Now of substances also, there are two sorts of ideas:- one of
single substances, as they exist separately, as of a man or a sheep;
the other of several of those put together, as an army of men, or
flock of sheep- which collective ideas of several substances thus
put together are as much each of them one single idea as that of a man
or an unit.
7. Ideas of relation. Thirdly, the last sort of complex ideas is
that we call Relation, which consists in the consideration and
comparing one idea with another.
Of these several kinds we shall treat in their order.
8. The abstrusest ideas we can have are all from two sources. If
we trace the progress of our minds, and with attention observe how
it repeats, adds together, and unites its simple ideas received from
sensation or reflection, it will lead us further than at first perhaps
we should have imagined. And, I believe, we shall find, if we warily
observe the originals of our notions, that even the most abstruse
ideas, how remote soever they may seem from sense, or from any
operations of our own minds, are yet only such as the understanding
frames to itself, by repeating and joining together ideas that it
had either from objects of sense, or from its own operations about
them: so that those even large and abstract ideas are derived from
sensation or reflection, being no other than what the mind, by the
ordinary use of its own faculties, employed about ideas received
from objects of sense, or from the operations it observes in itself
about them, may, and does, attain unto.
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