Watts - BX5200 .W3 1813 v.7

CHAPTER Ilt -331 other kinds of being, whether bodily or spiritual, besides those, from whence we first derived them : even those abstracted ideas, which might be first occasioned by bodies, may be as properly afterward attributed to spirits. Now, though Mr..L.ocke supposes sensation and reflection to, be the only two springs of all ideas, and that these two are suffi- cient to furnish our minds with all that rich variety of ideas which we have ; yet abstraction is certainly a different act of the mituf, whence {bese abstracted ideas have their original ; though per- haps sensation or refleetion may furnish us with all the first, objects and occasions whence these abstracted ideas -are excited and derived. Nor in this sense and view of things, can I think Air. Locke himself would deny my representation of the origi- nal of abstracted ideas, nor forbid them to stand for a distinct species. Note, Though we have divided ideas in this chapter into three sorts, namely, sensible, spiritual, and abstracted; yet it may not be amiss just to notice here, that a man may be called a compound substance, being made of body and mind, and the modes which arise from this composition are called mixed weder, such as sensation, passion, discotse, Ste. so the ideas of this. substance, or being called man, and of these mixed modes may; be called mixed ideas, for they are not properly and strictly spiritual, sensible, or abstracted. See a much larger account of every part of this chapter in the Philosophical Essays, by I. W. Ess, 3, 4, Ste. SECT. II. Of simple and complex, compound and collective Ideas. IDEAS considered in their nature, are either simple or complex. A simple idea is one uniform idea which cannot be divided or distinguished by the mind into two or more ideas; such are a Multitude of our sensations, as the idea, of sweet, bitter, cold, heat, white, red, blue, hard, soft, motion, rest, and perhaps extension and duration : such are also many of our spiritual ideas ; such as thought, will, wish, knowledge, &c. A complex idea, is made by joining two or more simple , ideas together; as a square, a triangle, a cube, a per, a table, reading, writing, truth, falsehood, a body, a roan, a horse, an angel, a heavy body, a swift horse, &c. every thing that can be divided by the mind into two or more ideas, is called complex. Complex ideas are often considered as single and distinct beings, though they be made up of several simple ideas ; so It body, a spirit, a house, a tree, a flower. But when several of these ideas of a different kind are joined together, which are wont to be considered, as distinct single beings, this is called a

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