we mean no more, than it is differenced by such properties as come to our knowledge. Sometimes nature is taken for the thing itself in which these properties are; and so Aristotle took nature for a corporeal substance, which had the principles of motion in itself; but nature and substance are of an equal extent; and so that which is the subject of powers and properties is the nature, whether it be meant of bodily or spiritual substances."

Your lordship, in this paragraph, gives us two significations of the word nature: 1. That it is sometimes taken for essential properties, which I easily admit. 2. That sometimes it is taken for the thing itself in which these properties are, and consequently for substance itself. And this your lordship proves out of Aristotle.

Whether Aristotle called the thing itself, wherein the essential properties are, nature, I will not dispute: but that your lordship thinks fit to call substance nature, is evident. And from thence I think your lordship endeavours to prove, in the following words, that we can have from ideas no clear and distinct apprehensions concerning nature. Your lordship's words are:

"I grant, that by sensation and reflection we come to know the powers and properties of things; but our reason is satisfied that there must be something beyond these, because it is impossible that they should subsist by themselves. So that the nature of things properly belongs to our reason, and not to mere ideas."

How we come by the idea of substance, from the simple ones of sensation and reflection, I have endeavoured to show in another place, and therefore shall not trouble your lordship with it here again. But what your lordship infers, in these words, "So that the nature of things properly belongs to our reason, and not to mere ideas;" I do not well understand. Your lordship indeed here again seems to oppose reason and ideas; and to that I say, mere ideas are the objects of the understanding, and reason is one of the faculties of the understanding employed about them; and that the

understanding, or reason, whichever your lordship pleases to call it, makes or forms, out of the simple ones that come in by sensation and reflection, all the other ideas, whether general, relative, or complex, by abstracting, comparing, and compounding its positive simple ideas, whereof it cannot make or frame any one, but what it receives by sensation or reflection. And therefore I never denied that reason was employed about our particular simple ideas, to make out of them ideas general, relative, and complex; nor about all our ideas, whether simple or complex, positive or relative, general or particular: it being the proper business of reason, in the search after truth and knowledge, to find out the relations between all these sorts of ideas, in the perception whereof knowledge and certainty of truth consists.

These, my lord, are, in short, my notions about ideas, their original and formation, and of the use the mind, or reason, makes of them in knowledge. Whether your lordship thinks fit to call this a new way of reasoning, must be left to your lordship; whether it be a right way, is that alone which I am concerned for. But your lordship seems all along (I crave leave here once for all to take notice of it) to have some particular exception against ideas, and particularly clear and distinct ideas, as if they were not to be used, or were of no use in reason and knowledge; or, as if reason were opposed to them, or leads us into the knowledge and certainty of things without them; or, the knowledge of things did not at all depend on them. I beg your lordship's pardon for expressing myself so variously and doubtfully in this matter; the reason whereof is, because I must own, that I do not everywhere clearly understand what your lordship means, when you speak, as you do, of ideas; as if I ascribed more to them than belonged to them; or expected more of them than they could do; v. g. where your lordship says, "But is all this contained in the simple idea of these operations?" And again, And again," so that here it is not the clearness of the idea, but an immediate act of perception, which is the true ground of certainty." And farther, "so that our certainty is not from the ideas

themselves, but from the evidence of reason." And in another place, "it is not the idea that makes us certain, but the argument from that which we perceive in and about ourselves. Is it from the clear and distinct idea of it? No! but from this argument." And here, "the nature of things belongs to our reason, and not to mere ideas."

These, and several the like passages, your lordship has against what your lordship calls " this new way of ideas, and an admirable way to bring us to the certainty of reason."

I never said nor thought ideas, nor any thing else, could bring us to the certainty of reason, without the exercise of reason. And then, my lord, if we will employ our minds, and exercise our reason, to bring us to certainty; what, I beseech you, shall they be employed about but ideas? For ideas, in my sense of the word, are," whatsoever is the object of the understanding, when a man thinks; or, whatever it is the mind can be employed about in thinking*" And again, I have these words, "whatsoever is the imme diate object of perception, thought, or understanding, that I call idea t" So that my way of ideas, and of coming to certainty by them, is to employ our minds in thinking upon something; and I do not see but your lordship yourself, and every body else, must make use of my way of ideas, unless they can find out a way that will bring them to certainty by thinking on nothing. So that let certainty be placed as much as it will on reason, let the nature of things belong as properly as it will to our reason, it will nevertheless be true, that certainty consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas; and that the complex idea the word nature stands for is ultimately made up of the simple ideas of sensation and reflection. Your lordship proceeds:

"But we must yet proceed farther: for nature may be considered two ways.

"1. As it is in distinct individuals, as the nature of a man is equally in Peter, James, and John; and this + B. ii. c. 8. § 8.

B. i. c. 1. § 8.

is the common nature, with a particular subsistence -proper to each of them. For the nature of man, as in Peter, is distinct from the same nature, as it is in. James and John; otherwise, they would be but one person, as well as have the same nature. And this distinction of persons in them is discerned both by our senses, as to their different accidents; and by our reason, because they have a separate existence; not coming into it at once, and in the same manner."

"2. Nature may be considered abstractly, without respect to individual persons; and then it makes an entire notion of itself. For however the same nature may be in different individuals, yet the nature itself remains one and the same; which appears from this evident reason, that otherwise every individual must make a different kind."

I am so little confident of my own quickness, and of having got, from what your lordship has said here, a clear and distinct apprehension concerning nature, that I must beg your lordship's pardon, if I should happen to dissatisfy your lordship, by talking unintelligibly, or besides the purpose about it. I must then confess to your lordship, 1. that I do not clearly understand whether your lordship, in these two paragraphs, speaks of nature, as standing for essential properties; or of nature, as standing for substance: and yet it is of great moment in the case, because your lordship allows, that the notion of nature, in the former of these senses, may be had from sensation and reflection; but of nature, in the latter sense, your lordship says, "it properly belongs to reason, and not mere ideas." 2. Your lordship's saying, in the first of these paragraphs, "that the nature of a man, as in Peter, is distinct from the same nature as it is in James and John ;" and in the second of them, "that however the same nature may be in different individuals, yet the nature itself remains one and the same;" does not give me so clear and distinct an apprehension concerning nature, that I know which, in your lordship's opinion, I ought to think, either that one and the same nature is in Peter and John; or that a nature distinct from that in John is in

Peter: and the reason is, because I cannot, in my way by ideas, well put together one and the same and distinct. My apprehension concerning the nature of man, or the common nature of man, if your lordship will, upon this occasion, give me leave to trouble your lordship with it, is, in short, this; that it is a collection of several ideas, combined into one complex, abstract idea, which when they are found united in any individual existing, though joined in that existence with several other ideas, that individual or particular being is truly said to have the nature of a man, or the nature of a man to be in him; forasmuch as all these simple ideas are found united in him, which answer the complex, abstract idea, to which the specific name man is given by any one; which abstract, specific idea, he keeps the same, when he applies the specific name standing for it, to distinct individuals; i. e. nobody changes his idea of a man, when he says Peter is a man, from that idea which he makes the name man to stand for, when he calls John a man. This short way by ideas has not, I confess, those different and more learned and scholastic considerations set down by your lordship. But how they are necessary, or at all tend to prove what your lordship has proposed to prove, viz. that we have no clear and distinct idea of nature, from the simple ideas got from sensation and reflection, I confess I do not yet see. But your lordship goes on to it.

"Let us now see how far these things can come from our simple ideas, by reflection and sensation. And I shall lay down the hypothesis of those, who resolve our certainty into ideas, as plainly and intelligibly as I can."

Here I am got again into the plural number; for though it be said "the hypothesis of those," yet my words alone are quoted for that hypothesis, and not a word of any body else in this whole business concerning nature. What they are, I shall give the reader, as your lordship has set them down.

1. We are told, "* that all simple ideas are true and adequate. Not, that they are the true representations * Human Understanding, B. ii. c. 30, 31.