wish I could be so, the better to deserve your lordship's approbation.

My saying, "that when we talk of substance, we talk like children; who being asked a question about something, which they know not, readily give this satisfactory answer, that it is something;" your lordship seems mightily to lay to heart, in these words that follow:

"If this be the truth of the case, we must still talk like children, and I know not how it can be remedied. For if we cannot come at a rational idea of substance, we can have no principle of certainty to go upon in this debate."

If your lordship has any better and distincter idea of substance than mine is, which I have given an account of, your lordship is not at all concerned in what I have there said. But those whose idea of substance, whether a rational or not rational idea, is like mine, something he knows not what, must in that, with me, talk like children, when they speak of something they know not what. For a philosopher that says, that which supports accidents is something he knows not what; and a countryman that says, the foundation of the church at Harlem is supported by something heknows-not-what; and a child that stands in the dark upon his mother's muff, and says he stands upon something he-knows-not-what; in this respect talk all three alike. But if the countryman knows that the foundation of the church at Harlem is supported by a rock, as the houses about Bristol are; or by gravel, as the houses about London are; or by wooden piles, as the houses in Amsterdam are; it is plain, that then, having a clear and distinct idea of the thing that supports the church, he does not talk of this matter as a child; nor will he of the support of accidents, when he has a clearer and more distinct idea of it, than that it is barely something. But as long as we think like children, in cases where our ideas are no clearer nor distincter than theirs, I agree with your lordship, that I know not how it can be remedied, but that we must talk like them.

Your lordship's next paragraph begins thus: "I do not say, that we can have a clear idea of substance, either by sensation or reflection; but from hence I argue, that this is a very insufficient distribution of the ideas necessary to reason."

Your lordship here argues against a proposition that I know nobody that holds: I am sure the author of the Essay of Human Understanding never thought, nor in that Essay hath any where said, that the ideas that come into the mind by sensation and reflection are all the ideas that are necessary to reason, or that reason is exercised about; for then he must have laid by all the ideas of simple and mixed modes and relations, and the complex ideas of the species of substances, about which he has spent so many chapters; and must have denied that these complex ideas are the objects of men's thoughts or reasonings, which he is far enough from. All that he has said about sensation and reflection is, that all our simple ideas are received by them, and that these simple ideas are the foundation of all our knowledge, forasmuch as all our complex, relative, and general ideas are made by the mind, abstracting, enlarging, comparing, compounding, and referring, &c. these simple ideas, and their several combinations, one to another; whereby complex and general ideas are formed of modes, relations, and the several species of substances, all which are made use of by reason, as well as the other faculties of the mind.

I therefore agree with your lordship, that the ideas of sensation or reflection is a very insufficient distribution of the ideas necessary to reason. Only my agreement with your lordship had been more entire to the whole sentence, if your lordship had rather said, ideas made use of by reason; because I do not well know what is meant by ideas necessary to reason. For reason being a faculty of the mind, nothing, in my poor opinion, can properly be said to be necessary to that faculty, but what is required to its being. As nothing is necessary to sight in a man, but such a constitution of the body and organ, that a man may have the power of seeing; so I submit it to your lordship, whether any thing can properly be

said to be necessary to reason in a man, but such a constitution of body or mind, or both, as may give him the power of reasoning. Indeed, such a particular sort of objects or instruments may be sometimes said to be necessary to the eye, but it is never said in reference to the faculty of seeing, but in reference to some particular end of seeing; and then a microscope and a mite may be necessary to the eye, if the end proposed be to know the shape and parts of that animal. And so if a man would reason about substance, then the idea of substance is necessary to his reason: but yet I doubt not but that many a rational creature has been, who, in all his life, never bethought himself of any necessity his reason had of an idea of substance.

Your lordship's next words are; " for besides these, there must be some general ideas which the mind doth form, not by mere comparing those ideas it has got from sense or reflection, but by forming distinct general notions of things from particular ideas."

Here, again, I perfectly agree with your lordship, that besides the particular ideas received from sensation and reflection, the mind "forms general ideas, not by mere comparing those ideas it has got by sensation and reflection;" for this I do not remember I ever said. But this I say, "* ideas become general, by separating from them the circumstances of time and place, and any other ideas that may determine them to this or that particular existence. By this way of abstraction they are made," &c. And to the same purpose I explain myself in another place t.

Your lordship says, "the mind forms general ideas, by forming general notions of things from particular ideas." And I say, "the mind forms general ideas, abstracting from particular ones." So that there is no difference that I perceive between us in this matter, but only a little in expression.

It follows," and amongst these general notions, or rational ideas, substance is one of the first; because we find, that we can have no true conceptions of any

modes or accidents (no matter which) but we must conceive a substratum, or subject wherein they are. Since it is a repugnancy to our first conceptions of things, that modes or accidents should subsist by themselves; and therefore the rational idea of substance is one of the first and most natural ideas in our minds."

Whether the general idea of substance be one of the first or most natural ideas in our minds, I will not dispute with your lordship, as not being, I think, very material to the matter in hand. But as to the idea of substance, what it is, and how we come by it, your lordship says, "it is a repugnancy to our conceptions of things, that modes and accidents should subsist by themselves; and therefore we must conceive a substratum wherein they are."

And, I say, "because we cannot conceive how simple ideas of sensible qualities should subsist alone, or one in another, we suppose them existing in, and supported by, some common subject." Which I, with your lordship, call also substratumt.

What can be more consonant to itself, than what your lordship and I have said in these two passages is consonant to one another? Whereupon, my lord, give me leave, I beseech you, to boast to the world, that what I have said concerning our general idea of substance, and the way how we come by it, has the honour to be confirmed by your lordship's authority. And that from hence I may be sure the saying, [that the general idea we have of substance is, that it is a substratum or support to modes or accidents, wherein they do subsist: and that the mind forms it, because it cannot conceive how they should subsist of themselves,] has no objection in it against the Trinity; for then your lordship will not, I know, be of that opinion, nor own it in a chapter where you are answering objections against the Trinity; however my words, which amount to no more, have been (I know not how) brought into that chapter: though what they have to do there, I must confess to your lordship, I do not yet see.

In the next words your lordship says, "but we are still told, that our understanding can have no other ideas, but either from sensation or reflection."

The words of that section your lordship quotes, are these: "the understanding seems to me, not to have the least glimmering of any ideas, which it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us: and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations. These, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several modes, and the compositions made out of them, we shall find to contain all our own stock of ideas; and that we have nothing in our minds which did not come in one of those two ways. Let any one examine his own thoughts, and thoroughly search into his own understanding, and then let him tell me, whether all the original ideas he has there, are any other than of the objects of his senses, or of the operations of his mind, considered as objects of his reflection: and how great a mass of knowledge soever he imagines to be lodged there, he will, upon taking a strict view, see, that he has not any idea in his mind but what one of these two have imprinted, though, perhaps, with infinite variety compounded and enlarged by the understanding, as we shall see hereafter."

These words seem to me to signify something different from what your lordship has cited out of them; and if they do not, were intended, I am sure, by me, to signify all those complex ideas of modes, relations, and specific substances, which how the mind itself forms out of simple ideas, I have showed in the following part of my book; and intended to refer to it by these words, "as we shall see hereafter," with which I close that paragraph. But if by ideas your lordship signifies simple ideas, in the words you have set down, I grant then they contain my sense, viz. "that our understandings can have (that is, in the natural exercise of our faculties) B. ii. c. 1. § 5.