OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF BOTH SENSATION AND REFLECTION.
1. Ideas of Pleasure and Pain.
There be other simple ideas which convey themselves into the mind by
all the ways of sensation and reflection, _viz_.
_Pleasure_ or _Delight_, and its opposite,
_Pain_, or _Uneasiness;_
_Power;_
_Existence;_
_Unity_ mix with almost all our other Ideas.
2. Delight or uneasiness, one or other of them, join themselves to
almost all our ideas both of sensation and reflection: and there is
scarce any affection of our senses from without, any retired thought of
our mind within, which is not able to produce in us pleasure or pain.
By pleasure and pain, I would be understood to signify, whatsoever
delights or molests us; whether it arises from the thoughts of our
minds, or anything operating on our bodies. For, whether we call it;
satisfaction, delight, pleasure, happiness, &c., on the one side, or
uneasiness, trouble, pain, torment, anguish, misery, &c., the other,
they are still but different degrees of the same thing, and belong to
the ideas of pleasure and pain, delight or uneasiness; which are the
names I shall most commonly use for those two sorts of ideas.
3. As motives of our actions.
The infinite wise Author of our being, having given us the power over
several parts of our bodies, to move or keep them at rest as we think
fit; and also, by the motion of them, to move ourselves and other
contiguous bodies, in which consist all the actions of our body: having
also given a power to our minds, in several instances, to choose,
amongst its ideas, which it will think on, and to pursue the inquiry of
this or that subject with consideration and attention, to excite us to
these actions of thinking and motion that we are capable of,—has been
pleased to join to several thoughts, and several sensations a
perception of delight. If this were wholly separated from all our
outward sensations, and inward thoughts, we should have no reason to
prefer one thought or action to another; negligence to attention, or
motion to rest. And so we should neither stir our bodies, nor employ
our minds, but let our thoughts (if I may so call it) run adrift,
without any direction or design, and suffer the ideas of our minds,
like unregarded shadows, to make their appearances there, as it
happened, without attending to them. In which state man, however
furnished with the faculties of understanding and will, would be a very
idle, inactive creature, and pass his time only in a lazy, lethargic
dream. It has therefore pleased our wise Creator to annex to several
objects, and the ideas which we receive from them, as also to several
of our thoughts, a concomitant pleasure, and that in several objects,
to several degrees, that those faculties which he had endowed us with
might not remain wholly idle and unemployed by us.
4. An end and use of pain.
Pain has the same efficacy and use to set us on work that pleasure has,
we being as ready to employ our faculties to avoid that, as to pursue
this: only this is worth our consideration, that pain is often produced
by the same objects and ideas that produce pleasure in us. This their
near conjunction, which makes us often feel pain in the sensations
where we expected pleasure, gives us new occasion of admiring the
wisdom and goodness of our Maker, who, designing the preservation of
our being, has annexed pain to the application of many things to our
bodies, to warn us of the harm that they will do, and as advices to
withdraw from them. But he, not designing our preservation barely, but
the preservation of every part and organ in its perfection, hath in
many cases annexed pain to those very ideas which delight us. Thus
heat, that is very agreeable to us in one degree, by a little greater
increase of it proves no ordinary torment: and the most pleasant of all
sensible objects, light itself, if there be too much of it, if
increased beyond a due proportion to our eyes, causes a very painful
sensation. Which is wisely and favourably so ordered by nature, that
when any object does, by the vehemency of its operation, disorder the
instruments of sensation, whose structures cannot but be very nice and
delicate, we might, by the pain, be warned to withdraw, before the
organ be quite put out of order, and so be unfitted for its proper
function for the future. The consideration of those objects that
produce it may well persuade us, that this is the end or use of pain.
For, though great light be insufferable to our eyes, yet the highest
degree of darkness does not at all disease them: because that, causing
no disorderly motion in it, leaves that curious organ unharmed in its
natural state. But yet excess of cold as well as heat pains us: because
it is equally destructive to that temper which is necessary to the
preservation of life, and the exercise of the several functions of the
body, and which consists in a moderate degree of warmth; or, if you
please, a motion of the insensible parts of our bodies, confined within
certain bounds.
5. Another end.
Beyond all this, we may find another reason why God hath scattered up
and down several degrees of pleasure and pain, in all the things that
environ and affect us; and blended them together in almost all that our
thoughts and senses have to do with;—that we, finding imperfection,
dissatisfaction, and want of complete happiness, in all the enjoyments
which the creatures can afford us, might be led to seek it in the
enjoyment of Him with whom there is fullness of joy, and at whose right
hand are pleasures for evermore.
6. Goodness of God in annexing pleasure and pain to our other ideas.
Though what I have here said may not, perhaps, make the ideas of
pleasure and pain clearer to us than our own experience does, which is
the only way that we are capable of having them; yet the consideration
of the reason why they are annexed to so many other ideas, serving to
give us due sentiments of the wisdom and goodness of the Sovereign
Disposer of all things, may not be unsuitable to the main end of these
inquiries: the knowledge and veneration of him being the chief end of
all our thoughts, and the proper business of all understandings.
7. Ideas of Existence and Unity.
EXISTENCE and UNITY are two other ideas that are suggested to the
understanding by every object without, and every idea within. When
ideas are in our minds, we consider them as being actually there, as
well as we consider things to be actually without us;—which is, that
they exist, or have existence. And whatever we can consider as one
thing, whether a real being or idea, suggests to the understanding the
idea of unity.
8. Idea of Power.
POWER also is another of those simple ideas which we receive from
sensation and reflection. For, observing in ourselves that we do and
can think, and that we can at pleasure move several parts of our bodies
which were at rest; the effects, also, that natural bodies are able to
produce in one another, occurring every moment to our senses,—we both
these ways get the idea of power.
9. Idea of Succession.
Besides these there is another idea, which, though suggested by our
senses, yet is more constantly offered to us by what passes in our
minds; and that is the idea of SUCCESSION. For if we look immediately
into ourselves, and reflect on what is observable there, we shall find
our ideas always, whilst we are awake, or have any thought, passing in
train, one going and another coming, without intermission.
10. Simple Ideas the materials of all our Knowledge.
These, if they are not all, are at least (as I think) the most
considerable of those simple ideas which the mind has, out of which is
made all its other knowledge; all which it receives only by the two
forementioned ways of sensation and reflection.
Nor let any one think these too narrow bounds for the capacious mind of
man to expatiate in, which takes its flight further than the stars, and
cannot be confined by the limits of the world; that extends its
thoughts often even beyond the utmost expansion of Matter, and makes
excursions into that incomprehensible Inane. I grant all this, but
desire any one to assign any SIMPLE IDEA which is not received from one
of those inlets before mentioned, or any COMPLEX IDEA not made out of
those simple ones. Nor will it be so strange to think these few simple
ideas sufficient to employ the quickest thought, or largest capacity;
and to furnish the materials of all that various knowledge, and more
various fancies and opinions of all mankind, if we consider how many
words may be made out of the various composition of twenty-four
letters; or if, going one step further, we will but reflect on the
variety of combinations that may be made with barely one of the
above-mentioned ideas, viz. number, whose stock is inexhaustible and
truly infinite: and what a large and immense field doth extension alone
afford the mathematicians?