ESSAY III. 375 words or sounds, the soul hasthese intellectual ideas which are at- tached to them, repeated or raised afresh, and they become actual- ly present to theanind : and thus we are assisted in the memoryor recollection even of intellectual things by animal nature in this pre- sent state : for though our intellectual ideas themselves cannot be traced, nor drawn, nor painted on the brain, andconsequently can have no similar impressions made there, yet they May be closely connected or attached by custom to certain corporeal motions, figures, strokes or traces which may be excited or delineated there ; which traces or motions were first raised by the reading or hearing words written or spoken, which were designed to sig- nify those incorporeal ideas or objects. XV. When the soul sets itself by an act of its will to recol- lect any former ideas, corporeal or intellectual, it is very probable that it employs some finer or more spirituous parts of animal na- ture to open all the kindred traces that lie in that part of the brain, till at last it lights upon that particular trace which is connected with the desired idea, and immediately the soul perceivesand acknowledges it. It is in this manner that we hunt after a name that we have almost forgotten ; as for instance, suppose the name be Tompkins, we think of all the names that end in kies, viz. Wilkins, Watkins, Jenkins, Hopkins, &c. till at last we light upon the name Tompkins Which sought ; or suppose we seek after the naine or idea of a temple, we rummage over the traces of ¡tense, building, palace, church, till we light on the idea and word temple. Thus we have seen the way and manner whereby the soul of man comes to acquire its ideas at first, both of corporeal and in- tellectual objects, and that is, by sensation and reflection ; we have also made a probable guess how these ideas are treasured up and recollected while the mind is united to the body. XVI. But besides these two sorts of ideas, there is a third sort whichare properly called abstracted ideas ; such as are not the express representations of any corporeal or spiritual beings just as they exist, but are as it were a part of our ideas of some spiritual or corporeal things abstracted from the other parts ; or At least they are ideas drawn from their real or supposed proper- ties abstracted from the beings themselves, or from some modes or affectiops of these corporeal or spiritual beings, or sometimes from the mere relations that several beings bear to one another. Of these obstructions there are several sorts and degrees, and consequently there are ideas which are more br less abstracted. The first sort of these ideas, which are least abstracted, are ideas of èommon and general kinds ofbeing drawn from particu- lars or individuals ; such as a man, a bird, a flower, a pigeon, a spirit, &e. Now these abstract ideas are formed in this manner. I see several pigeons, I observe they are birds of such a shape,
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