reflection, being no other than what the mind, by the ordinary, use of its own faculties, employed about ideas received from objects of sense, or from the operations it observes in itself about them, may and does attain unto. This I shall endeavour to show in the ideas we have of space, time, and infinity, and some few others, that seem the most remote from those originals.

CHAPTER XIII.

Of Simple Modes, and first of the Simple Modes of Space.

§ 1. THOUGH in the foregoing part Simple I have often mentioned simple ideas, Modes. which are truly the materials of all our knowledge; yet having treated of them there rather in the way that they come into the mind, than as distinguished from others more compounded, it will not be perhaps amiss to take a view of some of them again under this consideration, and examine those different modifications of the same idea; which the mind either finds in things existing, or is able to make within itself, without the help of any extrinsical object, or any foreign suggestion.

Those modifications of any one simple idea (which, as has been said, I call simple modes) are as perfectly different and distinct ideas in the mind as those of the greatest distance or contrariety. For the idea of two is as distinct from that of one, as blueness from heat, or either of them from any number: and yet it is. made up only of that simple idea of an unit re

peated; and repetitions of this kind joined together make those distinct simple modes, of a dozen, a gross, a million.

Idea of

space.

§ 2. I shall begin with the simple idea of space. I have showed above, chap. 4. that we get the idea of space both by our sight and touch; which I think is so evident, that it would be as needless to go to prove that men perceive, by their sight, a distance between bodies of different colours, or between the parts of the same body, as that they see colours themselves; nor is it less obvious that they can do so in the dark by feeling and touch.

Space and extension.

§ 3. This space considered barely in length between any two beings, without considering any thing else between them, is called distance; if considered in length, breadth, and thickness, I think it may be called capacity. The term extension is usually applied to it in what manner soever considered.

§ 4. Each different distance is a difImmensity. ferent modification of space; and each idea of any different distance or space is a simple mode of this idea. Men for the use and by the custom of measuring, settle in their minds the ideas of certain stated lengths, such as are an inch, foot, yard, fathom, mile, diameter of the earth, &c. which are so many distinct ideas made up only of space. When any such stated lengths or measures of space are made familiar to men's thoughts, they can in their minds repeat them as often as they will, without mixing or joining to them the idea of body or any thing else; and frame to themselves the ideas of long, square, or cubic, feet, yards, or fathoms, here amongst the bodies of the universe, or else beyond the utmost bounds of all bodies; and by adding these still one to another, enlarge their ideas of space as much as they please. The power of repeating or doubling any idea we have of any distance, and adding it to the former as often as we will,

without being ever able to come to any stop or stint, let us enlarge it as much as we will, is that which gives us the idea of immensity.

§ 5. There is another modification of Figure. this idea, which is nothing but the rela

tion which the parts of the termination of extension or circumscribed space have amongst themselves. This the touch discovers in sensible bodies, whose extremities come within our reach; and the eye takes both from bodies and colours, whose boundaries are within its view: where observing how the extremities terminate either in straight lines, which meet at discernible angles, or in crooked lines, wherein no angles can be perceived, by considering these as they relate to one another, in all parts of the extremities of any body or space, it has that idea we call figure, which affords to the mind infinite variety. For besides the vast number of different figures that do really exist in the coherent masses of matter, the stock that the mind has in its power, by varying the idea of space, and thereby making still new compositions, by repeating its own ideas, and joining them as it pleases, is perfectly inexhaustible; and so it can multiply figures in infinitum.

Figure.

§ 6. For the mind having a power to repeat the idea of any length directly stretched out, and join it to another in the same direction, which is to double the length of that straight line, or else join another with what inclination it thinks fit, and so make what sort of angle it pleases; and being able also to shorten any line it imagines, by taking from it one-half, or one-fourth, or what part it pleases, without being able to come to an end of any such divisions, it can make an angle of any bigness: so also the lines that are its sides, of what length it pleases; which joining again to other lines of different lengths, and at different angles, till it has wholly inclosed any space, it is evident that it can multiply figures both in their shape and capacity, in infinitum;

all which are but so many different simple modes of space.

The same that it can do with straight lines it can also do with crooked, or crooked and straight together; and the same it can do in lines it can also in superficies by which we may be led into farther thoughts of the endless variety of figures that the mind has a power to make, and thereby to multiply the simple modes of space.

Place.

§ 7. Another idea coming under this head, and belonging to this tribe, is that we call place. As in simple space we consider the relation of distance between any two bodies or points; so in our idea of place we consider the relation of distance betwixt any thing and any two or more points, which are considered as keeping the same distance one with another, and so considered as at rest: for when we find any thing at the same distance now which it was yesterday, from any two or more points, which have not since changed their distance one with another, and with which we then compared it, we say it hath kept the same place; but if it hath sensibly altered its distance with either of those points, we say it hath changed its place: though vulgarly speaking, in the common notion of place, we do not always exactly observe the distance from these precise points, but from larger portions of sensible objects, to which we consider the thing placed to bear relation, and its distance from which we have some reason to observe.

§ 8. Thus a company of chess-men standing on the same squares of the chess-board where we left them, we say they are all in the same place, or unmoved; though perhaps the chess-board hath been in the mean time carried out of one room into another; because we compared them only to the parts of the chess-board which keep the same distance one with another. The chess-board, we also say, is in the same place it was, if it remain in the same part of the cabin, though perhaps the ship which it is in sails all the while: and

the ship is said to be in the same place, supposing it kept the same distance with the parts of the neighbouring land, though perhaps the earth hath turned round and so both chess-men, and board, and ship, have every one changed place, in respect of remoter bodies, which have kept the same distance one with another. But yet the distance from certain parts of the board being that which determines the place of the chess-men; and the distance from the fixed parts of the cabin (with which we made the comparison) being that which determined the place of the chessboard; and the fixed parts of the earth that by which we determined the place of the ship; these things may be said to be in the same place in those respects: though their distance from some other things, which in this matter we did not consider, being varied, they have undoubtedly changed place in that respect; and we ourselves shall think so when we have occasion to compare them with those other.

§ 9. But this modification of distance we call place being made by men for their common use, that by it they might be able to design the particular position of things, where they had occasion for such designation; men consider and determine of this place by reference to those adjacent things which best served to their present purpose, without considering other things, which to answer another purpose would better determine the place of the same thing. Thus, in the chessboard, the use of the designation of the place of each chess-man being determined only within that chequered piece of wood, it would cross that purpose to measure it by any thing else: but when these very chess-men are put up in a bag, if any one should ask where the black king is, it would be proper to determine the place by the parts of the room it was in, and not by the chess-board; there being another use of designing the place it is now in than when in play it was on the chess-board, and so must be determined by other bodies. So if any one should ask, in what

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