Hence it
comes to pass that a man who is very sober, and of a right
understanding in all other things, may in one particular be as frantic
as any in Bedlam; if either by any sudden very strong impression, or
long fixing his fancy upon one sort of thoughts, incoherent ideas have
been cemented together so powerfully, as to remain united. But there
are degrees of madness, as of folly; the disorderly jumbling ideas
together is in some more, and some less. In short, herein seems to lie
the difference between idiots and madmen: that madmen put wrong
ideas together, and so make wrong propositions, but argue and reason
right from them; but idiots make very few or no propositions, and
reason scarce at all.
14. Method followed in this explication of faculties. These, I
think, are the first faculties and operations of the mind, which it
makes use of in understanding; and though they are exercised about all
its ideas in general, yet the instances I have hitherto given have
been chiefly in simple ideas. And I have subjoined the explication
of these faculties of the mind to that of simple ideas, before I
come to what I have to say concerning complex ones, for these
following reasons:-
First, Because several of these faculties being exercised at first
principally about simple ideas, we might, by following nature in its
ordinary method, trace and discover them, in their rise, progress, and
gradual improvements.
Pages:
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220