876 THE ORIGINAL OF OUR IDEAS. and size, and motion ; one is of a dark brown colour, a second is white, a third is speckled : but I omit or leave out these particu- lar colours, and all other peculiarities in which they differ, and abstracting from them the things in which they agree, I keep those only in mind, viz. a bird of such a shape, size, and motion, and I call this a pigeon : now this is a general naine for all the birds of that kind, and this we call an abstracted idea. So we form the general idea of a spirit, byconsidering the soul of Peter, Thomas, George, &c. and leaving out their different personal properties and individual circumstances, we retain only those ideas wherein they all agree, and call that a spirit. Note, this first sort of abstract ideas may still be called cor- poreal or intellectual ideas, according to the nature of the objects whence we derive them, though they arenot completely like those objects,, because they represent but that part of them only where- in they agree withothers of the same kind. Now these abstract- ed ideas evidentlyarise from a power that is in the mind itself to abstract or divide one part of an idea from the oilier, or to sepa- ratemingled ideas and conceive them apart. Another sort of abstracted ideas, and which indeed are more properly called by that name, are general relations which arise from comparing one thing with another, and from observing the relations that one thing bears to another : and then the mind ab- stracts those relations from the things which are related, and trea- sures up those relations as a distinct set of ideas, even while the things which are related, are neglected or forgotten ; such are cause, effect, likeness, difference, whole, part, Bic. I might give an instance thus ; when I see a sword wound a man, or when I am conscious that my soul forms an argument, I conceive the sword to be the cause, and the wound is the effect : or I conceive the soul is the cause, and the argument is the effect : then I re- serve these ideas of cause and effect for general use, and apply them very properly to a hundred other cases, when I have no further thought of a sward or a soul, which occasioned my first ideas of causality. These are pure abstract ideas. Some absolute modes, properties or affections borrowed from individual beings, as well as their relativemodes, or relations, will also afford Its such kind of pure abstracted ideas ; such are the ideas of essence, existence, duration, substance, mode, &c. which are formed in this manner. Suppose I think of a bowl as sub- sisting by itself, and that it is both round and heavy ; I conceive of the bowl as a'substance, and of roundness and heaviness as modes belonging to it : so when I think ofa spirit as a thing that subsists of itself, and that this spirit is grieved or joyful : I infer that spirit is a substance, and joy and grief aremodes of that sub- stance. Then I abstract the ideas of substance and .mode both from the corporeal and the spiritual ideas which first occasioned
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