366 TOE ORIGINAL OF OUR IDEAS. maintains itsbeing, with this capacity of perception ; and it,is his common providential concourse that continues it in constant act : By which I mean no more than the saine creating, conserv- ing and concurring influence of God, whereby all bodies were produced at first, whereby they persist now in being, and act or are acted according to their natures, and the laws given them by the Creator. II. How the soul of man forms or acquires spiritual or in- tellectual ideas, i. e. the ideas of itself; of its own actions, and the ideas of other minds or spirits, we cannot conceive any other- wise than by its own immediate consciousness of itself and its actions, by turning its thought§ inward upon its own existence, nature, perceptions and volitions, operations and affections, and by the remembrance of and reflections upon its own modifi- cations, as well as by its own consciousness of them at first : This is what Mr. Locke calls the knowledge of things, or gain- ing ideas by reflection. It is by this means we form or acquire all our ideas of understanding, will, spirit, assent, dissent,fear, hope, 4c. III. How the soul gains any new ideas of bodily things, when it is in a separate state, we are not so well capable of de- termining, till we arrive at that stateourselves. But in this pre- sent state of union with a body, we may give some happy guesses how we come to form corporeal ideas, or to acquire sensations of what relates to the body. This is what Mr. Locke chiefly calls gaining ideas by sensation. And in order to this we must first consider, whether a spirit could receive any sensations frommat- ter, without a special union to someparticular body ; and then what is meant by the union. of a spirit to a body. IV. As to thefirst, we cannot conceive how a spirit can re- ceive any sensations or ideas from corporeal objects, without its particular union to some certain body by that God who created it. Since body and spirit are of such widely different natures, that it is impossible they should touch one another, a body cannot give notice to a soul to raise any idea or perception in it by a jog or shake of any kind. Besides, when any particular body moves, can all spirits perceive it ? No surely. Or can any one spirit receive sensations from the motions of all bodies in the world ? By no means. Either of these is a most extravagant fancy, contrary to all ex- perience. It is evident, that one particular soul receives sensa- tions immediately from one particular animal body, and from that alone : Other bodies can impress' no immediate sensations or ideas on that spirit.* Noww why is it only from this one * I do not pretend to determine here, that it is not possible, in the nature of t ings, for onesoul to he conscious bf the motions of two, or of twenty bodies;
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