For simple
ideas are all from things themselves, and of these the mind can have
no more, nor other than what are suggested to it. It can have no other
ideas of sensible qualities than what come from without by the senses;
nor any ideas of other kind of operations of a thinking substance,
than what it finds in itself But when it has once got these simple
ideas, it is not confined barely to observation, and what offers
itself from without; it can, by its own power, put together those
ideas it has, and make new complex ones, which it never received so
united.
3. Complex ideas are either of modes, substances, or relations.
COMPLEX IDEAS, however compounded and decompounded, though their
number be infinite, and the variety endless, wherewith they fill and
entertain the thoughts of men; yet I think they may be all reduced
under these three heads:-
1. MODES.
2. SUBSTANCES.
3. RELATIONS.
4. Ideas of modes. First, Modes I call such complex ideas which,
however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of
subsisting by themselves, but are considered as dependences on, or
affections of substances;- such as are the ideas signified by the
words triangle, gratitude, murder, &c. And if in this I use the word
mode in somewhat a different sense from its ordinary signification,
I beg pardon; it being unavoidable in discourses, differing from the
ordinary received notions, either to make new words, or to use old
words in somewhat a new signification; the later whereof, in our
present case, is perhaps the more tolerable of the two.
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