Though the qualities that affect our senses are, in the things
themselves, so united and blended, that there is no separation, no
distance between them; yet it is plain, the ideas they produce in
the mind enter by the senses simple and unmixed. For, though the sight
and touch often take in from the same object, at the same time,
different ideas;- as a man sees at once motion and colour; the hand
feels softness and warmth in the same piece of wax: yet the simple
ideas thus united in the same subject, are as perfectly distinct as
those that come in by different senses. The coldness and hardness
which a man feels in a piece of ice being as distinct ideas in the
mind as the smell and whiteness of a lily; or as the taste of sugar,
and smell of a rose. And there is nothing can be plainer to a man than
the clear and distinct perception he has of those simple ideas; which,
being each in itself uncompounded, contains in it nothing but one
uniform appearance, or conception in the mind, and is not
distinguishable into different ideas.
2. The mind can neither make nor destroy them. These simple ideas,
the materials of all our knowledge, are suggested and furnished to the
mind only by those two ways above mentioned, viz. sensation and
reflection. When the understanding is once stored with these simple
ideas, it has the power to repeat, compare, and unite them, even to an
almost infinite variety, and so can make at pleasure new complex
ideas.
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