These are my guesses concerning the means whereby the
understanding comes to have and retain simple ideas, and the modes
of them, with some other operations about them.
I proceed now to examine some of these simple ideas and their
modes a little more particularly.
Chapter XII
Of Complex Ideas
1. Made by the mind out of simple ones. We have hitherto
considered those ideas, in the reception whereof the mind is only
passive, which are those simple ones received from sensation and
reflection before mentioned, whereof the mind cannot make one to
itself, nor have any idea which does not wholly consist of them. But
as the mind is wholly passive in the reception of all its simple
ideas, so it exerts several acts of its own, whereby out of its simple
ideas, as the materials and foundations of the rest, the others are
framed. The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over its
simple ideas, are chiefly these three: (1) Combining several simple
ideas into one compound one; and thus all complex ideas are made.
(2) The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex,
together, and setting them by one another, so as to take a view of
them at once, without uniting them into one; by which way it gets
all its ideas of relations. (3) The third is separating them from
all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is
called abstraction: and thus all its general ideas are made.
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