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to attain. But it appears not that God intended we fhould have a perfect, clear, and adequate knowledge of them: That perhaps is not in the comprehenfion of any finite being. We are furnished with faculties (dull and weak as they are) to difcover enough in the creatures to lead us to the knowledge of the Creator, and the knowledge of our duty; and we are fitted well enough with abilities to provide for the conveniencies of living: These are our business in this world. But were our fenfes altered and made much quicker and acuter, the appearance and outward fcheme of things would have quite another face to us, and, I am apt to think, would be inconfiftent with our being, or at least wellbeing, in this part of the univerfe which we inhabit. He that confiders how little our conftitution is able to bear a remove into parts of this air, not much higher than that we commonly breathe in, will have reason to be fatisfied, that in this globe of earth allotted for our manfion, the allwife Architect has fuited our organs, and the bodies that are to affect them, one to another. If our sense of hearing were but 1000 times quicker than it is, how would a perpetual noise distract us? and we should, in the quieteft retirement, be lefs able to fleep or meditate, than in the middle of a fea-fight. Nay, if that most inftructive of our fenfes, feeing, were in any man 1000 or 100,000 times more acute than it is now by the best microscope, things feveral millions of times lefs than the fmalleft object of his fight now, would then be visible to his naked eyes, and fo he would come nearer the discovery of the texture and motion of the minute parts of corporeal things, and in many of them, probably get ideas of their internal conftitutions: But then he would be in a quite different world from other people: Nothing would appear the fame to him and others; the visible ideas of every thing would be different: So that I doubt, whether he and the rest of men could difcourfe concerning the objects of fight, or have any communication about colours, their appearances being fo wholly different. And perhaps fuch a quicknefs and tenderness of fight could not en

dure bright funfhine, or fo much as open day-light; nor take in but a very small part of any object at once, and that too only at a very near diftance. And if, by the help of fuch microfcopical eyes (if I may fo call them), a man could penetrate farther than ordinary into the fecret compofition and radical texture of bodies, he would not make any great advantage by the change, if fuch an acute fight would not ferve to conduct him to the market and exchange; if he could not fee things he was to avoid, at a convenient distance, nor diftinguish things he had to do with, by thofe fenfible quali ties others do. He that was fharp-fighted enough to fee the configuration of the minute particles of the fpring of a clock, and obferve upon what peculiar ftructure and impulfe its elaftic motion depends, would no doubt difcover fomething very admirable: But if eyes fo framed could not view, at once, the hand and the characters of the hour plate, and thereby, at a distance, fee what o'clock it was, their owner could not be much benefited by that acutenefs, which, whilft it discovered the fecret contrivance of the parts of the machine, made him lofe its ufe.

13. Conjecture about Spirits.

AND here give me leave to propose an extravagant conjecture of mine, viz. that fince we have fome reason (if there be any credit to be given to the report of things that our philofophy cannot account for) to imagine, that fpirits can affume to themselves bodies of different bulk, figure, and conformation of parts; whether one great advantage fome of them have over us, may not lie in this, that they can fo frame and shape to themselves organs of fenfation or perception, as to fuit them to their prefent defign, and the circumstances of the object they would confider. For how much would that man exceed all others in knowledge, who had but the faculty fo to alter the structure of his eyes, that one fenfe, as to make it capable of all the feveral degrees of vifion which the afliftance of glaffes (cafually at firit lit on) has taught us to conceive? What wonders would he difcover, who could fo fit his eyes to all

forts of objects, as to fee, when he pleafed, the figure and motion of the minute particles in the blood, and other juices of animals, as diftinctly as he does, at other times, the fhape and motion of the animals themfelves? But to us, in our prefent ftate, unalterable organs, fo contrived as to difcover the figure and motion of the minute parts of bodies, whereon depend thofe fenfible qualities we now observe in them, would perhaps be of no advantage. God has, no doubt, made them fo as is beft for us in our prefent condition: He hath fitted us for the neighbourhood of the bodies that furround us, and we have to do with: And though we cannot, by the faculties we have, attain to a perfect knowledge of things, yet they will ferve us well enough for thofe ends above mentioned, which are our great concernment. I beg my reader's pardon, for laying before him fo wild a fancy, concerning the ways of perception in beings above us: But how extravagant foever it be, I doubt whether we can imagine any thing about the knowledge of angels, but after this manner, fome way or other in proportion to what we find and obferve in ourfelves. And though we cannot but allow, that the infinite power and wildom of God may frame creatures with a thousand other faculties and ways of perceiving things without them, than what we have, yet our thoughts can go no further than our own; fo impoffible it is for us to enlarge our very gueffes beyond the ideas received from our own fenfation and reflection. The fuppofition, at leaft, that angels do fometimes affume bodies, needs not startle us; fince fome of the most ancient and most learned Fathers of the Church feemed to believe that they had bodies; and this is certain, that their state and way of existence is unknown to us.

§14. Complex Ideas of Substances.

BUT to return to the matter in hand; the ideas we haveof substances, and the ways we come by them: I fay, our fpecific ideas of fubftances are nothing elfe but a collection of a certain number of fimple ideas, confidered as united in one thing. Thefe ideas of fubftances, though they are commonly called fimple apprehenfions, and the

names of them fimple terms, yet in effect are complex and compounded. Thus, the idea which an Englishman fignifies by the name fwan, is white colour, long neck, red beak, black legs, and whole feet, and all thefe of a certain fize, with a power of fwimming in the water, and making a certain kind of noise; and perhaps, to a man who has long observed thofe kind of birds, some other properties which all terminate in fenfible fimple ideas, all united in one common subject.

15. Idea of Spiritual Subftances as clear as of Bodily

Subftances.

BESIDES the complex ideas we have of material fenfible fubftances, of which I have laft fpoken, by the fimple ideas we have taken from thofe operations of our own minds, which we experiment daily in ourfelves, as thinking, understanding, willing, knowing, and power of beginning, motion, &c. co-existing in fome fubftance; we are able to frame the complex idea of an immaterial fpirit. And thus, by putting together the ideas of thinking, perceiving, liberty and power of moving themselves and other things, we have as clear a perception and notion of immaterial fubftances, as we have of material: For, putting together the ideas of thinking and willing, or the power of moving or quieting corporeal motion, joined to substance, of which we have no diftinct idea, we have the idea of an immaterial spirit ; and, by putting together the ideas of coherent folid parts, and a power of being moved, joined with fubftance, of which likewife we have no pofitive idea, we have the idea of matter. The one is as clear and distinct an idea as the other; the idea of thinking, and moving a body, being as clear and diftinct ideas, as the ideas of extenfion, folidity, and being moved. For our idea of fubftance is equally obfcure, or none at all in both; it is but a fuppofed I know not what, to fupport those ideas we call accidents. It is for want of reflection that we are apt to think that our fenfes fhow us nothing but material things. Every act of fenfation, when duly confidered, gives us an equal view of both parts of nature, the corporeal and fpiritual: For whilft

I know, by feeing or hearing, &c. that there is fome corporeal being without me, the object of that fenfation, I do more certainly know, that there is fome fpiritual being within me that fees and hears. This, I must be convinced, cannot be the action of bare infenfible matter, nor ever could be, without an immaterial thinking being.

16. No Idea of abstract Subftance.

By the complex idea of extended, figured, coloured, and all other fenfible qualities, which is all that we know of it, we are as far from the idea of the substance of body, as if we knew nothing at all: Nor, after all the acquaintance and familiarity which we imagine we have with matter, and the many qualities men affure themselves they perceive and know in bodies, will it perhaps, upon examination, be found that they have any more or clearer primary ideas belonging to body, than they have belonging to immaterial fpirit.

§17. The Cobefion of Solid Parts and Impulse, the primary Ideas of Body.

THE primary ideas we have peculiar to body, as contradiftinguished to fpirit, are the cohesion of folid, and confequently feparable parts, and a power of communicating motion by impulfe. Thefe, I think, are the original ideas proper and peculiar to body; for figure is but the confequence of finite extenfion.

18. Thinking and Motivity the primary Ideas of

Spirit.

THE ideas we have belonging and peculiar to fpirit, are thinking and will, or a power of putting body into motion by thought, and, which is confequent to it, liberty. For as body cannot but communicate its motion by impulfe to another body which it meets with at reft, fo the mind can put bodies into motion, or forbear to do fo, as it pleafes. The ideas of exiflence, duration, and mobility, are common to them both.

§ 19. Spirits capable of motion.

THERE is no reafon why it fhould be thought strange, that I make mobility belong to fpirit: For, having no other idea of motion but change of diftance with other

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