22. The mind thinks in proportion to the matter it gets from
experience to think about. Follow a child from its birth, and
observe the alterations that time makes, and you shall find, as the
mind by the senses comes more and more to be furnished with ideas,
it comes to be more and more awake; thinks more, the more it has
matter to think on. After some time it begins to know the objects
which, being most familiar with it, have made lasting impressions.
Thus it comes by degrees to know the persons it daily converses
with, and distinguishes them from strangers; which are instances and
effects of its coming to retain and distinguish the ideas the senses
convey to it. And so we may observe how the mind, by degrees, improves
in these; and advances to the exercise of those other faculties of
enlarging, compounding, and abstracting its ideas, and of reasoning
about them, and reflecting upon all these; of which I shall have
occasion to speak more hereafter.
23. A man begins to have ideas when he first has sensation. What
sensation is. If it shall be demanded then, when a man begins to
have any ideas, I think the true answer is,- when he first has any
sensation. For, since there appear not to be any ideas in the mind
before the senses have conveyed any in, I conceive that ideas in the
understanding are coeval with sensation; which is such an impression
or motion made in some part of the body, as produces some perception
in the understanding.
Pages:
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154