whether it arises from the thoughts of our minds, or anything
operating on our bodies. For, whether we call it satisfaction,
delight, pleasure, happiness, &c., on the one side, or uneasiness,
trouble, pain, torment, anguish, misery, &c., on the other, they are
still but different degrees of the same thing, and belong to the ideas
of pleasure and pain, delight or uneasiness; which are the names I
shall most commonly use for those two sorts of ideas.
3. As motives of our actions. The infinite wise Author of our being,
having given us the power over several parts of our bodies, to move or
keep them at rest as we think fit; and also. by the motion of them, to
move ourselves and other contiguous bodies, in which consist all the
actions of our body: having also given a power to our minds, in
several instances, to choose, amongst its ideas, which it will think
on, and to pursue the inquiry of this or that subject with
consideration and attention, to excite us to these actions of thinking
and motion that we are capable of,- has been pleased to join to
several thoughts, and several sensations a perception of delight. If
this were wholly separated from all our outward sensations, and inward
thoughts, we should have no reason to prefer one thought or action
to another; negligence to attention, or motion to rest. And so we
should neither stir our bodies, nor employ our minds, but let our
thoughts (if I may so call it) run adrift, without any direction or
design, and suffer the ideas of our minds, like unregarded shadows, to
make their appearances there, as it happened, without attending to
them. In which state man, however furnished with the faculties of
understanding and will, would be a very idle, inactive creature, and
pass his time only in a lazy, lethargic dream. It has therefore
pleased our wise Creator to annex to several objects, and the ideas
which we receive from them, as also to several of our thoughts, a
concomitant pleasure, and that in several objects, to several degrees,
that those faculties which he had endowed us with might not remain
wholly idle and unemployed by us.
4. An end and use of pain. Pain has the same efficacy and use to set
us on work that pleasure has, we being as ready to employ our
faculties to avoid that, as to pursue this: only this is worth our
consideration, that pain is often produced by the same objects and
ideas that produce pleasure in us. This their near conjunction,
which makes us often feel pain in the sensations where we expected
pleasure, gives us new occasion of admiring the wisdom and goodness of
our Maker, who, designing the preservation of our being, has annexed
pain to the application of many things to our bodies, to warn us of
the harm that they will do, and as advices to withdraw from them.
But he, not designing our preservation barely, but the preservation of
every part and organ in its perfection, hath in many cases annexed
pain to those very ideas which delight us. Thus heat, that is very
agreeable to us in one degree, by a little greater increase of it
proves no ordinary torment: and the most pleasant of all sensible
objects, light itself, if there be too much of it, if increased beyond
a due proportion to our eyes, causes a very painful sensation. Which
is wisely and favourably so ordered by nature, that when any object
does, by the vehemency of its operation, disorder the instruments of
sensation, whose structures cannot but be very nice and delicate, we
might, by the pain, be warned to withdraw, before the organ be quite
put out of order, and so be unfitted for its proper function for the
future. The consideration of those objects that produce it may well
persuade us, that this is the end or use of pain. For, though great
light be insufferable to our eyes, yet the highest degree of
darkness does not at all disease them: because that, causing no
disorderly motion in it, leaves that curious organ unharmed in its
natural state. But yet excess of cold as well as heat pains us:
because it is equally destructive to that temper which is necessary to
the preservation of life, and the exercise of the several functions of
the body, and which consists in a moderate degree of warmth; or, if
you please, a motion of the insensible parts of our bodies, confined
within certain bounds.
5. Another end. Beyond all this, we may find another reason why
God hath scattered up and down several degrees of pleasure and pain,
in all the things that environ and affect us; and blended them
together in almost all that our thoughts and senses have to do
with;- that we, finding imperfection, dissatisfaction, and want of
complete happiness, in all the enjoyments which the creatures can
afford us, might be led to seek it in the enjoyment of Him with whom
there is fullness of joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures for
evermore.
6. Goodness of God in annexing pleasure and pain to our other ideas.
Though what I have here said may not, perhaps, make the ideas of
pleasure and pain clearer to us than our own experience does, which is
the only way that we are capable of having them; yet the consideration
of the reason why they are annexed to so many other ideas, serving
to give us due sentiments of the wisdom and goodness of the
Sovereign Disposer of all things, may not be unsuitable to the main
end of these inquiries: the knowledge and veneration of him being
the chief end of all our thoughts, and the proper business of all
understandings.
7. Ideas of existence and unity. Existence and Unity are two other
ideas that are suggested to the understanding by every object without,
and every idea within. When ideas are in our minds, we consider them
as being actually there, as well as we consider things to be
actually without us;- which is, that they exist, or have existence.
And whatever we can consider as one thing, whether a real being or
idea, suggests to the understanding the idea of unity.
8. Idea of power. Power also is another of those simple ideas
which we receive from sensation and reflection. For, observing in
ourselves that we do and can think, and that we can at pleasure move
several parts of our bodies which were at rest; the effects, also,
that natural bodies are able to produce in one another, occurring
every moment to our senses,- we both these ways get the idea of power.
9. Idea of succession. Besides these there is another idea, which,
though suggested by our senses, yet is more constantly offered to us
by what passes in our minds; and that is the idea of succession. For
if we look immediately into ourselves, and reflect on what is
observable there, we shall find our ideas always, whilst we are awake,
or have any thought, passing in train, one going and another coming,
without intermission.
10. Simple ideas the materials of all our knowledge. These, if
they are not all, are at least (as I think) the most considerable of
those simple ideas which the mind has, and out of which is made all
its other knowledge; all which it receives only by the two
forementioned ways of sensation and reflection.
Nor let any one think these too narrow bounds for the capacious mind
of man to expatiate in, which takes its flight further than the stars,
and cannot be confined by the limits of the world; that extends its
thoughts often even beyond the utmost expansion of Matter, and makes
excursions into that incomprehensible Inane. I grant all this, but
desire any one to assign any simple idea which is not received from
one of those inlets before mentioned, or any complex idea not made out
of those simple ones. Nor will it be so strange to think these few
simple ideas sufficient to employ the quickest thought, or largest
capacity; and to furnish the materials of all that various
knowledge, and more various fancies and opinions of all mankind, if we
consider how many words may be made out of the various composition
of twenty-four letters; or if, going one step further, we will but
reflect on the variety of combinations that may be made with barely
one of the above-mentioned ideas, viz. number, whose stock is
inexhaustible and truly infinite: and what a large and immense field
doth extension alone afford the mathematicians?
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