proper and immediate sources of our ideas, not this kind of reflection on them, which seems to be nothing but the repetition or recollection of the first conscious impression, the perception of a perception. For example, Mr Locke includes among operations of our own minds "some sort of passions arising from our ideas," i. e. as he explains it, the sense of pleasure and pain. Now it is surely a little preposterous to make, not the original feeling itself, but the after consideration or reflection on that feeling, the source of our idea of pleasure or pain. In this sense, reflection must be the source of all our ideas, whether of external objects, or the operations of our own minds, for in the same sense may be argued, that the first impression of a sensible object is not the source of the idea we have of it, till the soul comes to reflect on and consider that original impression. But it might be said with equal propriety, that we have one source of ideas, viz., sensation, and another source of ideas, viz. ideas. From the view which Mr Locke has here taken of the subject, though the passions, or the satisfaction and uneasiness attending certain things are ranked among the operations of the mind, yet it is not quite clear whether we are supposed to have any consciousness of them or not; whether they are not as

it

remote from any thing like perception, as the lifeless objects without us, till coming to be afterwards reflected on and taken notice of by the mind, they furnish the understanding with a new set of ideas. The same reasoning may be applied to the other operations of perception, thinking, &c. for it seems to me that the original act of perceiving or thinking is the source of my idea of those mental operations, just as the first impression of any sensible object is the source of my idea of that object. Not sensation and reflection, therefore, but sensation and the operations of our own minds are more properly the sources of our ideas, that is, these two furnish materials for our reflection. I should not have dwelt so long upon this distinction, which may be thought of little importance in itself, but that I believe it has led to most of the errors of the Essay.' For in consequence of separating the operations of the mind in a manner from the mind itself, and making them exist only as objects for its contemplation, Mr Locke has been satisfied with considering those operations as acting upon the mind like external things, not as emanating from it. Thus, by a general formula, all our ideas of every kind are represented as communicated to the mind by something foreign to it, instead of growing

out of, and being a part of its own nature and

essence.

Secondly, another objection to this division of our ideas into those of sensation and reflection is, that it does not differ in any decisive manner from the more simple statement of Hobbes and others, who derive all our ideas from sensation. For by sensation these writers do not understand merely the external image, but the perception or feeling which accompanies it, and they contend that all our other ideas are continuations, modifications, or different arrangements of the original impressions, produced by objects on the senses. Now there is nothing in the extract above given to disprove this statement: and if so, the original hypothesis will remain in its full force. Indeed Mr Locke himself does not seem to have made up his mind, whether it were so or not. For though he speaks of the mind as furnishing the understanding with ideas, and with the materials of reason and knowledge, and enumerates and explains the several operations of the mind in comparing, distinguishing, &c. yet he elsewhere speaks of ideas as existing in the understanding like pictures in a gallery, or as if the whole process of the intellect were resolvable into the power of receiving, retaining, carrying,

and transposing the gross materials furnished by the senses. In this case, I think the simplest way

at once is to make sensation the foundation of all our other ideas and faculties. For my own part, the reason why I cannot assent to this doctrine is, that I believe there is another act or faculty of the mind implied in all our ideas, for which neither sensation nor any of its modes can ever account, and which I shall here proceed to explain.

The principle which I shall attempt to prove is, that ideas are the offspring of the understanding, not of the senses. By a sensation is meant the perception produced by the impression of the several parts of an outward object, each by itself, on the correspondent parts of an ganized sentient being: by an idea I mean the conception produced by a number of these together on the same conscious principle. Besides the succession or juxta-position of different sensible impressions, I suppose that there is a common principle of thought, a superintending X faculty, which alone perceives the relations of things, and enables us to comprehend their connexions, forms, and masses. This faculty is properly the understanding, and it is by means of this faculty that man indeed becomes a reasonable soul. What has led more than any thing

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else to the exclusion of the understanding as a distinct faculty of the mind, and to the principle of resolving the acts of judging, reasoning, &c., into mere association, or succession of ideas, has been the considering ideas themselves, or those particular objects which are marked by one name, or strike at once upon the senses, as simple things. Mr Locke, it is true, has avoided this error as far as relates to our ideas of substances, but he reckons among simple ideas of the qualities of things several ideas, which are evidently complex, such as extension, figure, motion, and number. Hence, having laid in a certain stock of ideas without the necessity of the understanding, it was thought an easy matter to build up the whole structure of the human mind without it, as we build a house with stones. The method, therefore, which I shall take to establish the point I have in view, will be by showing that there is no one of these simple ideas, or ideas of particular things, which are made the foundation of all the rest, that is not itself an aggregate of many things, or that can subsist a moment but in the understanding. I can conceive of a being endued with the power of sensation, or simple perception, so as to receive the direct impressions of things, and also with memory, so as to retain them for