374 THE ORIGINAL OF OUR IDEAS. almost destroy the very notion of cause and effect among created beings, and by introducing the divine agency immediately into all particular effects, and forming our expressions according to it, we shall exclude all dependency of created beings upon each other, and their several connexions which the God of nature and of order has ordained among them. The laws therefore, or appointments which. God has made, whereby body moves body, or whereby a spirit moves a body, or whereby ab'ody excites ideas in a spirit, may all be called natural, because nature is that order which God the creator has appointed. among the creatures he has made. XIII. When these traces or impressions are once formed in the brain, to which such particular sensations or corporeal ideas are attached by divine appointment, it must be observed that whenever these traces or impressions are repeated or awakenedin the brain again, though there be no such outward object present, nor any such outward cause to excite them, yet thesoul bath the same ideas or sensations raised, repeated or awakened in it ; be- cause these ideas or sensations are immediately attached to those particular motions in the brain, and not to the outward objects, or to the first cause of them. Hence proceed thepowers of imagination, and memory, and dreaming, &c. and for this reason we may feel hunger and thirst, pleasure and pain, even in dreams, though there be no external causes to excite them ; and when We are awake we may raise ideas of ten thousand shapes and colours of sensible and bodily: objects which are absent, when they have Onceformed their pecu- liar and proper traces on the brain before. When the same ideas or perceptions whichwe had before, are again excited in the soul, without the presence of the same object or the same occasion, this is called memory, supposing that we have a consciousness that we had this perception or this idea Before ; especially when the same ideas have the same qualities, And are joined or situated in the same manner as before : but if the idea's are varied, enlarged, diminished, multiplied, or joined and mingled in forms and qualities different fromwhat we had in Our first perceptions of them, this is called imagination, or the power ofÌancy. XIV. Though our intellectual ideas, such as the idea of thought, knowledge, will,reason, spirit, &c. arenot originally formed in us by impressions or traces made on the brain, but by a consci- onsnes,s of and reflection upon the powers and operations of our own souls, as Was said belbre, yet while we aro in this state of union with the body, it is highly probable that these very ideas are quickly attached to some words or sounds which make their impressions on the brain ; and therefore when these impressions in the brain are again repeated, or these traces awakened by these
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