I have only
mentioned these here, as so many instances of modes of pleasure and
pain resulting in our minds from various considerations of good and
evil. I might perhaps have instanced in other modes of pleasure and
pain, more simple than these; as the pain of hunger and thirst, and
the pleasure of eating and drinking to remove them: the pain of
teeth set on edge; the pleasure of music; pain from captious
uninstructive wrangling, and the pleasure of rational conversation
with a friend, or of well-directed study in the search and discovery
of truth. But the passions being of much more concernment to us, I
rather made choice to instance in them, and show how the ideas we have
of them are derived from sensation or reflection.
Chapter XXI
Of Power
1. This idea how got. The mind being every day informed, by the
senses, of the alteration of those simple ideas it observes in
things without; and taking notice how one comes to an end, and
ceases to be, and another begins to exist which was not before;
reflecting also on what passes within itself, and observing a constant
change of its ideas, sometimes by the impression of outward objects on
the senses, and sometimes by the determination of its own choice;
and concluding from what it has so constantly observed to have been,
that the like changes will for the future be made in the same
things, by like agents, and by the like ways,- considers in one
thing the possibility of having any of its simple ideas changed, and
in another the possibility of making that change; and so comes by that
idea which we call power.
Pages:
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330